Re. Religion helps those in need, Sept. 27th Martlet
<please note - the following article appeared in the Oct. 4th Martlet with significant editorial misprints - what follows is the correct unedited version>
I would like to thank Callie Perry for a respectable Рif rather clich̩ Рresponse to my column. Anti-theists assert that religion is not merely false, but that it does considerable harm. This claim does not entail that individuals or groups that are part of a religion are incapable of doing good works. Rather we may only judge the effects of a creed by examining the net consequences that result from the teachings directly. Scientists call this controlling for extraneous variables.
Perry dusts off the tired old argument that religious people do good things, therefore religion is good. This is a ridiculous non sequitur. The good works done by religions and religious people are often done in spite of or even in direct contradiction to the explicit teachings of the creed in question.
Of course religious people and organizations have done wonderful things. So what? Perry must show that the actions explicitly derive from the teachings of the creed itself. Perhaps an example will help. Oskar Schindler was a member of the Nazi party and saved 1100 innocent Jews from the Holocaust. Should we therefore conclude that the ideology of Nazism is good because of the actions of this man? Or should we judge the ideology on the basis of a broad, balanced examination of actions that have consequences derived from Nazi principles? Clearly Schindler did not save Jews by following Nazi ideology, therefore Nazism ought not get the credit.
Similarly, religion is only entitled to credit or blame for actions taken as a direct consequence of its teachings. It is effortless to show that witch burnings, pogroms, genocide, misogyny, ‘homo-cide’, jihad, and inquisitions derive explicitly from the holy books. It is somewhat more challenging to ignore these many barbarous passages and derive pro-social teachings from scripture. To do so requires the intellectually fraudulent skills of a used car salesman, selectively rejecting portions of the infallible ‘Word of God’ while accepting others.
Of course, rejecting the genocidal barbarity commanded in Leviticus and Deuteronomy reveals the reader as a better judge of morality than God, which puts the lie to the claim that morality comes from religion. Clearly the philanthropic deeds described by Perry do not originate from religious creeds, but from a deeper well of humanity.
Science and the Poverty of Mysticism
Who are we? Where did we come from? What is our relationship to the Universe? These are some of the “big” questions that have been asked by every generation of thinking men and women since the dawn of humanity. We live in the greatest golden age of human history. Thanks to science our generation is among the first in human history with a real chance to learn some of these answers!
The essential quality of science is that we must be free to speculate and dream, but we must be equally careful to separate speculation from fact. Even the most brilliant humans are prone to making errors. For this reason there are no absolute authorities in science; all claims to knowledge are open to the most penetrating scrutiny. Through critical thinking we can weed out ideas that are wrong and thereby arrive at progressively better answers to our questions.
It always puzzles me why so many people turn to religion, mysticism or new-age gibberish to find a “connection” to the Universe. Every day they are awash in overwhelming proof that science holds the power to finding true knowledge, yet they recycle bronze age superstitions that relate the positions of the stars and planets during birth to obscure and dubiously defined personality traits. Or they fabricate the existence of “super” natural beings without a shred of evidence beyond the “say-so” of themselves or others. (I’ve never quite understood how ANYTHING can coherently be described as “apart from” or “above” nature.)
These mystics enthusiastically believe all manner of appealing notions because they want to feel connected with something greater than themselves. They cling to their ideas like a drowning swimmer, no doubt because they derive some psychological illusion of comfort and control from their belief. Yet is this an appropriate basis for determining if something is true or false? Does wishing something to be true make it so? Does science offer its own comfort, if only we will look? Is the clear power of science up to the task of providing the very sense of connectedness to the Universe that most mystics claim to be seeking?
The true grandeur and majesty of Nature as revealed by the methods of science utterly dwarf the fuzzy non-thinking of the mystics, making their most appealing delusions seem as weak and feeble as their arguments in their favour. The difference between them is that science offers us solid reasons to think our beliefs are true, much in contrast to the delusional ravings of prophets and mystics.
Who among us has not stared up at the sky on a dark, clear night and been struck senseless by the spinning gaze of billions of stars peering down upon us? Each of those specks of light is a far off massive ball of molten gas many hundreds of times larger than the earth, the weight of its outer layers crushing the core to temperatures so hot that it shines.
All stars, including our Sun, formed when nearby gas and dust coalesced under the force of gravity into clumps, which continued to grow until the core of the clump grew so hot that the hydrogen gas within it began to fuse into helium, releasing vast amounts of nuclear energy. Eventually all stars will also burn up the gas that fuels their inner fire, producing heavier elements as by-products. Some large stars will explode when their fuel is exhausted, scattering the ashes of their nuclear fire back into the universe in a vast expanding bubble.
These supernova explosions are the only known natural source of heavy elements such as iron, carbon, oxygen, gold or uranium. Successive generations of new stars and planets are enriched with heavy molecules through this process – including all the molecules that formed the earth and our solar system.
The famous scientist Carl Sagan was fond of saying that we are all made of “star stuff” because the molecules that course through our cells, that form the air that we breathe, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood, the water that we drink, the gold in our banks and uranium in our weapons were all first formed billions of years ago inside the core of a dying star.
The individual molecules that constitute your body once composed the body of birds and fish, trees and bacteria, stones, dewdrops, planets and stars. Reincarnation of the physical body over billions of years of stellar evolution is a scientific fact.
Where do we come from? Are we a part of something larger? What science teaches us, if the mystics were educated enough to look, is that nature and the universe are indeed profoundly interconnected, and that each of us are a product of that system. Science teaches us that we are quite literally the children of the stars.
Further Reading: any introductory astronomy textbook; Cosmos by Carl Sagan; The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan.
The essential quality of science is that we must be free to speculate and dream, but we must be equally careful to separate speculation from fact. Even the most brilliant humans are prone to making errors. For this reason there are no absolute authorities in science; all claims to knowledge are open to the most penetrating scrutiny. Through critical thinking we can weed out ideas that are wrong and thereby arrive at progressively better answers to our questions.
It always puzzles me why so many people turn to religion, mysticism or new-age gibberish to find a “connection” to the Universe. Every day they are awash in overwhelming proof that science holds the power to finding true knowledge, yet they recycle bronze age superstitions that relate the positions of the stars and planets during birth to obscure and dubiously defined personality traits. Or they fabricate the existence of “super” natural beings without a shred of evidence beyond the “say-so” of themselves or others. (I’ve never quite understood how ANYTHING can coherently be described as “apart from” or “above” nature.)
These mystics enthusiastically believe all manner of appealing notions because they want to feel connected with something greater than themselves. They cling to their ideas like a drowning swimmer, no doubt because they derive some psychological illusion of comfort and control from their belief. Yet is this an appropriate basis for determining if something is true or false? Does wishing something to be true make it so? Does science offer its own comfort, if only we will look? Is the clear power of science up to the task of providing the very sense of connectedness to the Universe that most mystics claim to be seeking?
The true grandeur and majesty of Nature as revealed by the methods of science utterly dwarf the fuzzy non-thinking of the mystics, making their most appealing delusions seem as weak and feeble as their arguments in their favour. The difference between them is that science offers us solid reasons to think our beliefs are true, much in contrast to the delusional ravings of prophets and mystics.
Who among us has not stared up at the sky on a dark, clear night and been struck senseless by the spinning gaze of billions of stars peering down upon us? Each of those specks of light is a far off massive ball of molten gas many hundreds of times larger than the earth, the weight of its outer layers crushing the core to temperatures so hot that it shines.
All stars, including our Sun, formed when nearby gas and dust coalesced under the force of gravity into clumps, which continued to grow until the core of the clump grew so hot that the hydrogen gas within it began to fuse into helium, releasing vast amounts of nuclear energy. Eventually all stars will also burn up the gas that fuels their inner fire, producing heavier elements as by-products. Some large stars will explode when their fuel is exhausted, scattering the ashes of their nuclear fire back into the universe in a vast expanding bubble.
These supernova explosions are the only known natural source of heavy elements such as iron, carbon, oxygen, gold or uranium. Successive generations of new stars and planets are enriched with heavy molecules through this process – including all the molecules that formed the earth and our solar system.
The famous scientist Carl Sagan was fond of saying that we are all made of “star stuff” because the molecules that course through our cells, that form the air that we breathe, the calcium in our bones, the iron in our blood, the water that we drink, the gold in our banks and uranium in our weapons were all first formed billions of years ago inside the core of a dying star.
The individual molecules that constitute your body once composed the body of birds and fish, trees and bacteria, stones, dewdrops, planets and stars. Reincarnation of the physical body over billions of years of stellar evolution is a scientific fact.
Where do we come from? Are we a part of something larger? What science teaches us, if the mystics were educated enough to look, is that nature and the universe are indeed profoundly interconnected, and that each of us are a product of that system. Science teaches us that we are quite literally the children of the stars.
Further Reading: any introductory astronomy textbook; Cosmos by Carl Sagan; The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan.
Why Religious Thinking is a Threat to Human Survival
Most humanists and atheists such as myself take it for granted that religious claims are false. However many among us would classify ourselves as not merely a-theist, but anti-theist. The reason for this is that religious belief is not simply false and innocuous – as belief in Santa Claus, for instance – but has positively harmful consequences for society that must be actively combated.
The central problem of faith is that it produces the predisposition NOT to act to safeguard or promote the safety and well-being of oneself and others. This disinclination can apply to reactive situations where one fails to take action to safeguard against looming danger, or it can refer to a proactive failure of creative imagination to constantly improve our lives. Both must be accounted for.
The paragon instance of this deleterious world view is surely represented by the asininely negligent George W. Bush asking the nation to pray for New Orleans as hurricane Katrina bore down upon the pious city, while decades of engineering and scientific warnings to shore up the levees were ignored and millions of lives needlessly devastated.
Virtually all religions teach that some powerful being/force is acting as a hidden hand, guiding the events of our lives. The inescapable conclusion is that human beings are essentially powerless to shape our future.
This belief is reportedly a chief source of the psychological appeal of religion, however it comes at a striking cost to human esteem and dignity: it psychologically disempowers human beings, leading to fatalism, complacency and inaction where prayer and faith replace taking effective action to solve problems or safeguard the future.
By contrast those who reject blind faith realize that our future depends entirely upon the actions we take and the choices we make. Nature and the world around us impose consequences on us as a result of our actions and inactions alike, and those consequences affect believers and disbelievers without prejudice. For example, in 1884 a devastating 7.0 earthquake hit Granada in Spain, one of the most devoutly pious nations on earth, killing 800, injuring 1,500 and destroying 4000 homes on Christmas Day.
The key point is that religious belief provides false solutions that displace prudent and truly effective solutions from being implemented, or from even being invented in the first place. The religious edicts against the sinfulness of condom use is merely stupid within a first-world context, but when applied to the situation in AIDS-ridden Africa the religious discouragement of condoms is positively genocidal. Even more chilling, we now have the prospect of several Muslim countries steeped in the Dark Age world view of Jihad and Martyrdom deploying nuclear weapons, while Zionists in the constitutionally racist “Jewish state” of Israel and the speaking-in-tongues lunatics in the White House prepare their own nukes for the Rapture.
The obvious religious evils aside, if all the hours of human effort that have been wasted on ridiculous religious tasks had instead been used to study medicine, geology and engineering there is no telling what blights to human existence may have been mitigated over the centuries. If we take account of not only the well known direct harmful effects of religion, but also the indirect lost opportunity, then we begin to develop an accurate picture of what religion costs society and why it should not be merely tolerated as a quaint cultural relic of our intellectual infancy but outright opposed as a chief force for evil in the world.
Further Reading: Christopher Hitchens, ‘god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything’; Sam Harris, ‘The End of Faith’; www.carpediembc.com.
(Edited version published in the Sept. 13, 2007 edition of the Martlet)
The central problem of faith is that it produces the predisposition NOT to act to safeguard or promote the safety and well-being of oneself and others. This disinclination can apply to reactive situations where one fails to take action to safeguard against looming danger, or it can refer to a proactive failure of creative imagination to constantly improve our lives. Both must be accounted for.
The paragon instance of this deleterious world view is surely represented by the asininely negligent George W. Bush asking the nation to pray for New Orleans as hurricane Katrina bore down upon the pious city, while decades of engineering and scientific warnings to shore up the levees were ignored and millions of lives needlessly devastated.
Virtually all religions teach that some powerful being/force is acting as a hidden hand, guiding the events of our lives. The inescapable conclusion is that human beings are essentially powerless to shape our future.
This belief is reportedly a chief source of the psychological appeal of religion, however it comes at a striking cost to human esteem and dignity: it psychologically disempowers human beings, leading to fatalism, complacency and inaction where prayer and faith replace taking effective action to solve problems or safeguard the future.
By contrast those who reject blind faith realize that our future depends entirely upon the actions we take and the choices we make. Nature and the world around us impose consequences on us as a result of our actions and inactions alike, and those consequences affect believers and disbelievers without prejudice. For example, in 1884 a devastating 7.0 earthquake hit Granada in Spain, one of the most devoutly pious nations on earth, killing 800, injuring 1,500 and destroying 4000 homes on Christmas Day.
The key point is that religious belief provides false solutions that displace prudent and truly effective solutions from being implemented, or from even being invented in the first place. The religious edicts against the sinfulness of condom use is merely stupid within a first-world context, but when applied to the situation in AIDS-ridden Africa the religious discouragement of condoms is positively genocidal. Even more chilling, we now have the prospect of several Muslim countries steeped in the Dark Age world view of Jihad and Martyrdom deploying nuclear weapons, while Zionists in the constitutionally racist “Jewish state” of Israel and the speaking-in-tongues lunatics in the White House prepare their own nukes for the Rapture.
The obvious religious evils aside, if all the hours of human effort that have been wasted on ridiculous religious tasks had instead been used to study medicine, geology and engineering there is no telling what blights to human existence may have been mitigated over the centuries. If we take account of not only the well known direct harmful effects of religion, but also the indirect lost opportunity, then we begin to develop an accurate picture of what religion costs society and why it should not be merely tolerated as a quaint cultural relic of our intellectual infancy but outright opposed as a chief force for evil in the world.
Further Reading: Christopher Hitchens, ‘god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything’; Sam Harris, ‘The End of Faith’; www.carpediembc.com.
(Edited version published in the Sept. 13, 2007 edition of the Martlet)
Conversational Intolerance
Religious belief is a unique case where truth claims are held immune to critical examination in a spineless appeal to “tolerance”. That religious claims ought to be tolerated on the basis of mere conviction is ridiculous. Religious claims are no different than claims in any other topic of discourse, either they are true or they are not true, and absurd claims in religion that are clearly false should be denounced as such, particularly if belief in the truth of these claims have clear negative consequences.
An overwhelming amount of the violence and conflict in the world today arises out of religious truth claims. It ought to be obvious that a critical analysis of religious claims should be the highest priority to global society. Instead, through much of the western world the concept of religious “tolerance” has lead to religious truth claims becoming exempt from critical scrutiny. It is time to challenge this special “tolerance” that insulates religion from criticism and promote what Sam Harris calls “conversational intolerance” against truth claims that either lack evidence or are in direct contradiction to established evidence.
The most basic function of academic discourse in a post-secondary institution is to critically examine all claims to truth. Religion makes some very potent claims indeed. They inform the political decisions and life trajectories of the overwhelming majority of people on the planet, and have deep consequences for the survival of global society. If a chemist claims that they have discovered the lost secret to alchemy and can turn lead into gold we do not respect their belief, we demand evidence. If a doctor claims she can cure cancer with leeches we do not “tolerate” her strong conviction, we revoke her license to practice. If a pilot attempts to clairvoyantly steer his airplane through mountain clouds without navigational instrumentation we do not judge his claim on the basis of how strongly he believes it, we ground him and send him to a psychiatrist. Lives depend upon us demanding evidence for these claims and marginalizing those who fail the test of evidence.
Religion is the only area where truth claims are treated differently. Lives depend upon these questions, and possibly even the survival of our civilization. Either condom use in AIDS-ridden Africa is a sin or not. Either the souls of unbelievers will be eternally tortured in hell or not. Either apostasy should result in beheading in this world or not. Either God promised Israel to the Jews or not. Either those who die in defence of Islam will get 72 virgins in paradise or not. Millions of lives hang on the truth or falsity of these claims. It is long past time for us to treat the truth claims of religion with the same rigorous scrutiny that we treat claims in medicine, engineering, chemistry, economics, and plumbing.
Further reading: The End of Faith, Sam Harris; Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett.
(edited version published in Sept. 6, 2007 edition of the Martlet)
An overwhelming amount of the violence and conflict in the world today arises out of religious truth claims. It ought to be obvious that a critical analysis of religious claims should be the highest priority to global society. Instead, through much of the western world the concept of religious “tolerance” has lead to religious truth claims becoming exempt from critical scrutiny. It is time to challenge this special “tolerance” that insulates religion from criticism and promote what Sam Harris calls “conversational intolerance” against truth claims that either lack evidence or are in direct contradiction to established evidence.
The most basic function of academic discourse in a post-secondary institution is to critically examine all claims to truth. Religion makes some very potent claims indeed. They inform the political decisions and life trajectories of the overwhelming majority of people on the planet, and have deep consequences for the survival of global society. If a chemist claims that they have discovered the lost secret to alchemy and can turn lead into gold we do not respect their belief, we demand evidence. If a doctor claims she can cure cancer with leeches we do not “tolerate” her strong conviction, we revoke her license to practice. If a pilot attempts to clairvoyantly steer his airplane through mountain clouds without navigational instrumentation we do not judge his claim on the basis of how strongly he believes it, we ground him and send him to a psychiatrist. Lives depend upon us demanding evidence for these claims and marginalizing those who fail the test of evidence.
Religion is the only area where truth claims are treated differently. Lives depend upon these questions, and possibly even the survival of our civilization. Either condom use in AIDS-ridden Africa is a sin or not. Either the souls of unbelievers will be eternally tortured in hell or not. Either apostasy should result in beheading in this world or not. Either God promised Israel to the Jews or not. Either those who die in defence of Islam will get 72 virgins in paradise or not. Millions of lives hang on the truth or falsity of these claims. It is long past time for us to treat the truth claims of religion with the same rigorous scrutiny that we treat claims in medicine, engineering, chemistry, economics, and plumbing.
Further reading: The End of Faith, Sam Harris; Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett.
(edited version published in Sept. 6, 2007 edition of the Martlet)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)