Hitchens and the Speculative End of Religion

Posted on Wednesday 18 December 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

There have been several online articles in recent days about Christopher Hitchens, author of god is not great [lower cases intentional], who died just two years ago.

Jerry Coyne checks in on rival takes on Christopher Hitchens, both on Salon, including this one by an editor for The Atlantic, Jeffrey Tayler, criticizing an earlier essay (which was critical of Hitchens) by Sean McElwee.

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/14/the_real_new_atheism_rejecting_religion_for_a_just_world/”

McElwee calls for a “truce” between believers and nonbelievers. But he stands on the losing side of both public opinion trends and history. According to a Pew poll conducted in 2012, a record number of young Americans – a quarter of those between the ages of 18 and 29 — see themselves as unaffiliated with any religion. Atheists’ ranks are swelling, and believers are finding it increasingly difficult to justify their faith.
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McElwee then tendentiously defines religion so as to paper over its often decisive role in precipitating conflicts. Though he allows that it might “motivate acts of social justice and injustice,” “[r]eligion is both a personal search for truth as well as a communal attempt to discern where we fit in the order of things.” Religion first and foremost consists of unsubstantiated, dogmatically advanced explanations for the cosmos and our place in it, with resulting universally applicable rules of conduct. A good many of these rules – especially those regarding women’s behavior and their (subservient) status vis-à-vis men, and prescriptions for less-than-merciful treatment of gays – are repugnant, retrograde, and arbitrary, based on “sacred texts” espousing “revealed truths” dating back to what the British atheist philosopher Bertrand Russell justly called the “savage ages.” (Islam by no means has a monopoly on such rules – check Leviticus for its catalogue of “crimes”: working on the Sabbath, cursing one’s parents, being the victim of rape – that merit the death penalty.) Just how such “holy” compendia of ahistorical, often macabre fables are supposed to help anyone in a “personal search for truth” mystifies me.
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“The impulse to destroy religion will ultimately fail,” McElwee claims. Just what he means by this is unclear. Hitchens spoke out tirelessly against religion but never believed it could be eradicated; rather, he likened it to Camus’ plague-infected rats, scurrying about in humanity’s sewer, ever awaiting a chance to reemerge.

Despite the unpleasant allusion to rats, I would endorse Hitchens’ take on the futility of eradicating religion, simply because human psychology is what it is, and ignorance of the world and the universe is the default, requiring constant effort (i.e. education) to overcome. Back to my reset-the-world scenario: humanity would recreate culture and language and religions and science, and while science would be more or less the same — because it’s grounded in reality — cultures and languages would be different, and so would religions, because they result from psychological biases of the human mind in attempting to understand how the natural world works.

An SF writer influential when I was a teenager was Arthur C. Clarke, not just for the scales of space and time he evoked, and humanity’s small place in it, but for his calm assumption that, as humanity matured and moved out into the universe, the old superstitions of religion would fade. You don’t see much in the way of institutionized religion in Star Trek, to take a pop culture example. But I’ve changed my mind over the years about the likelihood of the Clarke assumption, without a species-wide leap toward more comprehensive education. And how would that happen? If anything the past decade or so has shown is that increased access to information – i.e. the internet – only creates self-reinforcing communities clinging to one ideology or another, the very opposite of any possible shared culture or comprehensive education about the real world. It demonstrates that most people can, in fact, ‘get by’ not knowing much of anything, and ‘believing’ lots of things that aren’t real, and still conduct themselves functionally as human beings. And there doesn’t seem to be much reason for thinking how or why that should ever change.

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Awe

Posted on Wednesday 18 December 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Here’s a story that’s gotten some attention this past week — reports that when people look at awesome scenery, like the Grand Canyon, they are more inclined to attribute them to God (whatever that means).

www.huffingtonpost.com/matthew-hutson/awe-increases-religious-belief_b_4423247.html

The emotion of awe has been described by psychologists Dacher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt as a combination of two elements: a sense of vastness — in terms of size or power or prestige — and a “need for accommodation,” a desire to somehow accommodate the experience into one’s worldview. When you look at the Grand Canyon, the scale of the thing overwhelms you, and its magnificence challenges you to find some explanation for its existence. In other words: Wow! How?

This disorientation sets the stage for magical thinking. Humans tend to flee from uncertainty, and they respond to it by looking for patterns in the world. They sometimes see patterns where none exists, and those patterns sometimes involve supernatural phenomena. Jennifer Whitson and Adam Galinsky have reported that making subjects feel out of control leads them to see shapes in random noise, to see false correlations in financial reports, to see coincidences as conspiracies, and to rely on superstitious actions.

So here I have a chance to to set down what seems to me a rather obvious observation, to those not blinkered by religious awe. To wit: why would it be that *certain* experiences in the world evoke this god-feeling? Seeing the Grand Canyon, or the immensities of space; or, to those more easily impressed, a simple rainbow, or the glow of sun from behind clouds.

Now think about this: if there is a god who made the universe, then this god is responsible for every part of it. The Grand Canyon, the dirt beneath your feet, the rainbow, the dead squirrel lying in the road — and even more repulsive circumstances I will refrain from suggesting. Everything you find impressive or disgusting and anything in between. So: if you find some of these experiences evocative of God and not others, then something is going on in your head that is not about experience of the world evoking God. Here is where we can cue the psychological biases discussed in this article. Perception of God is not about experience of reality; it’s about something going on inside your head.

Posted in Philosophy, Religion, Thinking | Comments Off on Awe

Aggressive Atheist Steps Down

Posted on Wednesday 18 December 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Interesting article by Martin S. Pribble, whose blog I’ve noticed from time to time, which post has been repurposed by Slate.come

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2013/12/why_i_m_quitting_the_online_atheism_community.html

Faith overrides knowledge and truth in any situation, so arguing with a theist is akin to banging your head against a brick wall: You will injure yourself and achieve little.

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I have decided to define myself by what I stand for in life rather than what I don’t believe in. I call this “methodological humanism.” In essence, methodological humanism is a standpoint by which everyone, theist, agnostic, and atheist alike, can agree on as a platform from which we can all benefit: the need for food, water, and sanitation; the protection of our natural environment; and the preservation of the world as a whole. Without these things, we, as a species, cease to exist.

So much of Internet discourse is based upon the disagreements we have with one another, and sometimes it feels like sport, about scoring points and relishing your opponent’s missteps. But if we can first find a space where we agree, a bottom-line for the well-being of all people, then the arguments about belief begin to look like petty squabbling over childhood toys.

It helps to understand that for many people, faith and religion are more important than having an accurate understanding of reality, even if faith and religion entail obvious practical absurdities, as they always tend to do. (Otherwise it would not be ‘faith’.) This dovetails with the ‘getting by’ comments in previous posts. In strictly terms of human survival, even prosperity, the myths (and psychological biases) can be more useful than a firm grip on reality. Letting go of the myths and pursuing reality is a dangerous, brave, scary thing to do.

In general, there comes a point when you have come to terms with what you ‘believe’ in – with the way in which you understand your own apprehension of the world – and cease needing to defend that to everyone or anyone. Instead you move on; you accomplish something; you show by example. This is why to some degree it doesn’t matter whether people ‘believe’ looney, unreal things, because the crazy contents of their minds don’t actually have much of an effect on anyone or anything.

As some bloggers frequently ask, what has faith accomplished lately? Has the religious understanding of God changed in the past century? No, because there’s nothing in the real world to affect that understanding.

Whereas the real world changes daily as science and technology continue to develop. Based on understanding and interaction with the real world. Faith doesn’t build 747s, or the internet.

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Getting Along without Knowing

Posted on Sunday 8 December 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Interesting interview with Patricia Churchland, UCSD ‘neurophilosopher’ in Slate today, originally from New Scientist, about the dismay some people feel at the notion that, to quote the interview’s intro, “our hopes, loves and very existence are just elaborate functions of a complicated mass of grey tissue.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2013/12/the_self_as_brain_disturbing_implications_of_neuroexistentialism.html

My initial reaction: well, yes of course, but how is this observation more dismaying that thinking of any great book — even, say, the Bible — as “just elaborate” arrangements of a handful of letters? It’s the complex patterns of those components that matter.

GL: Why is it so difficult for us to see the reality of what we actually are?

PC: Part of the answer has to do with the evolution of nervous systems. Is there any reason for a brain to know about itself? We can get along without knowing, just as we can get along without knowing that the liver is in there filtering out toxins. The wonderful thing, of course, is that science allows us to know.

This is a point worthy of extensive expansion. Humans can, and do, ‘get along’ without knowing an awful lot that, nevertheless, can be known by investigation and examination and experience. Most humans in history have ‘gotten along’ without knowing about anything outside their immediate family or tribe or valley, much less awareness of their internal biological or neurological workings.

The effect of investigation and examination and experience, of knowing things, is that the more things you ‘get along’ without knowing, the more likely the things you ‘believe’ are not actually true.

Posted in Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Thinking | Comments Off on Getting Along without Knowing

Today’s favorite song: Wake Me Up

Posted on Saturday 7 December 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Only just now saw the video; responding to having heard the song half a dozen times on KCRW and KROQ this past week.

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Applying the Lessons

Posted on Friday 6 December 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Skeptic Blog has a post on the topic that has fascinated me in recent months, the psychological biases of the human mind that guide our behavior but hide our understanding of what is real.

http://www.skepticblog.org/2013/12/02/champagne-tasting/

The blogger writes:

One of my primary goals for this blog is to reinforce, strongly and frequently, the notion of neuropsychological humility – the understanding that our perceptions and memories are deeply flawed and biased. There appears to be almost no limit to the extent to which people can deceive themselves into believing bizarre things.

Psychologists have documented these flaws and biases in numerous ways, and when confronted with demonstrations of such people tend to be amused, as if they were being entertained by a magic show, but do not necessarily apply the lessons to themselves and their own lives. This is one of the key differences, in my opinion, between skeptics (critical thinkers) and non-skeptics – a working knowledge of self-deception.

The subject of the post is about blind tasting of champagne. I’ve read about several such studies over the past few years — amazingly, even experts usually cannot tell the difference between cheap and expensive wine, or even whether a given taste is red or white — and so this is an area in which I have changed my behavior as a result of evidence. I no longer ‘splurge’ on expensive bottles of wine at the market, and I always aim for the low end (not the very low end) of the wine menu in restaurants. And they taste just fine.

Posted in Psychology | Comments Off on Applying the Lessons

Families

Posted on Tuesday 26 November 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Today’s New York Times’ Science section is entirely devoted to ‘Families’, with articles about changing trends and also profiles of several nontraditional families, including one about a gay couple — in their 50s and 60s — who have adopted 6 children (!).

A similar idea has not been entirely out of my own thoughts, recently.

Posted in Culture, Personal history | Comments Off on Families

Ineffability, God thereof

Posted on Monday 25 November 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Another Andrew Sullivan post on The Dish– a few days ago, this, via Aidan Kimel and Herbert McCabe:

God must be incomprehensible to us precisely because he is creator of all that is and, as Aquinas puts it, outside the order of all beings. God therefore cannot be classified as any kind of being. God cannot be compared to or contrasted with other things in respect of what they are like as dogs can be compared and contrasted with cats and both of them with stones or stars. God is not an inhabitant of the universe; he is the reason why there is a universe at all.

…and so on.

Today, readers bristle, in several comments, e.g.

You have to be kidding. “We don’t know what God is” has got to be just about the most unintentionally hilarious statement about religion I have ever heard. For the longest time, atheists have been trying to make the point that the concept of God as defined in every faith is impossible. The concept of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omni-benevolent deity is self-contradictory using elementary logic.

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Presumably the purpose of this is to move the argument away from where atheism is succeeding on the merits – pointing out the logical inconsistencies of religious belief – into more favorable and murky territory. “Richard Dawkins get it wrong, because our God isn’t like all those other gods. Because we say so.” This is utter piffle, unworthy of you or your blog.

Every religion ascribes the very existence of the universe to their deity or deities. Otherwise they wouldn’t be gods. Saying “God is in everything” is meaningless. It doesn’t change the fact that religious belief is based on pure faith and nothing else.

Several other worthy responses.

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A Celebration of Human Ingenuity

Posted on Monday 25 November 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

Andrew Sullivan’s The Dish on The Inevitabilty In Beauty.

Theoretical physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed and novelist Ian McEwan recently discussed the relationship between art and science, often agreeing that what might unite them is beauty.

I like McEwan’s response:

I would like to feel that we could think about science as just one more aspect of organised human curiosity rather than as a special compartment. And it has, as has been very clear from this discussion, a powerful aesthetic. I think we need to generalise it. We need to absorb it into our sense that we can love the music of Beethoven without being composers and we could love science as a celebration of human ingenuity without being scientists.

Science has had a huge effect on my own sense of the world. It certainly has helped me along the way to a general global scepticism about religion. The world of faith is inimical to the world of science and in that sense science has helped me want to write books every now and then that celebrate a full-blooded rationalism. It’s one of our delightful aspects and it informs what we try to do with our laws and social policy.
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The Trolley Problem

Posted on Sunday 24 November 2013 by Mark R. Kelly

NYTBR reviews not one but two books about the ‘trolley problem’, a hypothetical situation in which the decisions people make reveal how intuitive moral decisions are made differently by different people. The question is, suppose you see a runaway trolley car about to hit five people. But you could throw a switch to move the trolley to another track, where it would hit only one person. Would you throw the switch?

An equivalent but more disturbing situation: You are on a bridge and see the trolley bearing down on five people. There is a fat man next to you, and if you push him over the bridge, his bulk would stop the trolley, though at the cost of his life. Would you push him off?

The two books explore results of psychological studies on these questions, as well as the philosophical principles they reveal. The reasons for different decisions by different people boil down to issues of psychology, though the review doesn’t quite state it in those terms. But it’s consistent with my other recent reading (e.g. McRaney).

“The contingent nature of our ethical responses in general emerges from other research. We are more generous toward a stranger if we have just found a dime; a judge’s decision to grant parole depends on how long it has been since he or she had lunch. Are these the “deep-rooted moral instincts” on which we are willing to found decisions that may affect tens or hundreds of thousands of fellow humans?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/books/review/would-you-kill-the-fat-man-and-the-trolley-problem.html

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