On Lesley's post Peter Rollins - What is Religion? I've been trying to understand what Rollins is saying, without much success. But in the ensuing comments I claimed that love is just something that humans do - my intended implication being it is nothing to do with a god, or specifically God.
Kathryn asked, "Why do you think this [love] is something humans do? Do you think it is a genetic fluke, or is there some purpose?", and I wanted to give a more complete response than I could in a comment on Lesley's post.
It's a fluke in one sense: the sense that it just turned out that way due to evolution, without any intentionality or direct design or purpose. But that 'fluke' is not to be confused with ID critiques of evolution that say evolution relies on impossible odds. Fluke, luck, random events, whatever we might call them, have a part to play in evolution, but the theory of evolution shows that other forces, such as natural selection, play on those flukes in order to cause some change that persists.
The significant point from an evolutionary perspective is that traits that have some benefit in some sets of circumstances are more likely to survive.
Some simplistic examples to make the point and put love in context (for sexually reproductive species)...
A genetic condition (e.g. a mutation) that caused infertility would not be passed on to the next generation at all. Another mutation that didn't effect fertility but did remove sexual lust would also die out quickly in most animals (though humans, with our cognitive abailities, could overcome this). An emotion like love may not be as necessary at all for short term survival, but may be necessary in some species for greater group cohesion, or perhaps mother-infant bonding. Both fertility and lust are necessary for reproduction in sexually reproductive animals, but love isn't.
But we can still see how love can provide a greater benefit than not experiencing love, for some species.
Fertility we count as a physiological trait, love as an emotional one, but lust we see more as something of both physiological and emotional - so, where's the divide between physical trait and emotional trait? When you get down to the chemistry of what's going on in the brain they are, all three, physiological traits, each with their own contribution to the survivability of a species (along with all other influences). We have no reason to suppose that love is anything other than this, and certainly no evidence that it has any special meaning or value outside the context of humans that, using our brains, give it meaning and value. it's not something we need to associate with God, despite that fact that theists tend to raise it to the level of the divine.
Evolution doesn't have a purpose as such - and so there is no purpose for love. There is a trivial descriptive sense in which, looking back, we might use a purposive description - e.g. 'the purpose of this gene sequence was to cause that trait to emerge...' (again, a simplistic view of genes) But this isn't purpose in the sense of an agent intentionally causing some trait to appear for particular purpose of his. We are used to attributing purpose to the things we do, and we can mistakenly attribute purpose to complex causal chains that are otherwise hard to describe. It can be helpful to describe causal chains with such anthropomorphic framing of purpose - but we need to be careful that we understand that this purpose isn't real, it's a metaphor for causality.
So, there is nothing in our evolutionary past which could predict, in any reasonable sense, that love would turn out to be a trait that a particular species valued highly. There are clues available to the hindsight we have acquired through the development of the theory of evolution, based on our understanding of empathy and attachment that bond animal parents to young, and in some cases parents to each other. Insects have a very specific type of bond to their fellows nest, which is basically chemical. So, love (or its simpler animal parallel) isn't necessary for all animals to be evolutionarily successful - though for larger animals with more complex brains it may be particularly beneficial. We think it's beneficial for us - so much so we have learned to value it highly.
In this sense love is just what humans do, without it having any directive purpose. It's one of the many things we do, along with hate, fear, lust, empathy and many other traits. They all boil down to having emerged through our evolutionary history, and having been developed in our intellectual and cultural history.
Perhaps a better phrasing might be love is just what humans did in the past as a more refined development of empathy, but which we do now with more purpose and intent as we have come to appreciate it and value it.
We can reasonably explain the relationship between some of these things we do, in this simplified evolutionary context...
Personally and subjectively we like the feeling of love, and we dislike the feeling of fear. Our empathy makes us appreciate the same perspective in others, so we want love for others as well as for ourselves, and part of that is that we get additional pleasure from giving love, and even more from reciprocative love. And conversely we dislike fear, we dislike seeing fear in others, and so we want to alleviate the fear we see in others. And, on top of that we dislike seeing others cause fear, because of our empathy for the victims; and in a simple sense, just as a mother responds to defend her young with the animal equivalent of anger, so we respond with anger towards those that cause fear. These are strong innate emotional responses, honed in our history, with their origins lost in myth.
Many of our basic emotions have parallels in other animals, but have been developed into more refined concepts by us, probably because of the concurrent development of our language and our brain's ability to be more acute in our understanding of these emotions and the concepts we form about them. Just as a musician can develop a more acute sense of musical notes (an analogy Kathryn uses).
The problem is we don't often consider the simpler animal basis for our complex emotions - partly because of our ignorance of the evolutionary perspective. This ignorance was understandable for most of human history in which our reach back to the past was only ever measured in terms of a few generations. We could only develop myths out of that ignorance - ironically using the very creative imagination that later allowed us to come up with the science that helped us discover more plausible explanations.
The weight of those myths persists, and is maintained in varying degrees by a continued ignorance of the significance of what evolution is telling us, along with the willing, and sometimes not so willing, indoctrination in and bias towards those myths. Even those theists that have an understanding of evolution find it hard to accept the full implications of evolution and related ideas when they challenge their theological beliefs - they sometimes express a fear of the consequences of following the ideas through - e.g. the fear of the nihilism of atheism, in the absence of God.
To help a theist put this in perspective, consider some of the cosmological ideas that are floating around - many of which theists use as examples of how science has its own myths. In some respects our old myths parallel the current speculations about our cosmological origins - the old myths were speculations in the absence of data, just as some of our cosmological ideas are speculations in the absence of data. In some cases the mathematical theory of the latter replaces imaginative theology of the former, and so cosmologists might feel their theories have a greater legitimacy than theologies. But there may come a time, when we are better informed, when some our current cosmological speculations seem more like myths. So, this is how now atheists see theologies as outdated myths.
The deep history of religion is interesting, but I'm still largely ignorant about it. One particular book on my reading list is The Evolution of God, by Robert Wright. It appears to put the contingency of Christianity in perspective, effectively explaining the myth. It's the historical perspective that I need to know more about; and I suspect many Christians need to know more about it too, but without their own theological bias. If ever there was a case of the winners getting to write the history, theology is it - I don't think much of the history of theology sees the light of day. I don't know to what extent history of theology is taught in this respect. The book's website gives a good sampling of the book and is worth a read.
Showing posts with label Dennett Religion Language. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dennett Religion Language. Show all posts
Sunday, 17 October 2010
Saturday, 28 August 2010
Harris, Religion, Rape
The Harris religion and rape issue is inflaming opinion, still. This particular storm is about the comment he made in an interview with Bethany Saltman in 2006, and this particular sentence:
"I can be even more inflammatory than that. If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion."
The Beginning
But let's go back to where it started, with his book, Letter To A Christian Nation, 2006, which prompted the Saltman interview.
Naturally, for religious people that haven't read the book but who like to pick up on the nasty things atheists say on their journey to eternal damnation in the next life, then the whole concept of comparing their precious religion with rape is pretty shocking. And it looks like Harris has handed them a stick with which they can give him a damned good thrashing.
Trouble is, in their rush to read only the bad, they miss the point. Here's the section from the book where rape is first raised.
"As a biological phenomenon, religion is the product of cognitive processes that have deep roots in our evolutionary past. Some researchers have speculated that religion itself may have played an important role in getting large groups of prehistoric humans to socially cohere. If this is true, we can say religion has served an important purpose. This does not suggest, however, that it serves an important purpose now. There is, after all nothing more natural than rape. But no one would argue that rape is good, or compatible with a civil society, because it may have had evolutionary advantages for our ancestors. That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now the greatest impediment to our building a global civilization."
Here he is clearly using it to point out that because something has natural origins we don't have to think it acceptable behaviour now. It's used as an analogy.
But it's an analogy that many religious people don't get. And because they don't get it they've come over all of a froth, because of the dreaded word 'rape' - such a taboo word.
Analogies
My pop-psychology point of the day is that religious people are so used to selective reading when it comes to the holy books, so used to interpreting anything they read in order to give an affirmative bias towards their religion and a negative bias against anything that challenges it, that they are simply confused by analogies, not knowing when to read something literally and when to interpret it as an analogy, or even how to figure out what work the analogy is doing.
Here's a case in point. Suem wonders why there is so much outrage over Xola Skosana's sermon that included 'Jesus with HIV analogy'.
Suem asks, "Don’t people understand that analogies and metaphors are not meant to be definitive statements" - No they don't.
They don't get The Flying Spaghetti Monster, or fairy analogies. Here the point of the analogy is not to liken God to the obviously ridiculous FSM or fairies.
The FSM analogy is about the reasoning that gets you from some hypothesis, such as there is a God, or there is an FSM, to a full explanation, a theology, and even descriptions of characteristics of this hypothetical entity, without any evidence whatsoever.
The whole point of picking obvious nonsensical entities as the object of belief is to show that the same reasoning or faith that gives you God can give you these others; and so the reasoning and the faith is a flawed way of acquiring truth about the entity.
So, similarly, the point of Harris using 'rape' in this specific case in his book is to show that the analogous aspects of religion and rape is that because they had evolutionary advantage at some point doesn't make them beneficial now. Here rape is not meant to be analogous to religion directly.
Symbolically it's like this:
A has some aspect X
B has some aspect X
A is religion.
Where B is rape, X is the past evolutionary benefit of religion and rape.
Where B is the FSM, X is the poor reasoning about theology of religion and the FSM.
So, here's the argument.
A has aspect X, and is therefore good.
But B has aspect X, and B is clearly not good.
So, having aspect X is no indication of B or A being good.
The religious could save a lot of unnecessary argument if they took the trouble to figure out what the analogy is about.
The Harris - Saltman Interview
As if the religious hadn't got hold of the wrong end of the stick already, Harris gives them another excuse to fume. And fume they do.
Here's the 2006 article in which the next scene in the melodrama takes place. (Here's a pdf).
Let's have a look at what else he says before we get to the crutial point. Though many religious people might disagree with many of his points, there are some who do see his issues with religion when it comes to the more fundamental flavour. Here's how it goes towards the end of page 1 of The Sun web site version:
Saltman: "Isn't religion a natural outgrowth of human nature?"
Harris: "It almost certainly is. But everything we do is a natural outgrowth of human nature. Genocide is. Rape is. No one would ever think of arguing that this makes genocide or rape a necessary feature of a civilized society. Even if you had a detailed story about the essential purpose religion has served for the past fifty thousand years, even if you could prove that humanity would not have survived without believing in a creator God, that would not mean that it’s a good idea to believe in a creator God now, in a twenty-first-century world that has been shattered into separate moral communities on the basis of religious ideas.
Traditionally, religion has been the receptacle of some good and ennobling features of our psychology. It’s the arena in which people talk about contemplative experience and ethics. And I do think contemplative experience and ethics are absolutely essential to human happiness. I just think we now have to speak about them without endorsing any divisive mythology."
Note that both genocide and rape are given as examples. Clearly Harris is referring to the analogy, as I described it above. Being a natural human behaviour does not mean that it has any benefit now.
But Harris isn't saying benefit can't be derived from religion. To go back to the book, Letter To A Christian Nation, Harris knows full well that some people do derive benefit from religion:
"I have no doubt that your acceptance of Christ coincided with some very positive changes in your life. Perhaps you now love other people in a way you never imagined possible. You may even experience feelings of bliss while praying. I do not wish to denigrate any of these experiences. I would point out however, that billions of human beings, in every time and place, have had similar experiences - but they had them while thinking about Krishna, or Allah, or the Buddha, while making art or music, or while contemplating the beauty of nature"
So clearly, despite what some critics claim, he doesn't see all religious experience in the same light. But his main point is that overall it is detrimental to society.
I'll skip ahead slightly in the interview, past the offending words, just to make it clear Harris isn't a baby eater.
Harris: "Even Christian fundamentalists have learned, by and large, to ignore the most barbaric passages in the Bible. ...[some details about specific problems]...Now, these people are not evil. They're just concerned about the wrong things, because they have imbibed these unjustifiable religious taboos. There is no question, however, that these false concerns add to the world's misery."
Saltman: "If we were to eliminate religious identity, wouldn't something else take its place?"
Harris: "Not necessarily. Look at what's going on in Western Europe: some societies there are successfully undoing their commitment to religious identity, and I don't think it is being replaced by anything. Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Australia, and Japan are all developed societies with a high level of atheism, and the religion they do have is not the populist, fundamentalist, shrill version we have in the U.S. So secularism is achievable... [my emphasis]
See, he recognises some religions aren't so bad.
"...I think the human urge to identify with a subset of the population is something that we should be skeptical of in all its forms. Nationalism and tribal affiliations are divisive, too, and therefore dangerous. Even being a Red Sox fan or a Yankees fan has its liabilities, if pushed too far."
Saltman: "So you see Buddhist meditation not as a religious practice, but as something that can yield results."
Harris: "Clearly, there are results to any religious practice. A Christian might say, "If you pray to Jesus, you'll notice a change in your life." And I don't dispute that. The crucial distinction between the teachings of Buddhism and the teachings of Western religions is that with Buddhism, you don't have to believe anything on faith to get the process started."
Harris Hates All Religions?
Again I need to emphasise the fact that Harris does distinguish between degrees of religious fundamentalism and the associated harms. Remember that when we get to the crunch statement.
Saltman: "Do you think that there is such a thing as a peaceful religion?"
Harris: "Oh, sure. Jainism is the best example that I know of. It emerged in India at more or less the same time as Buddhism. Nonviolence is its core doctrine. Jain "extremists" wear masks in order to avoid breathing in any living thing. To be a practicing Jain, you have to be a vegetarian and a pacifist. So the more "deranged" and dogmatic a Jain becomes, the less likely he or she is to harm living beings.
Jains probably believe certain things on insufficient evidence, and that's not a good idea, in my opinion. I can even imagine a scenario in which Jain dogma could get people killed: I don't actually know what Jains say on this subject, but let's say they became unwilling to kill even bacteria and forbade the use of antibiotics."
...
Harris: "...They [evangelicals] have a great fear that unless we believe the Bible was written by the creator of the universe, we have no real reason to treat one another well, and I think there's no evidence for that whatsoever. It's just fundamentally untrue that people who do not believe in God are more prone to violent crime, for instance. The evidence, if anything, runs the other way. If you look at where we have the most violent crime and the most theft in the United States, it's not in the secular-leaning blue states. It's in the red states, with all their religiosity. In fact, three of the five most dangerous cities in the United States are in Texas.
Now, I'm not saying that we can look at this data and say, "Religion causes violence." But you can look at this data and say that high levels of religious affiliation don't guarantee that people are going to behave well. Likewise if you look at UN rankings of societies in terms of development — which includes levels of violent crime, infant mortality, and literacy — the most atheistic societies on the planet rank the highest: Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark. So there is no evidence that a strong commitment to the literal truth of one's religious doctrine is a good indicator of societal health or morality."
So, just to emphasise the point again. Harris does not see all religions as being as bad as each other. Harris does see people gaining some benefits from religion, though he thinks there are better ways. Harris does not think religion is the cause of all evil. Harris does not think all religion is evil. Nowhere does Harris actually call for the forced curtailment of religious belief. In all of this he is making very straight forward arguments about what he finds wrong with religion.
The Evil Atheists
Of course no discussion about religion is complete without a comment on the evil that atheists do. And nearly every religious person gets this point wrong. Saltman is playing devil's advocate here of course.
Saltman: "Atheism doesn't always go hand in hand with reason and compassion. Look at the destruction and violence caused by atheist ideology in China and the old Soviet Union."
Harris: "What I'm really arguing against is dogma, and those communist systems of belief were every bit as dogmatic as religious systems. In fact, I'd call them 'political religions'. But no culture in human history ever suffered because its people became too reasonable or too desirous of having evidence in defense of their core beliefs. Whenever people start committing genocide or hurling women and children into mass graves, I think it's worth asking what they believe about the universe. My reading of history suggests that they always believe something that's obviously indefensible and dogmatic."
And just to re-state the point made countless times, none of this was done in the name of atheism. Atheism isn't a dogmatic belief system that anyone does anything in the name of. And atheists are not claiming religion is the cause of all ills, or that all atheists are whitere than white. So, can we drop this red herring.
The Magic Wand of Harris
OK. Let's get to the main point. The offending place is top of page 2.
Saltman: "Your analogy between organized religion and rape is pretty inflammatory. Is that intentional?"
Harris: "I can be even more inflammatory than that. If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion. I think more people are dying as a result of our religious myths than as a result of any other ideology. I would not say that all human conflict is born of religion or religious differences, but for the human community to be fractured on the basis of religious doctrines that are fundamentally incompatible, in an age when nuclear weapons are proliferating, is a terrifying scenario. I think we do the world a disservice when we suggest that religions are generally benign and not fundamentally divisive."
Now, given the context in which the original analogy was used, this is just an extension of that. Here's the analogy:
A causes an amount of suffering.
B causes an amount of suffering.
Here A is rape, and B is religion. And on his assessment religion causes more harm than rape.
So, if he could wish away one of them he thinks the best option would be religion, as removing it would reduce harm the most.
Note that this is a simple thought experiment, wishful thinking, and as such has no specific bad consequences. For example, if it clearly was a magic wish that did the trick he'd no doubt want all the currently religious people to be simply non-religious - so it's not as if he would be causing more suffering by removing religion, the newly non-religious wouldn't feel they were deprived of religion. And we could still carry on trying to stop rape, so it's not as if Harris is condoning rape. It just happens to be an unwanted human behaviour that he uses in an analogy.
There really isn't that much to this statement after all, given the context. It's ridiculous how many religious people have tried to get mileage out of it since he maed it.
A More Literal Comparison
But what if he was to have meant it to be taken seriously. Is religion worse than rape? You'll have to ask Harris yourself, if you still think he's the son of Satan for uttering the words 'rape' and 'religion' in the same breath. But here's my understanding of what he said and how to interpret it, should you want to take it as a literal intention by Harris.
1) Individual rape can 'harm' one victim at a time. I'm not aware of any person being able to rape more than one person at once. This is basically a one-on-one act. Annually (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics) it might be 500,000 a year, accounting for unreported rape.
2) Nuclear weapons or biological weapons can 'kill and harm' hundreds of thousands or millions at a time. It might take more than one person to achieve this, but the ratios are still pretty high: one-to-hundreds-of-thousands, or one-to-millions.
3) Extreme religion probably has the highest potential for (2) currently.
4) All religions, by setting faith above reason, are self affirming systems that can, under some circumstances, provide the right framework for (3), and hence (2). That framework of extreme religions exists now, and this has been a self-evident fact since 9/11. Some small number of people with religious motivations killed thousands of people, directly and in the aftermath. And 9/11 was the catalyst for a war that kill even more. 9/11 is still invoking religious hatred now at ground zero. That's before we get to the many conflicts around the world that are going on now that have a religious element, if not done in the name of religion. Harris covers plenty in his book.
Note to liberals: the extensive use of reason on top of faith is not a get out of jail card. Faith plus speculation is a poor move. It just happens to be a really bad move in the hands of terrorist fanatics.
5) The same applies to all dogmas that affirm their beliefs and aren't subjected to sufficient scepticism. So, it's not just religion Harris is objecting to. But currently religion is the most dangerous in his view.
Again, a note to easily offended moderates and liberals: just because you're pretty harmless doesn't change the fact that religion in the wrong hands is dangerous.
6) Bonus point: without religion there's no RC church, which reduces the number of rapes and abuses a little. And since many of the genocidal wars around the world also include rape, then if removing religion could reduce the number of such wars then there'd be less rape anyway.
7) Harris isn't calling for or expecting the abolition of religion - some people have mistaken his statements here for that. Harris believes in freedom of religious belief. His statement was hypothetical wishful thinking. His point being that if it were possible for religion to suddenly vanish, that would be a better outcome than if all men suddenly stopped raping.
Now I know some people don't like it when we try to evaluate relative harms, when we try to be objective about them. They find something distasteful and taboo about even considering it.
Here's a response to Harris, "I would like to ask Sam Harris what personal experience he has of rape." Why is this relevant? What is my experience of rape or being the victim of a suicide bomber? None.
Another question to Harris, "And I wonder how it would feel to have been subjected to rape and then to hear a statement such as Harris's?" - Or how it would feel to have your family taken by a suicide bomber or abducted and beheaded by terrorists, of kill leaving his place of work, or blown up in an Irish pub.
These are very one sided questions. Do we have to experience every suffering to have any regard for the sufferer? What do you think human empathy is all about? what do you think it is that has been driving your own morals all this time? God?
Conclusion
Having read Letter To A Christian Nation, and the interview with Saltman, I don't think Harris has said anything particularly controversial. Dispite that being my opinion, of course Harris may well have made the statements specifically to be controversial. Maybe his remark about being inflammatory was calculated. You'll have to ask Harris. But on first reading it I hadn't noticed anything particularly bad about it - just a rhetorical flourish. I'm often surprised how the religious, who survive on emotive language, don't particularly like it when their religion is the target.
We can take any version of his rape statements: analogy of natural evolved benefit no longer being beneficial; a thought experiment, a wish, that religion wasn't present; or a more literal calculation of least harm. Each interpretation of Harris's words are really not that controversial - except to the extent that the religious like to find fault with Harris.
Harris, throughout his book and interview is quite gracious about the people of religion. He sees their particular problem as being that they have been misguided by religion. He simply dislikes the principle of religion and faith that can provide a framework for fundamental atrocities.
So, here are the words again:
"I can be even more inflammatory than that. If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion."
Out of context I guess they could be misconstrued. And the problem is they usually are taken out of context - as seen in a blog from a blog from the original source. And comments are made on the basis of the sentences here, or the fuller paragraph given earlier. But I see them as quite harmless in context, particularly the wider context of the book and the interview.
"I can be even more inflammatory than that. If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion."
The Beginning
But let's go back to where it started, with his book, Letter To A Christian Nation, 2006, which prompted the Saltman interview.
Naturally, for religious people that haven't read the book but who like to pick up on the nasty things atheists say on their journey to eternal damnation in the next life, then the whole concept of comparing their precious religion with rape is pretty shocking. And it looks like Harris has handed them a stick with which they can give him a damned good thrashing.
Trouble is, in their rush to read only the bad, they miss the point. Here's the section from the book where rape is first raised.
"As a biological phenomenon, religion is the product of cognitive processes that have deep roots in our evolutionary past. Some researchers have speculated that religion itself may have played an important role in getting large groups of prehistoric humans to socially cohere. If this is true, we can say religion has served an important purpose. This does not suggest, however, that it serves an important purpose now. There is, after all nothing more natural than rape. But no one would argue that rape is good, or compatible with a civil society, because it may have had evolutionary advantages for our ancestors. That religion may have served some necessary function for us in the past does not preclude the possibility that it is now the greatest impediment to our building a global civilization."
Here he is clearly using it to point out that because something has natural origins we don't have to think it acceptable behaviour now. It's used as an analogy.
But it's an analogy that many religious people don't get. And because they don't get it they've come over all of a froth, because of the dreaded word 'rape' - such a taboo word.
Analogies
My pop-psychology point of the day is that religious people are so used to selective reading when it comes to the holy books, so used to interpreting anything they read in order to give an affirmative bias towards their religion and a negative bias against anything that challenges it, that they are simply confused by analogies, not knowing when to read something literally and when to interpret it as an analogy, or even how to figure out what work the analogy is doing.
Here's a case in point. Suem wonders why there is so much outrage over Xola Skosana's sermon that included 'Jesus with HIV analogy'.
Suem asks, "Don’t people understand that analogies and metaphors are not meant to be definitive statements" - No they don't.
They don't get The Flying Spaghetti Monster, or fairy analogies. Here the point of the analogy is not to liken God to the obviously ridiculous FSM or fairies.
The FSM analogy is about the reasoning that gets you from some hypothesis, such as there is a God, or there is an FSM, to a full explanation, a theology, and even descriptions of characteristics of this hypothetical entity, without any evidence whatsoever.
The whole point of picking obvious nonsensical entities as the object of belief is to show that the same reasoning or faith that gives you God can give you these others; and so the reasoning and the faith is a flawed way of acquiring truth about the entity.
So, similarly, the point of Harris using 'rape' in this specific case in his book is to show that the analogous aspects of religion and rape is that because they had evolutionary advantage at some point doesn't make them beneficial now. Here rape is not meant to be analogous to religion directly.
Symbolically it's like this:
A has some aspect X
B has some aspect X
A is religion.
Where B is rape, X is the past evolutionary benefit of religion and rape.
Where B is the FSM, X is the poor reasoning about theology of religion and the FSM.
So, here's the argument.
A has aspect X, and is therefore good.
But B has aspect X, and B is clearly not good.
So, having aspect X is no indication of B or A being good.
The religious could save a lot of unnecessary argument if they took the trouble to figure out what the analogy is about.
The Harris - Saltman Interview
As if the religious hadn't got hold of the wrong end of the stick already, Harris gives them another excuse to fume. And fume they do.
Here's the 2006 article in which the next scene in the melodrama takes place. (Here's a pdf).
Let's have a look at what else he says before we get to the crutial point. Though many religious people might disagree with many of his points, there are some who do see his issues with religion when it comes to the more fundamental flavour. Here's how it goes towards the end of page 1 of The Sun web site version:
Saltman: "Isn't religion a natural outgrowth of human nature?"
Harris: "It almost certainly is. But everything we do is a natural outgrowth of human nature. Genocide is. Rape is. No one would ever think of arguing that this makes genocide or rape a necessary feature of a civilized society. Even if you had a detailed story about the essential purpose religion has served for the past fifty thousand years, even if you could prove that humanity would not have survived without believing in a creator God, that would not mean that it’s a good idea to believe in a creator God now, in a twenty-first-century world that has been shattered into separate moral communities on the basis of religious ideas.
Traditionally, religion has been the receptacle of some good and ennobling features of our psychology. It’s the arena in which people talk about contemplative experience and ethics. And I do think contemplative experience and ethics are absolutely essential to human happiness. I just think we now have to speak about them without endorsing any divisive mythology."
Note that both genocide and rape are given as examples. Clearly Harris is referring to the analogy, as I described it above. Being a natural human behaviour does not mean that it has any benefit now.
But Harris isn't saying benefit can't be derived from religion. To go back to the book, Letter To A Christian Nation, Harris knows full well that some people do derive benefit from religion:
"I have no doubt that your acceptance of Christ coincided with some very positive changes in your life. Perhaps you now love other people in a way you never imagined possible. You may even experience feelings of bliss while praying. I do not wish to denigrate any of these experiences. I would point out however, that billions of human beings, in every time and place, have had similar experiences - but they had them while thinking about Krishna, or Allah, or the Buddha, while making art or music, or while contemplating the beauty of nature"
So clearly, despite what some critics claim, he doesn't see all religious experience in the same light. But his main point is that overall it is detrimental to society.
I'll skip ahead slightly in the interview, past the offending words, just to make it clear Harris isn't a baby eater.
Harris: "Even Christian fundamentalists have learned, by and large, to ignore the most barbaric passages in the Bible. ...[some details about specific problems]...Now, these people are not evil. They're just concerned about the wrong things, because they have imbibed these unjustifiable religious taboos. There is no question, however, that these false concerns add to the world's misery."
Saltman: "If we were to eliminate religious identity, wouldn't something else take its place?"
Harris: "Not necessarily. Look at what's going on in Western Europe: some societies there are successfully undoing their commitment to religious identity, and I don't think it is being replaced by anything. Sweden, Denmark, Canada, Australia, and Japan are all developed societies with a high level of atheism, and the religion they do have is not the populist, fundamentalist, shrill version we have in the U.S. So secularism is achievable... [my emphasis]
See, he recognises some religions aren't so bad.
"...I think the human urge to identify with a subset of the population is something that we should be skeptical of in all its forms. Nationalism and tribal affiliations are divisive, too, and therefore dangerous. Even being a Red Sox fan or a Yankees fan has its liabilities, if pushed too far."
[page 3]
Harris: "Clearly, there are results to any religious practice. A Christian might say, "If you pray to Jesus, you'll notice a change in your life." And I don't dispute that. The crucial distinction between the teachings of Buddhism and the teachings of Western religions is that with Buddhism, you don't have to believe anything on faith to get the process started."
Harris Hates All Religions?
Again I need to emphasise the fact that Harris does distinguish between degrees of religious fundamentalism and the associated harms. Remember that when we get to the crunch statement.
Saltman: "Do you think that there is such a thing as a peaceful religion?"
Harris: "Oh, sure. Jainism is the best example that I know of. It emerged in India at more or less the same time as Buddhism. Nonviolence is its core doctrine. Jain "extremists" wear masks in order to avoid breathing in any living thing. To be a practicing Jain, you have to be a vegetarian and a pacifist. So the more "deranged" and dogmatic a Jain becomes, the less likely he or she is to harm living beings.
Jains probably believe certain things on insufficient evidence, and that's not a good idea, in my opinion. I can even imagine a scenario in which Jain dogma could get people killed: I don't actually know what Jains say on this subject, but let's say they became unwilling to kill even bacteria and forbade the use of antibiotics."
...
Harris: "...They [evangelicals] have a great fear that unless we believe the Bible was written by the creator of the universe, we have no real reason to treat one another well, and I think there's no evidence for that whatsoever. It's just fundamentally untrue that people who do not believe in God are more prone to violent crime, for instance. The evidence, if anything, runs the other way. If you look at where we have the most violent crime and the most theft in the United States, it's not in the secular-leaning blue states. It's in the red states, with all their religiosity. In fact, three of the five most dangerous cities in the United States are in Texas.
Now, I'm not saying that we can look at this data and say, "Religion causes violence." But you can look at this data and say that high levels of religious affiliation don't guarantee that people are going to behave well. Likewise if you look at UN rankings of societies in terms of development — which includes levels of violent crime, infant mortality, and literacy — the most atheistic societies on the planet rank the highest: Sweden, the Netherlands, Denmark. So there is no evidence that a strong commitment to the literal truth of one's religious doctrine is a good indicator of societal health or morality."
So, just to emphasise the point again. Harris does not see all religions as being as bad as each other. Harris does see people gaining some benefits from religion, though he thinks there are better ways. Harris does not think religion is the cause of all evil. Harris does not think all religion is evil. Nowhere does Harris actually call for the forced curtailment of religious belief. In all of this he is making very straight forward arguments about what he finds wrong with religion.
The Evil Atheists
Of course no discussion about religion is complete without a comment on the evil that atheists do. And nearly every religious person gets this point wrong. Saltman is playing devil's advocate here of course.
Saltman: "Atheism doesn't always go hand in hand with reason and compassion. Look at the destruction and violence caused by atheist ideology in China and the old Soviet Union."
Harris: "What I'm really arguing against is dogma, and those communist systems of belief were every bit as dogmatic as religious systems. In fact, I'd call them 'political religions'. But no culture in human history ever suffered because its people became too reasonable or too desirous of having evidence in defense of their core beliefs. Whenever people start committing genocide or hurling women and children into mass graves, I think it's worth asking what they believe about the universe. My reading of history suggests that they always believe something that's obviously indefensible and dogmatic."
And just to re-state the point made countless times, none of this was done in the name of atheism. Atheism isn't a dogmatic belief system that anyone does anything in the name of. And atheists are not claiming religion is the cause of all ills, or that all atheists are whitere than white. So, can we drop this red herring.
The Magic Wand of Harris
OK. Let's get to the main point. The offending place is top of page 2.
Saltman: "Your analogy between organized religion and rape is pretty inflammatory. Is that intentional?"
Harris: "I can be even more inflammatory than that. If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion. I think more people are dying as a result of our religious myths than as a result of any other ideology. I would not say that all human conflict is born of religion or religious differences, but for the human community to be fractured on the basis of religious doctrines that are fundamentally incompatible, in an age when nuclear weapons are proliferating, is a terrifying scenario. I think we do the world a disservice when we suggest that religions are generally benign and not fundamentally divisive."
Now, given the context in which the original analogy was used, this is just an extension of that. Here's the analogy:
A causes an amount of suffering.
B causes an amount of suffering.
Here A is rape, and B is religion. And on his assessment religion causes more harm than rape.
So, if he could wish away one of them he thinks the best option would be religion, as removing it would reduce harm the most.
Note that this is a simple thought experiment, wishful thinking, and as such has no specific bad consequences. For example, if it clearly was a magic wish that did the trick he'd no doubt want all the currently religious people to be simply non-religious - so it's not as if he would be causing more suffering by removing religion, the newly non-religious wouldn't feel they were deprived of religion. And we could still carry on trying to stop rape, so it's not as if Harris is condoning rape. It just happens to be an unwanted human behaviour that he uses in an analogy.
There really isn't that much to this statement after all, given the context. It's ridiculous how many religious people have tried to get mileage out of it since he maed it.
A More Literal Comparison
But what if he was to have meant it to be taken seriously. Is religion worse than rape? You'll have to ask Harris yourself, if you still think he's the son of Satan for uttering the words 'rape' and 'religion' in the same breath. But here's my understanding of what he said and how to interpret it, should you want to take it as a literal intention by Harris.
1) Individual rape can 'harm' one victim at a time. I'm not aware of any person being able to rape more than one person at once. This is basically a one-on-one act. Annually (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_statistics) it might be 500,000 a year, accounting for unreported rape.
2) Nuclear weapons or biological weapons can 'kill and harm' hundreds of thousands or millions at a time. It might take more than one person to achieve this, but the ratios are still pretty high: one-to-hundreds-of-thousands, or one-to-millions.
3) Extreme religion probably has the highest potential for (2) currently.
4) All religions, by setting faith above reason, are self affirming systems that can, under some circumstances, provide the right framework for (3), and hence (2). That framework of extreme religions exists now, and this has been a self-evident fact since 9/11. Some small number of people with religious motivations killed thousands of people, directly and in the aftermath. And 9/11 was the catalyst for a war that kill even more. 9/11 is still invoking religious hatred now at ground zero. That's before we get to the many conflicts around the world that are going on now that have a religious element, if not done in the name of religion. Harris covers plenty in his book.
Note to liberals: the extensive use of reason on top of faith is not a get out of jail card. Faith plus speculation is a poor move. It just happens to be a really bad move in the hands of terrorist fanatics.
5) The same applies to all dogmas that affirm their beliefs and aren't subjected to sufficient scepticism. So, it's not just religion Harris is objecting to. But currently religion is the most dangerous in his view.
Again, a note to easily offended moderates and liberals: just because you're pretty harmless doesn't change the fact that religion in the wrong hands is dangerous.
6) Bonus point: without religion there's no RC church, which reduces the number of rapes and abuses a little. And since many of the genocidal wars around the world also include rape, then if removing religion could reduce the number of such wars then there'd be less rape anyway.
7) Harris isn't calling for or expecting the abolition of religion - some people have mistaken his statements here for that. Harris believes in freedom of religious belief. His statement was hypothetical wishful thinking. His point being that if it were possible for religion to suddenly vanish, that would be a better outcome than if all men suddenly stopped raping.
Now I know some people don't like it when we try to evaluate relative harms, when we try to be objective about them. They find something distasteful and taboo about even considering it.
Here's a response to Harris, "I would like to ask Sam Harris what personal experience he has of rape." Why is this relevant? What is my experience of rape or being the victim of a suicide bomber? None.
Another question to Harris, "And I wonder how it would feel to have been subjected to rape and then to hear a statement such as Harris's?" - Or how it would feel to have your family taken by a suicide bomber or abducted and beheaded by terrorists, of kill leaving his place of work, or blown up in an Irish pub.
These are very one sided questions. Do we have to experience every suffering to have any regard for the sufferer? What do you think human empathy is all about? what do you think it is that has been driving your own morals all this time? God?
Conclusion
Having read Letter To A Christian Nation, and the interview with Saltman, I don't think Harris has said anything particularly controversial. Dispite that being my opinion, of course Harris may well have made the statements specifically to be controversial. Maybe his remark about being inflammatory was calculated. You'll have to ask Harris. But on first reading it I hadn't noticed anything particularly bad about it - just a rhetorical flourish. I'm often surprised how the religious, who survive on emotive language, don't particularly like it when their religion is the target.
We can take any version of his rape statements: analogy of natural evolved benefit no longer being beneficial; a thought experiment, a wish, that religion wasn't present; or a more literal calculation of least harm. Each interpretation of Harris's words are really not that controversial - except to the extent that the religious like to find fault with Harris.
Harris, throughout his book and interview is quite gracious about the people of religion. He sees their particular problem as being that they have been misguided by religion. He simply dislikes the principle of religion and faith that can provide a framework for fundamental atrocities.
So, here are the words again:
"I can be even more inflammatory than that. If I could wave a magic wand and get rid of either rape or religion, I would not hesitate to get rid of religion."
Out of context I guess they could be misconstrued. And the problem is they usually are taken out of context - as seen in a blog from a blog from the original source. And comments are made on the basis of the sentences here, or the fuller paragraph given earlier. But I see them as quite harmless in context, particularly the wider context of the book and the interview.
Wednesday, 18 August 2010
Atheists Against Religion - Misconceptions
Some theists seem to get the wrong impression about atheism and atheists, with regard to the extent and type of opposition to theism and religion. I think this occurs because several issues become conflated in discussions between theists and atheists. Some theists seem to think that atheists want to abolish religion or censor it; but they are confusion the following: genuine desire to stop some religious practices and privileges; the desire for a secular state; and intellectual disagreement on the validity of religious belief.
They are all issues that should be considered separately.
Opposition To Faith Schools
The objection to faith schools is because of indoctrination on young minds and the fact that one faith view is projected. Most humanist atheists want schools to be secular, which only means no religious or other world view bias (not even atheism), not the censorship of religion. We actually want education to include information about all religions and other world views and basic philosophy in a non-biased here-it-is make what you want of it sort of way. There's no requirement to impose the atheist or humanist world view above others.
My children attended a Roman Catholic school, which preached RC Christianity. Both my children said that when they compared notes with friends at a state school the coverage of other faiths was quite different. The Roman Catholic school had given feint acknowledgement to other faiths whereas the state school was more open about discussing the variations of the details of the different faiths. I don't know to what extent a difference in teachers played a part, and I've no detailed experience of other faith schools. But in principle I'm opposed to the promotion of a particular faith.
Faith schools breed division. This I know from my personal school experiences, where a predominantly CoE state school backed on to a Roman Catholic school - pupils were always at war, and though most pupils probably weren't particularly religious, the religious difference was a focus of difference. This inevitable divisiveness has also been commented on with regard to Norther Ireland many times. In Oldham there is currently a plan to form a mixed academy to replace the current Christian dominated school and Muslim dominated school in areas that resulted in race/faith/culture riots ten years ago.
Abolishing Religion
The wish by atheists that religions did not exist is just that, a wish. Not necessarily that they never existed - there is no requirement to change history. The wish is that religions would begin to fade away - starting with the most obnoxious elements of each religion, because we think in the long term society will be better when it has gone. Note that isn't saying atheist humanism is the cure for all ills.
And this wish isn't expressed in any political sense. There is no way in which humanist atheists want to censor or ban religion or religious thought. The very nature of atheist humanism, or in this context secular humanism, is that the state should not be involved at all in personal world views, and that everyone should be free to choose their own world view. There are many unknowns about the universe, regarding its origins and its makeup. The God hypothesis is a reasonable one, so given the free-thought imperative of secular humanists there is no requirement to stop people believing in God.
Secular State
The political desire for a secular state is not a request for censorship, it's the request for the removal of a religious bias and privilege that is already present. What's the alternative to removing bishops from the House of Lords as religious political posts? Add more bishops representing every faith in proportion to the faith adherents? Add atheists specifically because they are atheists? what about Wiccans and other belief systems? A Lord of New Age? No, the most equitable route is to remove all posts relating to religion and have people there on merit of by election - depending on the desired makeup. This then does not prevent religious leaders being members; they would simply be members for some other reason; hopefully, merit.
The wider issue of a state church is slightly less significant to me, though many British Muslims might disagree. We have a lot invested in our culture associated with our churches, armed services, state events, etc., that currently have a close association with religion. I'm in no hurry to see these go since they are quite benign, colourful and culturally of historic interest, in terms of the state. I don't, for example, have an issue with traditions that date back to more feudal times, such as the monarchy and knighthoods and so on. They just need disassociating from the executive branch of the state.
Intellectual Opposition
The intellectual objection to theism, as opposed to particular religious organisations that implement those theisms, is purely that, and intellectual one of the understanding of the philosophy and science of it all. Again the free-thought nature of secular humanism supports the unrestricted examination of all philosophical views and wants to engage freely in debates about these issues. Historically it has been religion that has wanted to censor views and interfere in the free thinking, free expression and free action of others that don't agree with them.
It's a bit rich for anyone associated with these ancient religions to accuse atheists of censorship - it couldn't be further from the truth for atheism, while at the same time most religions don't have a good record on censorship.
Anti-Religion
Anti-religion is the opposition to some or all religions. Personally I am strongly anti-religious when it comes to the more dogmatic religions.
There are many aspects of Islam, such as it's political desire to dominate that is such an important and freely expressed part of the religion, and the discrimination inherent in Islam against non-Muslims in Islamic state governance. These are inherent parts of Islam, given that they are stated in the Koran or Hadith. Islam would have to go through a radical change for me not to be anti-Islam. But there are many Muslims who would like to see such change, and I'd support them in that without wishing to have them give up non-political or otherwise humane aspects of their faith. If some Muslims think atheists have an unfair view of Islam then they need to start making their more moderate voices heard, not only by atheists, but by the more radical Muslims.
There are many aspects of fundamentalist Christianity that make me anti-those sects, such as the intense indoctrination of children into psychologically damaging beliefs about being sinners and being damned to hell. I am less anti-liberal-Christianity, though I do disagree with its ideas on intellectual grounds. Other atheists may have a more blanket anti-religious stance.
Summary
Atheists generally do want to stop faith schools, political privilege, any particularly unfair practices, and to work towards a secular state.
Atheists generally are willing to debate theism as opposed to atheism on intellectual philosophical grounds.
Atheists may also be happy to see the back of religion. But one of the main principles of free-though humanist atheists is the right to practice ones own belief system, and so would want to defend anyone's right to belief, as long as the practice of that belief is not contrary to the freedoms of other people.
My personal feelings is that I have no problem with self-funded religions and places of worship. I quite like some aspects of the CoE; I like to visit old churches; I enjoy some religious music, though I have no interest in the content of any songs or hymns; I like to visit grand cathedrals and mosques. I suppose my interest is atmospheric and historic. I have fond memories of some vicars from when I was young in the Boys Brigade - even our local tyrant was fair. So, other than the issues above I'm not that anti-religious.
And I enjoy a good argument.
So, in general atheists don't want to burn theists at the stake, stone them or decapitate them, or condemn them to hell or whatever the atheist equivalent might be (which according to some theists would be for them to become atheists). Live and let live - if only they all would.
They are all issues that should be considered separately.
Opposition To Faith Schools
The objection to faith schools is because of indoctrination on young minds and the fact that one faith view is projected. Most humanist atheists want schools to be secular, which only means no religious or other world view bias (not even atheism), not the censorship of religion. We actually want education to include information about all religions and other world views and basic philosophy in a non-biased here-it-is make what you want of it sort of way. There's no requirement to impose the atheist or humanist world view above others.
My children attended a Roman Catholic school, which preached RC Christianity. Both my children said that when they compared notes with friends at a state school the coverage of other faiths was quite different. The Roman Catholic school had given feint acknowledgement to other faiths whereas the state school was more open about discussing the variations of the details of the different faiths. I don't know to what extent a difference in teachers played a part, and I've no detailed experience of other faith schools. But in principle I'm opposed to the promotion of a particular faith.
Faith schools breed division. This I know from my personal school experiences, where a predominantly CoE state school backed on to a Roman Catholic school - pupils were always at war, and though most pupils probably weren't particularly religious, the religious difference was a focus of difference. This inevitable divisiveness has also been commented on with regard to Norther Ireland many times. In Oldham there is currently a plan to form a mixed academy to replace the current Christian dominated school and Muslim dominated school in areas that resulted in race/faith/culture riots ten years ago.
Abolishing Religion
The wish by atheists that religions did not exist is just that, a wish. Not necessarily that they never existed - there is no requirement to change history. The wish is that religions would begin to fade away - starting with the most obnoxious elements of each religion, because we think in the long term society will be better when it has gone. Note that isn't saying atheist humanism is the cure for all ills.
And this wish isn't expressed in any political sense. There is no way in which humanist atheists want to censor or ban religion or religious thought. The very nature of atheist humanism, or in this context secular humanism, is that the state should not be involved at all in personal world views, and that everyone should be free to choose their own world view. There are many unknowns about the universe, regarding its origins and its makeup. The God hypothesis is a reasonable one, so given the free-thought imperative of secular humanists there is no requirement to stop people believing in God.
Secular State
The political desire for a secular state is not a request for censorship, it's the request for the removal of a religious bias and privilege that is already present. What's the alternative to removing bishops from the House of Lords as religious political posts? Add more bishops representing every faith in proportion to the faith adherents? Add atheists specifically because they are atheists? what about Wiccans and other belief systems? A Lord of New Age? No, the most equitable route is to remove all posts relating to religion and have people there on merit of by election - depending on the desired makeup. This then does not prevent religious leaders being members; they would simply be members for some other reason; hopefully, merit.
The wider issue of a state church is slightly less significant to me, though many British Muslims might disagree. We have a lot invested in our culture associated with our churches, armed services, state events, etc., that currently have a close association with religion. I'm in no hurry to see these go since they are quite benign, colourful and culturally of historic interest, in terms of the state. I don't, for example, have an issue with traditions that date back to more feudal times, such as the monarchy and knighthoods and so on. They just need disassociating from the executive branch of the state.
Intellectual Opposition
The intellectual objection to theism, as opposed to particular religious organisations that implement those theisms, is purely that, and intellectual one of the understanding of the philosophy and science of it all. Again the free-thought nature of secular humanism supports the unrestricted examination of all philosophical views and wants to engage freely in debates about these issues. Historically it has been religion that has wanted to censor views and interfere in the free thinking, free expression and free action of others that don't agree with them.
It's a bit rich for anyone associated with these ancient religions to accuse atheists of censorship - it couldn't be further from the truth for atheism, while at the same time most religions don't have a good record on censorship.
Anti-Religion
Anti-religion is the opposition to some or all religions. Personally I am strongly anti-religious when it comes to the more dogmatic religions.
There are many aspects of Islam, such as it's political desire to dominate that is such an important and freely expressed part of the religion, and the discrimination inherent in Islam against non-Muslims in Islamic state governance. These are inherent parts of Islam, given that they are stated in the Koran or Hadith. Islam would have to go through a radical change for me not to be anti-Islam. But there are many Muslims who would like to see such change, and I'd support them in that without wishing to have them give up non-political or otherwise humane aspects of their faith. If some Muslims think atheists have an unfair view of Islam then they need to start making their more moderate voices heard, not only by atheists, but by the more radical Muslims.
There are many aspects of fundamentalist Christianity that make me anti-those sects, such as the intense indoctrination of children into psychologically damaging beliefs about being sinners and being damned to hell. I am less anti-liberal-Christianity, though I do disagree with its ideas on intellectual grounds. Other atheists may have a more blanket anti-religious stance.
Summary
Atheists generally do want to stop faith schools, political privilege, any particularly unfair practices, and to work towards a secular state.
Atheists generally are willing to debate theism as opposed to atheism on intellectual philosophical grounds.
Atheists may also be happy to see the back of religion. But one of the main principles of free-though humanist atheists is the right to practice ones own belief system, and so would want to defend anyone's right to belief, as long as the practice of that belief is not contrary to the freedoms of other people.
My personal feelings is that I have no problem with self-funded religions and places of worship. I quite like some aspects of the CoE; I like to visit old churches; I enjoy some religious music, though I have no interest in the content of any songs or hymns; I like to visit grand cathedrals and mosques. I suppose my interest is atmospheric and historic. I have fond memories of some vicars from when I was young in the Boys Brigade - even our local tyrant was fair. So, other than the issues above I'm not that anti-religious.
And I enjoy a good argument.
So, in general atheists don't want to burn theists at the stake, stone them or decapitate them, or condemn them to hell or whatever the atheist equivalent might be (which according to some theists would be for them to become atheists). Live and let live - if only they all would.
Thursday, 20 May 2010
Dan Dennet's AAI 2009 Talk
This is a reponse to comments on Lesly's post on Rollins.
In a comment there I posted a video by Dan Dennett to which Lesley responded. My response in turn is a bit too long for a comments section, so here is is...
Hi lesley,
I'll cover each of your specific points, starting with this one...
"he is called a philosopher, but he adds practically nothing"
Reverse engineering - seeing how thinks fail in order to understand them. Standard scientific process, used in his case in understanding the brain, psychology, etc. Dennett does know a lot about how the brain works, and how it fails to work. And much of this is about how it fails to work when applied to religious belief.
There is the assumption in the religious community that theologians who think about human behaviour in the context of a religious belief have a real grasp of the human condition, as if they have an insight that religious thought and belief brings to their understanding. Dennett's purpose here is to point out that they don't. Rollins and Bell are prime examples of believers who maybe don't appreciate how their stories and their methods are pure snake oil salesmen tricks. Dennett probably finds it hard to believe that many serious intelligent theologians really believe some of the stuff they come out with; and added to that the experiences he's had with religious believers you yourself might classify as 'nutters', simply because their belief is more literal than yours; then this is why Dennett is appears not to address your position on many of the pints he makes.
The part of the video that's about non-believing preachers is a genuine attempt to understand what is happening. It's a real psychological investigation. As someone interested in psychology I assume you can appreciate this. Even in this small initial study he classifies then as three liberals and three literals - so already he's naturally covering a range of beliefs.
"why does everything always revolve around the most extreme form of American evangelicalism?"
First, because that's a pretty prominent group he encounters, so no surprise their views are tackled often.
Second it tackles issues raised by the great variety of faith, so no surprise that more literalist views are sometimes tackled.
Dennett's talk was prior to the study. This paper, http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP08122150.pdf, outlines the study. If you think it's only about 'nutters', it isn't.
Some of the clergy interviewed express very similar beliefs to your own. Just because all the examples don't match your own doesn't invalidate them.
i>"at college... there was no sense of not believing what we were taught because it challenged preconceived ideas"
This may have been your experience, but if you read the experiences of those interviewed you'll see it's not always like that.
"as far as I know vicars are among the happiest and most satisfied people, and they live longest too."
That may be the case for many who get through. But on your blog there are often comments about struggles with faith.
But I don't think anything controversial has been said that can't be backed up. Much of what he covers comes from religious people who have rejected faith because they have seen problems with it.
Having said that...
"Prior to that I was in a certain mindset, where I didn't really question, I was too scared to question, and those who did question were looked on as apostate." - from your Hotel California post.
"There was so much to scared of, top on the list was Liberal Theology which was the slippery slope to unbelief"
"So we all huddled together in the Hotel California for security, we sounded the same, we acted the same, we looked the same. We looked to the Bible to save us from false prophets and various perceived evils."
"In this stage, our former views of God are radically challenged. The disruption can be so great that we feel like we are losing our faith or betraying loyalties." - From stage 4 of The Critical Journey, as quoted in your Abyss post.
"Our aversion to stage 4 is increased because of the very real dangers that accompany this stage. 'Sometimes people drop off the journey totally at this point. Overwhelmed by pain or crises in our lives, we absolutely cut ourselves off from God'." - Ditto.
These sound so much like the quotes from the clergy that took part in the study:
http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP08122150.pdf
"regularly uses the words subversive, willful, cunning, trick, liars etc."
"He suggests that we learn spin when interpreting the Bible. Not true."
he's not implying it's that open, or necessarily intentional, "There isn't a course [at seminary college] called how to put a spin. It's taught by example....They're sort of the truth." - And this is the point he is making. It's the mode of religious language that's deceptive.
In the examples he cites it's hard not to see it that way. Again, this might not match your experience, or how you see it.
But much of the work of Bell and Rollins for example does sound like the willful misuse of terms; there is trickery in the language an production that is intended to persuade.
Some of the clergy in the study have said they weren't telling the whole story:
"I knew I’m not going to make it in a conventional church. I didn’t believe the conventional things, even then. I mean, sure, I’m studying theology with Paul Tillich --- and Bultmann who says we can’t know much about Jesus, and Paul Tillich’s philosophical stuff about 'God is the ground of being'. I’m not going to go into a church and talk like this; I’m not going to, I’m not going to - I did not believe the traditional things even then."
In the cases he cites of those clergy who have to effectively misrepresent to hide their own degree of disagreement with the doctrine, then it is applying spin. And there's no way that some of the works he cites by religious authors, such as Spong is not spin.
"He suggests that those who lose their faith at college 'get out while the going is good'... as far as I know vicars are among the happiest and most satisfied people, and they live longest too. What does he mean?"
he's referring to those like the ones in the study. Read the quotes.
http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP08122150.pdf
It also ties in with this:
"In this stage, our former views of God are radically challenged. The disruption can be so great that we feel like we are losing our faith or betraying loyalties." - From stage 4 of The Critical Journey, as quoted in your Abyss post.
"He suggests that theology is to answer 'awkward questions'.. not true."
But that's the history of theology, and it's been going on for centuries, trying to address the awkward questions. This is what Augustine, Aquinas etc. put so much effort into building a more robust doctrine.
You often comment on versions of the faith that you don't agree with, and you've said yourself that much of what you read is disagreeable. Dennett simply finds it all disagreeable.
"He suggests that we try to stop people having inquiring minds.. not true."
we? - not you. The hierarchy, the establishment of the church.
You've said yourself that the there's a resistance to inquiry that you feel you struggle against yourself.
"And he says that either you believe God has existence or you are an atheist.. why?"
Because to believe in God as expressed by Christians is to believe in an agent. We have no experience of agents that do not have existence.
We can conceptualise God as an agent, just as we can conceptualise pink elephants and unicorns. But you really want to say God IS, and yet claim he does not exist, then you are reducing him to a mere concept, not an actual God.
In this sense God can be a metaphor for something - but then Dennett says, in that case he too can believe in that God, because he too believes in metaphors, he knows what they are.
This is what the 'History of God' reference was about. Many religious explanations describe the history of the religion - which is fine, because religion does have a history.
But in saying it's a history of God implies that there is a God to have a history about, when really it's a history of the concept of God, not of God.
Dennett says that he too believes in the 'concept of God', i.e. he understands what concepts are, and he gets what this specific concept is. He just doesn't believe in the content of that concept - i.e. God.
This is related to the Use-Mention Error - next.
" 'History of God' ... And he relates God to the Easter Bunny.."
First, the Easter Bunny, unicorns, flying spaghetti monster, Russell's teapot, or God, are all examples used to demonstrate the idea that having a concept of something isn't the same as that something actually being real. All the inexplicable attributes of God, his incomprehensibility, can all be applied to these other examples, but it doesn't make them any more true. The argument here is about the similarities with the type of claim being made, and not actually equating God to an Easter Bunny.
"The example he uses for his deepism is lousy 'Love is just a word'" - This is to with the common use-mention error, which he explains clearly. Here's some details on it:
This is what it means:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use%E2%80%93mention_distinction
And here:
http://www.critical-thinking-tutorials.com/if-the-brain-is-a-computer-does-that-mean-its-designed/
The specific History of God error:
http://www.nobeliefs.com/fallacies.htm
It's a point I've picked up on in Bell and Rollins. It's a way of conflating ideas, where the obvious and literal meaning of the sentence is easy for the brain to accept, and primes the brain for the more profound intention, even though the more profound intentional interpretation doesn't actually make any sense as a sentence.
So, (as I commented on your Rollins post) Rollins (and Bell) provide many examples of what Dennett calls a 'Deepity':
- A proposition that seems to be profound because it is logically ill-formed.
- It has (at least) two meanings, and balances precariously between them.
- On one reading it is true but trivial.
- On the other reading it's false, but would be earth-shattering if true.
And it's the failure to recognise the U-M error that allows these double readings to be conflated.
When this usage is mixed in with lots of other emotive sentences and vague notions they're easy to just absorb as if they have meaning. Dennett expresses something like, "Well, sounds okay, but?....well, I suppose I get it..." With repeated exposure this sort of stuff takes on a life of its own as if it actually means something.
Whenever a theist is asked to explain the detail of what is meant, then the simple claim that it's too deep, beyond our language to express, is what the rationalisation of the problem resolves to.
"I am honestly appalled...so sickeningly prejudiced...I am shocked that Richard Dawkins...you are better than this, I can't believe you can stomach it...anything racist or anti-gay or politically obnoxious...I find it distasteful...it seemed at the level of the Sun newspaper to me...It is just appalling...If he said these things about black people you would be rightly outraged and liken his propaganda to Hitler...these vile things...I think that is similar to racists equating black people to apes...as unpleasant as him. He represents for me the worst sort of bigotry."
I can only put this down to you being genuinely disturbed by it. Yes, he's preaching to the converted and does use some humour, which if you're on the receiving end could be considered puerile.
But your response raises another issue that is problematic - there is no right of the religious not to be offended, simply because what's being said is distasteful.
These are serious challenges to claims of ways of knowing things, and religious claims about what is known and how it is known do not stand up to scrutiny. The fact that you genuinely believe what you do does not make it any more viable, and Dennett is under no obligation to pull his punches when criticising ways of thinking that bamboozle so many people.
There are two topics covered seriously.
One, treated second, is the issue of religious language applied to the explanation of religious belief that has been adapting to criticism of literal meaning for centuries. He clearly shows up some of the flaws in the religious language that is used. he bases much of this on his understanding of philosophy, linguistics, psychology and the study of the mind, and the ideas are consistent i=with many leaders in those fields.
The other is the study that is underway to look into the effect of this religious language. In this particular case how it is used in a situation where clergy who struggle with the disparity in types of belief, the range of literal to metaphorical meaning, from traditional fundamental theism to near or actual atheism, to the extent that they have to deal with
I'm sorry you find much of Dennett's video so distasteful, but I think the arguments are fair, even if you don't like the presentation.
Ron
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