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.
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.
I had a brief chat yesterday with the distinguished English philosopher AC Grayling and was struck, as I’m sure many of the audience were during his presentation on Saturday, with his gentle but uncompromising erudition.
One of his key points concerns the ‘embranglement’ of science and religion. Great word. It was coined by George Berkeley, the early 18th century Bishop and “immaterialist” philosopher who famously said, Esse est percipi – ‘To be is to be perceived.’ And it describes perfectly how these two disparate fields of thought have sometimes become entangled and intertwined: Mistakenly, says Grayling. While some argue that science emerged from religion, “science and religion have only one common ancestor – ignorance.”
Grayling takes a great big swipe at the Templeton Prize, which throws large amounts of money at scholars who can demonstrate “a substantial record of achievement that highlights or exemplifies one of the various ways in which human beings express their yearning for spiritual progress.” A number of past prizewinners have tried to bring science and religion together in mutual comprehension. Embranglement. According to Grayling, religion and science are not alternatives, they each achieve entirely different ends, in entirely different ways.
In this respect, he’s in agreement with probably all of the scientists at the convention, including the acerbic PZ Myers, biologist and serial blogger. Myers believes that the scientific world-view is the only one worth considering because it submits to testability, admits to doubt and doesn’t pretend to have all the answers. “Religion makes you stupid”, he says, “it makes smart people do stupid things”. And moreover, “Science doesn’t like stupid.”
Myers’ blog, Pharyngula, often reads like a kind of science triumphalism, but let’s think about that; while science has brought us untold benefits, the appliance of science also has a lot not to be triumphant about, unless we conveniently forget the atomic bomb, Chernobyl, global warming, racial science, TNT, eugenics, cancer-inducing plastics…
Don’t get me wrong, I like science, and I agree that testability is more likely to lead to truth than anything else. But science doesn’t live in a vacuum, any more than faith does. The appliance of religion (to put it crudely) can certainly be stupid, but not always; it can provide community, a sense of purpose, a moral compass, and it can lead people to devote their life to good. In other words, we can’t impute the stupidity or otherwise of religion through what people do with it any more than we can impute the smartness or otherwise of science through the ways it’s applied.
And, let’s face it, we can do really stupid things with science: The cane toad, anyone?
Listen to AC Grayling on “Atheism, Secularism, Humanism: Three Zones of Argument” [Dur: 49.15; Size: 45 MB]
My conversation with James Sharpe at the Convention dinner prompted an interview. James is an artist who works on video games.
So what brings you to the Atheist Convention James?
I guess one of the biggest reasons is the quest for community. We’re all very similar genetically and there is a need for people of no faith to have the same level of community that people of faith have. In the secular world we haven’t created a good alternative to the communities that people of faith have.
I think that one of the things I find is that the secular world is not as good at talking about emotional stuff. There’s definitely a need for that sense that you can open up to people and talk about things that trouble you. My view of the church and religious organisations is that they create the environment where people can walk in off the street and talk about what is going on in their life. In the secular world it can be very lonely if you don’t have the right kinds of friends.
I think the next thing the secular community needs to address, which is far more important than taking on religion, is looking after our emotional needs and creating that support base.
So is this a spiritual quest?
Yes. Atheism is part of a spiritual quest, not the end but just a step along the way. And perhaps not the most important step. It’s about coming to terms with ourselves as emotional creatures. You don’t have to be an atheist to do that… I think I am most interested in keeping the question open: atheism is more about accepting you don’t know.
Hold on: wouldn’t a lot of people here at the convention disagree with that?
Possibly, but I think it is important to have meaningful definitions of your beliefs. I don’t call myself an agnostic because I am agnostic about everything and for me that means that agnosticism has no meaning. If I am to choose a label then it needs to communicate my behaviour and values, so I am an atheist because my actions are based on the assumption that a God does not exist.
I think that there is a certain sense of insecurity and frustration within the atheist community, perhaps because we don’t have a solid support structure. We don’t express ourselves emotionally in a healthy manner so there’s a danger of us becoming passive aggressive. If we are angry we need to say so, to be honest about how we feel and work out how we deal with that.
Are you angry?
Probably at some level but it doesn’t dominate me because I’ve put effort into expressing myself in a healthy manner. It’s more frustration than anger, not necessarily specific. It’s about how confusing life is and how hard it is to sort out the good information from the bad and to work out the correct course of action. The overwhelmingness of the consequences of our decisions… I feel sometimes we are in a world of the blind leading the blind, you follow someone for a way then realise they don’t know where they are going either. No one really knows what’s going on. You’ve got to question the traditions and the uncertainties of life… to accept that no one really knows the answers.
Surely that’s not the tone of this convention? Are you amongst friends here on that score?
I’m sure we all disagree about a great many things. This is a coming together of people who have formed a conclusion about a single topic: at the very least most people here would agree that there is not sufficient evidence to justify a belief that there is a God. Or at least they have not been presented with sufficient evidence.
My reading so far is that the mood here is not nearly so questioning as you seem to be. Don’t you hear a more definite and strident tone?
Absolutely. I think there are a lot of people here who have a stronger stance than I do. But I understand their position. The same way people of faith believe so strongly in their beliefs, there is a pressure to have strong convictions about our lack of beliefs. There are people here who would say not only that they lack a belief in God but that they believe there is no god. That would be me.
The dismissal by people here of the idea of a God might be out of frustration: there are a lot of theologians out there who offer poor arguments for their beliefs and you might be seeing a frustration or a rolling of the eyes because people won’t realise they do not have evidence based beliefs. The most successful theologians are those who say ‘I believe this because it feels true to me but I don’t know why.’ That position doesn’t require you to make up a ridiculous argument. But I know many would disagree with me: the feelings and intuitions can be deceived but at the same time we do trust our intuitions.
So if Christians want to convince people, should they drop the logical, philosophical, apologetic approach and talk more about feelings and intuitions?
I’m not sure you can convince people about religion without evidence. Until there is objective evidence then religion can only ever be a personal thing. You can’t convince someone to be religious.
What about relativism? One thing that strikes me here is that atheists and believers such as myself are agreed on an idea of truth that doesn’t allow the sort of “what’s true for you is not necessarily true for me” response. Rather, we agree that either the atheist or the theist is right but not both.
I’m very against the sort of post-modernist philosophical relativism. An example: if a meteor hits this building right now my non-belief in meteors will not protect me. That thought experiment throws the idea of epistemological relativism out the window. There is one truth but it is hard to know.
For me the most interesting part of the conference has been to talk to people who have a position that is not similar to my own. That is how we learn: by taking the ideas of others that conflict with our own. That way our own ideas become more refined and we can have a better faith in our own judgment. All people, whatever they believe, are advantaged by talking to people who disagree with them. The truth is best served by talking with people we disagree with.
Forgive this long post but Richard Dawkins was the star attraction of the Atheist Convention and I assume readers would prefer more rather than less of his presentation.
“The fact of your own existence is the most astonishing fact you will ever have to face. Don’t you ever get used to it.”
With those words Richard Dawkins launched an interesting, and less-polemical-than-the-others, talk spanning the origins of species, of life, of the universe and perhaps of billions of universes.
The universe we live in and the fact of our existence is truly a cause for gratitude. Gratitude for our individual existence and for the process of evolution which from the blind forces of physics produces all that we know and gives it the illusion of design.
Dawkins spoke of predictability and luck as the two halves of the creative process (although, no, I don’t think he used that loaded phrase). “Natural selection is the great engine of the predictable half of what I am talking about today,” he said, while blind chance is the other half.
“If some catastrophe wiped out the mammals today, the surviving vertebrates would evolve into a similar range of ecological types.” Dawkins referred to the work of Simon Conway Morris Cambridge Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology who argues that humans would have evolved again if the tape of life had been rerun. Perhaps he is right, says Dawkins, although he parts from Conway Morris who uses it “as evidence for his weird belief in Christianity.”
But, said Dawkins, the predictable engine of natural selection requires luck at certain critical points, the most obviously at the origin of life (self replication coded information that influences the world) is the most obvious case. This first step in the chain of evolution might have been a very lucky step indeed. How lucky? Dawkins asked.
We don’t know. Theories of the origin of life are hardly plausible at this stage. To ask the question is tantamount to asking how many times life has arisen around the universe. Do we live in a universe teeming with life or, at the other extreme, one where life has arisen only once? “For what it’s worth, and that is not very much,” Dawkins said, “my gut feeling is that life is probably reasonably common.” But the number of planets is so vast, that even a million independent planets with life might have no contact with one another.
But one thing is clear: if you believe that life has arisen only once, then a consequence is that the event that we call the origin of life has to be of such stupefying probability that any chemist looking for it is wasting their time. Any plausible theory would result in life arising many times. Only an implausible theory would result in life arising only once in the universe.
Dawkins spoke of what physicists call the ‘fine tuning’ of the universe explaining that there are a number of physical constants such as the gravitational constant that govern the laws of the universe. He referred to Martin Rees, the Cambridge Cosmologist and Astrophysicist who wrote Just Six Numbers. These are numbers that we can calculate but which we don’t have a rationale for why they have these particular values. We might think of them as six dials that have to be set exactly right at the very beginning. Many physicists have argued that the origins of the universe and laws of physics result from a stroke of blinding luck that left each of these dials at exactly the right position. Any other setting on any one of the dials would have given a no universe result.
Dawkins rebuffs any divine conclusions from fine tuning of the universe. This is not proof of conscious intelligence he says. “To postulate a divine knob twiddler who knew the exact value doesn’t explain anything.”
Rees resorts to what is known as the anthropic principle, “which theists think is their domain, but is deeply atheistic.” It holds that all universes that are observed must have the correct values (or there would be no observers). This can be combined with multiverse theory which holds that the one universe we observe is only one of billions of universes mutually incommunicado, all of which have different values of the fundamental constants. Now, with billions of universes with different values of fundamental constants, we can say that we live in the one that has the fine tuned properties necessary for us to be around to observe it.
Dawkins also cited a more Darwinian theory of the origin of the universe, the idea that universes “give birth to baby universes” which are slightly mutated versions of the parent. This is evolution on a universal scale where fitness is defined as the ability for a universe to last long enough to give birth to offspring. While not popular amongst physicists, Dawkins said, it’s hard to find strong objections.
From cosmology Dawkins moved back to human evolution emphasising that both seem to owe their beginnings to an enormous shot of luck. Both are wondrous, amazing and a cause to give thanks. But to whom? To providence? The gods?
What are the evolutionary roots of gratitude and of religion? The fact that such characteristics of humans seem to be universal demands an explanation. Dawkins suggested that religion might be a by-product of another predisposition. For example, the child mind is predisposed to obey authority, a characteristic which has strong survival value. But a by-product of this predisposition might be vulnerability to “mental viruses such as religion,” just as a computer is vulnerable to viruses because it has no way of knowing whether a program is good or bad.
As for gratitude, Dawkins suggested it might be the by-product of the need, prior to the use of money, to keep mental accounts of what is owed and owing. Children early on develop a sense of fairness and in some cases it operates without a real target, for example, “it’s not fair that it is raining on my birthday.” Sexual lust too still operates although its original reproductive benefit is no longer ‘the target.’
Dawkins suggests “we have a similar lust to calculate debt, gratitude, fairness and it’s so powerful that it goes off in a vacuum.” Such psychological dispositions might also lead us to postulate God, he said. In a pastoral moment Dawkins assured us that “this sort of vacuum activity is nothing to be ashamed of” and that the first part of his talk gave sufficient reason for gratitude to be alive even though it is “gratitude in a vacuum.”
One of the questions after the talk gave the audience a lesson from the master communicator when a Christian prefaced her question about DNA with her gratitude to God. The crowd started heckling but Dawkins quietly calmed the storm and went on to answer the question with seriousness and at length.
Another questioner asked whether Australia getting its first saint would do us any harm. “That’s pure Monty Python,” said Dawkins referring to the Pope as “Pope Nazi.” And, he said, it’s the sort of thing that “gives the lie to the claim that sophisticated theologians should be able to look down on fundamentalist wingnuts. They are all the same.” [See below for a correction to this paragraph.]
When asked when he would be willing to criticise Islam as he did Christianity, the response was pragmatic. “I personally believe we shouldn’t go out of our way to do things that will get our heads cut off.” To the Islamist he would make it clear that this reticence is “because I fear you. Don’t think for one moment it’s because I respect you.”
A question about how to talk to Christians “when let’s face it we think we are smarter than them?” brought the following reply and applause from the audience: “We aren’t necessarily smarter than them. Respect them and honour the reasons why they believe.”
Another question about the differences between atheism and agnosticism was answered: “I don’t actually call myself an atheist in that sense: I’m a 6.9 on the scale of 0 to 7. We are all agnostic about almost everything. I’m an atheist in the same way I’m afairyist.”
And: “Might there be a chink in my arguments? Of course there are all sorts of chinks, but the onus is on those who want to believe in religion. … It’s odd that people who in everyday life use perfectly logical reasoning don’t do so when it comes to religion… Religion certainly poisons your ability to use your brain.”
Overall an interesting talk with vitriolic moments but less polemic than I expected and tempered with the mellifluous tones of an Oxford don.
[Correction: After listening to an audio version of Richard Dawkins' answer it seems clear that when he used the phrase 'Pope Nazi' he was not referring to the current Pope but to Pope Pius XII, the Pope during the Second World War. Click here for the question and Dawkins' response.]
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.
Listen to Richard Dawkins speaking to “How Do I Misunderstand Thee? Let Me Count the Ways”
Part One Speech [Dur: 41.11; Size 37.7 MB]
Part Two Questions [Dur: 23.44; Size: 21.7 MB]
Reflecting on the convention this morning (and on this blog), I have to say that I found yesterday’s sessions to come close to what I hoped and expected. Just to reiterate, in my first post I said, “I’m hoping to find contributions which grapple with belief, morality and meaning from an atheist perspective, and which present both a coherent view of the physical world and a respectful critique of the theological. In particular, I’m hoping to find an atheism which can transcend militancy and ridicule in its dealings with those who choose to take a path of faith.”
Well yes, there has been ridicule, there has been militancy of a diluted, ‘let’s get political’ sort, (and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that); but yesterday’s mix of philosophers, commentators and feisty atheist women did the trick for me. I felt the exhilaration of an idea being probed and prodded, subjected to close examination, the weighing up of differing viewpoints and positions. It was intellectually and emotionally stimulating, and if I have a criticism thus far, it’s only that the lack of sympathy for organised religion spills over all to easily to an attack on ordinary human beings and on their personal faith. In a secular world, atheist or not, people surely have a right to their beliefs, as long as they cause no harm to others.
Speaking of causing harm to others, little has been said here about Taslima Nasrin, possibly because – in my opinion – nothing much more could be said. She left us speechless with her courageous and inspirational talk which pointed out all that’s wrong with a religion – in her case Islam – that can’t handle doubt and criticism, and that seeks to control people’s lives from cradle to grave. “No country becomes civilised without criticising the doctrines its religions”, she said.
I couldn’t agree more, and I’m sure there are many Muslims around the world who are appalled by Taslima Nasrin’s story, and who would echo my agreement.
Listen to Taslima Nasrin [Dur:43.24;Size: 39.7 MB]