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TechnoratiWhy are they throwing brickbats at God?
A campaign by eminent atheist Richard Dawkins to discredit religion makes little sense, says a Canadian ethicist.
Richard Dawkins has done more than all religious people together to put God on the current public agenda. He is on a highly publicised, international campaign to convince the world that "religion is the root of all evil". I think he’s seriously misguided, at best, and that his campaign is dangerous. Here are just a few of the reasons I think that.
Terry Eagleton, an eminent literary scholar, reviewing Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, in the London Review of Books, says that Dawkins’ writing on theology and philosophy is equivalent to someone writing on science whose sole familiarity with science is The Book of British Birds. That’s also an apt description of Dawkins’ limited discussion of ethics in his book. His ethical analysis is simplistic and unsophisticated.
Dawkins confuses religion and the use of religion – I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt intellectually and assume he does so deliberately -- in order to promote his thesis that religion is evil. Religion itself is not evil – just as science is not evil – but it can be used for evil purposes, just as science can.
Using religion to convince the 9/11 terrorists to commit mass murder by knocking down the World Trade Towers was a profoundly evil use of religion. Using airplanes to carry out that evil was a profoundly evil use of aeronautical science. However, Dawkins looks only at the evil uses of religion – never the good it effects -- and only the good uses of science – never the harms it does. A balanced ethical approach requires us to recognise both the goods and harms of both religion and science, and to try to stop the evil uses and to promote the good ones of each.
We should stop automatically associating having liberal values with being open minded and having conservative values with being closed minded – liberal people can be very close minded (as we can see with some uses of political correctness) and conservative people open minded.
The primary "way of knowing" in science is reason and reason is fundamental to the scientific method that produces scientific knowledge. Dawkins’ mistake is that he sees reason (and probably science) as the only valid way of human knowing and, consequently, as the only appropriate tool to explore non-scientific questions, such as profound ethical issues.
We have multiple ways of human knowing in addition to reason, all of which are essential to ethics. They include history (human memory) -- this is beautifully encapsulated in aboriginal people’s practice in making ethical decisions of looking back seven generations. Imagination and creativity – looking forward seven generations to try to assess the ethical acceptability of the impact of what we plan to do on future generations. Intuition -- especially moral intuition. Common sense. Experiential knowledge – including what we can know, as the gym teachers tell us, by listening to our bodies. And "examined" emotions, to name just some.
I believe that, in combination, these other ways of knowing constitute our primary decision making mechanism (what we describe as our "gut reaction") and that reason is an immensely important, but secondary in terms of its use, verification mechanism of those decisions. We use reason to make sure our gut reactions are on track, whether ethically, legally, spiritually, emotionally or in some other relevant way.
Indeed, research published in the last three weeks in Nature, one of the world’s leading scientific journals backs this up. In an article entitled, "The Moral Brain", researchers reported that people with the reasoning parts of their brains intact, but who had damage to the emotional centres, could not make good ethical decisions.
Basic presumptions are of great importance in decision making, although often they are unidentified. They allocate the burden of proof. When there is equal doubt about an issue the basic presumption prevails. Richard Dawkins’ basic presumption is that there is no God and, therefore, that those who believe there is must prove it. But the equally valid basic presumption is that there is a God and those who don’t believe that must prove it. Because both are tenable basic presumptions, both must be accommodated in a secular society. In contrast, and, ironically, where Dawkins and religious fundamentalists are ad idem, is that each wants to impose their choice between these basic presumptions on everyone else. Where they differ is only with respect to their choice of basic presumption, which are, of course, of opposite content.
In short Dawkins – who is a fundamentalist atheist (atheism is a secular religion) and religious fundamentalists are similar in an important respect: They take an either/or approach to everything: my beliefs or yours; religion or science; reason or Faith; and so on. They then seek to reconcile what they see as the conflicts between the two elements that make up each of these pairings, by dropping one or the other of them. Dawkins’ call for the elimination of religion demonstrates such a choice on his part. But it is an extremely dangerous proposal and likely to escalate the culture clashes and "religious wars" we are seeing.
I propose that what we need to do is search for a shared ethics that can accommodate as many people of goodwill as possible. We will never find a universal ethics and we will never be able to accommodate fanatics at either end of the spectrum of human beliefs, but we can articulate and develop an approach that will accommodate many more people in a big ethical tent than is presently the case.
To achieve that will require us to change in some ways. Instead of starting from and focussing on our differences, we should start from where we agree. Starting from agreement and then moving to our disagreements, as we must, sets a different overall ethical tone than starting from disagreement.
We should stop automatically associating having liberal values with being open minded and having conservative values with being closed minded – liberal people can be very close minded (as we can see with some uses of political correctness) and conservative people open minded.
We also have to stop assuming that all change in values is progress and to be welcomed, and re-value wise ethical restraint. That can require having the courage to say "no" -- which often takes more courage than saying "yes".
Dawkins’ approach of wanting to eliminate religion is also dangerous because it is an impossible goal. Probably the vast majority of people will not accept that religion should be eliminated and conflict will be exacerbated as a result. In short, in ethics and searching for values (a task which encompasses religion), impossible goals are not neutral; they cause harm. In contrast finding as much shared ethics as we can is a realisable goal and likely to reduce conflict This is not a "gently, gently" approach as Dawkins described it. It is a principled, pragmatic, ethical one.
The correct question is not whether religion can be used for evil purposes – it can. And the correct response to religion being used in evil ways is not to eliminate religion as Dawkins proposes. The correct question is: How can we best reduce, to the minimum possible, the likelihood that religion will be used for evil purposes and prevent its evil use? As an aside, as a person working on how to prevent bioterrorism, I’d add that this is the same question we are rightly asking in relation to science.
I believe that spirituality is innate to being human -- possibly new epigenetic research will show us in the future that the capacity for spirituality has a genetic base, although spirituality, itself, is not just a genetic phenomenon. Religion is one way – but not the only way -- people experience their spirituality and it’s very important they have access to that experience.
The search for meaning and the desire to belong to something larger than ourselves – the longing for transcendence – is of the essence of being human. And humans have also always searched for morality. Religion is one way – but I agree with Dawkins there are other ways -- that over vast periods of time, across all kinds of societies and cultures, humans have sought meaning, belonging and morality. Who knows, might Richard Dawkins and I agree on that, even though we strongly disagree about the role and value of religion in our contemporary societies?
Margaret Somerville is founding director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law at McGill University in Montreal. Her latest book is The Ethical Imagination: Journeys of the Human Spirit.
Things exist. Therefore God exists.
The proof of the existence of God comes from every child. A child spontaneously knows that there is someone higher than himself and in the process knows that there must be a creator to all things - someone all powerful and infinite, and that there is good and bad, and death to them is so frightening that life after death gives them joy and peace.
An eye of a child makes us humble, faithful, loving, hopeful, trustful. A heart and mind of a child is the thing needed in studying science and philosophy.
In order to understand the study of God we need to study philosophy first. Socrates’ started philosophy by knowing oneself. Aristotle saw God in scientific observations. Thomas Aquinas studied God in metaphysics.
If we really want to know the truth about ourselves, about others, and about God, we need to take advantage of the works of these great men specially the works of Thomas Aquinas in ‘Summa Contra Gentiles’ and ‘Summa Theologica’ concerning the existence of God.
Dear ptt,
I find your comments wise, compelling and well-expressed; if possible, I would like to get in touch with you. The webmaster is therefore kindly asked to forward my email address to you.
Best regards,
Mariusz Wesolowski
WEBMASTER: Dear Mariusz,
I have actioned this.
Jeffrey Olsson wrote:
“The science presented here, in article form, is not representative of the accepted concensus, and it completely ignores the fact that discrimination against any one leads to lessened self worth and many of the social problems associated with that demographic.”
This conflates two separate issues. I will mostly address the first one, because to explore the second requires more time than I have right now since I’m preparing for a presentation.
Since when has it been “accepted consensus” that inserting a penis into an anus is normative among primates? Let’s not overlook a very simple biological fact: from an evolutionary perspective, same-sex attraction is a genetic dead end. Same-sex attraction (SSA) is an objectively disordered condition—that DOES NOT make it sinful. However, just as with sexual attraction to other species or inanimate objects, SSA can lead to sinful thoughts and acts. This distinction is important, and it requires a great deal of honesty and self-awareness (rather than the self-abuse of bending one’s intellect to accommodate one’s selfish and lustful impulses) to realize this. It is those who refuse to examine the absurdity of certain first premises who will never understand that there is no contradiction between “faith” and “science” as many would like think.
Suggested reading: http://www.beyondgay.com/
About the second issue (i.e. diminished self-worth)—if the proposed solution is to elevate all conditions to equal status and to deny that some are objectively disordered and require treatment (administered not in a spirit of bigotry but in compassion), then that represents, as Pope Benedict XVI asserted, the tyranny of relativism.
As for the social consequences of accepting “same-sex” relationships as having the same status as the traditional family, it’s pretty obvious what those are. If society is a large, complex computational process that relies on sexual reproduction and the stability of the “platform” to continue creating new genetic algorithms, then same sex attraction can lead to what is programmatically termed an ABEND.
The magisteria do overlap, and they point to the same truth, except some are too proud and blind to see it.
No religion, no morality, God is the only True source of morality, you cannot get moral truth anywhere else except from God.
Everything else is just opinion.
Only God’s Word is Ojective Moral Truth.
Sure some people pick and choose the Law of God to follow, but these are the Christians-in-name-only, True Christians follow the Word of God and do not choose and pick, stoning is not a form of death penalty but rather a form of mobbing, which Jesus forbade in the NT, so there is no choosing and picking.
Religion is theism.
No belief in God, no religion.
In Buddhism , Buddha is their god, so it is a religion.
Atheism is an ideology.
Christianity is a religion.
The difference between religion and ideology?
God. And that makes all the difference.
Jeffrey,
I had intended to drop out from further commenting on this topic, but your last comment raised a question about the word “bigotry”.
You have stated that you accept the concept of “morals” though not necessarily drawn from the same foundation as mine. I assume that in a moral system there is behavior that is “good” (one ought to behave in that way) for reasons developed in the moral system, and behavior that is “bad” (one ought not behave in that way) again for reasons developed in the moral system. Given the immense diversity of genetics and environmental influences, for any moral system that contains any guidelines for behavior, there will be persons for whom at least some of the “good” is not particularly attractive and some of the “bad” is not particularly easy to avoid. Each person will have, if you will, a “behavioral profile” of difficult goods and attractive bads relative to this moral system.
Relative to this hypothetical moral system, a person’s “behavioral profile” is an aspect of who they are and is itself “morally neutral”. If my profile makes doing certain goods and avoiding certain bads easy, that does not make me a better person than someone whose profile makes this more challenging. In particular, it absolutely is bigotry to discriminate against anyone based on a judgement of what their profile is. However, if you truly believe in your moral system, you are not doing anybody a service by telling them that any good they find difficult is, for them, not a good.
I am not asking you to accept the Catholic moral code nor challenging you to convince me of yours: I don’t think we yet have enough common language on what makes a moral code rationally compelling to have a meaningful discussion on the topic (perhaps one day we will). Nor am I denying that some individuals (perhaps many) have behaved in manners that are discriminatory over “behavioral profiles”. But I am asking that, even if you think Catholicism has it wrong, you accept the intellectual and human sincerity that went into the development of the code and not call “bigotry” what is in fact simply a case of reaching conclusions in moral reasoning that happened to be different from yours.
Paul
ptt
Thanks for the kind words ptt, I “hear” you and accept your kindness, but I feel I must disagree. At first it felt like it was a genuine pat on the back, human to human, it even felt good to see you extend the hand of friendship. Thank you.
Sadly, after a few minutes of thought, I found your explanation quite inadequate. This is especially the case when it is the Catholic (and Anglican et al.) churches that continue to quote scripture as they discriminate against those who have a genuine same sex attraction.
In fact this website, and the articles presented on it do a fairly good job of expounding christian ethics on this topic.
The science presented here, in article form, is not representative of the accepted concensus, and it completely ignores the fact that discrimination against any one leads to lessened self worth and many of the social problems associated with that demographic.
It might as well have said:
“Facts, not flattery, about “poverty”.
I sense you are grasping at straws to find research that backs up Christian ethics, while ignoring the alternate explanations for the findings they represent. If I were to take the authors word about Francis collins position, Francis Collins seems to have “bent” his intellect to make findings that 3rd Psychology year students would see their way around.
The article basically implies that Gays, the 2nd most hated demographic in the USA (according to a recent poll) display poor self esteem, and have a drinking and drug problem. Big surprise!
Is this proof that their lifestyle is not genuine? or is it proof that they are as the poll says, the 2nd most hated demgraphic in the USA?
All of the doctors whose names are listed in the article ignore the position of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and the plethora of studies that show the same sex attraction is a normal permutation of mamalian, and human sexuality. In countries where homosexuality is openly accepted these social problems seem to disappear. Check other studies conducted in Sweden or Norway, Denmark etc.
There was once a time when it was OK to discriminate against another human because their skin colour was different than ours. One day people all over the world started to stand up and say “enough is enough”, we’ve had enough of this bigotry.
I have chosen to stand up! Like Dawkins, I have had enough of the religious bigotry represented by christians, as my earlier story explains.
I am also saddened that anyone could ever say the any “good” could have come out of the tragedy of the holocaust. (Yikes!)
The facts remain well documented, that regardless of his personal beleifs, Hitler used christian “argument” and twisted science to convince the German people that it was ok to kill Jews. He used Catholic arguments, specifically, from the lecturn as he spoke. He also used a twisted form of Aryan(As in “Arius” from the council of Nicea) philosophy as well.
You clearly said that if I REALLY want understand human sexuality I need to study scripture and science.
I have.
Scripture has it wrong.
This is a clear case of non-overlapping magesteria
“overlapping” uncomfortably.
The question: “What is normative human sexuality?” is clearly a scientific question. Faith should be left out of the equation.
I am sorry to say I must disagee, as you seem to have tried to justify bigotry based on bad science, and faith.
You also said:
“The sermon comparing this life with a woman in labor (who forgets her pain for the joy of a new person being born into the world) may seem a trivial metaphor to the Holocaust surviver, but even there, the Holocaust literature is filled with personal stories of people who emerged from this great human tragedy with a truly expansive view of the world and a peace that the more comfortable can only envy.”
I fear that you may never understand.
I have expressed my views, I am now done.
Jeffrey Olsson
Briefly, by the way…
“I realised from my new learnings that science and philosophy offer such a good explanation of human sexuality, psychology, physiology, biology and Human relations(sociology) that the Bible pales in comparison!”
Why is this presented as if it is “Bible” OR “science”. Certainly as a Catholic, all these disciplines add great value and complement rather than trump or “one up” revelation.
I would say that if you want to understand, for example, human sexuality, by all means study psychology, physiology, biology and Human relations(sociology). And if you REALLY want to understand human sexuality, study all of the above while remembering these two phrases:
“in His own image he created him, male and female He created them” and
“the two shall become one flesh”.
... Now as long as prior comments have recommended some reading, I will add a few recommendations of my own consistent with this theme of complementarity of faith and science:
“Love and Responsibility” by Karol Wojtyła is a great book that addresses sexuality from a fully integrated perspective incorporating the findings of all the relevant scientific disciplines (at the time at least, it was written around 1960). As the NY Times reviewer put it “...he shies from nothing...”
“Fides et Ratio” John Paul II and Pope Benedict’s Regensburg Address as great writings on the harmony and complementarity of reason and faith.
“Deus Caritas Est” Pope Benedict - an illuminating presentation of both human and divine love.
“Introduction to Christianity” Joseph Ratzinger - a tracing of the genesis of Christianity incorporating sources of historical criticism and other related secular disciplines.
Jeffrey,
I was deeply moved by your last comment. The running exchange of comments on the existence of God or lack there of, and on “rationally compelling” sources of morality has been engaging and I hope we all have gained from it. But your last comment brings home quite clearly that, in the end, life is a personal journey. All of this philosophy should be at the service of that journey, but the personal and incommunicable effort to find meaning in one’s existence and live consistently with that is at the essence of it all.
I cannot presume to offer “a response” to the deeply personal experiences you expressed here. But, your quote from Epicurus suggested the essence of the personal journey that we all must face.
In his list of questions, the second one gets to the heart of the matter:
“Is he able but not willing [to prevent evil]? Then is he malevolent.”
I think a lot of light can be shed on the existence of the deep mystery in the existence of evil, by rephrasing this in a form that hints at the paradoxical truth of the matter:
“Is he able but not willing [to prevent evil]? Yes, because He is infinite Love!”
If you will bear with me, I will try as best I can to express what I mean by this seemingly contradictory statement.
God, in his Triune interior life experiences and indeed embodies the fullness of love as both agape (complete gift of self to the beloved) and eros (delight in the possession of the beloved). As an entirely gratuitous act (God needs nothing), he created other persons to share in his creative love and created them with a “vocation to love”: being in God’s image, persons find true happiness only in love.
Love, however, is not love unless it is freely given and received. And therein lies the immense “risk” God took in creating free persons. Persons, in spite of where their true happiness lies, are free to choose self over other. In fact, for love to really be Love, it can be no other way.
The reality of temporal human life here on earth is the forum in which, over a life time, we have the opportunity to make the choice of other. Even our limited and finite nature is a major help: in our mutual dependency we are provided with opportunities to give of ourselves as well as receive the gift others, and it is only in society living in a solidarity of love that humanity truly accomplishes great things, while it is in selfishness that the source of all unhappiness lies. In the end “Heaven” is really the definitive and eternal experience of the freely made choice to Love, “hell” being the experience of the freely made choice of self.
Suffering is the outcome of selfishness. Whether it is the epic tragedy of the Holocaust or the daily anguish of the selfless spouse in a “one sided” marriage, the tragedy of selfishness is experienced in the deeply personal sufferings of individuals. But people can choose to cause suffering to others: this possibility is inherent in the very nature human freedom.
To even attempt at scratching the surface of this mystery, suffering must be viewed in the light of eternity. If this “vocation to love” represents the truth about human persons, then the only ultimate and eternal tragedy is the personal choice of selfishness. The sermon comparing this life with a woman in labor (who forgets her pain for the joy of a new person being born into the world) may seem a trivial metaphor to the Holocaust surviver, but even there, the Holocaust literature is filled with personal stories of people who emerged from this great human tragedy with a truly expansive view of the world and a peace that the more comfortable can only envy.
Jeffrey,
There is much more to be said: I’m sure you have much to say as well. But I do not know what more can be contributed in the context of this forum. I would offer that, if you are interested, we could exchange email address (through the administrators of this site of course - no need to publicly invite a shower of SPAM). To avoid putting anyone on the spot, I will send an email to Michael Cook (one of the editors who I happen to know personally). If you are interested, send him an email and he will send you my address.
Regardless of what you choose, I hope (and pray - I am a “theist” after all) that you will attain the full life that you seek.
Sincerely,
Paul
ptt,
I appreciate your comments a great deal. Thank you.
While we will never completely agree about God’s existence, (who knows?) we do agree on a lot more than we disagree on. especially free and open discussion. Thanks for that!
I do admire the many books that Dawkins has written,but I was also NOT impressed with the tone of the God Delusion.
I have to admit, though, that I can find no fault in Dawkins writing. Please remember that Dawkins has witnessed some of the worst that has come out of religion (Both worldwide and during the Irish conflicts), and has been under constant attack simply because he is a public professor of evolutionary science.
Imagine protestant parents teaching their children that your children are going to hell. Sending their kids to separate schools where they can never get to know how wonderful catholic children can be, and simultaneously seeking control over your lands.
The only difference between these Catholic and protestant kids is WHAT they have been taught about each other!
I witnessed a similar happening in Canada at my former parish when one family left our church because one of their five children declared that she was Gay. (actually three families left for the same reason)
After I investigated, I found out what had been said to the members of the Family, how they had been made to feel ashamed by the words of the “faithful” and how they deemed it easier to leave fellowship than to endure the bigotry.
I was perplexed, because everything that had been said to the family was within the context of a correct Biblical interpretation (Both in a literal sense and in the spirit of the writing).
St. Paul can be quite harsh!
When I found out why the other 2 families had also left I was truly heartbroken. These were good people and they had all played a large role in the life of the parish.
I felt forced to decide if I should agree with the words of the prophets on faith alone. Do I accept their wisdom on authority alone?
I started seeking alternate explanations and found myself smack dab in the middle of a cruel debate about the validity of homosexual relations, and whether or not they should be accepted within the Anglican communion.
When I finally settled on a decision it was a surprise to everyone, even my wife. I then chose to leave the instiution that contiunued to descriminate against those of homosexual orientation, had contributed to the residential school fiasco, and whose people had suffered numerous sexual abuses by it’s clergy. (Remember.. I was clergy, and this completely disgusted me).
As it stands right now one of my former colleagues has been convicted of more than 25 counts of sexual abuse.
I was so disgusted by the actions of the church that I seriously doubted my calling, realised that there certainly is no loving and omniscient God, and that the very existence of a diety was questionable at best.
Is he [God] willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent.
Is he able but not willing? Then is he malevolent.
Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil? - Epicurus
I realised from my new learnings that science and philosophy offer such a good explanation of human sexuality, psychology, physiology, biology and Human relations(sociology) that the Bible pales in comparison!
For anyone who cares to diligently study, there is so much more here than any religion can offer.
To those who say that science and philosophy offers no answer to lifes questions, I say, read all of Dawkins writings. (The God delusion was the 8th book I had read by Dawkins). Also read Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett, V.S.Ramchandran, Michael Shermer, Carl Sagan, Steven Pinker, Paul Davies, Bill Glasser, Aubrey Daniels et al.
And of course the best of all is: Alasdair Macintyre - A short history of ETHICS, a history of moral philosophy from the Homeric age to the twentieth century.
I have greatly appreciated all of your comments!
Jeffrey
Reason and free inquiry are the only effectual agents against error.-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, 1787
My earlier views of the unsoundness of the Christian scheme of salvation and the human origin of the scriptures have become clearer and stronger with advancing years and I see no reason for thinking I shall ever change them.” -Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), to judge J.S. Wakefield, following Willie Lincoln’s death in 1862
Jeffrey and Tim,
OK, the pipeline has settled down… As a reference, the last post I saw before writing this was by Christopher Canaris at 1:18 pm on 7 June. Anything posted after that will have no “causal relationship” to this comment.
Also, between my day job and my true vocation (i.e. my family), I have limited time so I will say up front that I have found your comments interesting and thought provoking so if my level of comments drops off for a while, it is because I do have an enormous amount of other demands for my time.
Having said that, I would like to respond to two points.
First, as far as Acquinas’ “5 proofs” go, they only serve to establish the logical necessity of a transcendent being or, more correctly, the logical contradiction inherent in postulating the alternative. These proofs do not go after anything else such as the properties or attributes this being has. He devotes considerably more effort (well over 100 propositions) in developing what could be termed rationally compelling arguments for particular attributes such as God’s possession of reason and will.
To Tim’s point on “why does the universe have to have a cause”, that is a legitimate question but certainly science has a real problem with answering that. While there are a lot of interesting theories out there involving things such as 11 dimensional “p-branes” and the like, actual solutions to, for example, the big bang’s initial singularity are pretty (pardon the pun) “creative”. Winding the clock forward, will we have a “big crunch”, a “big rip”, or a “big fizzle”? And critical to answering many of physics’ big questions is the question “what is gravity?” Yes, the existence of the paradoxes of modern physics could not even remotely be considered a proof of Acquinas’ theories. In truth, they are orthogonal to Acquinas and provide little in the way of support or opposition relative to his propositions. But they do beg the question of whose theory regarding the existence of God is more rationally compelling. I will respectfully put forth that the safe money is on Acquinas.
To Jeffrey’s points on morals and evolutionary biology, I don’t think you do “make this stuff up”. I find the field fascinating and see absolutely no challenge to my beliefs here. In fact, as a Catholic Christian who accepts the composite (body/soul) nature of man, the emergence of “altruistic” behavior in species is yet another way in which the “law is written in his heart”.
However, the mere correlation of certain evolutionarily advantageous behavior with behavior that one would call “moral” is not normative. As the often sad but frequently glorious history of the human race has shown, free will trumps biology every time. In any actual situation where a real individual free person is faced with a free moral choice, these studies can show correlations between certain behavior and practical expediency, but they cannot tell the person what they “ought” to do.
I remember a paper by the late Carl Sagan concerning a proposal that society develop its moral system based on game theory. But when you cut through the hyperbole, you find the essence of his theory to be that a well designed “game” can make cheating expensive and, in the probabilistic sense of “expected value”, more expensive than playing by the rules. The reality however is that many cheat and get away with it (though many more try and don’t). And in life, most of the radically exciting outcomes in human history have been achieved by people who ignored the expected value calculation. As a non controversial, though trivial example, Apple’s two most wildly successful and industry altering ventures have been their retail stores and the iPod. The industry experts universally calculated the expected value for both to be absolute failure.
And, by the way Tim, I never said that I believe in God because not believing is expensive. I said that believing is rationally compelling on its own, but since the cost of abandoning that belief also happens to be so high, the arguments that would lead to my abandoning it need to be a lot better than the ones I’ve seen to date.
In summary, these studies and theories of the emergence of certain behavior patterns, and the linkage of these patterns to evolutionarily expedience are certainly useful and interesting. If you actually have studied the body of Catholic moral theology with a scientifically open mind, you would find it remarkably consistent with the modern understanding of human psychobiology. And this body of teaching emerged long before there was such a field as psychobiolgy. But, interesting and valuable as they are, they still fail in the most important aspect of human morality: that of providing even a single, rationally compelling “ought”.
“Dawkins in his angry rejection of the theistic vision taps into morality and values which can only make sense within a world subsisting within a transcendent framework. Alas, the latter cannot be discerned from physical laws alone.”
Which is essentially the point that Francis Collins made to Dawkins in a debate the two had some time ago. See, for example, the commentary at
http://www.opensourcetheology.net/node/1074
“Suppose somebody asserted that chairs go out of existence when unobserved and challenged me to prove that they don’t. The usual response would be to dismiss such an idea as absurd- because if that were true, could I make judgments about anything at all? But that is not the same as disproving the chair sceptic’s claim: I can’t disprove it because the claim erodes all possibilities of either proof or disproof (here I am of drawing on Wittgenstein’s ideas particularly as set forth in his On Certainty).
That chairs do not go out of existence when unobserved is one of an undefined and vast range of empirical propositions embedded in our forms of life. They are taken for certain but are groundless. Within religious forms of life, the existence of God is one such fact. It is not something which can be proved but it is certain.”
ppt and Jeffrey,
My last post had a link to a blog on ‘morality and God’ removed by the mods, therefore, i will provide a synopsis here.
1) When I was a Christian I imagined that if there was no God that there would be no meaning for life and significantly no reason for acting morally.
2) When my reason compelled me to give up my faith the biggest issue for me was ‘what do I base my life on now’? (a stupid question now that i look back). But instead of becoming an immoral hedonist as i imagined i would, i soon realized that whether you believe in God or not, life goes on much the same. The fact is, there are loads of things that give our lives meaning; and god, i found, was irrelevant most of the time, and just a distraction from what really matters some of the time.
3) So why did I, and why do so many Christians believe that life has no meaning or morality without God. Well I think its simply because the Christian message is all about telling people that they are naturally sinful and helpless, and need God to save them - not exactly good news is it! I think this msg is the great hook of Christianity - what better way is there to sell you product than to convince people that they need it?
4)Unfortunately this msg does more than sell the product, it also leaves those who believe it morally immature in the respect that they stop using their reason and simply insert God whenever they come up against a moral issue. This may be generalizing a little bit, however, i have come across Christians who couldn’t think of any reason why pedophilia is wrong without God (i.e. at very least because of the lasting damage to the child). Now when ptt basically says atheism takes away the basis for morality he is in the same basket.
5) Obviously I have not argued for any meta-ethical philosophy here, im just trying to outline why Christans take the view they do (i.e. moral immaturity and indoctrination) - sry bout the harsh tone.
6) So what are our morals based upon? Jeffrey has been alluding to evolutionary ethics which I believe is the correct way to go (although [atheistic] moral philosophers have for the most part disagreed since G.E. Moore.) In the end it is a huge question which we will not be able to come to conclusions on in this forum.
7) The one thing we can do, however, is eliminate religion from the list of possible foundations for our morality. Dawkins does this in Ch.7. (ptt you should really read the book). In a nutshell, the ‘moral zeitgist’ (spirit of the time) is constantly evolving regardless of / in spite of religion. THis is why we can look back on the OT with disgust (’kill disobedient children!’), the NT with disgust (’role of a wife is submission’), and 50 years ago with disgust (’down with the niggers’). And some of us who are more in tune with the moral zeitgist (because religion does not hold us back) can look at Christians today with disgust (’Homosexuality is an evil’) and Islam today with disgust (oppression of women).
In the end, one thing is certain, religion is not the basis for morality!
The bitterness pervading Dawkins’ work saddens me. Many a great scientist has been a believer and many a non-believing scientist has had profound respect for religious perspectives. The late Stephen Jay Gould, a firm proponent of evolution, all too often captures the transcendent beauty of an evolving universe and biosphere whilst liberally quoting from the great canon of Western literature and the Judeo-Christian scriptures. Gould conceptualizes the relationship between science and religion in terms of what he calls “non-overlapping magisteria.” Science will tell you “how” things came to be but it will never tell you “why” things became the way they are because the material universe cannot in and of itself have a “meaning” or “purpose.” Likewise, philosophy, faith, and revelation cannot tell us anything about the material operations of the universe. Paradoxically, Dawkins in his angry rejection of the theistic vision taps into morality and values which can only make sense within a world subsisting within a transcendent framework. Alas, the latter cannot be discerned from physical laws alone.
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