Two weeks and many words ago, I first wrote as a guest blogger on this site. I was looking forward to participating in the Atheist Convention as an undercover heretic, a true believer in science but one who has the temerity to believe also in God. I haven’t been disappointed. I’ve been glad of the opportunities for dialogue and at times I’ve been surprised.

I’m glad that the Convention raised serious questions about ‘life, the universe, and everything’, including issues of prejudice and influence, in society and politics. I’m glad too for the challenges to the religious faithful to get their houses in order.

A surprise: despite opposing belief systems, as a Christian I found common ground with these committed ‘true non-believers’. Like me, the atheists have taken their stand. In a bizarre sort of way it was good to be amongst people who have no truck with relativism or with a postmodernism which turns truth into plasticine.

Another surprise: while religious groups feel marginalised at times by secularism, it was interesting to walk in the shoes of the atheist and hear of their angst at encountering religion at every turn of politics (Christian politicians), education (chaplains in schools) and law (tax exemptions for religious organisations).

In my first post I asked four questions. My answers below are tentative and personal. They arise from evidence which is largely anecdotal, from conversations with people at the Convention, and from some 800 comments on this blog.

1. Is the ‘new atheism’ a religion?

Of course not! Atheism rejects the ‘God hypothesis’. But wait… the irony of the so-called ‘New Atheism’, represented by Richard Dawkins, is that it is characterised by its antagonism to religion. With a few exceptions, this was the brand of atheism on show at the Convention. It is unapologetic about the battle to remove the influence of religion from the secular marketplace. So, try as the ‘New Atheists’ do to distance themselves from religion, there is a sense in which they are defined by it; by their anti-religious and anti-theist stance.

In the strident, and at times ridiculing atmosphere, I heard echoes of Alister McGrath’s suggestion that atheism in the West might be on the wane: “Once a worldview with a positive view of reality, it seems to have become a permanent pressure group, its defensive agenda dominated by concerns about limiting the growing political influence of religion.”

Melbourne philosopher, Tamas Pataki, opened his talk at the Convention saying he would likely be the least popular speaker. Why? Because he had no jokes and no inclination to incite ridicule of the religious. What’s more, he suggested that some of the prominent atheists were seriously mistaken, and he was concerned that organised atheism was taking on the marks of religion, with its priests, apostles and disciples.

This is a fundamentalism of sorts, mirroring the religious variety in its zeal bordering on bigotry, and its inability to understand how other thoughtful people can arrive at different conclusions.

But, as Pataki demonstrates, all atheists cannot be tarred with the same brush. Many do not share either the zealous non-faith or the political agenda of this ‘New’ brand of an old tradition. Many would not agree with Dawkins that “religion poisons your ability to use your brain.” For some, Dawkins is embarrassing. Atheist philosopher Jim Stone recognises that believers are often excellent philosophers and well respected by their atheist colleagues. He says: “The people I don’t like are the New Atheists, because they don’t seem to realize that the people with whom I must contend, even exist.”

2. What is the New Atheist’s psyche?

In my experience of the last two weeks I’ve come across a lot of cranky people. It seems that en masse, the ‘New Atheists’ are mad at religion and mad at religious meddling in society and politics. They are especially mad (with some justification) at Christianity; mostly its historical atrocities and its sexual norms and abuses.

So the question is:

3. Is conversation possible?

But perhaps there is a prior question: who wants to converse?

The creed of ‘intolerance to religion’ is a conversation stopper. Insofar as the rhetoric of the ‘New Atheism’ ends the dialogue, it finds itself out of place in an open and multi-cultural society. It paints a black and white picture of the evils of religion versus the abundant benefits of a religionless utopia. This polarity can only be bad for the atheist cause, as once again it mirrors its nemesis: just as religion is characterised and tainted by its extremists, so serious-thinking atheism runs the same risk. As a moderate Christian, orthodox in belief (yes, I believe Jesus rose from the dead) I, along with moderate atheists, do not want to be identified with extremists.

But there is no logical or necessary impediment to conversation. The words of Stephen Jay Gould, renowned evolutionary biologist (and not a religious believer), are worth repeating:

To say it for all my colleagues and for the umpteenth million time: science simply cannot adjudicate the issue of God’s possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can’t comment  on it as scientists. … Science can work only with naturalistic explanations… Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs—and equally compatible with atheism.

For those who wish to converse, the challenge is to distance themselves from the fringe. Some suggestions (in case anyone were thinking of asking):

- drop the rhetoric of superiority and the intellectual high ground of being ‘brights’ and ‘freethinkers’;

- leave ad hominem arguments aside;

- do not equate the limits of science with the more encompassing scope of reason;

- accept the language of belief, recognising that any truth claim is a claim to believe something (including that God does not exist);

- desist from equating intellectually robust theism, with dragons in the garage, spaghetti monsters overhead or fairies at the bottom of the garden;

- accept that science is not an objective, impersonal method resulting in guaranteed truth;

- pay attention to the manners and customs of civil conversation, especially when commenting on blogs written by sensitive souls such as myself.

4. Where will it all end?

Is a new wave of culture wars inevitable, premised on the idea that only a univocal secularism will bring harmony? No… so long as the extreme agenda and rhetoric of the ‘New Atheism’ does not become that of the moderate majority of atheists. In an increasingly secular West, harmony depends on mutual tolerance, not uniformity. The conversation can only continue when all parties accept the limitations imposed by an impartial democratic state.

The human condition is an intractable mystery that will not be solved by science alone. There are few serious contenders in the stakes for a comprehensive worldview. Atheistic naturalism, which proclaims the ‘death of God’, is one. My own Christian tradition, which ‘preaches Christ crucified’, is another. There are three or four more. In the end, truth will out, but in the interim — the centuries or millenia until then — the task is one of simply getting along. That will be made easier if we recognise that things are not so simple as the fundamentalist — atheist or religious — would like to make out.

Chris Mulherin has degrees in Engineering, Philosophy and Theology and is currently writing a doctorate on scientific and religious knowledge. He is an Anglican minister and lives in Melbourne.

Elizabeth Silver went to the Atheist Convention and left thinking about the issues she has with the idea of faith.  She has decided that in religious usage it conflates two notions: belief and loyalty.  But, she argues, belief is better served by a different partnership:

One evening during the Global Atheist Convention, I watched an atheist interview a remarkably intelligent and nuanced Christian (I didn’t catch his name, alas; for these purposes I’ll call him Mr Christian) for a short web video. I asked a couple of questions myself. One of the topics hit, I think, the crux of why religion appears so nutty to atheists.

Mr. Christian said that God would never clearly demonstrate his existence, because if He were to do so, He would compromise people’s moral autonomy to choose their beliefs.

Let’s leave aside the fact that Jesus ostensibly performed plenty of miracles, which were presented in the gospels as conclusive proofs of God’s existence.

The issue here is, simply, the virtue of faith. Many religious people see belief in God as a virtue in and of itself, even (or especially) when that faith is not supported by clear evidence. Requiring proof somehow cheapens the virtue, and expecting God to provide evidence is cheapest of all (cf. Doubting Thomas). By contrast, atheists do not attach any kind of moral virtue to belief; they may believe things that are not adequately supported by evidence (e.g. the complete absence of divine purpose, etc.), but this doesn’t make them better people, and ideally they’d prefer to have evidence for all their beliefs. As an atheist, I do not hold belief to be a virtue; it just seems nutty to me. So I’m interested in why religious people see belief as a virtue.

Why is faith a virtue?

I’m familiar with this moral stance; my mother held it while I was growing up. Mum (a Catholic, at that time) sometimes disparaged my father (an atheist) because “your Dad doesn’t believe in anything he can’t see.” This is clearly false (although it was not clear to me at the time); Dad, and I, and everyone else believe in lots of things we can’t see, like electrons. The point was, though, that proof somehow cheapened belief, and that belief itself was good. There’s a variation on this pattern in children’s stories, where children are often required to believe in magic in order to be good children (and for the magic to work).

This is the attitude Mum held, and to a certain extent instilled in me. Although I was an agnostic throughout high school, I still wanted to believe. I wanted God to be real. I also wanted unicorns to be real, but I suppose that was an unavoidable side effect.

I no longer hold that belief is a good in and of itself, nor that proof cheapens belief. In my first year of university, I developed such a love of truth that I now see only one way in which a belief can be good or bad: it is good if it is true, and bad if it is false. (There are added nuances about relevance and usefulness, but I think they’re side issues. Religious belief may be useful – it may make some people happier – but that won’t explain why belief is seen as a virtue.) I will not confer any additional moral evaluation of a person’s beliefs. In fact, when I say a belief is “good”, I do not mean morally good, or that the person holding it is morally good.

Whether the believer is good (or wise) for believing something to be true depends entirely on how the believer arrived at her beliefs. The belief itself is good because it is true, and truth is good. I take this as an axiom.

I have a strong intuition about why religion holds faith to be a virtue, but I have nothing but linguistic evidence for it, so I’ll just discuss it here, and I’d like to hear your opinions in the comments.

My intuition is this: there are two senses of the word faith. One means belief (i.e. what you think you know), and the other means loyalty. I think religion conflates (i.e. combines, collapses into a single construct) these two very different concepts. From now on I’ll use the words “belief” and “loyalty” when I want to draw those senses apart, and omit the word “faith” unless I want to refer to the conflation that occurs in religion. Please note that I’m not trying to talk about different kinds of faith, or divide them into two different kinds; there are infinitely many kinds of faith that people feel, and it would be sheer hubris for an atheist to try to categorise them. I’m just talking about two different senses of the word.

Loyalty

Loyalty may be a real virtue; it certainly helps to build trust between people, and trust can produce wonderful social benefits. However, none of us would wish to place our loyalty unwisely, by following false (or wicked) friends (or gods). For the moment I’ll assume that if given wisely, loyalty can be a powerful resource for good. Even if I don’t assume that, I can assume the weaker point that human societies value loyalty highly and instinctively. This goes back to tribalism and is easily demonstrated by in-group/out-group effects.

It appears to me that whenever faith is seen as a virtue in and of itself, which is cheapened by proof, it’s because we’re talking about loyalty. To be truly loyal, you should maintain your allegiance regardless of the evidence for or against your liege (though evidence against may invalidate the “if given wisely” clause, rendering the loyalty useless). It’s easy to act loyal to someone who pays you, like a boss; harder to be loyal to someone who treats you like you don’t exist. So loyalty is (perhaps) a virtue, and it is definitely stronger when you have less reason to apply it.

Belief

The trouble is belief is good when it’s true, and it has the best chance of being true when we have evidence to support it. I would not demonstrate virtue by believing the sky to be pink (or anything else that flies in the face of evidence, or is simply unsupported, like the existence of Russell’s teapot). So the apparent contradiction of “faith without evidence, or in the face of evidence, is the highest virtue” is really just a confusion of belief with loyalty. Once you disentangle these two concepts, you can realise that it is ridiculous to condemn people for their disloyalty to false, contradictory, or unsupported ideas. We may value loyalty to people or organisations, but there’s no reason to give our loyalty to beliefs; we believe them if they’re true and if they’re not, we don’t. There is no reason to devalue the pursuit of evidence.

Belief as loyalty, and loyalty to belief

However, when you have a personal relationship with God, your very belief in Him defines a person for you to be loyal to. Disbelief is suddenly a betrayal. Furthermore, even outside the context of religion, we often use beliefs as markers for membership in a particular group and/or loyalty to a particular leader. Examples: Catholics are fellows with one another and they are loyal to the Pope. By contrast, I wouldn’t feel much fellowship with a George-Bush-supporting-climate-change-denialist. The use of beliefs as membership cards allows the word “faith” to conflate loyalty with belief. It allows “faith in the face of evidence” to be a virtue, because what it really means is, “they’re on our side”.

This is why it is so important for atheists to create social bonds of fellowship between groups of different beliefs, to take the emphasis off loyalty (because in such a scenario, we’d all get along anyway) and put it back onto knowledge and belief. That is the only way to make “faith in the face of evidence” appear as ridiculous as I think it is.

Elizabeth Silver is a graduate of the University of Melbourne, a research assistant at Latrobe University’s Statistical Cognition Laboratory, and a tutor in bioethics at Monash University, who’s about to start her PhD in philosophy of science at either the University of Pittsburgh or Carnegie Mellon University.

The (non-) existence of God is ostensibly the defining characteristic of atheism. But my experience of the recent Atheist Convention and subsequent discussion, convinces me that the real issue at stake is the nature of science. The link is obvious: if science is the only source of objective knowledge, there is simply nothing to say about anything outside of science. But what if our view of science is wrong?

In a previous blog post I suggested that “science must take some things as given before it can start its work” and I also mentioned some ‘non-scientific’ beliefs that I thought most atheists would go along with. In this post I suggest that science isn’t the simple, methodical, truth-guaranteeing project we sometimes think it is. This view of science, gestated over a few hundred years, was born as positivism in the first half of the last century. It was mercilessly put to death in the second half by philosophers and reflective scientists. It is a view of science as a pure pursuit of sure knowledge, with the corollary that all other knowledge claims are pretenders. But it is a view that ignores much that is intrinsic to the logic and practice of real science.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that we are talking of science as it is practised today. And let’s accept what the philosophers call ‘methodological naturalism’. That means, in the words of philosopher of science Michael Ruse, “miracles lie outside of science, which by definition deals only with the natural, the repeatable, that which is governed by law.”

So if science is not as simple as the phrase ‘the scientific method’ implies, how should we understand it? What is this thing called science? (to borrow the words of Alan Chalmers’ book of that title.)

Science is an intrinsically human enterprise. It is a cultural product of the Western world, and it is rife with beliefs, commitments, intuitions, trust, subjective judgements, tacit knowledge, skills, creativity and presuppositions. It is not that science should be anything else: it can’t be. We have woken from the dream of 17th Century philosopher René Descartes, who hoped to find certainty by casting aside all that could possibly be doubted. This does not mean that it is unreasonable to trust scientific consensus. But it does mean we ought to pay attention to the historical, philosophical and empirical evidence which shows that science is no impersonal rule-governed enterprise resulting in sure knowledge.

History is littered with scientific theories that were ‘known’ to be true and subsequently overturned. Ptolemy’s universe was earth-centred before Copernicus came along. The Newtonian world was absolute before relativity arrived. Thomas Kuhn, a historian of science with a PhD in physics, changed forever our understanding of science with his 1962 book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn says that a scientific theory goes largely unquestioned until a revolution unseats the reigning paradigm, replacing it with a new vision of what is true. SSR, as the book is affectionately known, argues that the idea of a universal and rigorous scientific method is a myth. While Kuhn has his critics, there is widespread agreement that science does not follow a rule-based method and that there is no neutral umpire to arbitrate between two competing scientific theories. Even rules of thumb such as simplicity and beauty cannot be defined, and depend on human judgement.

As well as what is revealed by its history, a philosophical inspection of science also leads to a more nuanced understanding. I mentioned the so-called ‘problem of induction’ in a previous blog post. (No matter how many black crows you see, there is no way of proving that all crows are black.) Another difficulty is that there are any number of theories that will fit the evidence; it depends on how many assumptions you want to include. Ptolemy’s earth-centred universe was propped up in the face of contradictory observations by introducing more assumptions. For 1400 years it was renovated as historical need arose. The sun-centred Copernican view prevailed, not because it simply explained the facts, but for reasons ranging through politics, religion, personal alliances and an appeal to simplicity. In the words of Max Planck, the Nobel prize winning father of quantum theory, “new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”

In addition to anything found in text books, the expert scientist brings creativity and tacit knowledge to bear. There are many things we know, but cannot explain. Most of us know how to ride a bicycle. But few of us know what it is that we know. And if we could describe the laws of physics governing bicycles, it would be no use to a four-year-old astride a bike for the first time. Recognising rock specimens or identifying new diseases or species are examples of the intangible knowledge of the expert. This is an ‘added extra’ that cannot be explicated. In the end a human judgement has to be made. In the words of scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi, “into every act of knowing there enters a tacit contribution of the person knowing what is being known, and this coefficient is no mere imperfection, but a necessary component of all knowledge.”

When we see that this is how science works, says Polanyi, then we will desist from the “vain pursuit of a formalized scientific method”, and instead, recognise “the scientist as the agent responsible for conducting and accrediting scientific discoveries.” While the scientist’s procedure is methodical, those methods are “the maxims of an art” which the scientist applies in their own original way to the problem they have chosen. Nobel prize winning physicist, Max Born says, “Science is not formal logic–it needs the free play of the mind in as great a degree as any other creative art.”

So scientific discovery too, is an art as well as a science, driven by the passions and intuitions of the enquiring genius, which cannot be formalised. At sixteen Albert Einstein was dreaming of flashlights and moving trains. Convinced that his intuitions were correct, it took him years to put mathematical flesh on the bones of relativity theory. He knew more than he could explain, and driven by passionate belief, he persevered to convince the scientific establishment. Like most of the great discoveries of science, relativity did not arise from new information. Such discoveries occur when old information is seen in a fresh light, and without being able to explain the process, the scientist cries “Eureka! I have found it.” Polanyi said that to see a problem is to see something that is hidden, “to have an intimation of the coherence of hitherto not comprehended particulars.” And Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Scientific knowledge is also a complex and undefinable web of trust, hinted at by the ‘third law’ of sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke: “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Polanyi puts it more analytically: “the knowledge comprised by science is not known to any single person. Indeed, nobody knows more than a tiny fragment of science well enough to judge its validity and value at first hand. For the rest he has to rely on views accepted at second hand on the authority of a community of people accredited as scientists.”

Human judgement, trust, tacit knowledge, creativity, are all intrinsic to science as we know it. Is this a reason to abandon science? No. Is this a reason to doubt the scientific consensus on climate change? Not at all. But it is reason to recognise the limits and the very human nature of this thing called science. It is not all-encompassing. It does not guarantee truth. But when it comes to knowledge of the natural world, science is all that we have, and it seems to have a good track record. Which of course begs the question of induction, but one has to stop somewhere.

Chris Mulherin has degrees in Engineering, Philosophy and Theology and is currently writing a doctorate on scientific and religious knowledge. He is an Anglican minister and lives in Melbourne.

Comments keep coming in about scripture, puzzling over the way religious people attend to archaic texts.  Here Frank Moloney adds to Melanie Landau’s reflection on reading scripture, from the perspective of someone who has spent seventy years (almost) reading and reflecting on the scriptures of his tradition:

I am very sensitive to the problem that many people have with reading Scripture.  On the one hand there are many who regard it as pre-scientific, or even just silly: full of the world of a God who speaks to human beings, manipulates human history, works miracles, and even an incarnate Son of God who, though crucified, is reported as rising from the dead.  How can such texts, especially such narrative texts (“stories”) claim to be in some way normative for anyone today?

On the other hand, there are many for whom the Bible is normative.  They read texts, both the stories and the more didactic material, as if they were either 21st century texts reporting things exactly as they happened, or as if they are to be accepted as literal eye-witness reports, which thus cannot be challenged.  To such readers, no critical question can or should be raised.

Most people fall in between, and simply do not bother with the Sacred Scriptures of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Bible.  They are vaguely aware of some of the great stories (often through artistic representation), but would never take a word from Scripture as relevant to their lives.

This is a pity, because the Scriptures had their birth in “real life,” and need to be read in the light of our “real lives” in order to be better understood.  None of the biblical authors thought of themselves as writing texts that would become normative for millennia.  The authors of the first five books of the Bible (and there are several, as the books are made up of a number of traditions, assembled into their present form at a much later date) wanted to explain why there was so much evil and suffering about.  Was God responsible?  Does God exist?  They wanted to know where the people of Israel came from, how they should live together.  They wanted to know more about their choice to belong to only one God.  So they thought about these things, prayed about them, told stories about them as they sat by the fire at night … and gradually their experiences began to surface in traditions that meant everything to them.  These traditions remained alive, and were eventually shaped into the book of the Hebrew Scriptures.

It is respect for their questions and their experiences that must lead us beyond (and especially behind) a literal reading of a text that necessarily reflects its time and place.  The questions that were asked then are asked by believers – and even non-believers – now.  Across the centuries, we can sense the experience that we share with them, as they tell their stories, and reflect theologically upon those stories, as they tell of the prophets calling them back to their original faithfulness and so on.

But unless we respect where these experiences came from, and how they were shaped, then however we read (or do not read) Scripture, we miss the point.  The biblical Word of God does not plummet into life and society with a “once and for all” response.  It asks us to enter into a world where the presence of God has been felt, and asks if we share that experience.

The same must also be said for the Christian Testament.  Gospels were written decades after the life, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus.  It is the experience of this tiny group of crazy people who believed that Jesus was alive and among them, that they were energised by his Spirit as they tried to live, love, die and rise as he did, that is found in those pages.  That is why the four Gospels are such different “stories.”  They reflect different experiences of the one determining event: the person of Jesus.

Unfortunately, fundamentalist biblical readers are the people most recognised in the broader discussion.  They are courageous and they speak out.  They are also members of powerful churches.  Indeed, most church institutions are uncomfortable with the type of approach to the Scriptures that I have sketched: an approach that allows the Bible to reflect human experiences matching our own, “sets people free” from the institutions’ use of them for their own doctrinal and legal purposes.

It is important to remember that the experience of believing individuals and communities produced the Bible.  Those individuals and communities both created the Bible, and – as institutions – keep it alive in their lives and liturgies.  However, the Bible strikes back.  Read properly, respecting where, why and how it was written, it is a problem for institutions.  All human institutions want to control the Word.  But the word bites back, and acts as a thorn in the side of any institution that wishes to be an end in itself.

In the end, this is the dangerous edge of a correct use of Scripture: it asks us to be what we claim to be.  This is also a reason why many reject the Bible: it asks the questions they cannot – or do not wish to – answer.

Frank Moloney STL (PSU) SSL (PBI) DPhil (Oxon) STD Honoris Causa (St Mary’s Seminary and University, Baltimore, USA) FAHA has served as a member of the International Theological Commission to the Vatican.

In many comments on blog posts and in some talks at the Convention, scriptures of various religious traditions were criticised.  Melanie Landau reflects on some of the criticisms:

Critics of God and religion sometimes use the dynamics of interpretation as evidence of the bankruptcy of scripture. The argument goes something like this: that honesty requires scripture to be read literally and that any kind of interpretation and symbolic reading is an attempt to whitewash scriptural problems and evade the ‘truth’. However, I think that we do not need to defend any problems in scripture in a debate about whether God exists. God’s existence or lack of is not contingent on a morally or otherwise perfect scripture (or world for that matter).

To deny readers of scripture the capacity of good faith interpretation is to rob a canon of its capacity for ongoing dynamism and validity throughout the passage of time. I think humans need to take responsibility for the way we read scripture, reading it as an open gateway rather than a closed passage. When there are things that we don’t like we can use this as an impetus to act in the world against those things. We can be in dialogue with scripture so that it opens us to the world as we want it to be, or so that it narrows the world and eats in on itself, without any space for incorporating new realities as they unfold. As the rabbis say, it can be an elixir of life, or a drug of death.

In a famous rabbinic story, the Oven of Akhnai, the rabbis used a biblical verse about deciding according to the majority to actually ban God from interfering in rabbinic disputes, and to disallow the rabbis from bringing supernatural proofs to the argument. The irony here is that the rabbis used their interpretation of the Bible to ensconce their own authority against God.  Similarly a Talmudic story recounts a time travel episode with biblical Moses sitting in the classroom of Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Akiva is recounting laws and Moses doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about. But at the end Rabbi Akiva says that the laws are from Moses at Sinai, and in the rabbinic text, it says that after Moses heard this he was relieved. This shows the rabbis’ self-consciousness of the radical interpretive nature of their enterprise. They are interpreting Bible but Moses, whose signature is the bible, doesn’t recognise what they are talking about. Valid interpretation can take us that far from the original source that it becomes unrecognisable. At the same time it is still attributed back to its source and maintains its connection in that way.

The goal of calling scripture accountable to philosophical and scientific truth is not solely the domain of atheists; it is also something integral to many religious thinkers.  Medieval Maimonides tried to reconcile his belief in the truth of scripture with his commitment to philosophical truth and it was this process that gave birth to metaphorical readings that allowed scripture to continue to ring true as new knowledge was brought to bear upon it.  The truth of scripture can also be understood from a more humanistic perspective, in terms of the meaning and authority invested in it by communities of meaning, who often attributed their meaning because of suppositions about the divine inspiration of the text. But evidence of ‘faulty scriptures’ doesn’t ‘disprove’ God. In fact there wouldn’t be a rabbinic tradition without these faults, whose lines spark the creation of midrash. We just use our problem with scripture as part of our social action in the world, whether we are religious, or not.

My observance of Jewish ritual and, even more so, my learning of traditional sources is not invested in any attachment to God’s existence. Even relating to God is more about a sense of directionality towards infinity more than an address to something fixed.  I often suggest that students bracket the question of God because it can be a distraction. (Personally I don’t think ‘believe’ is the right verb for God, but that’s another story.) Although the tradition may self-reflectively attribute God as the locus of authority and intention, this attribution has been perpetuated by different communities of interpretation in different ways throughout time and can often be a tiny fraction of the deeply human factors motivating learning and ritual.

Melanie Malka Landau is Lecturer, Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, Faculty of Arts, Monash University. She also facilitates individual and group processes around relationships, healing and rites of passage.

This is a simple little post, as I ponder a frequent refrain of the ‘New Atheism.’ I call it the ‘only science’ claim and it goes like this: “we only believe the evidence of science.” Of course this raises questions about which version of ‘science’ we are talking about. We might also ask about ‘evidence’. Yes, also about ‘believe’. And the nitpicker might want to ask about the definition of ‘we’ and ‘only’ and even of ‘the’ and ‘of’.

But even at a common sense understanding  of science, it seems to me that this extreme ‘only science’ view, which is not held by all atheists, denies some obvious non-scientific convictions that such people hold. In fact, science must assume some truths to get it off the ground, which means that the person who believes ‘only science,’ is saying that science is more certain than the things it is based on.

Five things that atheists (and others) believe that cannot be shown by the evidence of science:

1. The universe is governed by the law of cause and effect.

2. We can normally trust human rationality and the evidence of our senses.

3. The axioms of mathematics and the laws of logic are true.

4. Moral language makes sense and cannot be reduced to personal preferences. Racism, paedophilia, destroying the planet and chauvinism are wrong in a more binding sense than “I/we don’t like those things.”

5. Humans have freewill and are not totally determined by the laws of science. In order to live, converse, decide what I will put on my sandwich, or whether I will attend an atheist convention, I must have the freedom (within limits) to make decisions.

There is more to be said, and the debate can be complicated, but the gist of the idea is that science must take some things as given before it can start its work. Most atheists take the above truths as givens, despite the fact that none of them can be derived scientifically.

Chris Mulherin has degrees in Engineering, Philosophy and Theology and is currently writing a doctorate on scientific and religious knowledge. He is an Anglican minister and lives in Melbourne.

Stephen Ames was at the Convention and now as a guest blogger he reflects on some of the Convention themes and on some of his Convention encounters:

Many atheists and believers have trouble recognising themselves in each representation of the other.  The Convention brought to mind my meeting NS, an atheist friend, in Federation Square, Melbourne. A few years ago we had attended a public event for social justice but met by chance afterwards. Neil was in tears. He was hurt and very angry.  He had been standing with a group of Christians who, on discovering he was an atheist, started to bag him as a bad person.  Neil asked me why so many religious people think atheists are bad people.  He knew that I am a Christian from when we first met in the late 1960s doing our doctorates in physics at the University of Melbourne; he knew that I had never thought of him that way.  I felt dreadful that he and many like him should be treated so badly by Christians.  NS is a Marxist and deeply committed to social justice. What a travesty.  I simply said that I knew he was a good man.   So, I appreciated the more moderate views of some of the speakers at the Atheist Convention, for example, Philip Adams’ more balanced assessment of religious people.  I have a comparison in mind.  For the last eight years I have been lecturing in ‘God and the Natural Sciences’, a second and third year subject at Melbourne University.  My colleague NT, a lifelong atheist, is a co-lecturer. Over a hundred students from all over the university enrol each year. About 40% of the students are committed atheists and another 40% are committed to a religious tradition, and 20% are agnostics.  Neil and I conduct a constructive public discussion in which we disagree on the fundamental question of God.  The Atheism Convention organisers come out of a different kind of conversation.   In fact it would appear that for many of the presenters and the audience the conversation is over.  The point was made by the comedian Sue-Anne Post on the first night. “There is no evidence for God. We are over arguing about it. There should be more mockery.”  Thankfully, this isn’t the only option.

Recalling the encounter with NS brought me back to the Convention.  There were many speakers who clearly felt that Christians could not affirm the truly good character of an atheist.  This is partly because of questions put to atheists about ‘why be good if there is no God’ or the idea that it is impossible to be good without God.  One of the emotional currents running in the Convention showed up in the cheering and applause whenever a speaker affirmed the possibility of living a good life without religion and especially without the denigration of this possibility by religion.  I have some sympathy for the atheist objection.   It resonates with the scene in Matthew’s gospel, concerning the last judgement.  The sheep and the goats are on the right and left hand of Christ.  The sheep are saved, the goats are not.  This will already be too much for many people.  But I ask you to wait.  It is the criterion that is of interest.  Those who end up at the right hand of God are those who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited the sick and those in prison.  The key point is that the text shows these people as never having heard the gospel, as acting without reference to God or Christ or even their own salvation.  The person in need was sufficient motivation.   Atheist friends say to me that this is not the message they have received from the church.  Well there is more to say of course.  But an ensuing conversation would not deprive us of this point from Matthew.

Richard Dawkins spoke on the theme, The evolution of gratitude and gratitude for evolution.  Evolution gives us reason to be thankful.  This evoked surprise in the audience and of course Dawkins gave it a rhetorical emphasis, ‘give thanks?’, ‘to whom?’   This ‘gratitude’ is another example of what Dawkins call a ‘misfire’.  A behaviour hard wired by evolution ‘fires off’ in a vacuum, another context where its evolutionary rationale no longer holds. In his God Delusion this is how he explains what he calls the ‘Good Samaritan’ in each of us – the tendency to feel compassion for strangers.  In the case of feeling gratitude for being alive, he suggests it is a misfiring of the early childhood learning to calculate what is fair or what is owing.  So we find ourselves thankful for all the green lights that give us an easy drive.  This is the basis for Dawkins’ strong exhortation for us to be thankful and to be inspired by the fact of our existence.    As I reflected on his exhortation, I was reminded of the theme of ‘thanksgiving’ that is part of my life as a Christian – thanksgiving for all life as a gift from God.  This is central to the meal and the conversation that is at the heart of worship for many Christians.    This gift and thanksgiving is what I wake up into and why I get out bed in the morning. It frames everything else, come what may.

For Dawkins this is just another example of misfiring, with my gratitude projected onto a non-existent God.   This is part of what Dawkins calls the “weird” Christianity espoused by the Cambridge paleontoligist, Simon Conway Morris. One reflection I have is that I would need something better than a ‘misfire’ to follow Dawkins’ exhortation.  Recall his own words, ‘the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”   I think this places the suggested gratitude for life due to  a  ‘misfire’ in a larger context.  Indifference, especially pitiless indifference, doesn’t warrant gratitude.

On the other hand, like many people, I am grateful for being alive.  Yes, I am thankful and amazed at the evolution of life in the physical conditions of the evolving universe, as this has been brought home to me by the scientific story about the universe.  But I was thankful for life long before I knew the scientific story, even though my gratitude is now deeply informed by that story.  From early in my life, before I became a Christian, I had a strong sense of the unconditional value of life.  I still take this as one of the clues to reality, even when, or especially when, this value is dreadfully violated.  (Robyn Williams wanted to know where God is in these circumstances.)  This sense of value does not accord with a world view, a metaphysics, in which everything conditions everything else.  The unconditional value of life must have its roots in something that transcends all the conditions of life.  My gratitude for life comes from recognising life is a precious gift.  The Christian message illuminates this gift and promises it will be honoured.   ‘At bottom’ I think there is a gracious giving of existence and the giver is the living God who will have the ‘last word’ for the whole created universe and it will be ‘Yes!’    And by the way, if someone says God is the source of all that exists, it is not logically possible to ask, ‘what created God?’ There is nothing prior to God to do that creating.  Other objections to this saying about God may be offered but not this one.

I know my atheist colleagues and friends think this way of recognising life is just a form of ‘misfire’, a delusion.  They find support for their view from the natural processes like a tsunami or a congenital disease, which appear to be indifferent to the value of life.  But these are some of the consequences of the processes that produce life.  In conversations with students this quickly leads them questioning my belief in God: ‘why would God use natural processes, including evolution by natural selection, to bring life into existence?’ and ‘why would God use any process at all, why not just create the world in the intended end state, if the world is supposedly created for some purpose?’   Will our faith and theology be up to answering these questions? The answer has to be robust enough to address Dawkins saying the universe is, at bottom, pitilessly indifferent.  I regard these as excellent questions for which there are good answers.  But these would take more than this blog to set out.  It is one part of a larger conversation working out the rationality of faith.  This reference to ‘reason’ is deeply Christian in a Christianity that has reason to believe the divine Logos has become flesh in Christ.

At the end of her vivid, witty segment Catherine Deveney gave us this word: “Seek the truth and the truth will make you free. Don’t be afraid of death. Be afraid of never having really lived.  Peace be with you.”  These are also deeply Christian themes, at least one being a direct quote.   CD says ‘God is bullshit’ – that is her gig at the comedy festival.  Taking a line from Dan Barker, a speaker at the Convention, this is culturally resonant with speaking about God as a shepherd in Jesus’ own day. But could the truth, life and peace she commends to us enter into a conversation with the truth, life and peace that Christians value?  Catherine Deveney, would you be interested in another gig?

Stephen Ames is a priest in the Anglican Church and a canon of St. Paul’s Cathedral in Melbourne. For the last eight years he has lectured in ‘God and the Natural Sciences’ at the University of Melbourne.  He is also the coordinator of Science, Religion & Society, a programme of Trinity College.  Stephen has two PhDs from Melbourne, one in physics and the other in philosophy of science.  His most recent publication is a paper, ‘Why would God use evolution?’ to be published by the Australasian Theological Forum.

Photo courtesy of Trinity College, The University of Melbourne.

On Monday I posted Credo affirming 10 things that I, as an orthodox Christian believer, have in common with many atheists. Well, I’ve been thinking… and it won’t surprise my atheist sparring partners to know that my own Credo goes beyond the 10 things in common. This Credo with Commentary is a personal response to things heard at the convention and that I’ve read in this blog.

1. We believe that we live in a wonderful and ordered world, where the law of cause and effect is the norm…

True, but hold on…  there is no scientific argument to say that the normal law of cause and effect governs everything. This might seem like common sense (and it was assumed by most speakers at the Convention) but in fact it is a commitment based on induction from past experience. And why should we trust induction from past experience? Because it has worked in the past? There’s the rub. Philosophers call it the problem of induction. Our confidence in induction is based on induction. A circular argument. Either we remain open to the possibility of ‘non-scientific’ truth or we admit that we have a basic and unprovable commitment (or belief, or faith) in induction and causality.

…and where human rationality is, in some extraordinary way, able to comprehend much of its amazing complexity.

But the limits to all possible knowledge can never be known because we don’t have an Archimedean viewpoint (colloquially known as a ‘God’s eye view’.) Unless we knew the whole, we could not know how close we were getting to it. Discretion is the better part of valour and humility demands that we be more agnostic than atheist.

2. We believe that science is the major source of truth about the physical universe in which we find ourselves…

Yes, but there’s more. See number 3 below.

More than that, we put our trust in the consensus of scientific experts in their respective fields…

Absolutely… but notice the word ‘trust.’ No individual knows everything. I trust my physics lecturer, she trusts her instruments. Richard Dawkins chooses which experts in other fields he will trust. Science is a web of trust. Religious people sometimes use the word faith for trust. Being open-minded or a true freethinker means conversing with those outside your web of trust.

3. We believe in the old-fashioned and common sense concept of truth…

I would argue that the roots of our word truth are  found in the Greek which means roughly ‘revealing’ or ‘uncovering’ and that the Gospel of John, especially the first chapter, is worthy of study on that topic. Things beyond the limits of human reason will never be found. They can only be revealed or else they will never be known.

4.  … climate change won’t go away. It is not just “another metanarrative.”

5. We believe human beings need to activate their little grey cells…

6. We believe in the problem of evil. Appalling things happen in our world. All is not good. Something must be done about it.

Why bother? I know very well that being an atheist does not make someone immoral. And I accept that being a Christian does not make one moral. But I would ask two questions: 1. If we truly find ourselves “in the unfeeling immensity of the universe, out of which we emerged only by chance,” then how does morality get a hold on us? Why am I subject to anything but my own desires and the will of those who have power? Peter Singer recognised in his talk at the Convention that ethics cannot be rooted in evolution or nature. It seems that Dostoevsky got it right: if God is dead, everything is permitted.

7. We believe in the problem of evil…  this time the issue is the theological problem of evil. For both of us, the question of how a good God could allow evil demands an answer.

Here it is. Number 7. The big challenge for Christians, and, the way I see it, the one powerful argument in favour of atheism. There are no slick theological arguments here. We could talk of free will and the possibility of evil that goes along with free will. We could talk of what it means to live in what Christians call ‘a fallen world.’ But they are pointers not answers. And we could talk of the suffering God of Christianity who is not the distant God of the philosophers. This is the God who was ‘in Christ,’ the ‘man of sorrows,’ full of compassion, who suffered and died. In that mystery lies a clue to the problem of evil: God himself experienced evil in its full force and in some way that we barely comprehend, will ‘make all things new.’

8. We believe that atheism can be a rational and internally coherent worldview.

Yes, and if I weren’t a Christian I think I’d be an atheist. But there are more things in heaven and earth that can’t be answered by that philosophy. I can’t squeeze myself into that box: it leaves out so much. For example, I don’t think it has convincing answers to issues such as: i. The experience of moral conflict within me between what I believe is right and how I behave; ii. My conviction that I really do have free will and responsibility and that my actions are not determined causally by neuronal firings or by random happenings at a sub-atomic level; iii. Historical truth is not open to positivistic scientific method. But orthodox Christianity centres on a historical happening outside the city of Jerusalem some 2000 years ago. With St Paul I say: if Christ was not raised, my faith is in vain. Who was Jesus of Nazareth? Was he a liar? Was he a lunatic? Or was he Lord? Empirical science cannot answer these questions.

9. We believe that intolerant fundamentalism is a bad thing.

10. We believe that Monty Python is funny and that Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy was ground-breaking science fiction.

I admit: I left out the Hitchhiker’s Guide. Apologies to Douglas Adams if he’s listening. And if he is, he knows the answer is not 42.

Chris Mulherin has degrees in Engineering, Philosophy and Theology and is currently writing a doctorate on scientific and religious knowledge. He is an Anglican minister and lives in Melbourne.

I got an email from JC last night. Julie Clarke has been an avid blog follower and a prolific and thoughtful commentator (‘JC’) – perhaps because she’s in a writing mood as she finalises her doctoral thesis. I asked Julie to give us some impressions of the Atheist Convention.

Why did I go to the convention? I think there were several reasons.

First, of course, I have read some of Dawkins’ books and was keen to hear him speak. As a person who loved science in High School, but pursued a career in law, I jump at any opportunity for a ’science lesson’ from an expert and find evolution particularly interesting (if we were taught it in High School I don’t remember it).

Second, it’s nice to get together to talk to people who share similar views (at least on this issue) and discuss the issue openly – it’s something we tend not to be able to do as freely in our day-to-day lives (or at least have trepidation in doing) for fear of ‘offending’ colleagues, friends or family.

A related reason (and probably the key motivating factor) is my concern about the intrusion of religion into the public sphere. As I’ve previously noted, I suspect the Convention – if it was held at all – would have been much less popular if it wasn’t for concern about the influence of religion in politics and in schools/education. With a 5yo about to start school next year this is of immediate concern for me; I do not want to make the decision to have her either sit in on a Christian ‘RI’ class or have to be segregated into another room for the duration.

As to the convention itself, overall I was impressed – I missed some sessions on Saturday morning (courtesy of my thesis!) but attended most of the weekend and the highlight for me was Anthony Grayling – I would happily pay to go and listen to him again. I enjoyed the other speakers too and thought the variety of issues covered was good, including the attack atheists confront most regularly – how can you possibly be ‘moral’ if you are an atheist. As an atheist I have no doubt at all about my ability to be moral without any supernatural rule-book or heavenly incentive, but it’s not always an easy concept to explain – I feel better equipped to meet that challenge now. I don’t think you could argue that we simply met to talk about ‘nothing’ as some religious commentators would like to believe.

Finally on the issue of bias, I think it’s more interesting to present a range of view points and to be up-front about that. No matter how much you could claim you had no bias in reporting on issues of this nature, if you were a practising Catholic you would not have been able to report on Dawkins’ lecture in a completely objective way. I’m sure the same could be said of an atheist who had a pre-existing admiration for the man – but that said I would still be interested in a Catholic view of the issue. My concern is only that bias (or affiliation) is acknowledged up front.

While some of the rhetoric sounds like atheists and theists are diametrically opposed on just about everything, the Atheist Convention left me thinking we have much in common.

More than once we heard that there is only one thing that atheists themselves have in common: their non-belief in God or the gods. But the mood of the Convention revealed a broader consensus. People shared more than simply that distinctive “non-belief.” In fact, at times some speakers seemed to want to move from a minimalist agreement to a broad platform for world change.

So, what are the cords that bind this particular orthodox Christian to many of those present at the convention? I acknowledge that, firstly, this is my personal view, not representative of all Christians, and secondly, I refer to many but not all atheists. What is our common creed?

1. We believe that we live in a wonderful and ordered world, where the law of cause and effect is the norm and where human rationality is, in some extraordinary way, able to comprehend much of its amazing complexity.

2. We believe that science is the major source of truth about the physical universe in which we find ourselves, from the microscopic to the macroscopic level. More than that, we put our trust in the consensus of scientific experts in their respective fields, recognising that while they might be proven wrong in one way or another, we would be foolish not to believe them.

3. We believe in the old-fashioned and common sense concept of truth. When it comes to factual claims about the world or about God, we agree that we can’t all be right. In such matters we are frustrated with a so-called postmodern relativism that talks of tolerance as an excuse not to deal with the issues.

4. We believe that, because of 2. and 3. above, these issues matter. Climate change won’t go away. It is not just “another metanarrative.” It is not “true for me but not for you.”

5. We believe human beings need to activate their little grey cells (please say that with the accent of Monsieur Hercule Poirot.) We have been created with brains; we ought to use them.

6. We believe in the problem of evil. Appalling things happen in our world. All is not good. Something must be done about it.

7. We believe in the problem of evil. No, I am not repeating myself: this time the issue is the theological problem of evil. For both of us, the question of how a good God could allow evil demands an answer.

8. We believe that atheism can be a rational and internally coherent worldview.

9. We believe that intolerant fundamentalism is a bad thing.

10. We believe that Monty Python is funny and that Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy was ground-breaking science fiction.

On these beliefs we stand united.

Chris Mulherin has degrees in Engineering, Philosophy and Theology and is currently writing a doctorate on scientific and religious knowledge. He is an Anglican minister and lives in Melbourne.