Wednesday, January 31, 2007

An Atheist Vs. Christian Debate

I've been really fascinated by the open dialogue between atheist Sam Harris and pro-religion blogger, Andrew Sullivan. If you have time to follow along, it's been wonderfully illuminating, respectful and educational. I was raised in a conservative Christian home, but many of the things I was taught are things I no longer believe -- like anti-gay theology, to name one example.

But what troubles me about religion is that it assumes that it should be respected above the kinds of standards we impose upon every thing else in the world. Science is always viewed with suspicion, as if it's trying to pull something over on the world, while religion gets a free pass because we shouldn't say anything bad about stuff that's "holy." Frankly, I'm getting tired of this kind of fascistic thinking. I think we should apply the same standards of "truth" to everything, whether it's been deemed "holy" or not.

That may scare some people, but, frankly, I think some people need to get scared about stuff they have always assumed to be true. Sam Harris makes a compelling point about the clash between science and religion here:

As you know, there are an uncountable number of questions upon which religion once offered a faith-based answer, which have now been ceded to the care of science. Indeed, the process of scientific conquest and religious forfeiture is relentless, unidirectional, and highly predictable.

Relentless, unidirectional and highly predictable. Think about it. From Galileo forward, every single time religion and science had a disagreement, religion ended up being in the wrong. Why? Because religionists and clerics inculcate mythology into their dogma. Then, when science proves them wrong, they are left with no good choices. Either kill the scientist or give up their religion. They never seem to understand that there is a third way: To admit they were wrong. Both in their belief about that subject, and wrong to impose mythology into their dogma.

Some smart person begins to doubt received opinion-about the causes of illness, the movement of celestial bodies, the nature of sensory perception, etc.-he or she then observes the world more closely (often making shrewd use of technology and/or mathematics) and makes predictions that can be verified by others. What we see, time and again, is a general unwillingness for religious people to seriously interact with this discourse (and even an eagerness to subjugate or murder its perpetrators) whenever it challenges doctrines to which they are emotionally attached.

Exactly. They want to be perceived as "knowing all." They want to be seen as better than the rest of us because they have "studied" God. Their position of power is threatened by truth.

Eventually, however, the power that comes with actually understanding the world becomes too seductive to ignore, and even the clerics give in. In this way, real knowledge, being truly universal, erodes the basis for religious discord. Muslims and Christians cannot disagree about the causes of cholera, for instance, because whatever their holy books might say about infectious disease, a genuine understanding of cholera has arrived from another quarter. Epidemiology trumps religion (or it should), especially when people are watching their children die. This is where our hope for a truly nonsectarian future lies: when things matter, people tend to want to understand what is actually going on in the world. Science (and rational discourse generally) delivers this understanding and offers a very frank appraisal of its current limitations; Religion fails on both counts.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

the ol' circular "sacred cow" argument.
You can't disparage my faith.
Why not?
Because it cannot be disparaged.
why?
Because God said the unbelievers would disparage it.

Where would they all be if evil science had been controlled and we never had vaccines, or surgeries, or knowledge that the earth was in fact a globe...

Anonymous said...

One of the speech and language specialists in my school system is also a professional storyteller. She is often asked by young children about her stories: "is it true?"

She turns the question back to them: "what do YOU think?"

Upon reflection, most children eventually figure out that there is no way to turn a child into gingerbread, there are no witches in the woods who eat them, and you can't REALLY make a house out of candy ("it's too sticky and you wouldn't fit inside," mused one 6-year-old).

But a child DOES inhabit a world filled with giants (aka grownups) and they CAN be outwitted at times. There are plenty of unknown adults to a child who look pretty scary, and lots of places that feel as unsafe as an enchanted wood (The Mall all by yourself, perhaps). Hansel and Gretel isn't true because it REALLY happened, it's true because it FEELS true, like every day life.

The problem with religion is not so much that it's false, or wrong, but that it's expected to be true in ways it was never meant to be true. As soon as believers expect their religion to be factually accurate we have exactly the confrontations you desccribe.

John Shelby Spong sums it up like this: We're asking the wrong questions. Instead of asking "Did it happen?" we should be asking "What does it mean?" It's a different view of truth, a more creative and forgiving one, IMO.

I think one reason the metaphors of religion persist is because they are SO are powerful - because on a very deep level they FEEL very true. Maybe that is why it is so very hard to let go of the thought that the feeling of truth is the same as factual, scientific proof.

Sadly, the average fundamentalist of my acquaintance has his buttocks clenched so tightly around said "truth" that I sometimes despair we will ever discover the right laxative to get everyone to relax their collective assholes long enough to drop that damn quarter.

and that's the TRUTH!

peace,
Brian

Anonymous said...

sorry so long-winded, still thinking about this...

The Big Voice is true. I am sure that for storytelling purposes some of the facts might have been, uh, "rearranged" or even invented a bit for dramatic purposes - in order to more fully convey the truth of how you two have experienced your lives.

When I saw Big Voice in Connecticut I couldn't help but see my life in your show. Big Voice is very much my story too, even though the facts of my life are nothing like those you put on the stage. Even so, you and Jim sing the TRUTH about how my life has unfolded, in depth, and with uncanny emotional accuracy, like I've never seen before in any theatrical production.

Truth - "truer than true" as my storytelling colleague puts it... it ain't necessarily about facts. The truth of experience. The truth of what this life feels like. The truth of the heart. The truth of our stories. Facts don't tell those truths very well. Nor can you use those truths as fact.

You speak and sing the truth Steve and Jim! Thank you, thank you, thank you...

peace,
Brian

googletoper said...

At the end there it did look a little more torwards tech. And science prevails, and its easy to agree with. But what if our technology and science fails? Then we need religion as a back up. Is it a waste of time going to cherch, or a back up, like one for a computer. We have came an insane langth as an animal. But I think we should push forth and ajetisond some humans into the depth of space. We use so much materiol just fuiling our economy, that a back up for 2012 would be nothing compaird to the coust of all these billions of years just to start from scratch... I think the human race is intreguing and we can alter our jeans geneticly... in SPACE. Aka anywhere. what comes to my mind is that computers are the only way we can jeneticly alter animals and humans and we need to keep them around. IN SPACE. Space pirates for the metroid games and olimar the space ship junk transporter both from the game cube have much to offer. They are fictitious, but we can harness thair knolage and base plans to get the buman race survivors out of the blast radius of the suns supernova. (If aplicable) lol
Games make me think. Thoughts make me dream. Dreams make me act. An act is playing games, or crating a spaceship that can get our spiecshies into the OUTERSPACE and than, behind jupiter but that has hopfully already happend because it takes years for a spaceship to move LIGHTYEARS lol ok ill stop ranting now. And hope the human race continues!!! For thoughts sake, just shoot some thousand mile an hour dna in tubes at another few hundred planites. Sins of a solar empire is a great game.

googletoper said...

Long live the human race! Even if we have to create it again on another planit...