Gabbin' About God

So lately my interest has turned to the subject of atheism. I myself am an atheist, but of a type I don’t often see in other people. This is not to promote myself or anything. Some are fond of putting atheism on a continuum of “weak” and “strong” types; “weak” atheists are supposed to be agnostics and “strong” atheists are the ones who avow their disbelief in God. This doesn’t suit my own position, however. Hopefully it becomes clearer below, but my intention is not to call religious people stupid or deluded or to be confrontational at all. I feel that groups like the American Atheists and people like the AA’s founder Madalyn Murray O’Hair have almost irreparably damaged the reputation of atheists in America and abroad, and created a very easy villain to link up with the progress of science (and thus promoting the false dichotomy of science and religion, as I also discuss below). On the other hand, I totally support the efforts of people like Michael Newdow, who wish to remove the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” from U.S. currency, because such fairly recent additions (both were added in 1954 with the expressed intent to distinguish America from godless communism) discriminate on the basis of faith.

Anyways, enough gabble. Most of my searching on YouTube and Google on the subject of atheism has centered around scientist and public figure Richard Dawkins. He’s most recently the author of The God Delusion, the host of a series of documentaries on the belief in God and the harmfulness of religion, and all-around bulldog for atheism. I'll admit that I haven't read anything by him, just seen interviews and discussion panels and some of his documentaries, so I'm speaking from an incomplete view of the man. He has, however, been on my list for a while. The people Dawkins seems interested in reaching, the greater public, aren't likely to be avid readers, however. They have to make due with the tv sound byte version, and when dealing with a concept like God, the sound byte version sounds confrontational and arrogant.

I find myself really ambivalent about Dawkins. On the one hand, he's a very visible character that promotes science and the scientific method. This is a great virtue. On the other, however, he presents his own arguments that God does not exist, that religion is a delusion, and that it is in fact harmful to the human race before he introduces the value of science. His presentation is essentially backwards, not to mention forceful, and that's why he comes off as condescending and combative and South Park can make a piss-poor parody of him that calls into question the adequacy of science.

I mean, just look at how good old Carl Sagan did it (and nobody did it like Carl). He starts by sharing his wonderment with the beauties of the universe. He then shows you how science can explain these things, not to reduce them to simple, soulless machinations like Dawkins ends up doing, but to demonstrate that the further one investigates, the greater that beauty becomes. Sagan loved talking about how curiousity, not inflexible doctrine, has lifted humanity from the Stone Age. While Dawkins rages against religion, Sagan taught that there was something greater to behold, beyond explanations that abhor evidence and now grow increasingly inadequate.

Dawkins follows a different route. I can see his method: jolt people into questioning their beliefs, and then rush in with the TRUE answer. It rarely works that way, however. Most people simply close up when they read a book title like The God Delusion or hear that some guy is implicating all religious people, not just extremists. Their response is to hurl out the same obsfucations that have been used since religions were first organized when those in charge saw it was necessary to discourage skepticism in order to remain in power.

With that in mind, watch the clip at the link below. It's a half an hour, but I say it's worth it, though admittedly I find this stuff endlessly fascinating, so I may be biased:

Dawkins on the Late Late Show

Towards the end, Dawkins is so agitated he's practically jumping off his chair. There's your problem right there. Now, I don't blame him for getting angry. He's not superhuman. He sat there for twenty minutes while people attacked him, people who either deliberatley misrepresented his position, or just didn't understand. But for the latter group, the people who can't grasp the impact of his ideas and so respond by throwing out fallacies and straw men like "Well, religion gives you hope", their misunderstanding isn't their fault.* It's the fault of Dawkins. He doesn't see that he can only lead people to water; making them drink is a whole nother challenge. Encouraging people to embrace science is what Carl Sagan and Bill Nye and Jane Goodall and Ben Franklin understood. Dawkins doesn't. Instead he believes he can quite simply blind people with science, he believes he can intimidate and strongarm them into abandoning what they see as a perfectly good explanation for the state of the world. I winced every time Dawkins said "Oh, COME ON," or "It's very obvious," to whatever member of the audience he was speaking, because that's not how you win people over.

The framing device for a lot of the interviews with Dawkins is the opposition of science and religion. Now, the idea that science and religion have to be in opposition has been with us for a while, but never with such intensity as today. Nor is it just science that is suddenly the mortal enemy of piety: so is any kind of acceptance, any lapse in the evangelical zeal. But where did this thinking come from? It's a question worth asking, because it's clear that nothing constructive is going to come by continuing to set the two against each other.

Now, my professors at NYU are fond of saying that the dominance of postmodernism and moral relativism in the late 20^th century was a big factor in religions taking hold in America and in places like the Middle East, that people were sick of hearing subjectivity and sick of hearing other ways of life than their own justified by it. They wanted absolutes. That’s how the argument goes, anyways. I think there is, however, something going on at a much deeper level.

Really, the intrinsic value of facts themselves has changed within the past ten years, especially in matters of politics and religion. Groups are no longer willing to argue on the same terms because they don’t feel the need to conform to one set of evidence. We currently live in a world where it's encouraged to dismiss evidence that does not line up with your ideology. There are numerous examples, not just from religion: WMDs in Iraq, abstinence-only sex education, the accusation that we didn’t land on the Moon, the list goes on. With respects to religion, the recent surge in fundamentalism and evangelicalism means that groups outside of the mainstream of religious thought can use this common practice of cherry-picking facts to fit their extreme views. This is not a reaction to postmodern relativism; it is an appropriation of it for a different end. Fundamentalists have extended and have deliberately misinterpreted the concept of subjectivity to include scientific fact, in other words what is verifiable and falsifiable. In essence the idea that truth is relative has been turned against itself to promote fundamentalism and division, which is a totally bizarre and deeply troubling consequence.

Since the 19^th century, religions like Christianity and Judaism have been dashing about trying to fit new concepts like cosmology and evolution into their existing beliefs. Until very recently the common view was that, while literal interpretations of Christianity and Judaism and so on were under serious threat with the introduction of these scientific concepts, the spirit of these belief systems could be maintained. But recently, in the face of science's ever-growing stock of evidence, religions have stopped attempting to stretch their beliefs over the gap, and instead see scientific facts themselves as biased. The result is a belief that science, operating under some agenda, is attempting to undermine religion.

People often accuse science of trying to replace religion, but science does nothing of the sort, because it is solely concerned with explaining the natural world. A great many number of scientists hold that God and the supernatural are none of their professional concern. Science is limited to what evidence can be verified and what tests can be reproduced. That's it.** So speaking at a personal level now, it is unclear to me how science can somehow disprove God by lack of evidence, or at least banish him from consideration. Myself, I can't make that leap from saying that there is no evidence of God to saying there is NO God, flying both under the banner of science. There has to be a separation. Dawkins can safely say that religion is harmful to humanity, and that the promotion of faith as a virtue in a way excuses fundamentalists. But I don't see how science enters into the debate of God's existence.

A concept of God can change, but that idea doesn't get any chance to breathe in organized religion. Religions are run by humans, who like to be in power, and who like protecting their own. Change threatens their hold on power, and so it's forbidden. Even the old "This is the one true faith" routine is designed to keep people in line, not to simply pat them on the back for their correct choice.

I mean, this is all immediately apparent, I suspect even to true believers. People are not so blinded that they cannot draw inferences about a human institution that happens to profess holiness. Someone who doesn't truck with religion, however, doesn't have to operate under the cognitive dissonance required to keep the conceit going. I suppose at the very least, Dawkins encourages people to think for themselves (in principle). Some people just happen to feel very intimidated when they think he's saying that HE'S the only one that's right. He’s not, but his attitude needs work to convey the message in a helpful manner.

Of course, that's strictly my opinion. I do wish more people were atheists, or at least recognized that they were atheists, because I believe such a climate would encourage not only the curiosity that popularizers of science value so much, but also greater senses of self and a greater awareness of one's own power. I sincerely believe that taking away religion does not leave one with a bleak, hopeless life. Instead it empowers you, it gives you an awareness you would never fully realize while still under the sway of religion. Years ago I would have totally agreed with Dawkins and wonder why people didn't see that science had moved beyond the need for God. Today I feel that atheism and science simply offer a better, more flexible, more dynamic explanation of life. I don't operate under the pretense any longer that science and atheism go strictly hand-in-hand, but I do find that a freedom from the notion of God produces a greater willingness to explore the world before us.

* And I despise it when people accuse a scientist of worshipping their own religion, of taking things like evolution on faith, and can't stop high-fiving each other long enough to hear the scientists go through a simple explanation of the scientific method for the millionth time. Like when the moustached guy on the panel tries to call out Dawkins for calling alien life "probable." It's clearly something Dawkins supposes in order to make a point, not a pledge of his undying faith in the existence of aliens. He doesn't affirm or deny it. Unfortunately that last point is drowned out in the applause and "Oh, snap"'s and raisings of the roof.

** And miracles and faith healing and prayer answering DON'T COUNT. By the faithful's own admission, they concern supernatural events, and so sit outside the realm of science.