The Nays won, narrowly, and the debate, between Daniel Dennett and Lord Robert Winston, will be available as a podcast here. A summary is here.
One thing that I find interesting in these debates, which let's face it are more important for allowing people to vent than actually proving anything, is that those opposed to religion tend to think, as the Guardian commentator does, that anyone who has what I would think is a rational approach to belief, is a kind of "God-Lite", "an unthreatening and more-or-less rational - and private - approach. It's hard to object to that: practised in this way, religion is unthreatening and benign."
They think religion is not like that; and of course anyone from the United States is likely not to, where the vocal minority of Christians are ignorant, opposed to freedoms and science, and try to control how others behave. The United Kingdom was once like that, but it came, in great travail, to a settlement, and guess what? Most people seem to hold the God-Lite view that Dennett, Dawkins, and Richard Denton (the commentator) think is rare. Same is true here in Australia.
If the contrast is fundamentalism v. science then of course religion threatens science. But if the contrast is fundamentalism v modernist theologies v Catholic doctrine v ... for the whole disjunct of actually held views in a given society, then the "threat" of "religion" is lessened to what I think it is, a minority of believers, through a spectrum of attitudes to science ending in total acceptance and contribution to science. The error lies in lumping all religious views into one category, defined rather crudely, and then claiming that all members of that category are either (i) like the definition, or (ii) rare. But if they are neither rare nor like the objectionable types, then all inferences fail. If "the" religious lobby is an artifact of the way these things are reported in the media, the way that people think we live in a violent society because they see the violence from all over the world, then the fear and loathing of religion is equally ill-founded as the paranoia of violence in this least violent of all periods in western history.
That said, I look forward to listening to the debate.
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Right on, John. I'd like to see anyone argue that Quakerism (for example) is the greatest threat to scientific progress and rationality that we face today!
Equally ill-founded, but is it as dangerous? Do you think that such militant atheists might make matters worse, by encouraging theists to stick together against what they might increasingly see as a godless materialism that includes science; or might they make things better by encouraging debate and thought?
And is there a similar picture of science, with a few bad bits (e.g. dangerous technological applications as integral parts of the capitalist system that funds science) being highlighted by the mass media etc.? Do serious scientists and serious theologians have a common enemy to unite against? Should they (I wish I knew)?
It surprises me to see Dennett commit the fallacy of composition in this case. So it seems anyone can commit a fallacy.
I would tend to agree with you John, until last night when I got dragged along with my wife's family to a Greek Orthodox (hardly different from Catholic in most respects) Easter church service. Then, in a passing comment I referred to the nice-but-ineffective reality of prayer, and I got interrogated as to how I can believe that "devout priests can't light candles by prayer alone."
Meh... even those of "benign" religious traditions routinely say things that are founded on mysticism and unthinking credulity.
Forgive me for not bothering to listen to yet another debate between believers and infidels, but I'm curious about something. If religion is not the greatest threat to rational thinking and scientific progress, which I assume is the position of Winston, then what is? I'd listen to the debate, but somehow I doubt I'd get an answer.
If you want my opinion, and let's face it since you're here you must, the biggest threat to science is antimodernism. Sometimes it's a religious thing. Sometimes it's not.
Well, that would have made for a more interesting debate. It would be interesting to hear Dennett's rebuttal to that argument.
Well, if it's not religion what is it? You might say the threat is only coming from one or more specific parts of "religion" - e.g. it's not coming so much from Buddhists or liberal Jews - but the fact is that religion, taken as a whole, is a huge threat to freedom (which I'll sneak in), reason, and science. And it's often so-called moderates, just as much as fundies, who will argue for illiberal views that would constrain scientific research and rational social policy. It's not just American protestant fundamentalism that's a problem, but the entire religious way of looking at the world as something that has a kind of divine imprimatur (though the Buddhist way of looking at things is, once again, rather different). And anyway, the biggest world-wide threat that I can see is from the cult of misery rather than the fundies.
Right here in Australia, I can put a specific name to the biggest threat to liberal public policy (including science policy) and the life of reason: it's Cardinal George Pell. On the other hand, even the low-church Anglicans of the Sydney diocese are pretty bad here (unlike the nice, usually very liberal, high-church Anglicans of the Newcastle diocese where I grew up).
I wonder what might be a greater threat at the moment to the things that I value, such as rationality. Astrology? New Age thinking of various other kinds? Some kind of irrational political ideology? Bill Joy with his relinquishment thesis? Wacky post-structuralist forms of epistemic relativism or radical epistemological scepticism? Corporate funding? Crazy deep greenies? They all play their part, and should all be subjected to harsh, sceptical scrutiny, but I doubt that any of them now wield anywhere near the power to undermine science and rationality possessed by American fundamentalism, radical Islam, or the cult of misery ... or by just the simple idea of Nature as we know it having a divine imprimatur.
I think it might be fair enough to say that the biggest dangers are coming from various sub-sets of religion, and that the proposition under debate wasn't specific enough, but the fact remains that the greatest social forces that we have to fear belong within that amorphous cloud of things called "religion". And it's not obvious at all that the threat should be confined to specific brands or flavours. As soon as you start seeing the world in religious terms at all, it will tend to make you hostile to many conclusions that might arise from rational inquiry. For example, most religions find it very difficult to reliquish ideas of human exceptionalism.
All in all, much as a lot of religionists doubtless are moderate and liberal and nice, there's still plenty of motivation to want to spread scepticism about the epistemic content of all religions and about the authority of religious institutions and leaders.
Ha, by the time I wrote my post other people were dealing with the same question. Okay, but the question could be rephrased as, "What is the most powerful source of anti-modernism?" Or, "Who are the most powerful advocates of anti-modernism?" Maybe it's just plain traditional thinking, or fear of change that leads to anti-modernism. But even if so, the most powerful organised lobbies that give expression to the fear are religious ones. I don't think religion can be let off the hook easily.
No, it's not fundamentalism that is the problem -- it's religion, period.
I talk to people all the time who are honest, decent, interested in good social values, who want to contribute to the community, etc. -- people who are not flaming fundamentalist nut-jobs. Yet at the same time they will flatly reject good science entirely because it conflicts with the doctrines their religion promotes. It's not simple anti-modernism, because some of these people are also rah-rah patriots who want the US to support more science...just not the kind of science that challenges their religion.
Religion is a source of false authority. It is far more powerful than any other kind of lunacy -- New Agey stuff, for instance -- that is percolating out there in the citizenry. You have a biased view yourself of British and Australian religiosity, because you're arguing that right now nothing has inflamed anti-science sentiment in the religious populations in those countries. It is a taint waiting to be inflamed into a destructive poison, though. When you make excuses for an irrational way of knowing simply because the consequences now are not apparent, you open the door to a wider spread of unreason.
I agree that these debates prove very little. They are a kind of sport, a bout of intellectual fisticuffs put on for the entertainment of the unwashed (in the case of Oz and the US, at least) masses. The crowd gets to cheer their 'side' and boo the opposition (mostly metaphorically) and the 'winner' is decided by who is perceived to have landed the most telling blows. It's all good fun but, at the end of it, what has been decided, other than who is the more skilled and persuasive orator?
It seems to me that this confrontation between science and religion is both misframed (sorry, couldn't resist) and driven by exaggerated fear on both sides.
The believers fear that secular science and rationality could fatally undermine the foundations of belief on which they have built their whole lives. Dan's anecdote about attending the Greek Orthodox ceremony illustrates just how foundational these beliefs are, a point which some atheists seem to have difficulty grasping. For them, the existence of God and the power of prayer are as much certainties as the Sun and gravity are for us. They find it as incomprehensible that we could doubt God's existence as we would if some one came to us and argued that the Sun really orbits the Earth and that the force of gravity is just a delusion
On the other side there is a fear that science and reason have only gained a fragile foothold in human culture which could easily be swamped by an upsurge in some form of fundamentalism. Both are possible, of course. But religion seems to be embedded so deeply in human culture that it is going to take a lot more than a few outspoken atheists to uproot it and the benefits and advantages of science are now so obvious and widespread that only a fool would throw them away. Not that there aren't such fools around but they are a negligible minority.
The reason I called the debate "misframed" is that I see the real problem as a sort of absolutism: an instinctive human need for the comfort and security derived from being in possession of some absolute, unequivocal, unchallengeable Truth. It has been expressed most often through religious belief but we have enough examples of the same thing as atheistic ideology - the Nazis in Germany, Maoism in China, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Kim Il-Sung in North Korea - to know that it can take secular form just as easily.
Unfortunately, this suggests that, on the face of it, agnosticism is not going to be much of a solution to the problem. Answering a plea for certain knowledge by offering nothing but doubt and probabilities does not sound like a winning strategy.
On the other hand, I do believe that people do want to know the 'truth', in the sense of knowing how much reliable data we have accumulated and how many reliable explanations for that information we have built and tested so far, even if that truth is that in many areas we still know very little. If they can be assured that we have a means of discovering more information and putting together better explanations, given time, then I believe they can live with that.
Particularly if it is not presented as some form of atheistic proselytizing that aims to wipe out their most cherished beliefs because humanity as a whole whould be better off without them.
That may be the purpose of New Atheists but it is not the purpose of science.
Religion shmeligion: science (henceforth to be known as Big Science after its recent cinematic reframing) depends on a massive infrastructure of institutional resources - funding, personnel, training, facilities, tools, materials, etc.
Though religion (in the US, at least) is doing its best to erode the 2nd & 3rd of those necessities, the whole list is in jeopardy due to the accumulating ravages of environmental destruction, peak oil, climate change, etc, exacerbated by the wars which inevitably(?) accompany such stresses.
In short, "the greatest threat to scientific progress and rationality" is that familiar unspeakable elephant in the living room, the apparent impending collapse of civilization. More succinctly, we have met the enemy, and he is us.
On what is the biggest problem faced by science and by society in general.
It isn't religion it is short termism in business and by politicians. Little to no long term planning nor investment.
How to increase earnings next quarter or how to get re-elected; these are the aims.
Also greed, dishonesty and outright theft by politicians and business leaders together with an errosion of the ideas of fair play and trust.
Now the greed and corruption may not be new but the arrogance shown when caught and self-righteous indignation is. How dare the hoi-polloi question their betters. Doesn't help that they normally get off scot free.
Religion, as generally practiced doesn't hold a candle to these.
The biggest danger to rationalism is the certainty of being the repository of what is "right." That is obviously not an exclusive trait of religion.
:o~ It is?
Now what could inflame it?
Doesn't seem like the UK I know.
Even T Bliar made it clear that religion stays in the RE class and ID/creationism doesn't have any place in the science classes.
If the UK faces a fundamentalist threat it is more likely to come from Islam than from Christianity and will go bang.
Maybe the militant atheists really are worried about the threat of all those suburban Methodists, but I think that part of the hostility to "normal" human religiosity has a very different source. Fundamentalism is absurd and can be genuinely destructive, but it is at least passionate. In contrast to all that heat and energy, the tepid faith of mainstream denominations can seem rather contemptible, a set of compromises that is more reasonable than rational. Atheism is not a religion, but atheists have this much in common with television preachers: a virulent distaste for the lukewarm. The Inquisition might burn you at the stake, but saccharine spirituality makes you sick to your stomach.
John, your comment "Most people seem to hold the God-Lite view that Dennett, Dawkins, and Richard Denton (the commentator) think is rare. Same is true here in Australia." Is, I think, also largely applicable to Canada, and much of western Europe.
However, I am not sure that religion, per se, be it "God-Lite" or otherwise is really the threat: rather a particular belief; to paraphrase '... man has [been given] dominion over nature...", inherent in all of the Abramic religions, as well as some other belief systems is the problem. Any belief system that states or implies that mankind is somehow 'in control' of nature, (nature now becoming the other), transforms all human activities to the creation of controlling technologies rather than the pursuit of understanding, inevitably leading to the misapplication of what little knowledge we have and, ultimately to disaster!
"The biggest danger to rationalism is the certainty of being the repository of what is "right." That is obviously not an exclusive trait of religion. "
Are you sure you are "right", or did you mean to say "Maybe the biggest danger..."?
Nazi ideology was not atheistic. Please don't help to perpetuate this untruth.
http://www.nobeliefs.com/Hitler1.htm
The term 'militant athiest' is a sure sign of the weekness of religious arguments. Its like schoolyard slanging when the argument is going the wrong way for one party and the easiest way to argue is ignore the point and start using derogatory terms instead. Its very use could be construed as a form of attack, and thus militant in itself from the accuser.. you gotta love the religious, peace, love for all, eternal understanding, and death and gore to anyone who doesn't share their opinion.... oh the irony.
PZ Myers: "I talk to people all the time who are honest, decent, interested in good social values, who want to contribute to the community, etc. -- people who are not flaming fundamentalist nut-jobs. Yet at the same time they will flatly reject good science entirely because it conflicts with the doctrines their religion promotes."
People rejecting evidence because it conflicts with their beliefs?! That's so ... so ... human.
The real underlying problem is that we are prone to assorted cognitive biases that are probably due to quirks in how we evolved. Those biases can certainly be reinforced by modern-day religions, especially the fundamentalist ones, but they can be channeled into politics, manifest themselves as woo like the mercury militia, and so on. Worse, those biases aren't likely to go away too soon. Attacking religion is attacking certain branches of the problem, but not the root, and attacking religion with theatrical irrationality is especially so.
"Theatrical irrationality" and "cognitive biases" ... so deep, yet so missing the point.
So, What, is the greatest threat to scientific progress and rationality that we face today?
Mike: "'Theatrical irrationality' and 'cognitive biases' ... so deep, yet so missing the point."
That's very cutesy, but doesn't say much. Do you have an actual argument?
Another thing occurs to me (which isn't related to what Mike was saying). Religion is sometimes benign and sometimes not, but greed is rarely benign. Think about denialism on climate change, or the snow jobs put forth by the tobacco companies, or Merck ghostwriting the studies for Vioxx. These all involve perversions of science that have threatened the public welfare, and they have far more to do with corporate profits than religion. Heck, climate change denialism may still kill us yet. I'd say that the kind of irrationality that threatens science comes from far more fronts than just religion.
Someone touched on this before - the idea of "right". People who work backwards - come to an understanding of how the world works, and then look for evidence for it - are the biggest threat to science. They never "get" it, and, yes, they are religious (that seems like it should be the definition of religious) but their religion can be Maoism, Christianity, Capitalism, etc.
The scientific mindset, where you get the facts then develop an understanding of the world, is not common and perhaps not the default state for humans, but I believe that it can be encouraged.
Yeah. And "survival of the fittest" is an an empirically false statement as long as there are accidents ... and you ignore the quirks of language in which those "est" words are not actually absolute terms.
Russell Blackford:
Sydney is the exception to almost every rule (including rules of common sense) when it comes to Australian Christianity. Even the Uniting Church, one of the most liberal mainstream denominations anywhere, tolerated Fred Nile. Can you imagine that happening in Melbourne?
Anyway, as you probably know, Cardinal Pell was very closely allied to the previous government. Now that the current guy in charge is an ex-Catholic who knows that Australia extends beyond Sutherland, Penrith and Hornsby. It'll be interesting to see if this remains true.
Nemo wrote:
I agree Nazi ideology was not atheistic in the sense of the other examples I gave but neither was it fundamentally religious in the sense of espousing rigid adherence to a narrowly literal interpretation of the holy texts of a particular faith.
As I see it, the Nazis were more opportunists than idealogues. They promoted a vision of Germanic nationalism and Aryan racial superiority which had a broad appeal to a people looking for purpose and hope amidst the political and economic chaos following the recession, exacerbated in Germany by memories of the bitter humiliation of the Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles.
To further that vision they sought to enlist support from any source that they thought might be useful. These included Christianity, not suprisingly since it was strongly represented amongst the German people, and evolution - although for the Nazis it meant something more akin to animal husbandry than Darwin's theory - which, as science, hearkened back to the foundation the modern German state on the back of its advanced science and industry.
Of these two, by far the greater impetus came from the anti-Semitism which was a part of Christian belief and that had been endemic in Germany and Europe as a whole for hundreds of years. The Nazis also plundered concepts from the much more recent theory of evolution that could serve as handy justifications for what they planned to do to the Jews but that was about as far as their interest in the theory went.
"Religion is a source of false authority." Indeed. Not just authority, but it seems to fool the most unlikely; however, that may happen sometimes because they want to be part of the group. Someone I know was raised (according to her) entirely without religious training and yet believes strongly that the early history of the Jews must be almost exactly as it is written in the Bible, evidence not required. She is a UCLA Ph.D, not a local yokel.
BTW, just finished "Your Inner Fish" about 30 minutes ago. There were over a hundred people on the library waiting list ahead of me, so everyone else probably knows what I was pleased to see: Evolving Thoughts and Pharyngula mentioned at the back of the book as important science blogs.
I am waiting on the podcast version. However your commentary on the fundamentalist atheist view of the debate between science and religion I tend to agree with. I found Dawkins polemics seriously flawed, although the facts of the case he presented are generally true, they do not represent all religious practice. The same applies to Christopher Hitchins. I tend to agree with S.J. Gould, excepting a flawed NOMA concept.
However I tend to sit back and watch these debates, particularly both extremes in America with amusement, most of us can move in the real world without demanding everyone agree with me, or you. I remind the creationists in my own religion discussion groups that we teach Evolutionary Biology and accept Post Doctoral research on the subject. If it is that bad why do they teach it at such a high level?
Of course we all will be damned in Hell, and are forbidden for asking for God's help in the event of a disaster, just like Dover, Pennsylvania.
But for many Europeans this God-Lite is not really an important source of community, comfort, and values anymore. Which is a good thing. But those who point to the prevalence of God-Lite might acknowledge that it's also rather superfluous.
If the Nordic countries are any clue, what happens for the majority is that they might retain the church as a place for weddings, baptisms and other rituals, as a sort of European Shintoism with little to do with religious feeling. Privately people then might or might not believe in something supernatural, like angels or a "higher force" or a very vague "God". I personally would question whether this arrangement even constitutes a "religion" but I might be accused of no-true-Scotsmanism!
In any case the existence of God-Lite in Europe shouldn't stump the opponents of organised religion. However laissez-faire the individual European believer, the pronouncements of the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury and the religious opposition to gay marriage in many countries show that our religious institutions have not quite reached the most enlightened levels of God-Lite.
John P.,
"Yeah. And "survival of the fittest" is an an empirically false statement as long as there are accidents ... and you ignore the quirks of language in which those "est" words are not actually absolute terms."
Exactly. Is it possible that some of those you lump into the "certainty" camp, have the same view? Reminds me of Midgley's review of Dawkins. :)
J.J.,
"That's very cutesy, but doesn't say much. Do you have an actual argument?"
I suppose I wasn't trying to say much. :) It seemed clear to me that your target of "theatrical irrationalism" was Myers, since that is who you replied to, but I haven't seen any evidence that he is unfamiliar with the work on cognitive dissonance, and I find the fact that he concentrates his criticism on the religious (both fundy and mainstream) form of woo that has by far the most influence on U.S. policy, completely appropriate.