Which is Dominant?
Well, I’ve had some correspondence about the Science and Religion In Focus, which I suppose is not surprising. I thought I might as well discuss the issue a little more here, so that people can comment directly. To quote from Bill’s letter on the Letters page:
And aren’t these quotations reflective of a climate of opinion that is dominant in many quarters, notably (in my experience)in American academia? So dominant, in fact, that the viewpoint you deem right is pretty much taken for granted, hardly needing to be articulated–which condition you may be confusing with polite silence. In other areas, of course, including American electoral politics, the situation is rather different.
Well, maybe. It depends what you mean by ‘many quarters,’ for one thing. But in a great many other quarters, like for instance the mass media, that’s not the case at all. And that’s a change. All these angels cluttering up the place, for example – you didn’t see that kind of thing in my long-ago youth! And a good thing too. And yes indeed, American electoral politics (they do these things differently on the other side – Tony Blair is religious, but he doesn’t like to go on about it). And that is after all a rather important sector, wouldn’t you say? Worth talking about, worth criticising if you think it needs criticising?
I realize your view is a popular one. Susan Greenfield was saying a similar thing. But I simply don’t think religion is benign or harmless, so I think it’s a mistake to allow it to throw its weight about the way it does.
Funny how no one ever says that their view is the conventional, commonsensical one, the dominent view of their culture, except for complete cranks and loonies like Berkeley who claimed to be a champion of the common man and common sense.
Even in the US, with all the loudmouth Fundamentalists and notoriously high rates of religious participation, religious belief isn’t in the ascendency.
“Spirituality” may be, along with an amorphous mish-mash of sloppy superstitions from self-help literature to alternative medicine to angelology, reports of UFO abductions, and various conspiracy theories. But that’s quite a different thing. Maybe in the US the line cuts in a different place, not between “brights” and dims, but between devotes of fashionable nonsense and advocates of unfashionable nonsense–and sense.
Fashions change, but there are a few things that are just hard-core unfashionable, which include being fat, being old, and being a theist.
Hmm. That’s not true though. People do say their view is the conventional, commonsensical one – they do it all the time. Precisely in order to make people who disagree with them look like loonies. In the US, at least – as you say: the line does indeed cut in a different place. (I usually remember to specify.) Here, politicians for example love to announce that people who disagree with them (nearly always in comparatively tiny ways: the two ‘major’ parties are Tweedledum and Tweedledee these days) are ‘not in the mainstream,’ are ‘extremists,’ while they themselves are entirely mainstream. ‘Normal’ is a great accolade here.
And being a theist isn’t nearly as unfashionable here as I would like it to be. If it were, why would we keep electing them to high office?
I agree with OB here. Whole political movements are founded on the claim to be representing the views of the common-man. Thatcherism, for example, was populist in this way. But also, for example, the 19th century Russian narodniki and the American populists of the same period (so, for instance, Ignatius Donnelly claimed that the intention of American populism was to restore the government to the hands of the ‘plain people’).
Could just be here in Southern California where “normal” is no accolade and fashionable nonsense is a mark of elite status.
As to why we in the US keep electing theists, with 93% of the population professing to theism, it’s the same reason why we keep electing people non-bald people.
Oh, Southern California – oh well then.
Yes, I realize that’s why we keep electing theists – that was my point. That non-theism is not what I would call fashionable here. I only wish it were.