Is religion natural? Is science unnatural?

You and I, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, even the late Christopher Hitchens, are all religious. So you should all stop complaining about religion and trying to change people’s religious beliefs. It’s just not possible to eradicate religion, so we might as well accept whatever crazy stuff they want to believe.

Bob McCauley [Update: McCauley is this guy who blogs here.) argues that science is a fragile flower in need of precisely the right conditions in order to survive, but religion is a durable and universal part of human experience. Thus, science is no threat to religion; religion will continue whether science conflicts with it or not, and if there really is a conflict between science and religion, science will be the inevitable loser. More than that, every single person is religious; religion is part of everyone’s character whether they like it or not. Perhaps in some instances it might seem that science undermines a particular religion to some degree in some sufficiently advanced country, but in the long run, religion will survive, indeed thrive, in one form or another while science will undoubtedly disappear into the mists of time.

McCauley reasons that science involves a counterintuitive set of processes and products. The content, or product, of scientific theories is counterintuitive. Quantum physics, cosmology, microbiology, biology all involve exotic entities (from the perspective of ordinary experience) acting in complex and unexpected ways. [I’ll see if I can find a video of this. Just ask people where the mass of a tree comes from. Even people who ‘understand’ photosynthesis are unlikely to answer, “From the carbon dioxide I the air.” It is intuitively difficult to conceive of air as providing the enormous mass of a tree.] Religion involves no such counterintuitive entities: the content of religion is magical people who control events by mystical means but who are essentially like us in psychology. In other words, the key concept of religion is the agent-cause, the person or intelligent agent as a cause of events that otherwise are not explained (and, hell, really many of them that are explained in non-agent terms). You might think that religions appeal to mysterious invisible, intangible, sky-beings who operate in untestable ways with minds that are infinitely powerful, infinitely complex, and thus incomprehensible to mortals, but this is not the case. All these trappings of contemporary religion are not really religious at all but belong to theology, a highly intellectualized explanatory endeavor more akin to science or abstract fields such as mathematics or logic, than to religion. Theology, of course, could disappear, and this would have no bearing on religion whatsoever. In short, the product of the scientific method, the content of science, is counterintuitive and hard to grasp, and so cannot be considered an enduring part of human belief.

Religion, on the other hand, is simply the tendency to believe in anthropomorphic causes for events. I got the job; there must be an agent behind my good luck, a being who worked behind the scenes to get me the job. Mary got cancer; there must be someone acting to give her cancer. That’s religion, and that’s really (almost) all that religion is.

However, the product is not the main part of McCauley’s argument. The main issue for him is the process of science, not its content. “The scientific method” is not an easy or intuitive process for people to grasp and follow. (Let’s assume there is a single, albeit complex, method of science.) Ordinary people, and even trained scientists, have difficulty following the strictures of the scientific method: blind, or double-blind, experiments, mathematical models for inferring correlations, clear distinctions between correlation and causation, etc. These and other aspects of science are difficult to grasp and follow, and even trained scientists are prone to abandon them in ordinary life.

Science further requires a complex set of social relations and institutions such as publication and peer review. Religion, on the other hand, depends only on processes that are quite ‘natural’, even innate—if you believe in innateness. Religion has two main essential features: explaining events in terms of agents (intelligent beings) as causes (noted above) and treating certain items, areas, or events, as “sacred” or ”contaminated” (or treating ourselves as contaminants of the sacred). McCauley equates religion with this subset of largely erroneous reasoning tendencies and processes. Since people inevitably reason poorly in these ways, religion can never disappear.

Similarly, as it turns out, my toddler (and possibly my dog) is religious since he is prone to the same errors. Taking this poor reasoning as partly constitutive of religion does not mean that this is all there is to religion. It might be that these two features are universal to all religions, but there is more required for something to count as religion. Alas, McCauley does not offer any further definienda for religion. This failure conveniently leaves him lots of leeway to argue that religion must be natural since he considers only attributes that are shown to be ‘natural’ (what McCauley calls “maturationally natural”) by cognitive psychology.

I hope it’s obvious at this point what’s wrong with this reasoning. He’s defined science narrowly, to include only the highly sophisticated social institution of science as it is practiced in the modern world, but he’s defined religion very generally so that virtually any supernatural thinking qualifies as religion. Obviously if science were defined equally generally, as, for example, a systematic method of learning about the world by means of observation and experiment, then it would be impossible to find anyone who did not have some cognitive capacity for it and tendency to use it. My toddler certainly experiments with the world and tries to understand it, often inferring unobservable mechanisms. And there are lots of experiments in developmental psychology that show children using such inference patterns. Certainly not everyone would do science well, but it’s also obvious that not everyone does religion well either. (Hey, look at the Scientologists!) Similarly, there is a narrow definition of religion that requires it to have the kind of sophisticated social apparatus that we find in contemporary Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. These types of religion clearly include counterintuitive doctrines and concepts far removed from common experience. The Catholic doctrines of transubstantiation and the triune God are highly counterintuitive. Even the processes of religion in the contemporary world can be unnatural. Do we need priests in cassocks to interpret the will of God for us? Why must these priests be sexually abstinent men? So, contemporary organized religion is just as unnatural and contingent as contemporary science (unless misogyny is intrinsic to religion); and simple science is just as unavoidable and intrinsic to human nature as is simple religion. My toddler has the same supernaturalist tendencies as religious believers, but my toddler also experiments with complex machines to try to discover their inner workings.

McCauley’s argument is an equivocation. The only thing that makes it appear plausible is the reliance on different standards or scopes for the two concepts. Religion and science are both contingent and unnatural when viewed one way (narrowly, if you will), and they are both necessary and natural when viewed another way (broadly, generally, or simply).

So, if this was obvious to me, wasn’t it also obvious to McCauley?

Ironically, McCauley identified confirmation bias as an error people commit that makes them poor scientists. He noted that people are often quite good at finding rationalizations that allow them to maintain failed theories even in the face of overwhelming counterevidence. Perhaps McCauley might do well to diagnose himself.

McCauley attempts to avoid my objection by labeling the sophisticated and unnatural activity that appears to relate to religion theology. So, there is little unnatural about religion since religion is defined as that activity that psychologists have discovered to be natural, and any unnatural aspect of religion (as we would ordinarily understand the term) is theology. Obviously, then theology could disappear without religion disappearing. Theology appears to be a set of doctrines, beliefs, rules of inference involving religion, but it does not appear to involve the practices of religion (such as the priesthood or gender discrimination). I suppose McCauley could add some other term for narrowly defined practices of a particular religion, and argue that these practices are not essential to religion either. Should we dispute McCauley’s rather arbitrary distinction between the theology (and theological processes involving, say, confession or the priesthood)? It’s probably not worth it; McCauley can define his terms in whatever way he wants as long as we can explain them in ordinary terms that anyone can understand. So, here’s how to state McCauley’s claims in those ordinary terms:

There are supernaturalist tendencies in human reasoning that tend to persist even when people are aware that this reasoning is fallacious. Similarly, humans have difficulty in applying good scientific reasoning; instead, they often rely on or apply poor scientific reasoning. Of course, humans are capable of good scientific reasoning on their own, but they are more effective if they have complex social institutions that allow for critique and debate.

Given these facts, it is also entirely possible that people can reason well enough together that they will not be taken in by supernaturalist reasoning. McCauley doesn’t exactly emphasize the last point, but it’s implicit in his discussion of science since science succeeds despite our tendency towards error.

Take that, Dawkins! Religion 1, Science 0.

My friend who brought in McCauley for the lecture explains that Dawkins and Dennett think that the demise of religion is inevitable and that McCauley is merely providing a dose of realism. I cannot speak for Dawkins/Dennett, or the rest of the Four Horsemen of the Theopocalypse. So, this claim may be true or it may not. Still, I have two questions. (1) What do we do about religion if some important aspect of it is difficult to eradicate from human psychology? And (2) are societies in which religion has a strong grip more successful (in the sense that they are more likely to survive, spread their belief systems) than those that are less religious? Will the religious or non-religious societies compete more effectively?

To the first question: If we believe, as McCauley does, that religion is essentially irrational, then we ought to do everything possible to limit its power and influence, to educate people sufficiently so that they cease to be religious, and implement social policies that will make it more likely that religions will slowly fade away. Clearly these things can be done, and they would not require mistreatment of the religious or religions. We need only cease to give religion special treatment in order for it to lose at least some of its power. The most effective thing to do would be to stop giving special support for religion. For example, religions are given a prominent role in all sorts of social circumstances that their actual contribution to society does not merit. We could stop giving invocations at public events as a way of reducing religion’s influence. We could stop giving religions special treatment in funding for their activities. For example, drop all the federal government’s ‘faith-based initiatives’ and make social spending based on evidence, not faith. We could work harder to educate our children in science and limit the role of religion in schools. We can improve our social support for the poor and disadvantaged in order to limit the need for social services religions provide. We could make it easier for people to live without religion. We do not need just to imagine doing these things either because most European nations already do them, and those nations fare better on basically any measure of social welfare or happiness than America does.

To the second question: I do not know whether religious or non-religious societies will thrive in a kind of evolutionary free-for-all, but I know that public policies based on religion and religious thinking cause tremendous problems for our society. America is, I think, dropping from the ranks of the developed world. And it’s fairly clear that the benighted policies of our conservative leaders, supported by their religious followers, have led to this trend. The authoritarian-follower personality of the conservative movement in America, dominated by religious believers, has enabled the looting of the government by the wealthy and the gradual decay of our infrastructure and our important social institutions (such as public education). Societies that are free of religion do better in promoting the welfare of their citizens and fit better in a community of nations. I do not know if this means they will continue to exist longer or spread their values more effectively than will more religious nations (such as America or Saudi Arabia), but it is devoutly to be hoped that they will, and it seems a worthwhile goal to work towards achieving that end.

There are successful nations with majority atheist populations. There are organizations of scientists who inculcate good reasoning into scientists at young ages, and they are capable of leaving behind most of their errors and superstition. There are millions of atheists worldwide. All of these people may be prone to errors of reasoning, but these millions appear to have avoided or corrected this reasoning in adherence to ‘the’ scientific method and/or in rejecting religion. So, the relative naturalness of superstition is not sufficient evidence that superstition cannot be overcome or replaced with more careful reasoning.

McCauley reasons that religion is, at bottom, a kind of fallacious or erroneous reasoning, so he cannot reasonably object to the attempts by the new atheists to limit, even eradicate, its influence. Perhaps it will be harder to do this than some think, but if you really think that religion is basically superstition and cognitive error, then you really cannot accept religion with equanimity. If superstition can be fought at all, which it clearly can be, then our goal, whether it is easy or difficult, should be to fight it. I can only hope that McCauley’s overall purpose is to warn atheists away from false optimism, but, if so, that was not the tenor of his talk. I cannot help feeling that McCauley's argument is really a counsel to despair, that we should accept that people cannot change this aspect of their psychology. To me, even if he is correct about these kinds of cognitive errors being universal, if religion really is rooted in fallacious reasoning, then this fact should provide more motivation to oppose it.

One Angry Philosopher

Last week I was summoned for jury duty and so I had to sit for 3-4 hours reading a book while other people were actually asked to serve on juries, so it was not a tremendous imposition on me (although I did have to get a substitute to administer a test for me). I even got to bring home a “Juror” sticker to put on my 2-year-old’s shirt. He loves stickers, and I liked the idea that people might think he had actually served on a jury. I imagine he would be an improvement on the average American.

Still, there was one thing that bothered me about the experience. They administered a swearing-in for the group to swear an oath to do our duties as jurors. You can probably guess how my story ends. The oath basically said that jurors would do their best to uphold their responsibility as jurors, be without bias in decision, etc. “so help me God.”

Obviously, then, when we were asked to say “I do”, I couldn’t affirm that. Nobody paid any attention to me, and probably most of the people were only half listening anyway. In some sense the swearing-in was just a meaningless formality, but it illustrates how pervasive religion is in important aspects of American public life. Moreover, the addition, “So help me God,” is otiose or nonsensical.

First, it’s clearly unnecessary. The oath has only to do with doing one’s epistemic best. The oath is a deontological construct put purely in terms of internal strivings of the agent, not in terms of consequences or actual reality. If the oath were to discover the truth, or render an accurate verdict, that might reasonably be thought to require God’s aid since we have no absolute certainty about the criminal or direct access to the criminal act. But the oath was given reasonably in terms of trying to uphold our responsibilities as jurors, and we don’t need God’s help to do that.

In fact, second, it doesn’t even make sense to ask God for help in doing that. If we are not already doing our best, then God cannot make it so that we are doing our best because then God would be doing that for us. If God is required to assist us, then we clearly have not done our best and have failed in our oath and no action on God’s part can make it so that we tried any harder to fulfill our obligations. If on the other hand, we are doing our best, then God’s assistance is completely unnecessary for we have already fulfilled our oath. It is not even logically possible to ask for God’s help in fulfilling this oath since the oath is to do something that is entirely, and necessarily, under our, and only our, control.
Perhaps my argument is unfair to theists. Christians tend to think of God as a stern but loving father who approves of good moral behavior and frowns on immoral behavior, and so God’s influence operates indirectly through our own beliefs and attitudes given God’s approval or disapproval. God’s presence is more like the presence of our parents (deceased or not) whose standards we try to live up to. Perhaps, then, the reference to God is primarily there not as a literal request to God to help us accomplish something that is completely and only within our power. Instead, this admonition is to request God to be present in our minds so that God’s peering over our shoulder encourages us to do our best.

However, either God is not present, and the idea of God is what pushes us to do our best, or God is present, and our fear of God influences us to try just a little harder. If it’s the former, then appeal to God could be nothing more than a reminder to focus on our idea of God, and that idea then helps us to try harder. If it is our idea of God that allows us to do our best, then God is not necessary for that. If it’s the latter, if we are calling on God to be actually present in our minds exerting some influence over us, then we have given up the idea of our own autonomy and responsibility.

I won’t review the role of religion in public life and the rather obvious violation of separation of church and state involved. But what I always find disturbing is the degree to which the public utterances and affirmations of faith are fundamentally senseless. People who believe should be the ones most disturbed by the nonsensical nature of the oath. Unsurprisingly, however, no one really thinks about what they are saying. The fact that the oath mentions God is enough to keep the religious happy, and not enough to upset the vast majority who take it to be a meaningless formality. This episode just illustrates one more way in which people are expected to abide by an inherently nonsensical religion without question.

Republicans, Sex and Religious Freedom

When the Republicans in Congress impeached Bill Clinton, they said the case was not about sex but about lying. Everyone knew this was bull; they impeached him for lying about sex, but ignored everything else he lied about (or at least that they believed he had lied about; actually the testimony they used to impeach him was the testimony in which he told the truth about how he evaded the inept questions of the laywers in the Paula Jones case). So, in short, it was still about the sex because the Republicans only cared about lying when it was lying about sex.

The same thing is true now. Republicans in Congress are universally claiming that their attempts to allow any employer to opt out of allowing their women employees to have free contraceptive coverage are about religious freedom. The problem is that religious freedom only became an issue when it was about their religious freedom to deny contraceptive coverage to women employees. So, leaving aside all the other absurdities in the religious freedom argument, the debate is not really about religious freedom when the so-called religious freedom only concerns sex.

Christianity's Son-Drenched Future

Second in a series on the evangelical pamphlet Our Daily Bread that I found in my door one day. The title of the second day’s meditation is “Sonrise”, and the text is as follows.

My state’s name, “Idaho,” according to one legend, comes from a Shoshone Indian word “ee-dah-how.” When translated into English, it means something like, “Behold! The sun rising over the mountain.” I often think of that when the sun breaks over the eastern peaks and spills light and life into our valley.

Also, I think of Malachi’s promise: “The Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings” (Mal. 4:2). This is God’s irrevocable
promise that our Lord Jesus will come again and all creation “will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God” (Rom. 8:21).

Each new sunrise is a reminder of that eternal morning when “bright heaven’s Sun” will arise with healing in His wings. Then everything that has been made will be made over and made irrevocably right. There will be no throbbing backs or knees, no financial struggles, no losses, no aging. One Bible version says that when Jesus returns we will, “go out and leap like calves released from the stall (Mal. 4:2 NIV). This is my highest imagination and my hope.

Jesus said, “Surely I am coming quickly” (Rev. 22:20). Even so, come, Lord Jesus! –David Roper.

I can never think of Jesus “coming quickly” without thinking of this giant billboard in West Virginia that said, “Jesus the Bridegroom: ‘Behold, I come quickly.’” I always thought, “Maybe so, but I wouldn’t brag about it.”

Resisting my childish impulse for now, I will point out that this whole Lord Jesus-thing is fiction. The book of Malachi talks about the LORD, the Lord, God, and fathers (or Fathers), but there’s absolutely no textual evidence to interpret this as anything like Jesus of the New Testament. That’s just reading Jesus back into a text that has nothing to do with him. I’m sure the author feels justified in interpreting it this way in the same way you might reread the first chapter of a mystery novel and substitute “the butler” for “the murderer” after you’ve found that the butler was the murderer. But there’s really nothing to connect them in the text here. There’s absolutely no reason to interpret “The LORD” as Jesus rather than God or a more primitively conceived warlord deity.

More important, does the suggested reading, the book of Malachi, especially chapter 4, support the author’s friendly picture of the Lord (Jesus or not) coming soon to make us all happy and take away all our suffering? It seems a little unlikely that he’s going to show up to take away your knee and back pain when somehow he couldn’t manage to get here in time to stop (as a brief sample) the execution of his early followers, their internecine struggles in interpreting the new religion, the corruption of the Roman Empire, the destruction of that empire and the loss of life resulting from the destruction of European civilization in the dark ages, the Crusades, the Black Death, and the Holocaust, to say nothing of countless other wars, natural disasters, famines, pestilences and more mundane pains and deaths. If Jesus were coming quickly, you would think he could make it in time to stop the Holocaust at least. Maybe he got stuck in traffic.

In any case, if the Lord were going to release us all from our stalls, maybe we should consider who put us in those stalls in the first place. Apparently consistency is not the hobgoblin of good Christian minds.

Anyway, wanting to get the full benefit of biblical wisdom, I started at the beginning of the book of Malachi. Holy crap! Does anyone read this stuff?

Chapter 1 says that the LORD (who is not in any way a provincial and anthropomorphic warlord deity) is quite upset at the people of Israel because they defiled him but not giving him the proper sacrifices. It condemns the Israelites:

“When you offer blind animals for sacrifice, is that not wrong? When you sacrifice lame or diseased animals, is that not wrong? Try offering them to your governor! Would he be pleased with you? Would he accept you?” says the LORD Almighty. (1: 8)

It continues:

“Oh, that one of you would shut the temple doors, so that you would not light useless fires on my altar! I am not pleased with you,” says the LORD Almighty, “and I will accept no offering from your hands. My name will be great among the nations, from where the sun rises to where it sets. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to me, because my name will be great among the nations,” says the LORD Almighty.
. . .
“When you bring injured, lame or diseased animals and offer them as sacrifices, should I accept them from your hands?” says the LORD. “Cursed is the cheat who has an acceptable male in his flock and vows to give it, but then sacrifices a blemished animal to the Lord. For I am a great king,” says the LORD Almighty, “and my name is to be feared among the nations. (1: 9-14)

So, the LORD is angry because he’s not getting the best food, and he’s going to be famous and successful someday, so you (Israel) will totally regret not giving him a decent meal or make the house smell nice with a little incense when he comes home smelling of booze. This is not of a perfect, loving being but a drunken, abusive husband with delusions of grandeur. (Hey, not every place lights incense for him, so even now the scenario he paints is delusional. Maybe that’s still in the future.)

Chapter 2 doesn’t get much better:

“And now, you priests, this warning is for you. If you do not listen, and if you do not resolve to honor my name,” says the LORD Almighty, “I will send a curse on you, and I will curse your blessings. Yes, I have already cursed them, because you have not resolved to honor me.
“Because of you I will rebuke your descendants[a]; I will smear on your faces the dung from your festival sacrifices, and you will be carried off with it. And you will know that I have sent you this warning so that my covenant with Levi may continue,” says the LORD Almighty. “My covenant was with him, a covenant of life and peace, and I gave them to him; this called for reverence and he revered me and stood in awe
of my name. True instruction was in his mouth and nothing false was found on his lips. He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.
“For the lips of a priest ought to preserve knowledge, because he is
the messenger of the LORD Almighty and people seek instruction from his mouth. But you have turned from the way and by your teaching have caused many to stumble; you have violated the covenant with Levi,” says the LORD Almighty. “So I have caused you to be despised and humiliated before all the people, because you have not followed my ways but have shown partiality in matters of the law.” (2: 1-9)

The footnote [a] says, “Or will blight your grain”. So, either the LORD will rebuke the descendants or will blight his grain. One or the other; they’re basically the same.

Anyway, the LORD’s upset so he’s going to put s#*t on their faces and they’ll be carried off, whatever that means. It seems as though this dude wants the people to follow him, but they aren’t so it’s too late and he’s going to punish them (and maybe their descendants) anyway. This LORD-dude seems particularly distraught about the Levi guy dying and his kids not keeping up with his traditions. I wonder if maybe someone could have figured out that this was going to happen and put a stop to it.

In the rest of the chapter he explains how much he dislikes divorce and Judah cheating on his wife by getting a divorce and marrying a younger woman. Sounds like the LORD must be a big fan of Newt Gingrich.

Anyway, let’s see if chapter 3 paints a more enlightened picture of the LORD. The LORD says maybe they can put things right again (despite his already saying it was too late). He’s cheesed off but he’ll give them a chance by sending someone to test them and purify them as a laundry soap does. (I’m really not making the laundry-soap thing up. Great metaphor, God.)

“So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the LORD Almighty.
“I the LORD do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. Ever since the time of your ancestors you have turned away from my decrees and have not kept them. Return to me, and I will return to you,” says the LORD Almighty. (3: 5-7)

So, the LORD will give some of them a second chance as long as they don’t oppress widows and orphans, rip off their workers, or commit perjury, adultery or sorcery. If there actually were sorcerers, then I’m sure they’d be in real trouble. Anyway, what about those who aren’t bad?

Then those who feared the LORD talked with each other, and the LORD listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the LORD and honored his name.

“On the day when I act,” says the LORD Almighty, “they will be my treasured possession. I will spare them, just as a father has compassion and spares his son who serves him. And you will again see the distinction between the righteous and the wicked, between those who serve God and those who do not. (3: 16-18)

The LORD will spare those who continue to worship him the same way that a father doesn’t kill his own children if they serve him. I guess at this point in history if you didn’t serve your father, he could kill you with impunity. It must have been fun for kids who didn’t want to do their chores. The LORD needs someone to write down all these names; otherwise he’ll forget and punish the wrong ones (for failing to honor and fear him, primarily). Maybe the LORD turns out to be a little smarter in chapter 4. Chapter 4 is short; it goes like this:

“Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace. All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire,” says the LORD Almighty. “Not a root or a branch will be left to them. But for you who revere my name, the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its rays. And you will go out and frolic like well-fed calves. Then you will trample on the wicked; they will be ashes under the soles of your feet on the day when I act,” says the LORD Almighty.
“Remember the law of my servant Moses, the decrees and laws I gave him at Horeb for all Israel.
“See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and
dreadful day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.” (4: 1-6)

So, the LORD wants us to worship him and if we do we will frolic happily and crush the non-worshipers (aka the wicked and arrogant) under our feet. This is more of that good Christian desire to crush those who do not believe as they do (and other bad people, of course). The LORD then promises to strike the land with total destruction unless the hearts of parents and children are turned to each other, and I guess that’s happened because the land has not been totally destroyed yet.

In all seriousness, why is a perfect being so worried about who and how many people fear and worship him? It’s not a flattering picture of a perfect being. This whole book describes a petty tyrant who wants everyone to fear, honor and respect him by giving up all their best things for him and who looks forward to the day when everyone will give him the respect he deserves. I wonder if Rick Santorum’s household is like this.

If I didn’t know better, I would think that the authors of this Our Daily Bread pamphlet (and Christian apologists more generally) are picking out only the parts of the Bible that say the things they want it to say and leaving out all the objectionable other material. It’s almost as though they are cherry-picking the evidence to support their preferred picture of the divine being. Or maybe they just don’t read the whole book. After all, a booklet so full of commonsense wisdom and goodness would never include deliberately suppressed evidence, would it?

Passages such as the book of Malachi illustrate why atheists and agnostics are more likely to have read the Bible than are typical Christians. Reading the book, rather than the carefully sanitized version of it presented in standard Christian propaganda, leads ineluctably to the conclusion that it’s an imperfect, human book describing the construction of their provincial deity, trying to enforce conformity, and reflecting their petty concerns and primitive morality.

By the way, Wikipedia has this to say about the name “Idaho.”

The exact origin of the name remains a mystery. In the early 1860s, when the United States Congress was considering organizing a new territory in the Rocky Mountains, eccentric lobbyist George M. Willing suggested the name "Idaho," which he claimed was derived from a Shoshone language term meaning "the sun comes from the mountains" or "gem of the mountains". Willing later claimed that
he had made up the name himself.

It would be fitting if the introduction to the Daily Bread story was based on a fabrication. Anyway, I always thought “Udaman” was a more positive name than “Idaho.”

God's Vandalism

Recently in North Carolina, a patriotic atheist billboard was vandalized. Our good friends at World Net Daily, specifically one Chrissy Satterfield, believe this vandalism was justified. The only criticism I have of this article is that the author assumes the "vandal" is human.

Atheists often claim that miracles never happen anymore and slyly insinuate that this fact indicates a kind of erroneous or fallacious reasoning on the part of believers. But, really, why couldn't this spray painting be a miracle? After all, as Ms. Satterfield attests, this is exactly the kind of graffiti God would write or want to have written.

One might think that this is mundane and non-miraculous spray paint. But, look at that billboard, it's really high. Could a normal human really get that high? Ok, maybe. Admittedly, it's not a burning bush or stone tablets, but anyone could set a bush on fire, chisel some stone tablets, and then tell his people that they came from God. Or write a book claiming that this happened. Or tell a story around a campfire that this happened to someone so that generations later someone else could write a book based on the story you told that this happened to someone. This spray painting is as miraculous as that.

What, you say, there is no evidence that this spray painting was miraculous? I say to you that there is no evidence that it was not miraculous! It takes more faith to deny that God did this than it takes to believe it!

Maybe you think that spray painting a billboard is too petty for the Alpha and Omega, the all-knowing, all-powerful, all-good creator of everything? Possibly, but no more petty than telling Ms. Satterfield (she writes that God gave her "a little reminder" about the sign) to encourage that vandalism, and no more petty than cursing a fig tree for not bearing fruit out of season (Mark 11:12-14). If God wants to punish our sinfulness and disbelief, and he promised not to destroy the world, then he might choose vandalism. And remember, God works in mysterious ways. Just look at the platypus. I've got nothing against monotremes, but they are freaky.

Could God do a more convincing job than this spray paint? Maybe, but God designed whales with unnecessary leg bones. Maybe God just wanted to leave us room to question his miracles to prove our faith.

I think the belief that this vandalism was a miracle is as well-supported as any miracle in the Bible. And, anyway, isn't it more likely that God did it than that a good Christian would commit a cowardly crime?

Armstrong on Robinson's Absent Mindedness

Via PZ Myers, I ran across a review by Karen Armstrong in the Guardian of what appears to be a startingly unpromising book on religion and the flaws of atheism. The review itself appears to consist of little more than strawmen, serious exaggerations or distortions of the atheist position. In reality, atheism is not the highly flawed, limited view she considers it to be.

Here's the subtitle of the review:

Karen Armstrong hails a profound and timely argument against the positivist world view.

I suppose this is only funny to philosophers since no one has been a positivist in philosophy for about 1/2 a century. This makes the headline somewhat like, "A Timely Argument against Geocentrism" or "A Timely Refutation of Spontaneous Generation of Life".

Still, other people use "positivism" in a broader sense. Apparently in this context it is the view that science is the only means to discover truth. (I'll assume she means this only about the physical world, not about logic or mathematics.)

Here's the first paragraph.

At the same time as the western scientific revolution empowered human beings, opened new worlds and broadened their horizons, it progressively punctured their self-esteem. Increasingly, luminaries of modern thought have told us that our minds are not to be trusted: that even though we thought we were standing on a static Earth, our planet was moving very fast indeed; that we could never be sure that our ideas corresponded to objective reality outside our own heads; that some of our noblest ideals were simply the product of repressed sexuality; and that, finally, we are deluded if we imagine that we "think", "reason," "learn" or "choose". Our minds are simply a passive conduit for an unknown, indifferent force.

What is the reviewer going to argue for here? Apparently, given the opening sentence, the problem with science is that it undermines our self-esteem. So, is she suggesting we should reject or limit belief in science in order to maintain that self-esteem? If so, she doesn't seem committed to learning anything about reality. In any case, the description of what modern history has shown is baffling. Enlightenment science relies on trusting human reason and observation above our religious authorities, but here we are to suppose that science is undermining some intuitive knowledge. Some of this surely needs to be undermined, but science has not shown that "we could never be sure that our ideas corresponded to objective reality outside our own heads." That's the philosopher's job. Depending on the emphasis you put on "sure", this is true and trivial, or it is probably not true and not shown to be so by science. If Armstrong simply means that we can never be absolutely certain that our perceptions are accurate, this is true. On the other hand, if she means that we cannot be reasonably sure that our perceptions are accurate given the proper conditions and hence should suspend judgment with respect to them, then her claim is not supported by science and probably is not true (although many philosophers struggled with this view or even believed it).

Are "our noblest ideals . . . simply the product of repressed sexuality"? I don't suppose so. I assume she is referring to Freud here, but it's quite a stretch to consider Freud's views to be part of our modern scientific worldview.

Is it true that:

finally, we are deluded if we imagine that we "think", "reason," "learn" or "choose". Our minds are simply a passive conduit for an unknown, indifferent force.

I have no idea what she's talking about here. Some philosophers/scientists are determinists, but that would not undermine the idea that we think, reason or learn although it might undermine freedom of choice. But the next sentence is just bizarre: What unknown, indifferent force is she talking about? Does she think science postulates a mysterious, unknowable force that creates and maintains in existence everything around us and is the ultimate source and ground of reality? If so, I think she has science confused with religion. If she is claiming that the modern scientific worldview entails natural, causal laws that govern everything including human thoughts and behavior, then she's probably right, but that doesn't mean there is an unknown force that controls us or for which we are passive conduits. In fact, the purpose of science is to know these laws and ultimately to use them to control (or adapt to and improve) our world.

Continuing, she argues that the view that science is the only reliable means to discover truths entails certain problems with altruism:

Since Huxley, for example, Darwinians have found altruism problematic, as evolution would necessarily select against benevolence to another at cost to oneself. Altruism can only occur because of the "selfishness" of a gene. Thus for EO Wilson, a "soft-core altruist" expects reciprocation from either society or family; his byzantine calculations are characterised by "lying, pretence and deceit, including self-deceit, because the actor is more convincing who believes that his performance is real". Every apparently compassionate action is, therefore, simply a matter of quid pro quo.

Invoking Huxley is clever, since Huxley did see empathy and altruism as something that needed to be explained away as not fitting evolutionary theory. However, Darwin did not see it that way, and, as with many others, saw the benefits of altruism for everyone in the group. The short solution to this problem is that genuine altruists tend to do better than people who try to cheat others, to act compassionately only when it will benefit them. The main point is that those of us who act altruistically do not need to make the calculation ourselves; the behavior (or the genes) came about because of the benefits to ourselves not because we were aware of those benefits. To say we are governed by selfish genes is not to say that we are selfish.

Again, continuing directly, she finds language use to be intrinsically altruistic and, hence, in conflict with science unless it can adequately be explained away.

In the same way, because it transfers useful information to somebody else and requires an expenditure of time and energy, language seems essentially altruistic. But, says the evolutionary biologist Geoffrey Miller, "evolution cannot favour altruistic information-sharing", so the complexities of language probably evolved simply for verbal courtship, "providing a sexual payoff for eloquent speaking by the male and female".

I almost think this is a joke. Has she ever asked for directions? Has she ever ordered a latte? Language use is clearly beneficial to those who speak and understand the language. There is no need to invent convoluted explanations for sexual benefits of language, it's obvious to everyone who speaks how we benefit from exchanging information with others. The puzzle, I suppose, is whether there is any reason to be honest with other people given that we would benefit by gaining information from them, and they might out-compete us, if we give them accurate information in exchange. There's a huge amount of research on social cooperation and cheating that I am too lazy to link to, but the answer is that mutually beneficial exchanges of information occur all the time (including when we are not in competition for survival), and someone who lied often enough to others would be caught and would not be able to continue exchanging information with others.

Following up her misunderstanding of language is her misunderstanding of art:

In the same way, art may appear to be "an exploration of experience, of the possibilities of communication, and of the extraordinary collaboration of eye and hand," but according to some neo-Darwinians, it too is simply a means of attracting sexual partners. "Leonardo and Rembrandt may have thought they were competent inquirers in their own right, but we moderns know better."

Scientific explanations do not eliminate the phenomenon to be explained but vindicate it. If I can explain human consciousness as (suppose) neural activity of a certain sort in physical human brains, I have not gotten rid of consciousness, I have not shown that consciousness does not exist or that we are all deceived in thinking that consciousness is something fascinating and wonderful since it is only some neurons firing. Scientific explanations help us understand why a phenomenon exists, but they do not eliminate it. Leonardo and Rembrandt are competent inquirers into perception, experience, and representation of beauty. The wonder is that such complex and insightful human behaviors can arise from simple organisms whose only needs are to survive and reproduce. Yet we evolved an ability to create and understand art, literature, music, science, and philosophy. This does not mean that Leonardo and Rembrandt are wrong or that they are not creating beautiful works of art. The point of the scientific explanation of production of art is to see how humans evolved this capacity. Armstrong and Robinson's characterization here is another strawman, and I wonder why she will not let current scientists do the kind of scientific, explanatory work she praises in Leonardo and others.

Again, she continues:

This disdainful "hermeneutics of condescension" cannot function outside of a narrow definition of relative data. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the positivist critique of religion. Daniel Dennett, for example, defines religion as "social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought". He deliberately avoids the contemplative side of faith explored by William James, as if, Robinson says, "religion were only what could be observed using the methods of anthropology or of sociology, without reference to the deeply pensive solitudes that bring individuals into congregations". Bypassing Donne, Bach, the Sufi poets and Socrates, Dennett, Dawkins and others are free to reduce the multifarious religious experience of humanity "to a matter of bones and feathers and wishful thinking, a matter of rituals and social bonding and false etiologies and the fear of death".

Before examining this paragraph, stop for a moment and appreciate the irony of someone accusing a philosopher of believing that the only way to achieve reliable knowledge is through science.

Back to the topic: I have no idea what the first sentence means. She's describing secular, scientific explanations in insulting terms, but it's not clear what the complaint is. Perhaps that it narrows its focus so much in attempting to explain something that it leaves out the essential phenomena to be explained. One might make this argument about Daniel Dennett's view of consciousness, but it is inappropriate in this context. Dennett, she argues, gives a definition of religion that is too narrow in that it leaves out, "the deeply pensive solitudes that bring individuals into congregations". I'm not exactly sure why a deeply pensive solitude would lead an individual into a congregation, but the point that his definition of religion does not include mystical experience is completely misguided. Not everyone who joins or adopts a religion has had mystical experiences, and so, had he defined religion in the proposed way, he would have given a definition that was too narrow, excluding these believers from religion. Mystical experience is not the essential feature of religion in need of explanation.

The real complaint cannot be with the definition of religion but with the credence Dennett, presumably, does not give to the mystical experiences themselves. Unfortunately, mystical experiences cannot be treated as authoritative; there is no way to prove (or even make likely) that one particular religion (or even any religion at all) is true because of the experiences of some of its practitioners. Religious and mystical experiences are common among distinct religious groups. Each group interprets the experience as cohering with or supporting its own religion. Since these interpretations, necessarily, are inconsistent, mystical experiences cannot support the truth of one particular religion or religions in general.

We can still appreciate the beauty of the works created by Donne or Bach (but give me Marvell or Beethoven any day) without thinking that mystical experience is epistemically reliable. Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote poetry under the influence of opium (or after being under its influence). Does that mean that in order for me to appreciate The Rime of the Ancient Mariner I have to think that Coleridge was in touch with a transcendent reality forever hidden from me in my naturalistic world? We can appreciate the beauty without endorsing its source as veridical.

Perhaps religious experiences are valuable in themselves, they are enjoyable or help people feel that their lives are more meaningful or connected to others. If mystical experiences are the only way to achieve these results, and there are no corresponding harms from such beliefs, then one might encourage such experience. But probably we're all just better off encouraging people to use LSD or magic mushrooms or go to rock concerts. That's a lot less work than constructing these complex religions based on ancient folk traditions, and it would result in a lot less potential for harm. The passionate Dio vs. Ozzy debates among the Black Sabbath faithful led to relatively few deaths, after all. [Yes, I'm comparing Black Sabbath to religions, and I think some of their music can be fairly sublime as well.]

I'm running out of enthusiasm for this, but I'll look at one more paragraph. Armstrong writes,

More significant than this jejune attack on faith, she argues, is the disturbing fact that "the mind, as felt experience, has been excluded from important fields of modern thought" and as a result "our conception of humanity has shrunk". Robinson's argument is prophetic, profound, eloquent, succinct, powerful and timely. It is not an easy read, but one of her objectives is to help readers appreciate the complexity of these issues. To adopt such a "closed ontology", she insists, is to ignore "the beauty and the strangeness" of the individual mind as it exists in time. Subjectivity "is the ancient haunt of piety and reverence and long, long thoughts. And the literatures that would dispel such things refuse to acknowledge subjectivity, perhaps because inability has evolved into principle and method."

I don't see any necessary connection between consciousness or subjectivity and religion. But if this is her critique of science, it is not particularly prophetic but rather dated. Consciousness has, in the past, been excluded from scientific study, largely because scientists did not know how to study such subjective phenomena. It's odd that Robinson would take now to be the time for critiquing contemporary science for overlooking consciousness and subjectivity since it is now more than ever that science is attempting to study it. Of course, it's appropriate to exclude consciousness from most fields of modern thought--it should be excluded from many such fields. It wouldn't do any good to include understanding consciousness as part of the field of physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology (most of it), some of psychology, and economics. But consciousness is now being studied by psychologists, neuroscientists and philosophers.

Her critique may be the old Nagelian line that whenever we study something scientifically, we must exclude its subjective aspect. I was never very convinced by this line of thought. But if it's her view, then I'm not sure how other fields, besides science, are supposed to provide us with an objective account of subjectivity without falling into the same trap. Perhaps the critique is that we must acknowledge the existence of consciousness and subjectivity in our lives and simply not study it. But, again, we can still appreciate consciousness even if we understand it. Only time will tell whether the secrets of consciousness yield to scientific inquiry, but you don't get any closer to understanding those secrets by appeal to religion.

One of the things I find most frustrating about this kind of critique of science, atheism, naturalism or the rest is the idea that the group in question somehow destroys or undermines the sense of beauty, enjoyment or wonder. I don't know why they think this because it really makes no sense. Scientists, atheists, positivists and the rest enjoy poetry, music, a beautiful sunset, sex, and the music of the spheres (actually, scratch that last one) just as much as anyone else. Explaining phenomena does not mean you have to destroy it; we do not lose appreciation for Handel, Da Vinci, Mozart, Beethoven, Michelangelo, or any natural beauty by understanding it. Film critics continue to enjoy movies even when they understand how they achieve the effects they do. Some of them even enjoy the movies more when they understand the visual allusions (for example) they make.

Furthermore, we would not lose beautiful works even if we ban religion (which no atheist would do anyway); people could still create beauty (or transcendent ugliness) without the additional layer of theism or religion. God, religion, or supernatural beliefs are not necessary for this creative process. Perhaps all this reveals is Robinson and Armstrong's inability to understand or enjoy science "has evolved into principle and method."

Mary Midgley, Abuses of Science

I read PZ Myers's blogpost on this post by Mary Midgley. I'm not going to address Myers' critique, but here's my take on the article. [Revised for brevity.]

What caught my attention, however, was actually Midgley's second paragraph. Let's quote the first two paragraphs to start.

Science really isn't connected to the rest of life half as straightforwardly as one might wish. For instance, Isaac Newton noted gladly that his theory of gravitation gave a scientific proof of God's existence. Today's anti-god warriors, by contrast, declare that Darwin's evolutionary theory gives a scientific disproof of that existence and use this reasoning, quite as confidently as Newton used his, to convert the public.

In both cases the huge prestige of science is being used not for scientific purposes but to defend an existing general world-view. In both cases that defence is found necessary because this world-view, though prevalent and respected, has been coming under attack. And in both cases the supposedly scientific argument provided is weak. It only convinces people who already share that world-view.

This does appear to be a strawman. I don't know of any atheists (with perhaps some of my undergrads excepted) who will claim that evolution immediately disproves the existence of God. It counts as fairly strong evidence against the idea that life was created by a perfect God, however. So, evolution is not relevant only to creationism but to any of the ID forms of God-belief.

Be that as it may, I think Midgley is actually trying to establish something else here, however. She's suggesting that in some sense religion may not be verifiable/falsifiable in the way that science wishes its claims to be, and perhaps not at all. Or perhaps what she wants to argue is that one can have no evidence for or against religion without already accepting or rejecting a world-view. And, given that religion (or a particular religion) constitutes a world-view, it may be impossible to prove or disprove (or provide evidence for or against) religion or a particular religion. It's all a bit vague. At any rate, the arguments of Newton and the New Atheists, a recent movement to argue against the existence of God and undermine public support for religion, are not useful in doing this since they only appeal to partisans who already agree with the side's basic theist or atheist contention.

But before I go further, please note the utter confusion in the second paragraph. She compares Newton's deism with the New Atheism. She starts by mentioning Newton's claim to have proved the existence of God using science. Then, in the second paragraph, claims that this is a case in which "the huge prestige of science is being used to defend" a "prevalent and respected" world-view that "has been coming under attack". The logic here requires that she be saying that atheism is a prevalent and respected world-view that has been coming under attack. When Newton argues for deism, that's what he's doing.

So when the New Atheists use evolution, they must be using science to support their prevalent and respected position after it has come under attack. That's just plain inaccurate. If Midgley wants to claim that Newton's deism is prevalent and respected, she's probably about half right. Atheism simply is not prevalent or respected at least not by the American public. Perhaps this is true of the British, but I don't think so. If so, more power to them, I suppose.

I don't really have the patience to quote and dissect the basic argument. She argues that evolution only strictly contradicts creationism, and no one's really a creationist (except about 40% of the US population--oops). So arguments from evolution are basically irrelevant to Christianity or theism.

That's not quite right. My view of this is that one primary argument for atheism is a simplicity argument. Without a need to explain something in supernatural terms, we should do without supernatural posits. Evolution then undermines one of the primary items purportedly in need of supernatural explanation. Thus, if we can show that there is no need to appeal to God to explain the origin, nature, distribution and qualities of life, then we lose one reason constantly given in favor of God's existence. Then, without any further items needing supernatural explanation, we can reject the existence of God as being a completely unnecessary (not to say excessive) explanatory posit. Hence, we reject the existence of God.

Now we get to the other part of Midgley's argument, talking about creationism:

Like cargo cults, however, this Bible worship is also a spiritual phenomenon, a message felt in the heart. Despite its confusions, it involves a genuine response to the real wisdom which can also be found in the Bible. Serious attempts to answer it need, therefore, to acknowledge that wisdom. They must try to show ways of combining it with more modern thinking.

Belief in God is not an isolated factual opinion, like belief in the Loch Ness monster – not, as Richard Dawkins suggests, just one more "scientific hypothesis like any other". It is a world-view, an all-enclosing vision of the kind of world that we inhabit. We all have these visions. Though they are always loaded with lumber and often dangerous, we need them. So, when we try to relate and improve them we have to treat each of them as a whole. We would not be right, any more than Newton was, to start by taking our own standpoint as infallible.

The basic form of the argument I am using could be considered scientific although I prefer to consider it a more generally rational argument. Oversimplifying a bit, we should only believe in things when we have a good reason to; otherwise we reject belief in them. But on Midgley's account, we cannot reason in this way at all. Rather, belief in God is a world-view, and thus it is not open to this sort of support or rejection.

I'll skip the bit about combining the wisdom of the Bible with a more modern understanding. I think Myers is basically right about this. But I will talk about the last paragraph. She argues that belief in God is worthwhile in some way even if it cannot be supported or undermined by empirical evidence, at least not in isolation, and so we need to look at the belief as a whole and "improve" it in some way. Now, why should we improve belief in God rather than simply reject it? What is the improvement in that belief that would render it superior to atheist belief? I can see no merit in these proposals except, perhaps, pragmatically, to wean people off their stone-age religion to a less-harmful bronze-age religion. She may think that people are not intellectually or emotionally capable of rejecting religion, but I'm not sure I agree, and I don't see this as sufficient reason to cease criticizing any such religious view even if she's right.

Finally, what's with the "all-enclosing vision" stuff? I think she's saying that each world-view carries with it its own standards of evidence, so we cannot evaluate the world-view against the standards of any other world-view. And if the world-view's standard has no problems with self-contradiction, contradictions with empirical evidence, or absurdity, then, presumably, there is no way to refute that world-view by appealing to those sorts of problem. Thus, empirical evidence only convinces those who start with a world-view that accepts empirical evidence as a means of justification.

If she's serious about this, then she's adopting a thorough-going skepticism. That's not the kind of belief you generally find in a theist or deist or religious thinker. More importantly, I just don't think this view is justified. People even with opposing world-views can recognize the results of experiments, the value of empirical evidence, and the benefits of the modern scientific world-view. Few fundamentalists, for example, forgo medical treatment because science conflicts with their religious world-view.

We patch together our beliefs about the world--our world-views--based on our experiences, and those are not infinitely malleable given our presuppositions. We do have to recognize that belief systems consist of complex sets of beliefs in justificatory relationships. And people will attempt to hold on to some beliefs while modifying others. But that doesn't mean that world-views are infinitely malleable and equally deserving of respect. Some world-views work; some require ridiculous mental gymnastics to maintain in the face of overwhelming evidence and internal contradiction. When the total systems of the atheist and the theist are compared, I believe ultimately any rational person can see which system is better.

I'd like to think that Midgley is merely making this commonplace point about holism and encouraging atheists to be more comprehensive in their arguments, but, given the context in which she defends the viewpoints of even the creationists, I do not think that's her purpose. To the contrary, not all world-views are equal, and we can use empirical evidence to help distinguish them. Irrationality does not count as a defensible world-view.