The New Atheism.

[hardheadjarhead]

Tellner, that was a good post. I'm not sure I agree with you on everything, but you took your time with it...and I appreciate that.

Science does indeed feel threatened. Both science and religion have been described as the two greatest social forces in existence, and they by nature clash. By their definitions they can not help but do so.

I have to agree with Dawkins when he takes Gould to task on an attempt to harmonize the two. Gould felt the two were "non-overlapping magesteria," and that we could have both the "Rock of Ages" plus "The Ages of Rocks."

Yet the religious impulse towards dogma doesn't allow for free inquiry. The scientific method can not co-exist with dogma. Whether the religion is Christianity, Islam, Stalinism (or some other "ism") there will be adherents who force it to the simple-minded path of "no questions." Science is nothing but questions. In the absence of science, iconoclasm of any measure raises questions by nature. Kill science and you'll still have heretics. Of course, we know full well they can be killed as well.

I disagree that discourse and debate are almost things of the past. I'm just old enough to remember when such talk was taboo. In my youth nobody dared question religion in any public forum. Yes, there was Bertrand Russell and Clarence Darrow and H.L. Mencken in the first half of the 20th century, and Ingersoll and others before them. When I was a child, it simply wasn't done. Perhaps youth skewed my perceptions. It was the sixties, and other things were afoot.

In any case we've seen The Rational Response Squad take on The Way of the Master on Nightline. Mainstream news has given Harris, Dawkins and the others lots of air time. Documentaries such as "The God Who Wasn't There" and "Jesus Camp" have earned a following. 1,600 people have gone on YouTube and taken "The Blasphemy Challenge." Michael Newdow has sued over "In God We Trust" on currency and over the Pledge of Allegiance. On the death of Jerry Falwell we see Christopher Hitchens give him a posthumous *****-slapping...and people laud him for it, as well as lambast him.


I suspect we're going to see more of this...and it is going to get very, very hot.

Regards,

Steve

 

[hardheadjarhead]

Tellner, that was a good post. I'm not sure I agree with you on everything, but you took your time with it...and I appreciate that.

Science does indeed feel threatened. Both science and religion have been described as the two greatest social forces in existence, and they by nature clash. By their definitions they can not help but do so.

I have to agree with Dawkins when he takes Gould to task on an attempt to harmonize the two. Gould felt the two were "non-overlapping magesteria," and that we could have both the "Rock of Ages" plus "The Ages of Rocks."

Yet the religious impulse towards dogma doesn't allow for free inquiry. The scientific method can not co-exist with dogma. Whether the religion is Christianity, Islam, Stalinism (or some other "ism") there will be adherents who force it to the simple-minded path of "no questions." Science is nothing but questions. In the absence of science, iconoclasm of any measure raises questions by nature. Kill science and you'll still have heretics. Of course, we know full well they can be killed as well.

I disagree that discourse and debate are almost things of the past. I'm just old enough to remember when such talk was taboo. In my youth nobody dared question religion in any public forum. Yes, there was Bertrand Russell and Clarence Darrow and H.L. Mencken in the first half of the 20th century, and Ingersoll and others before them. When I was a child, it simply wasn't done. Perhaps youth skewed my perceptions. It was the sixties, and other things were afoot.

In any case we've seen The Rational Response Squad take on The Way of the Master on Nightline. Mainstream news has given Harris, Dawkins and the others lots of air time. Documentaries such as "The God Who Wasn't There" and "Jesus Camp" have earned a following. 1,600 people have gone on YouTube and taken "The Blasphemy Challenge." Michael Newdow has sued over "In God We Trust" on currency and over the Pledge of Allegiance. On the death of Jerry Falwell we see Christopher Hitchens give him a posthumous *****-slapping...and people laud him for it, as well as lambast him.


I suspect we're going to see more of this...and it is going to get very, very hot.

Regards,

Steve

 

[Rich Parsons]

That would be Pascal's Wager

My apologies you are correct. I did not remember the correct mathematician/philospher.

 

[tellner]

HHJH, I see where you're coming from and agree with much of it. A lot of our disagreement depends on what religion is. Like most Westerners I'm guessing your unspoken assumption is that "religion" means praising a big guy in the sky with a beard who made the universe and keeps a list of who's naughty and nice in the hopes that you'll go to a good place when you die". Such a conception obviously comes from a human desire for safety, security and being taken care of in a universe that makes moral sense. Going back to the Buddha, it's the result of desire and attachment and as such is suspect, a trap even if it's true to fact. It also comes from a conception of religion as a list of things one believes rather than that which one does.

If you look at the New Atheists they are mostly dethroning the Big Guy in the Sky - showing that any particular conception people have about Him/Her/It isn't compatible with what we know about the physical universe and that our deities are constructions which come from the deep structures of our brains and evolutionary past. That's a wonderful thing. Idolatry demands iconoclasm.

The religious urge is a part of us. As I said before, if it were excised we would cease to be human as much as if we got rid of curiosity or "The Force that through the green stem drives the flower."

If this urge is going to be useful to real human beings who want to be awake, aware and spiritually mature their religion will need to be one for adults rather than frightened children no matter what form that practice takes. My Sheik puts it this way "You won't find Allah in the mosque." No human construction is the external reality. The Divine Unity, clear perception of reality, the coming to rest of the manifold of named things, the stilling of the nafs, whatever you want to call it, isn't going to be found in theology or mythology. At best those are tools which can point the way and help a person through particular stages of development. They can and must be abandoned when they are no longer useful in the same way that mathematical models are useful for describing physical phenomenon but are only abstractions used to describe the thing itself.

At the risk of getting quote-heavy there's a good one from the talented, immature, unethical, sometimes brilliant Aleister Crowley. "We place no reliance on virgin or pigeon. Our method is Science. Our aim is Religion." He has a point. We aren't illiterate sheep herding refugees from Iraq (my people). A lot of what was right for them is not right for us even though we are biologically identical to them. The life of the mind has moved on. We live different lives and know different things.

You make a good point about dogmatism. That, alas, is a part of the human condition that shows up in every sphere of endeavor. It must always be guarded against. It shows up in religion a lot, but you see it in politics, AKC conformation standards, childcare, finish carpentry and economics. OK, I'll grant that economics is more a form of religious fundamentalism than art or science

I'm partial to Cthulhu and Tsathoggua - it doesn't get any better than tentacles and toads

It goes without saying, of course, that the desire to destroy religion in general may itself come from irrational fears, desires and knots in the psyche. That is where, I would maintain, the scientist needs a religious practice in the broader sense just like the rest of us. The ability to plumb the mysteries of the three families of quarks or the factorially complex interactions of what we used to call "junk DNA" does not guarantee clarity of mind, proper intention or a life that isn't utterly screwed up in anything except that one area of specialization. It doesn't even work there all the time.

I think we're going to end up disagreeing or at least need a lot more discussion to get down to the fundamentals about the state of the state of the political discussion, the electorate, the state of reason and the rest in the public sphere. If we put it through the wringer I'd bet that we're closer than we seem. I'm just currently more pessimistic about the state of the world. I've been reading The Science of Coercion and a lot of books on fundamentalism, the mechanics of the public opinion/advertising industry and the war against science in general lately. It's depressing reading especially when we are coming up against conditions that demand clear thought, honest debate and a cold dispassionate look at the real world.

It's clear that science education and public understanding of science is terrible in the US. Back when we had people like Glen Seaborg in charge there were advances. Now we're miles behind the rest of the developed and some of the developing world. It's been a long time since Scopes. We shouldn't still be fighting the same battles when even gods-help-us Iran takes modern biology for granted in its schools.

Funding for science is falling in real terms in this country and almost all of it is short-term and commercial. We are producing fewer scientists and engineers partially because the financial and status rewards just aren't there. In many ways the Calvinists may not be winning, but they are certainly ensuring that science, at least on this continent, will lose.

Back when Scopes was on trial there really were mass grassroots movements and a great deal more involvement of the public in the business of the Republic. That was also the era of the Populists when the local Grange was a political force to be reckoned with just to choose one example out of many. The same William Jennings Bryan who made a monkey of himself in Tennessee had given what may be the most rousing speech in American political history just a few years ago. It was on the intricacies of the bi-metallic standard.

These days our sources of information and opinion - the Internet notwithstanding - are more centralized and owned by fewer people with a more homogeneous view of the world than before. The science of manipulating opinions is much more sophisticated than it has ever been, and its reach is further and deeper. We could argue it back and forth. We'd probably find that the real differences are pretty subtle and not that great. I would love to talk over the issues over a beer sometime. Suffice it to say that for a number of reasons I believe that the hindbrain is currently in the ascendancy over the forebrain in the war for the American mind and the tools are more effective than they used to be.

 

[hardheadjarhead]

Well, crap.

I just put almost two hours in on drafting a post, and then the engine logged me off. I then lost all my work. I need to start drafting them in a text file, and then cutting and pasting them.

Crap.

Well, your posts are provocative, Tellner. Sorry that my response went to waste. I may yet respond.

As for Cthulhu?

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fhtagn.

And it is late, and so must I.


Regards,


Steve

 

[tellner]

Drat. Damn. Heck. I was looking forward to it. :tantrum:

And someone else brought up Pascal's Wager. It's a sucker's bet. For all we know the Ultimate Reality might be Mumbo Jumbo G-d of the Congo, Isis, Odin All Father, the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos instead of Yahweh.

 

[arnisador]

As for Cthulhu?

Cthulhu?

Concur with what was said about le pari de Pascal...in any event, if one buys it one believes only out of a combination of fear and logic, which seems to defeat much of the point.

 

[Makalakumu]

The religious urge is a part of us. As I said before, if it were excised we would cease to be human as much as if we got rid of curiosity or "The Force that through the green stem drives the flower."

Tellner - our species may not survive the infancy in which we are currently passing, so all of what I may write may be moot. But, you have said that the religious urge is part of us and from the rest of your post I get the feeling that this is an integral part of the human essence.

There is no human essence.

There is nothing static or permanent in the human condition. We all evolved and that means that what we see here is a snapshot in time, a temporal stilling of the great river of our genes by our reason. Our perspective betrays us though. We, whose life spans are incandescently short in comparison to the Earth, have no intuitive grasp of the things happen over thousands, millions and billions of human generations.

Religion evolved like any other human characteristic. You can note its appearance in the fossil record just as if an ant colony began to build a new type of hive. We can't know for sure what the environmental conditions were at the time that led to the evolution of religion, but certain theories have invoked everything from group identification, abstract awareness of death, use of chemicals, etc.

These conditions have not remained static and neither has religion. As a whole, it has diversified as it spread from human to human as generations passed through different environments. At every point on the journey, religions grew and changed in response to the environmental conditions, sometimes completely reinventing themselves in short bursts of punctuated equilibrium.

Lets assume humans were to go extinct tomorrow and a new form of intelligent life evolved in fifty to one hundred millions years. The strata that would form when certain conditions were right would capture this process for a possible futuristic paleontologist to see. This being, if the society in which it was born was astute enough to rediscover Darwin's insight, would correctly identify our current behavior as ornamentation.

A rough approximation could be made of the physical environmental of the time, but there would be no explanation for the massive and intricate structures that developed because of our religion. With the conceit of hindsight, this paleontologist could see this process in other strata. 400 millions before that time, trilobites underwent a similar transformation. Some of them grew massive horns and others developed intricate lacework patterns in their exoskeleton. All of this cost them a great amount of energy to build and there is no explanation for it.

Another thing these futuristic paleontologists would see with the conceit of hindsight is that all forms of life go extinct when they undergo an ornamentation phase. The explanation is simple, too much energy is expended for purposes other then survival in the changing environmental conditions.

Our environmental conditions are changing in ways that all humans on this planet have ever experienced in all of our long years of evolution. Globalization is connecting us to nearly every other human on this planet. It is possible for all of our thoughts and ideas to be shared and it is possible for every group to physically interact with every other group.

What will all of the old behavioral relics of religious ornamentation do under these conditions? How can the massive organized groupthinks that developed in the middle ages adapt to this? How long do we have to wait for one group or another to use a nuke to deal with the infidels?

Religion has become maladaptive to the current human condition. There are lots of things that could cause our extinction. Most of those things are beyond our control. One of them that we are able to influence is our behavior. All religion, through dogma, encourages just the type of interactions with all other human beings that promote conflict. Globalization requires the use of our reason. Peace is impossible without it because we'll never figure out how to live with one another.

In my opinion, this is why you see the new type of atheist rising out of the woodwork. People like Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, etc, have sensed the way the evolutionary river is flowing and they are rightly afraid of its direction.

upnorthkyosa

 

[heretic888]

Tellner - our species may not survive the infancy in which we are currently passing, so all of what I may write may be moot. But, you have said that the religious urge is part of us and from the rest of your post I get the feeling that this is an integral part of the human essence.

There is no human essence.

There is nothing static or permanent in the human condition. We all evolved and that means that what we see here is a snapshot in time, a temporal stilling of the great river of our genes by our reason. Our perspective betrays us though. We, whose life spans are incandescently short in comparison to the Earth, have no intuitive grasp of the things happen over thousands, millions and billions of human generations.

Religion evolved like any other human characteristic. You can note its appearance in the fossil record just as if an ant colony began to build a new type of hive. We can't know for sure what the environmental conditions were at the time that led to the evolution of religion, but certain theories have invoked everything from group identification, abstract awareness of death, use of chemicals, etc.

These conditions have not remained static and neither has religion. As a whole, it has diversified as it spread from human to human as generations passed through different environments. At every point on the journey, religions grew and changed in response to the environmental conditions, sometimes completely reinventing themselves in short bursts of punctuated equilibrium.

Lets assume humans were to go extinct tomorrow and a new form of intelligent life evolved in fifty to one hundred millions years. The strata that would form when certain conditions were right would capture this process for a possible futuristic paleontologist to see. This being, if the society in which it was born was astute enough to rediscover Darwin's insight, would correctly identify our current behavior as ornamentation.

A rough approximation could be made of the physical environmental of the time, but there would be no explanation for the massive and intricate structures that developed because of our religion. With the conceit of hindsight, this paleontologist could see this process in other strata. 400 millions before that time, trilobites underwent a similar transformation. Some of them grew massive horns and others developed intricate lacework patterns in their exoskeleton. All of this cost them a great amount of energy to build and there is no explanation for it.

Another thing these futuristic paleontologists would see with the conceit of hindsight is that all forms of life go extinct when they undergo an ornamentation phase. The explanation is simple, too much energy is expended for purposes other then survival in the changing environmental conditions.

Our environmental conditions are changing in ways that all humans on this planet have ever experienced in all of our long years of evolution. Globalization is connecting us to nearly every other human on this planet. It is possible for all of our thoughts and ideas to be shared and it is possible for every group to physically interact with every other group.

What will all of the old behavioral relics of religious ornamentation do under these conditions? How can the massive organized groupthinks that developed in the middle ages adapt to this? How long do we have to wait for one group or another to use a nuke to deal with the infidels?

Religion has become maladaptive to the current human condition. There are lots of things that could cause our extinction. Most of those things are beyond our control. One of them that we are able to influence is our behavior. All religion, through dogma, encourages just the type of interactions with all other human beings that promote conflict. Globalization requires the use of our reason. Peace is impossible without it because we'll never figure out how to live with one another.

In my opinion, this is why you see the new type of atheist rising out of the woodwork. People like Dawkins, Harris, Dennett, etc, have sensed the way the evolutionary river is flowing and they are rightly afraid of its direction.

upnorthkyosa

That's all well and good, John, but here's the problem.

If every religion were somehow wiped off the face of the earth, human beings would still access altered states of consciousness, still undergo what Maslow identified as "peak experiences", and still develop into postrational and transpersonal stages of consciousness (which are quite often identified as "spiritual" although I would hesitate using that designation myself) with cognitive maturation. In fact, unless our physical brains undergo some massive evolution and fundamental "re-wiring" sometime soon, this is always going to be a facet of the "human condition".

This is all even more likely if meditative and contemplative technologies continue to survive --- and there's no reason to believe they won't --- which make men and women more epistemologically "open" to these sorts of phenomena. That being said, it is feasible that meditative practice can live on while the religious tradition it was once wedded to has long since died.

Of course, as I argued previously about moral development, the environments people are born in will in large part adjudicate how much of this stuff is "permissible" in social practice. However, regardless of environmental factors, human beings are still born in a given psychological "axis" that they quite frankly have no choice about (no social conditioning can alter the fact that human children mature cognitively from symbolic-representational thought into concrete rule-based logic and so on, all the environment can do is alter the "pace" at which this development proceeds).

So, yeah, "religion" in one form or another is going to be with us as long as humans have something remotely akin to the biology and psychology we have now.

 

[Makalakumu]

That's all well and good, John, but here's the problem.

If every religion were somehow wiped off the face of the earth, human beings would still access altered states of consciousness, still undergo what Maslow identified as "peak experiences", and still develop into postrational and transpersonal stages of consciousness (which are quite often identified as "spiritual" although I would hesitate using that designation myself) with cognitive maturation. In fact, unless our physical brains undergo some massive evolution and fundamental "re-wiring" sometime soon, this is always going to be a facet of the "human condition".

This is all even more likely if meditative and contemplative technologies continue to survive --- and there's no reason to believe they won't --- which make men and women more epistemologically "open" to these sorts of phenomena. That being said, it is feasible that meditative practice can live on while the religious tradition it was once wedded to has long since died.

Of course, as I argued previously about moral development, the environments people are born in will in large part adjudicate how much of this stuff is "permissible" in social practice. However, regardless of environmental factors, human beings are still born in a given psychological "axis" that they quite frankly have no choice about (no social conditioning can alter the fact that human children mature cognitively from symbolic-representational thought into concrete rule-based logic and so on, all the environment can do is alter the "pace" at which this development proceeds).

So, yeah, "religion" in one form or another is going to be with us as long as humans have something remotely akin to the biology and psychology we have now.

I think you may be overestimating the amount of wiring our brains devote to this sort of thing, but that discussion is not something that can be solved here.

The point of my post isn't to argue that transforming one's state of conciousness is maladaptive to our current environmental conditions, its to show how the structures that manipulate this process are ultimately dangerous to the existence of our species. They are evolutionary ornamentations.

I think that our species needs to excise these and develop an individualized way of accessing other states of consciousness and/or development.

 

[heretic888]

I think you may be overestimating the amount of wiring our brains devote to this sort of thing, but that discussion is not something that can be solved here.

Well, let's put it this way... there is some evidence to indicate that meditative states of awareness are in some way related to the various stages of sleep (REM, dreamless, and so on) that human beings experience.

To say nothing else, it is very interesting when an experienced meditator can be pumping out delta waves (normally associated with deep dreamless sleep) while perfectly awake and cognizant of his or her surroundings.

The point of my post isn't to argue that transforming one's state of conciousness is maladaptive to our current environmental conditions, its to show how the structures that manipulate this process are ultimately dangerous to the existence of our species. They are evolutionary ornamentations.

Well, you addressed that point in reaction to Tellner's comment about the "religious impulse". I won't speak for him, but I believe "transforming one's consciousness" was probably what he was talking about.

I think that our species needs to excise these and develop an individualized way of accessing other states of consciousness and/or development.

I dunno. There are a lot of religions out there that are pretty benign to mine eyes. Zen Buddhism, Sufism, most forms of Kabbalah, Unitarian Universalism, some forms of Quakerism, Vedanta Hinduism, Transcendental Meditation Yoga, and others all immediately come to mind. Of course, these all pretty much put emphasis on contemplation and ethical practice over preaching and converting.

I also believe the kind of absolutist totalitarianism you are worried about here is not exclusive to religion. If religion were excised, human beings would still project their impulses toward power and control onto other social institutions. I also doubt whether we can truly excise this way of thinking, as it is most likely a stage of development.