Ironwolf

No, I’m not going to refute atheism for you.

But over at edge.org, the conversation started at the Beyond Belief 2006 conference is continuing with a lively debate between Scott Atran and Sam Harris. A worthwhile read, but I want to focus on something Harris said near the closing of his rebuttal:

If there is an argument against “evangelical” atheists like Dawkins, Weinberg, and myself it must take one of these forms:

(1) Certain religious beliefs are true (or likely to be true); here’s why…
(2) Religious beliefs, while not likely to be true, are so useful that they are necessary; here’s the evidence…
(3) Many religious people are so irrational that it is simply too dangerous to criticize their beliefs. Please keep your mouth shut.

I thought this to be particularly insightful, because many of the arguments I run into these days are entirely tangential to the stratagems Harris lists. A short list of popular tangents:

• Religious people are often good.
• There are bad people who are/were atheists.
• Economic and political circumstances drive people to do bad things.
• Science cannot/has not answered all questions about origins/meaning.
• It is impolite/impolitic to criticize others’ religion.
• You don’t understand the religion(s) you are criticizing as deeply as the believers and/or scholars of that religion.
• Atheists cannot disprove “God” (for some sufficiently vague definition of “God”.)

These points, in and of themselves, are not fallacies. Yet, granting every single one of them will not diminish by one iota the force of the arguments made against superstition and dogmatism in general, and religion in particular.

Unfortunately, many of these points are regularly trotted out not only by believers who seem to think they somehow bolster the case for faith, but also by well-meaning scientists and philosophers who envision a lasting détente between science and religion.

As I don’t see religion going away any time soon, I can see times and places where temporary détente might be a good thing. However, I believe that mollifying dogmatists is ultimately a losing strategy. Our world has been in dire need of voices like those of Dawkins and Harris who are willing to play bad cop to the chorus of Templeton Prize-contender good cops. Calling the good cops on the carpet for attacking such tangents as listed above is one major contribution to the conversation the bad cops make, as Harris does so eloquently in his rebuttal.

So if you want to attack the arguments (or tactics) of “evangelical” atheists, by all means do so. But do it right and go for the three points that Harris raises instead of the litany of straw men that really add nothing to your position.

That phrase keeps coming up lately.

Traditionally, “beyond belief” has been used to denote things that are literally unbelievable, as in “totally, completely, or utterly beyond belief.”

But I’ve noticed the phrase is now becoming adapted for a more contemporary issue: what lies beyond religious faith?

If you’re a Christian, then you might use this phrase to mean, “OK, so you believe. Now, how do you go beyond mere beliefs and live your life as God wants you to?”

But more interestingly (to me at least), a number of secular sources have begun to use it to pose the issue of, “What does the future look like when we have moved beyond superstitious faith?”

For instance, in 2003, the art theme of Burning Man was Beyond Belief.

Beyond belief, beyond the dogmas, creeds, and metaphysical ideas of religion, there is immediate experience. It is from this primal world that living faith arises. The intention of Beyond Belief is to explore this mystery. In 2003, we will invite participants to create interactive rites, ritual processions, elaborate images, shrines, icons, temples, and visions. Our theme will occupy that ambiguous territory that lies between reverence and ridicule, faith and belief, the absurd and the stunningly sublime. The human urge to make events, objects, actions, and personalities sacred is protean. It can fix on and inhabit anyone or anything. This year our art theme will release that spirit in the Black Rock Desert.

Clearly this theme touched a nerve. In my opinion, it was a particularly fertile year for the always-fertile Black Rock city.

A more recent use of the phrase was at the Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason, and Survival symposium given November 5-7, 2006 at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, CA. This symposium drew together prominent scientists to discuss three major threads:

1. The clash of cultures: religion and science. Is this a zero-sum game?
2. Can you be good without God?
3. If not God then what? What about spirituality, meaning, and purpose?

The best news about this symposium is that the entire, un-edited video is freely available for viewing online.

So, from what I can see the “Beyond Belief” conversation is proceeding nicely in both sides of the brain, the right side exemplified by Burning Man and the left by the symposium. Knowing things like these are going on gives me a lot of hope for the future of humanity.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend today. He had just finished reading Sam Harris Letter to a Christian Nation, and being a (rather liberal) Christian himself, I was quite interested in his take on the book. Essentially, he thought that Harris was protesting too much over religion as a root of evil, and asserted that virtually every world conflict, from the Crusades to Manifest Destiny to the conflicts in Northern Ireland to 9/11 were really struggles over culture, ethnicity, politics, or land or other resources. Religion, he said, was always a pretext to cover simple human greed and “class struggle.”

I told him this view surprised me— the willingness to die as the 9/11 hijackers did most often arises in the case of religious martyrs. I mentioned that Christians will often give, as a reason for their belief, that many early Christians were willing to die as martyrs for their beliefs; a fact that gives weight to modern belief. The argument goes that people who die as martyrs believe that they will in fact benefit from dying (in the afterlife) so they must have good reasons for their belief. My friend’s reaction was that he had not heard of Christians giving this reason for belief, although I assured him I had encountered it on a number of occasions.

We were finally able to agree that religion is at least one factor among many that leads to conflict. I felt this was a minor victory in our debate, as he seemed quite resistant to finger religious superstition as a source of any human misery. I tried to enlarge the context of the problem by pointing out that Harris sees religion as an important component of a larger problem: dogmatic belief systems of all kinds. Religious people are dogmatic about the truth of their belief system’s propositions.

“Unlike you?” my friend asked, slyly.

I considered. “Look at the book, The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins. Dawkins is perhaps the leading public atheist of our time. The core of his book lies in Chapter 4, entitled ‘Why there almost certainly is no God.’ Does that sound like a dogmatic statement? Is he saying, ‘There is definitely no God?’ Is he saying, ‘Any kind of God is impossible?’ No. He has beliefs on the matter (well-founded I think,) but he remains open to new evidence. Now, how many Christians are willing to make the complementary statement, “There almost certainly is a God?” How would they feel about leaving the door open to the possibility that God doesn’t exist? Who really has the dogma?”

He had no answer.