No barriers to entry
So even the Times Higher thinks it has a duty to tell the world that there is no tension between science and religion, that they are perfectly harmonious and compatible, and that the only people who think otherwise are militant atheists. The Times Higher – which has some connection to higher education, and thus to intellectual development and the exercise of reason.
Matthew Reisz leans heavily on Karl Giberson for his “information” on this lack of tension. Giberson has co-written a book about six prominent atheist scientists: Dawkins, Gould, Sagan, Hawking, Weinberg, and Wilson. All of them have written something
setting out their largely unflattering views on God and the godly.Given that they have thereby ventured well beyond their central areas of scholarly expertise, Giberson disputes the accuracy of many of their claims.
And in doing so, Giberson “ventures well beyond his central area of scholarly expertise” – but does Reisz bother to point that out? I leave it to your wisdom to determine.
But that’s bullshit anyway. We hear it seven million times a day, and it’s bullshit. God is a public subject; there are no barriers to entry; so there can’t be any barriers to non-entry either. That’s only fair, and reasonable. There are no credentials required to believe in god, so there should be no credentials required to disbelieve in god. God is like a public park, or like the ocean, or air: god is there for the taking. (Not “God” the person of course, but god the concept.) Public. If it’s public, it’s public. We get to talk about it just as much as believers do. If they get to say god hears their prayers and answers them either yes or no or I’ll think about it, then we get to say show us the postmark.
There’s something profoundly fishy about this “Arik” person. Even assuming it’s a real entity, it strikes me as a rather disingenuous and straw-mannerific way of beginning a news article on the subject, Particularly the bit about childhood indoctrination. Even if this person exists, it seems rather awkwardly presented as typical of atheists, and not very honest reporting.
I have read some theology and I noted that it was free from the higher mathematics, theorems and supporting data which imposes a barrier to entry in the sciences. I wonder what knowledge exactly one has to have before saying that God probably doesn’t exist.
I do also wonder who these small-minded Christian wimps are who will throw hissy fits and refuse to work with someone who disagrees with their religious views. Perhaps our time would be better spent telling them to grow the fuck up instead of telling everyone else how import it is to use baby talk lest we offend them.
Yes, “Arik” does have more than a whiff of the old “Tom Johnson” story about him…
You just linked an essay by Joseph Hoffmann on the five strong points of atheism. Unfortunately the link, which is an important one, I think, is already under the fold. But he says something that needs to be addressed here, in relation to articles like this one in the THES. The whole essay is very good (no, not Reisz’s, Hoffmann’s), but this I think is vital to understand:
Religion is not going to go peacefully into that good night, it is going to rage against the dawning of the light. There is no other explanation for this steady stream of failed analysis and abuse. This article is typical fare. A few nods in the direction of evidence (in this case Ecklund’s paltry work is brought forward once again), a few epithets flung at atheists, a few completely off the wall historical remarks made, questions about love and beauty, which, presumably, is what Reisz means by ‘beyond the physical’ (although he doesn’t stop to explain, merely assuming that, if it is beyond the physical — what, numbers, concepts, and meaning too?! — it must be religious), and the article ends in some mad detail about religion in a multireligious society. Doesn’t he realise that a multitude of religions falsifies religion already? What more evidence does anyone really need?
And, as for religion being beyond the province of Dawkins, Hitchens, et al., when just anyone can set himself up as a preacher and put ‘Rev’ before his name, well, surely, the field is open. Has anyone bothered counting the sects of Christianity, the kinds of Islam, the varieties of Judaism, the gods of the Hindus? What does it take to qualify to enter a field so crowded? Does anyone qualify, or nobody? I’m just reading Robertson’s The Case of the Pope. It’s enough to make you sick. It’s also enough to make it clear that there are no religious experts — yes, I know, I keep vascillating — only religious cons.
With the possible exception of “W,” no real person ever crams that many combatative words and bellicose sentiments into such a short utterance. Unless he’s being very badly misquoted, “Arik” sounds like fiction.
Do atheists boast of indoctrinating their children? I can’t believe this is typical of militant atheists. If it is then I must not be one of them. Yes, this does look fishy. Either “Arik” is made up or chosen to put atheists in the worst possible light.
It would seem that in the case of religion, as in some many cases, the attempt to impose barriers to entry is driven by the desires of incumbent interests to protect themselves from new challengers.
I think that there are “barriers to entry” to discussing particular religions and possibly religion in general. These are the same barriers I would expect for any anthropological study.
As for discussing God? The significant barrier is that there seems to be little agreement as to what is meant by the word. This isn’t a barrier that keeps anyone from participating but it does make it less likely that the discussion will be fruitful.
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: No barriers to entry http://dlvr.it/6HnQK […]
I’m just haunted by Eric’s comments on Jerry’s blog today:
Indeed. Copiously!
setting out their largely unflattering views on God and the godly.Given that they have thereby ventured well beyond their central areas of scholarly expertise
That’s revealing. Largely unflattering views of God -‘thereby’ it’s beyond their areas of expertise.
It’s also interesting that Giberson counts Gould, Sagan and Wilson among the big meany heads.
There are separate standards applied to believers for justifying their beliefs than to non-believers for justifying our non-beliefs. A believer can be reminded of the trinity by a frozen waterfall and then become a believer. But in order to be a valid non-believer we need to know all about the philosophies of all of the theologies of all the religions. We need to study and refute each one before we can justifiably be considered real smart and valid atheists.
That is the barrier to entry to atheism, Ophelia.
Meanwhile, make enough money from tithers and call yourself a “bishop” and someday you may be asked to pray with the president or a prime minister or governor general or someone who can increase your visibilty. All you have to do is come up with an apohatic way to say that faith is justifiable as an other way of knowing.
Exactly. Im also waiting for them to clearly articulate that to be a believer you must also have a degree in theology otherwise you shouldn’t be able to express a belief in God.
There are no experts on God, so the whole idea is moot anyway. It’s like being an expert on Klingons or Orcs; you can be an expert in the history of belief of such entities, but I don’t need to memorize the Klingon dictionary to bother pointing out that there just ain’t no such beasts. Even supposed experts in the history of belief are often wildly dishonest or remarkably underinformed, depending on how much benefit of the doubt you’re giving them; looking at the many shocking errors of commision and ommision in any given Karen Armstrong book makes me think that we could, in fact, consider Dawkins an expert in “God” just as easily.
Would they take us more seriously if we claimed that we also take an apophatic view of God, but push it to the limit?
What gets me here is that these guys seem to function on the idea that the evangelical Christian types who see a conflict with science don’t know their own religion.
Yet you look at the recent survey on religious knowledge – sure us atheists come out on top. But when you look at knowledge of Christianity – you get the white evangelical protestants in the lead.
They know their faith, and they know what isn’t a part of it. All of this “What conflict? No conflict here. No sir-ree” essentially just comes out as lying.
And once we have them thinking of scientists as lying on that insulting a level, how the heck do we convince them that scientists aren’t when it comes to evolution?
Bruce Gorton: “But when you look at knowledge of Christianity – you get the white evangelical protestants in the lead.
They know their faith, and they know what isn’t a part of it. All of this “What conflict? No conflict here. No sir-ree” essentially just comes out as lying.”
In the current intellectual climate, this is something that really needs more emphasis. Fundigelicals are commonly ignorant of art, science, and history, but their own religion and its respective holy book are one area they are not starved for knowledge. The “tolerance”-soaked discourse of moderate and liberal Christians is almost always couched in secular reasoning; their religious content, if it is present at all, is limited to a vague reference along the lines of “Jesus preached tolerance and love,” Biblically cherry-picked at best, and utterly devoid of any scriptural (or even traditional/folklore) basis at worst.