Hitchens among the benighted

I’m dumber for even listening to this: Christopher Hitchens in a debate with FIVE blithering theologians (one of them was the so-called moderator). Hitchens was excellent, but the four other guys…Jebus. They all trot out these ridiculous arguments about a first cause and fine tuning and oooh, the historical evidence for Jesus is so good. Lee Strobel, in particular, is a flaming fraud and liar.

William Lane Craig was interesting, but stupid. His argument was that people couldn’t have a debate if they were the mere product of chemical reactions, because chemical reactions just fizz, they don’t hold debates. That’s an argument from ignorance; it’s claiming that all chemistry is a big black box he doesn’t know anything about, there’s no difference between biology and the chemistry of soda pop, and he needs to imagine a ghostly puppet master making the pop bottle dance. My impression of Craig’s intellectual acumen plummeted in this one debate. (My impression of Strobel, of course, was already flopped flat in the mud, and the others I’d never heard of).

Hitchens, though…wow. That takes guts to charge into such a biased audience and a panel stacked and loaded against him, and maul them all.

Guess why the economy is a mess?

Isn’t it obvious? It’s all the atheist’s fault! Some goober named David Lebedoff has an article in the Strib that claims that the whole source of the problem is all those amoral, atheistic people who don’t believe in an afterlife.

If you only go around once, then the main thing is to have fun. If you start by admitting that from cradle to tomb it isn’t that long of a stay, then life is a cabaret, old chum, and so, by the way, is Wall Street. There is a bumper sticker favored by some of the recently rich that proclaims “he who dies with the most toys wins.” This is indeed the moral philosophy of those who believe that death is the final closing bell. Materialism, hedonism and Stairmasters are what people do until the clock stops ticking.

I had no idea that Wall Street was run by atheists, or that the government was run by atheists, or that Christians and Jews and Moslems were never, ever interested in material possessions (I just knew that whole Prosperity Gospel thing was a weird confabulation of my imagination).

But, speaking as a fairly strong atheist, I have to protest. The absence of an afterlife means that this life is all I’ve got, and I’d like to live it well — there are no do-overs or second chances. I don’t have the excuse that “God would never allow harm to come to the planet” or “Jesus will forgive my sins and let me live in paradise”. If I screw up now, that’s all there is. I also share normal concerns that even after I die, I want my kids (and grandkids, if such should happen, although I’m much too young for that yet) and friends to live good lives. Not believing in a magical afterlife doesn’t change that, and actually tends to make things like preparing for the future, being a good steward of my resources, educating future generations, etc., even more important.

Mr Lebedoff is a victim of a failure of comprehension. He doesn’t understand atheists at all, and he imagines in his simple-minded way that we’re all mindless hedonists rushing to burn out fast.

By the way, that phrase, “he who dies with the most toys wins”, makes no sense to most atheists. He who dies is dead, full stop. Toys don’t matter at that point.

The amorality of the faithful

Rabbi Avi Shafran is a columnist who, to my mind, represents the very worst of religious dogma. He often writes about “morality”, bemoaning the horrid state of godlessness, but his morality is little more than the rote obedience of the dogmatically orthodox. His usual complaint is that atheism removes the moral compass provided by a god — that one can believe that any arbitrary thing is good if you’re an atheist.

Now he has written another bogus argument that shows the exact opposite: if you use religion, you can justify anything. It’s a very strange piece, a study in contrasts.

On the one hand, Bernie Madoff: a scoundrel and swindler who used a Ponzi scheme to enrich himself and bilk investors of an estimated 65 billion dollars. He was also a dedicated philanthropist who skimmed off a little of his ill-gotten riches and donated to primarily Jewish charities.

On the other hand, Chesley Sullenberger, the pilot whose competence made for a safe emergency water landing a few months ago. He has been fairly quiet, and has not made a big issue of the event; he also hasn’t given any credit to a deity for the landing.

Guess which one Shafran thinks is the good guy? Since he’s using religious logic, it’s a safe bet to guess the one that makes the least sense.

That’s right, Shafran thinks Bernie Madoff is admirable. Why? Because he owned up to his crime, and didn’t flee the country, and also because Shafran imagines that he begin his investment firm with good intent. Never mind that, at some point long ago, Madoff knew he was ripping people off, that he was building an unsupportably rickety pyramid of promises that he couldn’t keep, and he didn’t own up then — he just kept robbing people. And then, of course, even after he was caught out, he was frantically trying to hide his assets. He’s a crook. Shafran is impressed because he said he was sorry after he was caught.

And what about Sullenberger?

No such sublimity of spirit [the “sublimity of spirit” refers to Bernie Madoff], though, was in evidence in any of the public acts or words of Mr. Sullenberger. He saved 155 lives, no doubt about it, and is certainly owed the hakoras hatov of those he saved, and of their families and friends. And he executed tremendous skill.

But no moral choice was involved in his act. He was on the plane too, after all; his own life depended on undertaking his feat no less than the lives of others. He did what anyone in terrible circumstances would do: try to stay alive. He was fortunate (as were his passengers) that he possessed the talents requisite to the task, but that’s a tribute to his training, and to the One Who instilled such astounding abilities in His creations (and Whose help the captain was not quoted as acknowledging).

I suspect that lack of acknowledgment is what really chafes Shafran.

Here is the difference between religious and secular morality written in boldfaced crayon. The religious claim to have an absolute, a god, who has dictated an unquestionable standard for what is good, and the role of the mere human individual is to be obedient to that standard, to follow the hierarchy of leaders who exist to translate and explain their deity’s rules. I can see where this certainly has some advantages to a society — it’s a tool to promote and enforce service to the state or church — but it’s not morality. It’s rationalized slavery.

We godless lack that certainty, and we know the world is a complex place that requires compromise and is not ruled by a moral force — virtue is subject to negotiation, and is found in working together with others to find mutually satisfactory solutions. Good is not absolute, it is an emergent property that arises from successful networks of individuals. It is also something that is measured by evidence: we look at the good that people do, not the promises that they make and never keep, or the lies that dovetail nicely into dogma. Competence is a virtue. Intent is meaningless without action.

We also know that goodness is not a state of being, but a process that requires constant effort and continuous assessment against its effects in the real world. Blind adherence to a presupposition without adjustment to fit the facts of execution is a formula for doing great harm.

My short summary of the difference between religious and secular morality is this: will you obey, or will you strive? Rabbi Shafran’s answer is that you must obey.

New Zealand is looking better every day

I may have to think about retiring in 15 years or so, and I may just have to move to New Zealand. The trends are all going in the right direction.

There has been a sharp rise in the number of New Zealanders with no religious affiliation, new research shows.

In a study by the University, 40 per cent of respondents say they have no religious affiliation compared to 29 per cent 17 years ago.
Just over a third of New Zealanders describe themselves as religious.

Sounds so lovely. Of course, it’s not perfect yet:

Fifty-three per cent say they believe in God (although half of those say they have doubts), 20 per cent believe in some form of higher power and about third say they don’t believe or don’t know.

However, 60 per cent say they would prefer children to have religious education in state primary schools with strongest support for teaching about all faiths.

Get to it, Kiwis — you’ve got about a decade to improve those numbers. I’m sure you can do it.

Religious people aren’t necessarily stupid…and atheists aren’t necessarily smart

Oh, no. Richard Lynn, the fellow infamous for trying to link intelligence and race, is in the news again, this time trying to claim a causal relationship between atheism and intelligence.

“Why should fewer academics believe in God than the general population? I believe it is simply a matter of the IQ,” Lynn told the Times Higher Education magazine. “Academics have higher IQs than the general population. Several Gallup poll studies of the general population have shown that those with higher IQs tend not to believe in God.”

I am always so tempted to simply accept this kind of claim — it’s wonderfully self-serving, obviously — but I can’t. I’ve known lots of religious people who really are brilliant, and I also know lots of atheists who were sincerely religious once upon a time, and there was no sudden increase in their native intelligence when they abandoned faith. And yes, I also know a few knee-jerk atheists who aren’t unbelievers because they’ve reasoned their way to that position. We live in a world with a range of intellectual abilities in different people, but anyone can be religious or infidel.

The difference is not in intelligence. It’s on the foundation of their education. Intelligent people who are indoctrinated into a faith can build marvelously intricate palaces of rationalization atop the shoddy vapor of their beliefs about gods and the supernatural; what scientists and atheists must do is build their logic on top of a more solid basis of empirical evidence and relentless self-examination. The difference isn’t their ability to reason, it is what they are reasoning about.

This is one of the reasons we godless need to be militant in expressing our ideas: there are children out there right now who have the potential for genius, but their talents are being shunted into the futile wasteland of religiosity. Yes, there are a lot of atheists in the topmost ranks of successful scientists, but it’s not because they are intrinsically smarter than someone who believes in gods — it’s because they more easily embrace the mode of thinking that is most productive and successful in scientific fields, and are less burdened with absurd presuppositions. Let’s stop handicapping our kids.

I was feeling pretty good about being at the top of the list, until I looked down

Who’s going to the American Humanist meeting in June? I know I am — I’m getting an award, and I felt quite cocky about it. Then I saw all the other people being recognized, and I’m suddenly having one of those “I am not worthy” moments. Yikes. At least it guarantees that we’ll have a really good meeting.

And if that isn’t enough to convince you to show up, I think I’ve talked my wife into going, too. And Skatje is going to be in town.

The heathen are raging again

More than five years ago, I was griping about the pretense of compatibility between science and religion, prompted by an otherwise good site at the University of California Berkeley that offered the usual pablum:

Science and religion deal with different things. Science tries to figure out how things work and religion teaches about morality and spirituality. There doesn’t need to be a conflict.

Complete bullshit. I’d rather get my morality from reason and real world experience, from science, and religion teaches nothing about morality. Religion is about obedience to arbitrary rules. As for spirituality — I don’t need a cult to teach me about the nonexistent and irrelevant. Then last year, the NAS came out with the same nonsense:

Science and Religion Offer Different Ways of Understanding the World

Science and religion address separate aspects of human experience. Many scientists have written eloquently about how their scientific studies of biological evolution have enhanced rather than lessened their religious faith. And many religious people and denominations accept the scientific evidence for evolution.

There is this kind of conciliatory and entirely false cliched position that major proponents of better science education tend to take — because it’s popular, they pretend that religion is the gentle, benign bit of fluff that has some vague utility in making people better. It’s a lie told to calm the ignorant…the ignorant who will then turn about and obligingly stick a knife in our efforts to improve science, all in the name of their Lord.

I’ve never understood it. It simply grants religion an unquestioned privileged place as an equal to science, when it deserves no such prestige. Why aren’t these pro-science organizations going out of their way to say, “Science and literature deal with different things” or “Science and Art Offer Different Ways of Understanding the World”? At least then they’d be saying something true. At least then they wouldn’t be promoting a damaging delusion.

I’m not a lonely voice crying out my frustration to an unheeding world, I’m pleased to say. I’ve heard from many fellow scientists who feel the same way. Larry Moran has always been vocal about the same problem. And of course we’ve got those cranky New Atheists busily publishing their demolitions of the validity of faith.

Add another big name: Jerry Coyne is making a similar argument.

It seems to me that we can defend evolution without having to cater to the faithful at the same time. Why not just show that evolution is TRUE and its alternatives are not? Why kowtow to those whose beliefs many of us find unpalatable, just to sell our discipline? There are, in fact, two disadvantages to the “cater-to-religion” stance.

  1. By trotting out those “religious scientists”, like Ken Miller, or those “scientific theologians,” like John Haught, we are tacitly putting our imprimatur on their beliefs, including beliefs that God acts in the world today (theism), suspending natural laws. For example, I don’t subscribe to Miller’s belief that God acts immanently in the world, perhaps by influencing events on the quantum level, or that God created the laws of physics so that human-containing planets could evolve. I do not agree with John Haught’s theology. I do not consider any faith that touts God’s intervention in the world (even in the past) as compatible with science. Do my colleagues at the NAS or the NCSE disagree?

  2. The statement that learning evolution does not influence one’s religious belief is palpably false. There are plenty of statistics that show otherwise, including the negative correlation of scientific achievement with religious belief and the negative correlation among nations in degree of belief in God with degree of acceptance of evolution. All of us know this, but we pretend otherwise. (In my book I note that “enlightened” religion can be compatible with science, but by “englightened” I meant a complete, hands-off deism.) I think it is hypocrisy to pretend that learning evolution will not affect either the nature or degree of one’s faith. It doesn’t always, but it does more often than we admit, and there are obvious reasons why (I won’t belabor these). I hate to see my colleagues pretending that faith and science live in nonoverlapping magisteria. They know better.

If you want to talk compatibility with science, atheism is a far better fit to the evidence. It is ridiculous that we still try to link evolution and science education to an airily nebulous version of inoffensive religion that virtually no one accepts, and isn’t even a reasonable model of the way the universe actually works.