Science and Religion
If you want to hear some thoroughly silly reactions to Dawkins on God, listen to the latest Saturday Review.
First you get a bit of soundtrack, of the cheery perky dense evangelical telling Dawkins what’s what.
Ted Haggart: ‘We fully embrace the scientific method, as American evangelicals – and we think, as time goes along, as we discover more and more facts, that we’ll learn more and more about how God created the heavens and the earth – ‘
Dawkins points out that the evidence shows the earth to be 4.5 billion years old, Haggart says (perkily, cheerily), ‘You know what you’re doing?’ and explains that he’s paying attention to just part of the scientific community, and that maybe in a hundred years ‘your grandchildren will laugh at you.’
‘You want to bet?’ Dawkins asks, sharpish.
‘Sometimes it’s hard for a human being to study the ear or study the eye and think that happened by accident.’
‘I beg your pardon, did you say “by accident”?’
‘Yeah.’
‘What do you mean “by accident”?
‘That the eye just formed itself somehow.’
‘Who says it did?’
‘Well, some evolutionists say it.’
‘Not a single one that I’ve ever met.’
[Sarcastically wondering]: ‘Really?!’
‘Really.’
[More wondering]: ‘Ohh.’
‘You obviously know nothing about evolution.’
‘Or maybe you haven’t met the people I have.’ [laughs] ‘But you see – you do understand – you do understand that this issue right here, of intellectual arrogance, is the reason why, people like you, have a difficult problem with people of faith – ‘
See what I mean? He has a considerable nerve, this Haggart guy, telling Dawkins that he, Dawkins, is arrogant, when he’s just been lecturing him on a subject of which he does obviously know nothing. ‘That the eye just formed itself somehow.’ He has no clue what he’s talking about, but that doesn’t stop him from insisting on his ridiculous point. Isn’t that a tad arrogant?!
Then after the listen, all three guests rant and fume and gibber. George Walden talks about ‘jackboots stamping on the few Christians who are left’ and ‘stamping on the faces of Jews and Catholics’. Then Fay Weldon gets worked up: ‘He had an emotion, which is that science and religion are fundamentally opposed, and he cannot come to terms with the fact that they may not be.’ Walden complains, ‘He doesn’t deal with faith, he deals with religion – and faith is a big serious thing.’ Tom Sutcliffe – he was the only sensible one there – pointed out, ‘His specific point in the first programme is that faith is the problem – the belief in things without as it were physical or substantial evidence is the central problem.’ Then Weldon, outraged, says, ‘Well it’s outrageous, what is he going to put in its place, science?’ ‘Yes!’ says Sutcliffe, slightly exasperated. Weldon is flummoxed. ‘He’s going to look at the stars and say – ‘ [stupid baffled laugh] ‘I mean how is he going to explain them away?’ Then Paul Farley quotes William Burroughs, ‘No job too dirty for a scientist.’ In short it was quite a display of hostility to science and reason on the part of right-on intellectuals. But it does seem (to me anyway!) to bear out the claim that criticism of religion inspires a special intensity of outrage, even among non-believers. And even in the UK.
You had to see the evangelical preacher to get just how damn -scary- he was.
Is there not some slightly irritated Murcan, with one of those nice high powered rifles Mr.Heston insists you all have the right to carry, who considers Haggart to be somewhat too frothing to be allowed near (within 1000 miles) of anybody’s children? It strikes me that the problem with the USA is that the sane have far too much tolerance for the completely deranged. One cannot apply the same argument to Jerusalem, because there the sane are in such a minority as to be absolved of any blame. Well done O.B; keep on keeping on.
I did something I do only very rarely and turned the television on for that programme. The Haggart chap was worse than creepy–aggressive. I thought he was going to hit Dawkins! But I couldn’t stop laughing at the absurdity of his statements (I won’t call them ideas.)
At a later point in the programme, Dawkins interviewed a young Muslim man–I can’t remember the context, I’m afraid, my concentration is quite poor. After being welcomed warmly, Dawkins stated that he was an atheist but quite a gentle one, and that he didn’t hate anyone. The Muslim fellow said that he hated atheists, because, among other things, “You dress your women like whores.”
“…women dress themselves.” replied Dawkins.
For me the key image (so far, that tape will get some play) was when, as Dawkins was carefully explaining the key point, Haggart was grinning, nodding, yeah-righting, and then just talked on, delivering prefabricated responses. It was the equivalent to sticking his fingers in his ears and going la-la-la.
The beleaguered free-thinkers was revealing. I noticed a passing reference to the ‘hassle your science teacher’ courses these characters run. Wasn’t there a thread on that here, or do I mis-remember?
I didn’t catch the precise comment, but not long after accusing him of arrogance, I’m sure Haggard said that if Dawkins started being more open-minded and humble (or something along those lines), eventually “You’d be a great man like me.” Riiiiight.
And Fay Weldon? As quoted by Dawkins in Unweaving the Rainbow, referring to science:
“Don’t expect us to like you. You promised us too much and failed to deliver. You never even tried to answer the questions we all asked when we were six. Where did Aunt Maud go when she died? Where was she before she was born? . . . And who cares about half a second after the Big Bang; what about half a second before? And what about crop circles?”
Crop circles, no less. And now those ruddy scientists are out to explain the stars away!
Fay Weldon also sticks her fingers in her ears and chants la-la-la. Sutcliffe sounded exasperated, desperately, and my heart went out to him. I have been in much the same conversation and wonder why the same sloppy “arguments” and ad hominems are recycled. Thanks, Olivia, for bringing some brains into the pastures of the blessed bovines. You inspire me to hunt sacred cows.
Oh, surprise surprise. The Radio 4 usuals stamp on anything that goes outside of their narrow, supposedly liberal presuppositions and, of course, bring up the “OMG SOVIET RUSSIA! ATHEISTS ARE EVIL!!!!111” argument which holds no weight wit anybody who’s got any damn braincells.
Dawkins has produced a programme that’s riled up exactly the sort of people who ought to get riled up – complacent, fluffy hacks.
Okay so of course you guys long to send me a (very belated, by the way) Xmas present, and bung a tape of that show in the post. Right? Right. So kind of you, many thanks.
Don, yes, there was a thread on that here, or close, anyway – about hassling museum staff rather than teachers. I’ll try to find it.
“And Fay Weldon? As quoted by Dawkins in Unweaving the Rainbow”
Oh right! I’d completely forgotten that. I knew I already thought she was a bit dim, but couldn’t remember why. That was it! Unweaving the Rainbow. I remember feeling somewhat shocked. ‘You never even tried to answer the questions’ – god, how stupid can you get.
Yeah, my heart went out to Sutcliffe too. He did a good job.
Yes, it was last September, the thread about creationist harassers in museums.
I’m sure Haggard said that if Dawkins started being more open-minded and humble (or something along those lines), eventually “You’d be a great man like me.”
Ben, that was Haggard paraphrasing what he took Dawkins’s attitude to be.
For a more recent news report on docent harassment:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/25/AR2005122500675.html
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http://tinyurl.com/cmxxr
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Haggart’s (Haggard?)willingness to comment in public on something scientific of which he is clearly ignorant is perhaps not unusual.
Late last year the New Criterion published a lengthy article called “Science and Scientism” by a professor emeritus of philosophy who took as his principal evidence of scientism the unwillingness of dogmatic scientists to consider ID seriously.
The writer referred eight times to random mutation (which he thought was biology’s explanation of evolution), three times stated or implied that evolution had no formative principle, mentioned Behe without criticism, but did not once refer to natural selection or any paraphrase thereof.
If an educated person whose former profession involved the study of truth and knowledge (I presume) can write such easily checked nonsense for publication and editors of what I had hitherto considered a reputable conservative magazine accept it, goodness knows what unpublished, uninformed beliefs hold sway in the general public and their preachers.
You certainly have a good point, Kiwi Dave. But there are two responses it inspired in me, albeit one less serious than the other.
Firstly, whenever a presumably educated person spouts absolute gibberish – especially about religion – it pays to remember that the decrease in religiosity with increase in education is a statistical matter: There are lots of educated people, so even the skinny part of the bell curve will contain many individuals who have all the critical thinking capacity of a clam.
Secondly, it also helps to remember a bit of statistics that I first learned as Sturgeon’s Law, roughly paraphrased: 90% of science fiction is crap. Then again, 90% of everything is crap. And in science fiction, the remaining 10% is some of the most interesting and compelling stuff there is.
I apply the same general principle to philosophy and philsophers. Although perhaps 10% is a bit generous for the non-fecal ratio. (And yes, I am a philosopher. Whether I fall in the 90% or 10% is a judgment I leave for future smart-asses like me to make.)
Thirdly – because I thought of another point, despite having started out with two – the phrase “reputable conservative magazine” may well be an oxymoron. Magazines with clear, strong political-ideological perspectives ought not to count as “reputable” in the way you seem to mean it – that is, unlikely to publish tripe. Editorial boards shaped primarily by political ideology are prone to publishing at least some drivel – usually lots and lots of it – as long as it comes wrapped in the packaging of the proper political perspective.
Adam, you’re right – cheerfully withdrawn! Haggard’s overly animated top lip still scares the bejesus out of me, mind.
GT, I think Marxism fails your test – it doesn’t really have a god, prophets I guess, but no god, and it isn’t based on fear or superstition (it may be wrong, but that isn’t the point).
Listening to that guy I think the Discovery Institute and pals have mostly succeeded in their mission.
Religious believers were always troubled by the fact that scientists pretty unanimously rejected their creation myths. But now they have a set of people claiming to be scientists who say their creation myth is fine. Your average religious believer doesn’t (and never did) care about the truth of the matter. As long as the scientists are disagreeing with each other their beliefs are unthreatened.
Hence the nut-job preacher talking about how his book has no contradictions while scientists all disagee with each other, and how all the scientists -he- knows think evolution is false.
Oh quality, Dawkins is bad for knocking religious people, or bad for not knocking the Muslims enough.
Communist Russia and China, and the evil scientific complicity in the actions of the multinationals. Brilliant stuff – it seems it is no longer possible to talk about truth claims independently, the hostility expressed towards science amongst the arts commentariat is very interesting.
But my favourite was the claim that Dawkins wasn’t being ‘scientific’, it seems science has become a hoorah word with no content – it is utterly meaningless in the context.
To add to marxism failing G. Tingey’s test, surely you have to add Buddhism and Confusionism. Buddhism has a universal spirit; Confuscionism has a heaven, hell and demons.
1. No “god” can be detected – OR – God is not detectable
for “god” substitute a supernatural entity or element, such as undetectable heaven, unsubstantiated reincarnation or something else, perhaps.
Bound to be someone who can improve on my suggestion.
I only caught the program from the interview with that smug and smarmy evangelical. By the end though I began to despair that there really are such stupid and malevolent people in the world. As Dawkins said religion gets good people doing evil things.
In practice of course it isn’t just religion. Any dogma that claims to know the answer before anyone has asked the question is as likely to have the same outcome – which means marxism and many brands of libertarianism as well as Christianity, Judaism and Islam.
By the end I just wanted to nail all those arrogant know-alls behind a big door – preferably the same door.
‘However, if, as Jesus clearly taught, the Bible really is the Word of God – and the internal evidence is overwhelming – true Science will always agree with it.’
A deranged mid-western evangelical or Head of Science at a prestigious English Secondary School?
http://www.darwinwars.com/lunatic/liars/layfield.html
“Any dogma that claims to know the answer before anyone has asked the question is as likely to have the same outcome – which means marxism and many brands of libertarianism as well as Christianity, Judaism and Islam.”
Yup. That’s pretty much a paraphrase of B&W’s ‘About’ page. If you know what conclusion you have to come to ahead of time – you’re lost.
What a lot of commentators missed – deliberately unless they really did have their fingers in their ears while saying la la la – was Dawkins asserting that he wanted to tell us about how faith is bad enough e.g. in terms of the massed delusion that is Lourdes, as no-one ever gets better just because they wheeled their sick carcass down there. Bad enough he says – clearly, and near the beginning of the show – but things get an awful lot worse when this numbskullery is placed in the hands of unnaccountable extremists who have a political agenda. To give evidence, he interviewed men who have influence on Bush’s policies and men in Jerusalem who really do think that anyone who deosn’t beleive in their faith need slaughtering. He also interviewed college professors who fear for their jobs if they admit to their atheism in parts of the US. Yet all the abovementioned critisim from the Radio 4 ‘comentariat’ has been along the lines of ‘why didn’t he interview someone more balanced and sophisticated and cuddly’? Because that wasn’t his f@cking point, was it you imbeciles? They have roundly ignored his message from the get go… la la la
They really did seem imbecilic – all three of them. It kind of reminded me why I’ve gone off the whole idea of artsy people lately. It has – finally, belatedly, long overduely – forced itself on my awareness that self-consciously exclusively artsy people are all too often really bad at thinking. I mean really, systematically, dedicatedly bad. As if they think it’s part of the job description or something.
(Although the Walden guy is a linguist. But he sure seemed to be thinking like an artsy person in that last segment. An honorary artsy person, maybe.)
…self-consciously exclusively artsy people are all too often really bad at thinking…
I think the modifiers ‘self-consciously exclusively’ are well-placed. It is my impression it’s most often those trying hardest to pose as the sophisticates who are also most likely to be the most stolid and stunned of the lot.
There’s a logic to this, really, seems to me. And I think when you think about the notion of fashionable nonsense, it sticks out.
Seems to me there is a sort of herd mentality in some folk about art. It’s important to them to be fashionable, and whatever’s today, that’s what they’re for, and the important thing isn’t so much to have your own honest reactions to the work, it’s to be able to comment knowledgeably on those you’ve heard from other folk presumably knowledgeable and respectable…
Again, it’s about what’s fashionable, and it’s about argument from authority, really. Independence of thought is less a value. So it’s unsurprising that when you put someone on the podium next to them who actually expects arguments to make sense as opposed to follow the latest fashion, they look more than a little silly.
So knowing about art, appreciating art, even really keeping up to what’s in the hip galleries, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going also to carry about some monumentally naive ideas about, say, holistic medicine. But if you’re the sort of person for whom the flavour of the month is always the whole world, supplanting all that went before as somehow irrelevant and gauche, yeah, it probably does mean that.
I’ve talked about the programme to two Xtian colleagues who saw it. Both were quite happy to emphasise that, of course, they weren’t the kind of people about whom Dawkins was talking. When I explained the underlying thesis, which they seemed to have missed, they got very put out indeed and, of course, denied it and started to chunter on about how important religion is to maintain the moral values of society, etc.etc.
As the ‘News of the World’ used to say – I made my apologies and left.
No, Marxism is not a religion. First, there is not one, single, monolithic entity called Marxism, and even Marxism in Eastern Europe was a lot different depending whether we’re in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Prague in 1968 or the SU in the early eighties. And that leaves aside a whole variety of Marxisms that were never state ideological tools.
I even feel that calling Soviet Marxism at its most dogmatic and leader-worshipping a “religion” would be widening the definition of religion too far – i.e. to include all kinds of closed, metaphysical ideologies. Whether they include the existence of God or not. Which seems to me to be a rather important aspect of religion.
And let’s also get rid of the line that “all religions kill, enslave and torture”. I would submit, first of all, that there is a slight difference between, say, fundamentalist Islam and Scandinavian Lutheranism in the enslaving, killing and torturing department. Besides, I am a bit loath to blame the ideas people have for actions that, in the end, they do themselves.
Religions of the “if you don’t believe what I do you’ll end up in Hell and, hey, let’s help you on your way” variety (or my favourite – the ‘argument from intimidation’ I saw linked to on this site – “See that pyre? God exists”) may be the most conspicuous, the most noisy – but they’re also historically quite late (the Romans were supremely uninterested in whether belief in Mars or Jesus or Cybele or Mithras was more “truthful”). And they’re hardly representative of religion in the modern industrialized, urbanized West – though I agree that the fact that they’re alive and kicking at all is one that causes great concern.
I haven’t seen the program with Dawkins – here in Sweden, it’s unlikely I will. But on the face of it, I’d much rather see a debate between Dawkins and a theologist worth his/her salt – or even a scientist who happens to be religious – than a silly Evangelist. I don’t believe that a debate in which religion is represented by it’s most loony and intellectually weakest exponent is going to be very fruitful.
No, GT, of course it’s not just you who says Marxism is a religion. (And well done working it out for yourself ten years back. Four stars.) But the fact remains that that is an oversimplification. It may or may not be useful for rhetorical purposes, but it’s still an oversimplification. The fact that Marxism ‘behaves’ (does Marxism really ‘behave’ at all?) ‘like’ ‘a religion’ doesn’t mean it is in fact a religion. It may or may not have a lot in common with religion and still not actually be a religion. It depends, obviously, how one is defining religion. You can define it any way you like, but the common usage of religion includes the supernatural and a deity.
There is a reason the word ‘religion’ is not considered a synonym for ‘ideology’ – the two words reflect a useful distinction.
“I’d much rather see a debate between Dawkins and a theologist worth his/her salt”
But what do you think would be the result? Fundamentally there must be some really rather dodgy piece of reasoning in said theologian’s argument, likely backed up with bizarre ad hominems about fundamentalist atheism and hand-waving appeals to beauty and what-not.
Oh, and what Merlijn said, too. I missed that – was busy typing myself.
I’m not sure about the silly Evangelist though. Those people do have ever-increasing influence, after all.
PM – depends on what the subject matter of such a discussion would be. If it were the existence of God, the debate would be possibly interesting but necessarily inconclusive. Not because the theologian’s arguments would be necessarily flawed, but because IMO the question lies beyond the limits of scientific inquiry (caveat: this is opinion. Not all possible conceptions of “God” are inapproachable by science).
Note that I have nothing against building metaphysical beliefs that cannot be scientifically validated. I do it all the time (they just never convince me enough to blow people up or persecute heretics on the basis of them).
But questions about the sociological function of religion, the issue of authoritarianism and the like, or the issue of the basis of morality – those would be very debatable, I think. But they would require someone on the “religious” side who is both a) not a maniac who believes in the literal truth of Scripture and the imminent incineration of those that don’t, as such a person necessarily lacks any critical distance towards his own beliefs and b) not someone of the postmodernist “many different truths” persuasion either, as then there would be nothing to debate (and I’d quickly feel sorry for the postmodernist theologian).
Ah, a saying I can wholeheartedly salute:
“Note that I have nothing against building metaphysical beliefs that cannot be scientifically validated. I do it all the time (they just never convince me enough to blow people up or persecute heretics on the basis of them).”
That’s true, of course, G. Tingey – but I believe it more to be an extreme case of a phenomenon more or less inherent in _any_ human organization than indicative of religion. Set people apart in any kind of subculture, and you will have a tendency for them to subdivide into even smaller groups, all of which feel they are more “true” to whatever ideal they started out with than the other.
To have that with organized religion, however, you would first need a religion with some kind of central dogma which you can divert from. That’s not all religions. Some will happily incorporate any heresy or any foreign god you might think of, and these might be kept together by other mechanisms than dogmatism (e.g. ethnicity). Religion would here not be the focal point of personal identity (and therefore, a basis on which to persecute anything constituting a threat to that) but something else is. It’s the universalist, multi-ethnic religions such as Christianity or Islam where things get hairy in the dogmatism/heresy department.
It’s not so much that organized religion causes or promotes authoritarianism, but that people will tend to create authoritarian structures wherever they can. We’re herd animals. And if organized religion is on the way out, we’re sure to find new ways to pit our group against the other. Sure, radical politics is one. Then there’s ethnicity and tribalism and weird youth subcultures and just basically anything you can think of that you can build identity politics upon.
Mr. De Smit makes some good points. Which brings out again my point: how unique is religion as a generator of the evils of authoritariansim and “not-thought”? We need to be careful when we speak of the “unique” evils of religion, because the human mind can create oppression and genocide without the benefit of “(the) god(s).” Are we perhaps being unfair to single out “religion” when an array of human cultural structures does the same thing (or even worse)? There are Maoist terrorists active right now-in Peru, Nepal, etc. In some ways, they are as bad or worse than Al Qaeda.
Who around here does speak of the unique evils of religion? Take a look at the About page – surely it makes exactly the same point.
But religion is one large, powerful, pervasive, and, especially, protected branch of this a priori refusal to think, so B&W pays a lot of attention to it in particular. That doesn’t require calling it unique.
OK, Ophelia. you have certainly not ignored other not-thought movements :) I’m just saying that we can’t lose sight of the difficulties of secular movements in creating similar problems.
‘Right on intellectuals’, Ophelia? Is that a scientific term? And how do you decide whether they are ‘right-on’ and whether your reading of ‘right-onness’ corresponds with that of others? Myself, I can’t see Walden or Farley being right-on. Wrong, they may be, but right-onness has nothing to do with it. Except that you don’t like them. Fine. But is that science? Personally I think Farley is an exceptionally good poet, which is not quite the same thing as being an exceptionally good bicycle-repair man. It suggests to me that he is a man capable of thinking, feeling and articulating perceptions better than most. And yet, he may be wrong. I would not think any the less of him for that.
Is science really a moral crusade? Is its authority really endangered because some people’s sense of life is different, often on subjects on which science has nothing particular to say, like aesthetics for example, or love, or dread, or other pretty common human states?
I will take a scientist’s word on the force of gravity and all relevant matters. But I don’t see why I should assume that a way of investigating particular kinds of information automatically annihilates everything else that pertains to other areas of life. Since I have no idea in any clear sense of what God is or may or may not be, except a few historically and culturally specific notions such as that he is a he and that he is love, and that he so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, and such things, none of which is exactly falsifiable, unless you know better than I do, I don’t see why – should I find some kind of meaning in any of these statements – I should get up your, or indeed Dawkins’s, nose.
Or at least, if I were to do so by finding meaning in such statements, whether your best recourse would be to call me ‘right-on’, or the equivalent, meaning anything you don’t like?
And since we may (or may not) agree about much else that is considered important, why is it necessary for ‘you’ to get so het up about that particular aspect of the hypothetical ‘me’ ? Does that mean we don’t talk to each other? Does that mean there should be no conversations between people who you would consider to be objectively right and those you consider objectively wrong?
Uh oh! Nailed by a poet – caught red-handed.
You’re quite right, George: right-on was just a bit of casual abuse there. But then the three of them were being a tad casually abusive themselves.
But I take your point – and I can easily believe that (apart from Weldon) they may be very insightful in general. But I did think they all three said some remarkably silly things in their comments in that last segment. And I think (I’m going to offend against section five of the public order act here, beg pardon) that sometimes artists have a Romantic impulse (or sense of obligation, perhaps) to pride themselves on being, what, intuitive in a more or less explicitly anti-rational way. That they sometimes feel a duty of sorts to attack science and rational thought in general, as being inimical not just to art but to the way artists think. And when they do that – they sometimes say silly things, it seems to me.
Keats is my own personal paradigmatic example of this, because in a way I find him convincing, simply because I nearly always find his way of stating things convincing. I read the Letters and I agree and disagree at the same time – and it causes great upheaval inside my head.
I suppose that’s one reason I get het up about it. I’m a literary type myself, or at least used to be. And I think the result was that…I impoverished myself, I guess.
So I suppose I think that Romantic trope tends to be harmful – and I get het up about it. Especially when it’s as confident and scornful as it was on that Saturday Review.
“I’m going to offend against section five of the public order act here, beg pardon”
It’s ok, you’ve written it down.
Let me run with this a little longer, Ophelia.
It is not so much a matter of anger that results in name-calling, but of dismissing a complex and far from one-dimensional experience with a display of hostility. That, I think, is what some people dislike about Dawkins. I don’t think they necessarily think that Dawkins is wrong (just as I don’t necessarily think you are wrong) but I doubt whether either you or Dawkins can flick away the accumulated experience of thousands of years as if it were some noisome fly.
Religion is a codified version of certain basic human feelings, hunches and states of mind. Some of these result in evil actions, some in good. You can say the same about most human states of mind.
I understand why scientists get cross with proponents of ‘intelligent design’. They are, in effect, trespassing on the domain of science: scientists must be the best judges of their methodologies and should be able to resist religious trespassers.
But I can point to many fields – indeed have already pointed to some in my last comment on this thread – where science has little of value to say.
You mention Keats’s letters. I think ‘negative capability’ was Keats’s most important perception. Uncertainty is, I think, a necessary condition for the making of art, and the making of art is vital because it is the forming of uncertainty into comprehensible shapes that ring such deep bells in us that their power to do so seems inexhaustible, and because they strike us as comprehensively true. Bach, Mozart, and late Beethoven are not just pretty inconsequential fribblings. They are meanings. They are what life has meant to human consciousness.
That uncertainty is also an aspect of religion, in that it is belief that is being appealed to, not logic.
There are of course vast core problems with ‘belief’ as such, because belief in the end comes down to unsupported assertion. And that, precisely, is why uncertainty – which is usually accompanied by humility – is a necessary aspect of any system or code of belief. It is the discarding of uncertainty that results in monstrous actions. Fanaticism is certainty in full cry.
But opposite certainties are equally problematic. It is certain that if I leap off the top of the multi-storey car park I will descend to the ground. It is certain that if I put a flame under something it will get hot. But not all life fits under the heading of verifiable truth.
I am sure I don’t need to point to more examples of that. In fact I am not even sure that I need to say what I am saying, except that time and again when I read posts, I feel I am entering a corner where someone says, ‘Smith sucks!’ and someone replies, ‘Doesn’t he just!’ , going on to add ‘Smith is an idiot’ then ‘Smith is evil’ finally down to ‘Better that Smith had never been born’.
And that seems odd, because I think Smith – like most Smiths, most of the time – is just Smith, not Abu Hamza, or Pat Robertson, or indeed Stalin or Mao. I think Smith’s natural state is uncertainty and that I am in no position to declare that invalid. Smith is not sure whether there is something transcendent about his or her experience of life, but sometimes he feels there is. He or she may not be able to locate or name the transcendent but values it just the same. Why, he or she, may even be at their best when feeling so. Blake felt everything that lived was holy. How long do we want to argue about the meaning of the word ‘holy’? I am not sure I agree with Blake – at least I don’t act as though I agreed – but I don’t think any the worse of him for it. Quite the converse in fact.
It is not that I am making a categorical statement about the existence or possible qualities of God or gods, but I do know that a vast number of beautiful, useful, substantial, heartrending things have been created by people who entertained such a possible notion in their minds. You are not going to tell me that Giotto, or Fra Angelico, or Masaccio or Piero della Francesca, to take a tiny example, have added nothing to the sum of human achievements. And I, in my turn, am not going to tell you that when I look at works by those artists, who painted by and large the subjects, seem to me to be talking about precisely the same ‘being’, or the same sensation of some such presence.
Uncertainty remains: theirs and ours. There is no verifiable way of establishing that the vision and productions of any of these artists, was truer than that of the others.
I suspect Paul Farley’s comment was the result of an attempted defence of that which seems to him, as it does to most most artists, the numinous and the uncertain which are his province, his field of expertise if you like, not Dawkins’s.
I don’t think I will make any further comment on this subject. Just as I would not even dream of making a case for the existence of God (which God?) neither would I for the authority of canonically, politically and historically selected scriptures. Nevertheless there are many marvellous things in the Bible that are not simply categorcal statements about verifiable or falsifiable truth.
I will not be arguing this point after this posting because I would simply be repeating myself with different examples.
I just wanted to put in a word for religious, praying, hymn-singing Smith because nobody else here is going to do it.
“But I can point to many fields – indeed have already pointed to some in my last comment on this thread – where science has little of value to say.”
This is a very common response, but I think it is very flawed. Because science is not trespassing onto the realm of the airy-fairy artistic ‘truth’, it is simply pointing out that whatever religion has to say about that, it is also making unsupported truth claims which can have very concrete consequences. If you want to believe in some made-up new age crap that -doesn’t- make claims about the world in that way I doubt Dawkins would be all that bothered about it, and he certainly wouldn’t be making TV programs about its malign influence.
This is just like that Dylan Evans (or whatever his name was) – you can’t claim immunity from scientific scrutiny because religion talks about different things from science if you’re just gonna cross straight back over that line whenever you can and say stuff that just ain’t so.
Well, you see, that’s the difference between us, PM. I don’t think artistic truths are ‘airy-fairy’. Is that what you think the examples I have quoted are? All that Shakespeare, Bach, Rembrandt airy-fairy stuff?
What have I said that you can categorically state is not so? I suspect you are being very literal minded. I certainly don’t believe in new-age crap. I have a respect for the productions of various periods. In any case, I have distinctly said that my state is not belief but uncertainty. What is so difficult about that.
As for consequences all assumptions have consequences. My argument was that the consequences are rather more complex than is claimed here.
In so far as religion makes claims that can be verified or falsified, scientists are, naturally, very welcome to verify or falsify them. I don’t think I argued against that. That would be stupid of me.
I am not trying to convert anybody to anything, certainly not to any set of ideas I am unaware of holding. It’s just that I think railing at religion generally, and claiming that all it has produced is stupid and wicked, seems very short-sighted and unscientific to me.
It’s just not good enough to say simply God is crap, religion is crap, art is airy-fairy crap. But don’t worry, I won’t be dancing my fairy rings here again. Not on this subject anyway. Do please continue as you were before I came in.
“Well, you see, that’s the difference between us, PM. I don’t think artistic truths are ‘airy-fairy’. Is that what you think the examples I have quoted are? All that Shakespeare, Bach, Rembrandt airy-fairy stuff?”
They’re airy fairy because it is so very difficult to figure out just what artistic ‘truth’ -means-, hence the scare quotes. And thus they are a very different kind of truth from scientific truths, if they can really be called truths at all.
You say “Is its authority really endangered because some people’s sense of life is different, often on subjects on which science has nothing particular to say, like aesthetics for example, or love, or dread, or other pretty common human states?”
And I am trying to point out that what Dawkins (and the rest of us) are objecting to in religion is this kind of merrilly saying all we’re talking about it deep spiritual things, and then once you’ve ducked the criticism to go on your way claiming that God wants such and such to happen, and imposing this on other people, whether it be by violence or through civil power.
Fine if all you think religion is about is feelings and spiritual awe, but then you are not talking about the same extant religion that we are, the sort of religion that is out there doing stuff and has lots of believers influencing the way the world is.
“there are many marvellous things in the Bible that are not simply categorcal statements about verifiable or falsifiable truth.”
But there are a hell of a lot of things in the Bible that are simply categorical statements about truth – the very things that lead people to kill each other, the very things that lead people to impose their view of the way things should be on other people, the very damn things dawkins is moaning about. He is moaning that you are seemingly prepared to let religion off the hook because it might have some effect on people’s feelings, even when that tiny little inoffensive aspect of it is then used to justify faith in things that there is no evidence for, and consequent forcing of others to adhere to that view.
If you think that all religion is about is awe and whatnot then we’ve got no beef with you, but don’t try and let the rest of the believers off with you, they still have plenty of things to say about stuff that science (and more than science, reason in general) has plenty of objections to.
“It’s just not good enough to say simply God is crap, religion is crap, art is airy-fairy crap.”
I say that there is no reson to be believe in the existence of -a- god, and even less reason (i.e. there are positively good reasons not) to believe in God. Religion can be harmful and I do not like people believing in factual claims without good reason. If they get some spiritual buzz from it that is really none of my concern. And finally, art is not airy-fairy crap, but ‘artistic truths’ are certainly not the same thing as verifiable factual claims about the world, I don’t think I even believe in ‘artistic truths’ really, more in ‘aesthetic responses’ which manages to avoid the strange equivalence you seem to want to put religion and science into.
Look at it another way – I have no objections to the artistic truths of Harry Potter (a fatuous example but bear with me) but if fans of it tried to start making public policy based on Centaurs and Unicorns and the existence of magic -then- I’d be rather opposed to this HarryPotterish turn.
Religion is much the same, it wouldn’t bother me if it stuck to the realm of the artistic and spiritual – but it doesn’t, and there is really very little point making the distinction between the two when we attack it because only a very few apologists make the distinction anyway – it is certainly not something recognised by the majority of believers.
Thanks for continuation, George. (I realize you said you’ve said what you’re going to say, but I might as well answer anyway.)
“Religion is a codified version of certain basic human feelings, hunches and states of mind.”
Sure, but the trouble is, that’s not all it is. If it were just that, I would have no quarrel with it, and neither would Dawkins (I can say that with confidence because he’s said as much). The trouble is, most religion also makes truth claims, and presses those claims on everyone else.
I agree about negative capability; it’s one of many ideas in Keats’s letters I find almost bottomlessly suggestive and attractive. However –
“That uncertainty is also an aspect of religion, in that it is belief that is being appealed to, not logic.”
It ought to be, but isn’t. In practice it all too often works exactly the opposite way. Religious believers claim to know what they believe. In practice they claim far more certainty than scientists do. Scientists in fact are well aware of uncertainty, and religious believers rarely are.
“I suspect Paul Farley’s comment was the result of an attempted defence of that which seems to him, as it does to most most artists, the numinous and the uncertain which are his province, his field of expertise if you like, not Dawkins’s.”
But if that is because Farley sees Dawkins as some sort of threat to the numinous and the uncertain, that’s just a misunderstanding. Dawkins’s objection is to the truth claims of religion and the asymmetrical deference those truth claims get – not to poetry, or Bach, or Fra Angelico!
“Nevertheless there are many marvellous things in the Bible that are not simply categorcal statements about verifiable or falsifiable truth.”
I completely agree – at least in the King James translation; I go off it a good deal in modern translation, I must say; and I don’t know the Hebrew or Greek. A great many marvelous things. I wouldn’t dream of denying it.
“It’s just that I think railing at religion generally, and claiming that all it has produced is stupid and wicked, seems very short-sighted and unscientific to me.”
But I haven’t actually done that. I’ve never said all it has produced is stupid and wicked, and I have noted the other side on occasion. But I do claim that a lot of what it does is stupid and wicked. That’s all I claim.
OK. My last comment.
PM, do you actually read what I say and understand it? I am not a believer. I made a clear distinction between verifiable truths and the sense of truth located in uncertainty. The sense of truth in art is located in the area in which language meets experience, and there is a lot of experience that is not verifiable. Is that not simple enough? Maybe you think everything is verifiable.
And please point out anything in my post that leads you to suggest: “and then once you’ve ducked the criticism to go on your way claiming that God wants such and such to happen, and imposing this on other people, whether it be by violence or through civil power.”
How can I even begin to argue with someone who attributes such views to me? Even if he is using ‘you’ for ‘they’ it is smearing by asssociation. It sounds to me rather like: ‘He is not in the same camp as us, therefore he must be in the one I have drawn for him.”
I am not an apologist for religion. I am trying to explain why it is there, and to point out that simply beng rude about it doesn’t sound like an attractive or interesting procedure. Is it untrue to say that religion has a mixed record? Or that the reason it exists is because people have experiences that are hard to verify?
Frankly I don’t think this is a difficult or problematic statement. How do you account for the ancient provenance and continuing practice of religion? Religion is one of the things humans do. It further seems to me that many on this board mistake fanaticism and tyranny (which you can find outside the religious context too) for a more complicated matter and spend an inordinate amount of energy slagging that matter off as if it were the whole story.
And Ophelia – the balance between the ‘stupid and wicked’ view and any other seems practically non-existent on this board to me. And I am not sure which particular realms of truth you think religion makes claims on. Does it make sense to talk of text in purely verifiable terms? Are you expecting the parables to be verifiable truths? The Book of Job? The Psalms? Do you think the majority of European Christians actually treat the text as literal truth in terms of history? Why act as if they did?
All societies have had rules and practices and have generally tried to impose them.
Believers in anything are capable of acting tyrannically and imposing their rules and values on others. I for one wouldn’t want to trust my life in a court to PM.
My argument throughout was about uncertainty not about dogmatism. I did not talk about religious governance. I would maintain that the more substantial writers on religion have always allowed for uncertainty.
None of the points you pick up from my last posting constitutes an argument on principles. You are simply saying that the balance of practical results is heavily tipped towards your view. Well, fine. I think you may be right. Perhaps you are right.
I personally haven’t made any claims about proportion.
To recap: all I say is that religion exists, seems to have existed for ever, and has produced good things as well as bad things.
I should add that the good things are not necessarily all in the aesthetic realm. They exist in the moral realm too. We can argue about the balance of that too (though it is not a particularly worthwhile argument). I suspect that some of the moral productions of religion are humane and improved life for those who came into contact with it. Who knows how much? I don’t. I have known good religious people who gave their entire lives to be of practical help to others. Fools and knaves?
But let it pass. I did not write my post with the intention of arguing with your attitude to or thoughts about religion. I wrote because I was struck by the tone of some of the entries.
On that basis PM thinks I must be some sort of New Age, crystal hugging, airy fairy thickhead. Does he understand metaphor? I doubt it. That, I think, is the problem in a nutshell.
I don’t think we disagree on all that much, George. Maybe the part about truth claims.
“And I am not sure which particular realms of truth you think religion makes claims on.”
The existence, and usually the nature of, God.
“I would maintain that the more substantial writers on religion have always allowed for uncertainty.”
Hmm. Luther, for instance?
But anyway – even if you’re right about that – there is an abundance of less substantial writers and talkers on religion around now, who make very confident claims with no mention of uncertainty, and the claims are often quite wrong. Among the all too certain claims such writers and talkers all too often make are about the nature, habits, and beliefs of atheists – how narrow and cold we are, how there is no alternative for us but to jump off a cliff (someone said that in the Guardian a mere few weeks ago). I’m sorry to insist, but there really is a lot of very dogmatic assertive rhetoric about the virtue of religion and the vice of its absence kicking around. B&W is one-sided about it partly in response.
But as for metaphor – I love the stuff. I also use it a fair bit.
I love poetry, I don’t love religion; I take them to be different things. I think it flatters religion too much to put it in the same category as poetry and art.
“How can I even begin to argue with someone who attributes such views to me? Even if he is using ‘you’ for ‘they’ it is smearing by asssociation. It sounds to me rather like: ‘He is not in the same camp as us, therefore he must be in the one I have drawn for him.”
Hmm, you’d prefer the use of ‘one’? I tend to regard that as an affectation.
“I for one wouldn’t want to trust my life in a court to PM.”
Hey who needs “smearing by asssociation” when you can just come out and say it!
“Do you think the majority of European Christians actually treat the text as literal truth in terms of history? Why act as if they did?”
Not all of it, no. But a considerable and significant part of it? Yes.
George, let us revisit what you said:
“Since I have no idea in any clear sense of what God is or may or may not be, except a few historically and culturally specific notions such as that he is a he and that he is love, and that he so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, and such things, none of which is exactly falsifiable, unless you know better than I do, I don’t see why – should I find some kind of meaning in any of these statements – I should get up your, or indeed Dawkins’s, nose.”
And Dawkins’ response is:
“You can see why people may want to believe in something…The idea of an afterlife where you can be reunited with loved ones can be immensely consoling – though not to me. But to maintain such a belief in the face of all the evidence to the contrary is truly bewildering.”
“Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.”
“I am trying to call attention to the elephant in the room that everybody is too polite – or too devout – to notice: religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life. I don’t mean devaluing the life of others (though it can do that too), but devaluing one’s own life. Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.”
“I think moderate religion makes the world safe for extremists, because children are trained from the cradle to think faith in itself is a good thing. So then when someone says it’s part of their faith to kill people, their actions need no further justification, and are almost respected as such.”
“… religion, and specifically the devaluing effect that religion has on human life. I don’t mean devaluing the life of others (though it can do that too), but devaluing one’s own life. Religion teaches the dangerous nonsense that death is not the end.”
“I think moderate religion makes the world safe for extremists, because children are trained from the cradle to think faith in itself is a good thing. So then when someone says it’s part of their faith to kill people, their actions need no further justification, and are almost respected as such.””
Read In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs. A chilling account of Revolutionary Iran, exactly what PM says in his last comment, imo
Ophelia – I won’t take up more space here. I understand all you say. I don’t think I quarrel with it. Nor do I see that you are quarreling with me, since your few objections are embedded and explicitly allowed for in my posts.
If you are interested – though there is no reason you should be – I am pursuing the point on my own blog, which is a kind of thinking diary and, having been designed simply as a web-site with compartments, has no real blog mechanism such as comments and tracking.