If there ever was a time for scientists to “come out” as atheist with respect to the gods of the monotheisms it is now,  Coyne gives them an opportunity to do so.  If our political and cultural leaders are taking civilization to the brink of catastrophe based upon prophesies from the Iron Age, then it’s time to demonstrate and emphasize the foolish of relying on such supernaturalism.

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[I naively banged this into the middle of some discussion over at Pharyngula. Perhaps it’s more approp. here]
Hi, I’d like to make some comments and ask some questions. I was hoping I could get some constructive replies and criticism.
Sorry if it’s a little long.

First point:
The initial push encouraging the ‘outing’ of atheists was necessary, but current situation still leaves some things to be desired.

Accomodationism debate:

1. Best point on atheist side: still religious ‘fundamentalists’ who could be
argued to have negative effects on the world and that can only really be engaged in confrontational manner.

2. Best point on ‘accomodationist’ side: not all religious believers like this. Plenty that we can get along well
with and who can accept evolution/science/knowledge and social rights (e.g. rights for homosexuals etc).

Counterpoints from each, re best points:

1. Confrontation puts off the more open-minded and creates negative
impression, minimising chance they will bother to listen to you (since they have that choice and lots of competing opinion).

2. These people only accept these things by essentially ignoring their religion. Not ‘true believers’. Just
plain fluffy-minded.

Obviously this can continue on for a while.

However, a first-cut suggestion: now that atheists have been well ‘outed’, why
not focus primarily on public agnosticism (i.e. agnosticism/secular values for public policy) while maintaining personal and
within-group atheism?

This is still sufficiently antagonistic to those who want God directly involved in day to day life and public
policy, but is in-line with the ‘agnostic believer’ i.e. those with a more ‘subtle’ form of belief which is not as dangerous. If we could
join forces with the agnostics to some extent e.g. with respect to public policy we would potentially avoid many side-tracking issues.

We could essentially argue the same points: e.g. science/evol tends to encourage an agnostic view of the world, with each side then
making additional separate arguments if they wish to encourage atheistic agnosticism vs religious agnosticism.

This would surely be a first step towards whatever world we want, but avoid an ugly split between the (for lack of better descriptors)
hardline/strict atheists and the more pragmatic/accommodating atheists, which seems to be possibly happening to some extent. It might
also make new allies with regard to the really important things e.g. teaching best science in schools, social rights, etc.

This of course seems a bit naive to me, but it’s a first cut. Any thoughts, criticisms or suggestions?

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There’s another option (one I’m betting my life on): namely, religion accomadating to science.  Religion evolving.  Religious people interpreting all of religion’s mythic language as metaphor (what it’s always been).  Religion becoming naturalized.

There’s a large and growing number of religious people, like me, who are thoroughgoing naturalists,  evolutionary humanists.  We have no religious beliefs whatsoever.  We’re neither theists, nor atheists.  We’re emergentists.  (“Theism” and “atheism”, as concepts, came into being long before we had an evidential understanding of evolutionary emergence.)

My book, “Thank God for Evolution”, has been endorsed by 6 Nobel laureates and other science luminaries, including noted skeptics/atheists, and by religious leaders across the spectrum.  My goal in writing TGFE was twofold (1) to allure religious people into an evidential, naturalist worldview, and (2) to inspire people of all backgrounds and beliefs to cooperate in service of a just and thriving future for all.  It seems to me that we’re in serious trouble as a species if both of these things don’t happen relatively quickly.

My work is all about helping religion to evolve.  There is nothing mystical, otherworldly, supernatural, or woo woo in my book or public programs.  I value empirical evidence over ancient texts.  Everything I speak or write about is grounded in, and thoroughly reflects, our very best scientific understanding of cosmic, Earth, biological, and human history.  When I use religious language metaphorically, as I often do with religious audiences, I’m careful to always define the terms naturally.

Reality is my God.  Integrity (the practice of being in right relationship with reality) is my religion.

Keep up the (dare I say?) prophetic writing.  One of the great ironies of our time is that it’s the New Atheists who seem to be the true prophets of our age. 

Co-evolutionarily,
~ Michael
http://MichaelDowd.org

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Hi Michael,
  It would be good to see a further naturalisation of religions. As Dennett points out the great towering gods of ancient history have been slowly mellowed by time and new information etc.
  We are in a battle with our minds (limbic systems?) though. New ideas that undermine our beliefs and challenge us create stress, anxiety and anger; alas what would the world be like if we had not evolved that particular defence mechanism?, if it is one.

  I guess this is why, as Dennett points out, all that matters to the faithful is that the changes in the religion occur so slowly as to be imperceptible.
  This is not to say that large shifts do not occur. The change in rules about limbo could be an example, but that was the Pope’s will. If the change is being forced by external factors then perhaps it is more dangerous.

  My thought here is that scientific knowledge is accelerating and religion no longer has the luxury of slow change. People are highly adaptive however, but the consequences of the limbic system remain.

  I worked in Saudi Arabia recently. I took away several things. Firstly the people were wonderfully friendly, you are like an immediate brother to them. Secondly science has barely impacted there at all, in fact if at all. It is utterly controlled by a notion of Islamic Science, if the Koran says it is not true then it is not true. The most wide spread understanding of evolution i encountered was that it was a Jewish conspiracy to take people away from Islam. I explained that this would require that the global scientific output as well as many governments be controlled, this was the accepted opinion of those i spoke to. This is what they were taught. These were all people with geology degree’s from the university of Cairo.

  I agree that scientists and scientific philosophers seem to have the best debating quality, that they seem to be the prophets so to speak. Hopefully this will be enough to tip some balances in the West, but i do not know about the rest of the world, where the religions actively compete for the misinformed and un-educated.

  Most of the sophisticated denials of science/scientific interpretations come from philosophical undertakings. You know the sort, the experimental method is limited, we cannot know everything etc. These are right, in their own ways, but it would be good to have more philosophers reminding people of the reasons why we cannot just insert whatever we might like into their gaps. Perhaps God of the Gaps needs to be broadened into Philosophy of the Gaps.

  Of course there is also still much to learn. Philosophies that contain mysteries and imaginative concepts are fine, but responsibility should be taught that belief is not to be played with lightly, it is a very powerful emotional and ‘active’ construct. Too often it seems to me that debates do not move beyond ‘i believe X’ and ‘I believe Y’, perhaps undermining belief itself could be useful. Historically the religions have placed it on a pedestal, you could even get eternal rewards from it, maybe now it is time to remind people it is just a mental process, though a powerful one.

I have waffled enough.

Ben

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Thanks for your comment, Ben. 

You raise many good, important points.  I agree with you down the line.  I’m now in the process of raising money to send 500 copies of my book to progressive Islamic scholars and imams, inviting them to do for the Muslim world what I attempt to do for Christianity in my book. 

Here’s my website and blog in case you’re interested in seeing my approach to naturalizing Christianity: http://ThankGodforEvolution.com

Co-evolutionarily,

~ Michael

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Here’s a direct link:

CHRISTIAN NATURALISM: http://tinyurl.com/mbs2k7

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Mr. Dowd, I’m confused by your statements: there are a number of religious people, like me….that hold no religious beliefs whatever.

I don’t understand.

I think religion has already evolved enormously. Unfortunately, due to the kinds of brains some of our fellow humans have, the virus gets in and does some really serious damage. The only way to fix this problem, as I see it, is to irradicate the virus. Where would, could, the human race be now if over 99% of its ongoing population wasn’t a slave to keeping things as they are and resisting change? Calling for smaller, incremental changes may work for some. Yelling and bulling works for some. Patiently explaining works for some, etc. etc. I think there’s room for the Sams, Richards, and Dans of the movement toward irradicating the virus, as well as the Michaels. Different ways of communicating the message works for different people. I, for one, am firmly behind being in their faces, calling for change. It is much too important to cower away because they call us names like strident and militant. So what? We need to be.

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I agree with you, Majority of One.  I’m hardly calling for (nor would be satisfied with) small, incremental changes!  (That’s one of the reasons I’m so grateful for Sam, Richard, Dan, Christopher, Bill, PZ, Jerry, and others for hitting religious people over their heads with books and movies that are marvelously effective conceptual 2x4s! )

I don’t see religion as a virus.  I find David Sloan Wilson and others involved in the field of Evolutionary Religious Studies helpful on this point.  Our metaphors matter.  Imaging religion as like a virus practically forces one to see religion’s role in human history as utterly negative. 

I see religion along the lines of people like Joseph Campbell and Houston Smith (each of whom spent a lifetime studying religion and religious people), as “that which puts us in accord the universe” and “that which gives life meaning and helps us feel connected to the whole”.

Until recently, answers to life’s biggest questions and access to life’s most cherished emotional states were, for the vast majority, only obtained through mythic stories. Now, for the first time in human history, we have meaningful answers to life’s biggest questions and consistent access to life’s most cherished emotional states via knowledge that can unite us, rather than beliefs that necessarily divide us. This fact will soon, I trust, change everything. I predict it will be the single most important factor in helping humanity survive its rite of passage into species adulthood (which includes the naturalizing, the REALizing, of each religious tradition).

I think E.O. Wilson is correct when he says, “The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have”.  I also think he’s right when he says, “The predisposition to religious belief is the most complex and powerful force in the human mind and in all probability an ineradicable part of our nature. It is one of the universals of social behavior, taking recognizable form in every society from hunter-gather bands to socialist republics. It goes back at least to the bone altars and funerary rites of Neanderthal man.”

Many approaches will be needed if we are to be successful—that is, if we are to help billions of religious people to value empirical evidence over mythic beliefs in the next 50 years or so.  I celebrate the work of the New Atheists AND I feel “led” (compelled by life) to take a different approach.  Both are already proving to be effective.  I suspect this will continue in the decades ahead. 

As I said above, my approach is radically different from the accommodationist position that Sam and Richard and Jerry so rightfully attack.  To my mind, if religion doesn’t accommodate to science in the coming decades, we’re all screwed.

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Hi Majority of One,

  I agree with you that it takes all types of argument. We should expect to be shouted back at and called names. ‘Strident’, ‘militant’ fine. As you say, we need to be.
  Many of the debates i have had in the last year have centred around this stridency though. Not so much from the perspective of fundamental religiosity, but from those of art and philosophy.
  Looking at the media and beneath the veil of many of the attacks we can see a trend. Many think that rationalism and the ‘new atheism’ is going to somehow reduce art and literature, to reduce our ability to express ourselves imaginatively. This is something that i think should be tackled right now, so it doesnt become a stereotype that can be used to attack us.

  If i could suggest an example, just picking one at random from the world of sci-fi - Star trek.
  Star trek currently exists as a literary and imaginative expression. It has its hopes and dreams visible in its conventions and its portrayal of good and evil, as well as hope in technology and science in the future.
  Where it is at the moment it fine, no-one thinks it is real. It can claim a large number of followers as well as having large amounts of power to get people to shell out their money.
  Imagine though if its conventions started to express political ambitions. If they started opening schools telling children that the ‘Q’ are real and should be worshipped. That the ethics of the different races be studied in school, perhaps even followed. If different sects started to split down the lines of the different races, or teachings of the different characters.
  It would be difficult to pin down what the virus was, which bit to attack. I wouldn’t want Star trek expunged from the world, though perhaps in the argument the literary and imaginative construct would be lost amid all the squabble.

  It would be a crazy world, but it is the one we live in at the moment. The fictions of our ancestors are made real by belief, and our politics is forced into discussion with them.

  Somehow behind all this though lies our humanity and i think we are losing the argument with those that see rationality as a threat to it, as if we are arguing against all imagination, which of course we are not - just people trying to make it real.

  There are surely many atheist artists and philosophers who have an interest in this as well. Somehow we need to reach out to them and see if we can convince them that rationalism is not a threat to art and human expression. Just to the teaching of obvious bullshit to children and its affects on politics.

  That in essence we can still learn about life and the universe factually and have our hopes and dreams as well, that they are separate, but that human nature is not going to be lost in the process.

  Hopefully I’ve written this in a comprehendable way, even if I haven’t written it in the most elegant manner.

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“Post Date Wednesday, February 04, 2009”

The original post date should really appear somewhere on this blog post.

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Thanks, Anthonzi!  I mistakenly thought this was just posted yesterday. Oh well.

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It’s a nice exercise for Coyne to take us through Miller’s argument that the inevitability of humans proves God’s plan to provide a being “capable of apprehending and worshipping its creator”, and then to explain why the argument does not hold up to scrutiny.  But it seems to be a turn in to a cul-du-sac.  Miller’s assertion reveals nothing about the nature of the creator* (pardon the pun).  Is not the evolutionary process at least equally valid a description, in this context, if not more so, of our creator?

Perhaps the difference is the bit about worship.  Is that why some religiously inclined persons tend to argue that science is just another religion - because they cannot imagine a philosophy that doesn’t require the bended knee?

Is Miller one of these?  Is that why, despite his elegant arguments for the theory of evolution, he still believes in Christian miracles?  ” Such belief [as in the proposition of the multiverse] also requires an extraordinary level of “faith” and the nonreligious would do well to admit as much.” 

Miller’s argument is god-of-the-gaps ad nauseam.

*Many argue that God works in mysterious ways. Yet, in the same breath, they still profess to know.

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Michael, your definition of Religion (why the capital?) seems a curios one to me.  Is your hope to have the view of “all of religion’s mythic language as metaphor” a hope to redefine religion as Morality Play?  Preemptive revisionist history?

Cool.  (If only religions were not so morally reprehensible.)

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John, you said, “now that atheists have been well ‘outed’, why not focus primarily on public agnosticism.”

Gays have been trying to leave the closet since ancient times.  Yet they still struggle for recognition as humans.

I agree with your call to focus on public agnosticism.  Why is it so very hard to for us to say, “I don’t know”?

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Homostoicus, the only places where I meant to capitalize “religion” were at the beginning of sentences.  I’m not attempting to redefine religion so much as to point out that religious language has always been metaphorical, even if many religious people interpret such language literally. Prior to a few hundred years ago, so-called “supernatural” (actually pre-natural—before we could have possibly had a natural understanding) stories were the norm. 

ALL God-talk is about the subjective realm, not the objective realm.  I realize, of course, that many (most?) religious people fail to grasp this.  That’s one of the reasons why the work of the New Atheists is so important.

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FYI, my most recent blog post touches on some of what’s been discussed on this thread:

HUMANITY’S RITE OF PASSAGE:
http://thankgodforevolution.com/node/1927

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Wow. Coyne is brilliant. I’m picking up his book.

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I don’t think “virus” is a metaphor. I use the term very literally. Parasite may even be a better term. Religion is a parasite that gets implanted by our parents and/or peers and then we spend the rest of our lives as a mind slave trying to rationalize and defend these beliefs.

I don’t know people think that there would be no art or music, etc if we didn’t have religion. We may have even more wonderous imaginings if we didn’t have so much of our time and energy taken away trying to maintain a belief in a savior/creator et al.

I personally think the world would be so much further along in all kinds of progress if we didn’t have these ancient ideas holding most of us back.

Thanking god for evolution is silly to me. We evolved on this planet because conditions allowed for it. If conditions hadn’t allowed for it, we wouldn’t be here to wonder about it. It is that simple for me. I figured this out when I was about 8 years old when we were studying the planets of our solar system. Why are those other planets there and why are they devoid of life. If god can create conditions here that make it so we can live, he could do it for the other planets as well. If he created EVERYTHING, he could tweak conditions on those planets to support life too. Huge planets out there floating around the sun with seemingly no purpose whatsoever. The only answer my 8 year old brain could come up with is a god who created this universe doesn’t make sense. Living in Arkansas at the time did not make this a popular answer and to make things worse, when I would ask questions of this nature to my parents or grandparents, I was spanked or worse. I then began to realize that people’s religious faith is very fragile and most don’t want that faith challenged—even to the point of slapping a child across the face if that child challenges you. Imagine how my relatives feel about Richard Dawkins or Sam Harris. They would kill them if they got the opportunity and didn’t think they’d get caught by the police. Of this I have no doubts.

Anyway, I’m digressing. But, I hope you get my point as to how dangerous religion is. My family isn’t even among the most “militant” of christian sects that other family members are in, e.g. Primitive Baptists…and they still behave very badly because of their infection with the religious virus.

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It’s a pyschological virus. it infects young, fertile minds and it stays there until it is consciously removed. The older you grow the harder it is to remove. 10 year old muslim boys can recite the entire koran. no matter what happens that is something he will remember 70 years later. I remember a jehovah’s witness who came to my door with his son who was 10 or so and she was reciting passages out of the bible off the top of his head. and he didn’t have a glimmer of doubt about him. Those fertile minds are vast and if they get in early they can plant as far as their imagination allows them to.  ask a ‘religious’ person this question. What would you begin doing differently if you discovered there was no God? What would you do different day to day?

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How do you think this would fly?  If enough people protested and demanded that there be a government inquiry, a congressional hearing into the existence of ‘God’. Televised on C-SPAN. at some point it would have to be concluded that there is no evidence of his existence and therefore it could be argued that as a result all references to ‘God’ must be removed from government documents: ‘God’ to be taken off money, ‘God’ to be taken out of courtrooms, the bible to be replaced by something else when the president takes office. ‘God’ to be taken out of insurance documents - not liable for any acts of God - .  I dare say this will one day happen. 500 yrs, 3000 yrs, 70000 yrs from now but it will happen.  We’ve had “God” with us for only 5000 yrs or so. we have another approx. 4,000,000,000 yrs to go before the sun burns out. This notion of ‘God’ will not last much longer.

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at what age are muslim boys told that if they die fighting a holy war that 72 virgin girls await them in eternity? I shudder to think the pyschological state of this boys mind at age 13 or so. If he becomes convinced of this what is he thinking in bed late at night as he nurses the dozens of erections he gets?  Imagine, 72 girls who are going to adore me and worship me for eternity without the risk of any man taking them away from me.  that is the fantasy of all males at some point in their life and here you have a boy who is convinced it is going to happen. How appealing is death to him? It’s the ultimate! Is sex the reason why they strap themselves with dynamite and ask for directions?  It is an all time low for a religion to stoop that far down. The tortured mind of that boy is beyond imagination. That is the cruelist thing you could ever tell your sons.

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That is the cruelest thing a man could say to a young boy in order to feed his ego for he could now say “look, even the young are convinced and feel it right and just to die for what i told them is true”

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In the old testament it ends with this phrase “return the fathers to the children and the children to the fathers or else i will smite the earth with a curse”

now being an atheist i believe those words were written some 5000 years ago by men who wrote. I have wondered what they thought that curse was and so, in a due respect, i penned the sentence further .... “...i will smite the earth with a curse… and that curse shall be me. For you will begin to choose me over yourselves. I will confuse the connection between father and child. I am perfect and you are not but i will always be chosen. You will neglect the true, the real. You will take instruction from the imagined and care and love what is not there. And the real shall suffer the curse that is me, God.

In a marriage were the woman believes in God, she will always compare the men to him. He will never be good enough.  A child who adores God will look at the father and think…douche bag…not good enough. Nothing like Him.

Even a man walking through life holding high Him (another male figure that he is subordinate too) weakens him against the overbearingness of other men.

The Father who worships Him and neglects the real people in his family…the daughter who hates religion, the son who is gay, etc…the wife who flirts..

A curse by definition is unseen. It cannot be questioned, blamed, punished or extinguished. IT IS ALWAYS THERE…..

sounds like a very perfect Curse.

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and again, in all due respect, if i was a writer, writing a story such as the bible that’s the way i’d finish it. it’s incredibly ingenious and its a goal of every writer to have such a magnificent twist to it. and i also believe that if those writers knew about evolution they wouldn’t have gone so far in cementing the immovability of God. That God is fixed, cannot change, ever. And yet we have a society outside of it that by nature changes, adapts, grows and the infrastructure is there for that society to continue for the next 4 billion years. I honestly doubt that that God is going to manage policing the morals of that society for that length of time.  A definition of sanity is the continuing adjustment and re-adjustment of the outside world to the inside world in your head.  If God is not going to adjust or re-adjust to the society he governs He will go insane.

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the more i think of it as a writer writing a story the more brilliant it is. You, as the reader, are being convinced of this being that exists and it is the reason for your existence etc and the book is all about family etc and then you end it by saying, obviously from some societal observations made, that generation-ally we/you must stay close and together and one generation should not feel that it always knows everything.. and then as a writer you put in “if you don’t” then you will have to deal with that being i told you about before which can become true if you want or not. it’s up to you!  brilliant! maybe he thought it was obvious…the ending. readers will ask…what is the curse then? what was he talking about? what should we look out for?  maybe he/she/they thought it was obvious.

and again, my apologies to all those three monotheistic believers but i only wanted to share what i as an atheist saw while reading it and thinking about it for the past two years.

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and then what happens…the new testament is written and as you turn a few pages from that very last ‘warning’ you read (in some bibles but not others) Jesus Christ saying to a group of men “I have not come here to bring peace but i am here to put a sword between you and your fathers” 

If you’re a catholic what do you do? Read the old and the new and you go quietly insane. On one note you form a bond between you and your father and he likewise to you but then you challenge him to war or conflict?  And the writer of the first testament, “what he didn’t read the last part of the old”

to me that “curse” is well… ‘the real shall suffer the curse that is me”  there are not enough bytes in cyberspace to give examples of that

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