An interesting article in Christianity Today looks at a recent meta-analysis of social science studies which finds a small but significant negative correlation between intelligence and religious belief.
Since it's mostly believers who'll be reading this, I'll translate that. Some university professors took all the studies that have been made of whether religious folks are more stupid than atheists, mixed them together in a pot, and found that, yes, on average, us church-goers are ever-so-slightly dimmer. (That's self-mocking humour, by the way.)
I read through the presentation of the study in Personality and Social Psychology Review (squinting with intense concentration as I did so). I won't quarrel with the methodology, which seems sound enough to me. The writers seem to have allowed for the obvious distorting factors. But I was indignant at these lines, in their discussion of the findings and what they could possibly mean:
As noted hereinbefore, the most common explanation for the inverse relation between intelligence and religiosity is that the intelligent person "knows better" than to accept beliefs that are not subject to empirical tests or logical reasoning...But why would intelligent people know better? It does not take a great deal of cognitive ability to understand that religion does not arise from scientific discourse. One does not generally hear from believers that their faith is based on fact and logic, but they continue to believe anyhow.
Rrrr! It does not take a great deal of cognitive ability to see that the number-crunchers were straying outside their area of authority when they made such airy generalizations.
Never mind that, though, and let's turn to the bigger question. Do you have to be of inferior intelligence to be a religious believer? Obviously not, since so many blindingly brilliant people have been devout Christians (and Jews and Muslims).
But what if religious belief is tilted towards the less clever, as the majority of studies have suggested? Well, this would seem to be in accordance with Christ's own words: "At that time Jesus said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children."
There's no reason to assume that intelligence is the key that would unlock the deepest secrets of the universe. It may well be that the universe is deliberately rigged to frustrate that approach.
Of course, many other factors could account for this correlation (as the authors admit)-- the intellectual fashions of the academic elite, for instance. It was the intellectuals who fell en masse for Marxism in the earlier part of this century, and intellectuals who continue to champion avant-garde art and literature.
Society's attitude to intelligence intrigues me. Almost everybody would consider himself or herself of above-average intelligence, even though-- by definition-- that can't be so. We get angry at people for being "stupid", even though there can hadly be any shame in this-- it's not really something that a person can help. (Would you chide somebody for being short or blind?) We praise a person's intelligence in a way that we would be slow to praise their looks, their health, or their social status-- even though intelligence is no less a gift of fortune. The heroes of books and movies may be poor, ugly, vicious, or otherwise deficient or afflicted, but they are almost never slow-witted or dim.
If there is any lesson that Catholics should draw from this finding (such as it is), it is that we should be slower to boast about Aquinas and Augustine and the whole Catholic intellectual tradition. Yes, Catholics (and Christians) have intellectual giants on their side. But so do atheists. The question isn't who's smarter. The question is who's right.
Showing posts with label Atheism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Atheism. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Monday, August 19, 2013
Challenging God...but not the Audience
I love debates. I really love debates. There are some activities which, I believe, make human life more civilized by their very nature. The reading, writing and reciting of poetry is one example. Urbane and serious debate is another.
In serious debate, human beings step back from the flux of events and survey life, or some element thereof, from a higher vantage point. Not only this, but they accept the responsibility of making their ideas and beliefs public property, of translating them into terms that other people can grasp. Prejudices must become propositions, and assumptions must become arguments. Debates also make us more aware of the dignity of being human. Badgers don't have beliefs. Computers don't have convictions.
But that is all analysis, which only goes so far. Ultimately, I can't say why the spectacle of serious debate thrills me so much, but it does. Nothing is more exhilarating than to see people who care passionately about a subject, and who know a reasonable amount about it, arguing the case with each other. (I am talking about civilized debate here. Hostile and acrimonious discussion I would call argument, not debate, and witnessing it makes me want to curl up and die.)
So I was rather excited, last night, to come upon the second episode of Vincent Browne's new series on TV3, Challenging God. Although you can have a cracking debate about a highly specific subject, the general tendency is that broader topics tend to make for more exciting debates-- and no topic could be broader or more significant than the question of God.
As well as this, I think that "talking heads", despite being a rather pejorative term in TV producing, actually make for the best television. No amount of clever camera-work, in general, is as compelling as a long and in-depth interview with somebody who has something to say. I wish there were more serious panel shows and in-depth interviews on television.
Unfortunately, Challenging God has been a massive disappointment. Instead of intellectual fireworks, we have had a long series of damp squibs.
God, it has to be said, has been especially poorly represented. When I look at the guests that have appeared on the show to defend the Deity, I have to ask: "With friends like these, who needs enemies?"
On the first episode, we had theologians Fainche Ryan and James Mackey, challenged to answer the question: "Did God make man or did man make God?". In the second episode, transmitted last night, we had an Augustinian priest named Michael Mernagh and a rabbi whose name I've spent ten minutes looking for on in the internet, but can't find anywhere, defending God from crimes against humanity.
All four of the God squad-- with the occasional exception of James Mackey-- seemed to be copying the tactics of the Russian generals during Napoleon's invasion of their country-- that is, to retreat, retreat and retreat again. The difference being that the Russian generals had a sound strategy, whereas the supposed defenders of God on Vincent Browne's show seemed to have no strategy whatsoever. In fact, the atheist guest on each episode-- the ubiquitous Michael Nugent on the first, and a young atheist lady-journalist on the second-- had nothing to do but fold their arms and watch the religious believers make their case for them.
Christian apologetics in our day have truly become apologetic, in every sense of the word. These are the standard moves:
1) To stress the unknowability of reality and the limits of science.
2) To complain about a perception of God that makes him "an old man with a long white beard".
3) To contrast "religion" with faith, to the detriment of "religion".
4) To insist that the Bible is to be understood allegorically.
5) To vie with atheists and secularists in attacking the Catholic Church, the Christian churches, and organized religion in general.
6) To concede that religion does not make you a better person.
Now, there is something to be said for all of these points. But if this was all that was to be said, I would never darken the door of a church again.
Yes, ultimate reality is unknowable, and the scientific method can only discover empirical truths. But we do have other tools for the discovery of objective knowledge. There is, most importantly, metaphysics, which tells us (especially through the Five Ways of Aquinas) that our universe has a First Cause that is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful. We also have historical knowledge, which tells us (less rigorously, but still objectively) that Christ rose from the dead and that the apostles handed down this truth, for which they were willing to die, in an unbroken tradition down to today's bishops.
Yes, God is not an old man with a beard. He is not a creature at all, but the ground of all being-- he is Being himself. And yet, as Edward Feser explains, his prophets and his Son describe him as a Father, and so should we.
Yes, religion is part of our sublunary world and is inevitably corrupted by idolatry and unworthy passions. But it is still simply the term for the organized worship of God and as such is a good thing. The Bible uses the term "religion" a lot. (James 1:27: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." I have no idea what word the original text used, but my guess is that "religion" is a perfectly adequate translation.)
Yes, the Bible has many allegorical elements and cannot be understood in a literal, fundamentalist sense-- nor was it so understood through the long history of Christian exegesis, as the Confessions of St. Augustine tells us. Nevertheless, it is not all allegory, and to scream "literalism!" every time an unbeliever challenges us about some difficult passage of the Bible is a total cop-out. (As for myself, there are many passages in the Bible which I simply don't understand, and cannot explain-- such as the apparently genocidal instructions that God gives in the Book of Joshua, and which were raised by Vincent Browne last night. Just as I don't expect to understand a scientific theory, or even that scientists should fully understand a scientific theory, I don't expect to fully understand the Christian explanation of reality. I think it is more honest and more convincing to shrug and say, "I really don't know. What I know of Christianity is enough to convince me that it is true and that there is some explanation for these dark corners of the Bible. Besides, I don't really want a God or an explanation of the univese that isn't mysterious or challenging." Or, as St. Peter said: "To whom would we go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life.")
Yes, terrible crimes have been committed in the name of Christianity; burning of witches, religious wars, persecution of Jews, and so forth. But nothing irritates me more than the craven eagerness of many Christians to outstrip militant atheists in their condemnation of Christian history. Taking the history of Christianity as a whole, and comparing it with the rest of world history, I don't think Christians have all that much to apologize for. What other force in human history has brought so much good into the world? Who can take the merest glance at antiquity, and especially the classical world-- a world of tremendous sophisitication, in many ways-- and not feel struck, like the blast of heat from a furnance, with the great cruelty, vainglory, bigotry, misogyny, ruthlessness and ambition which was entirely unabashed at that time? Why should Christians apologize for making a great part of the world accept that charity, humility, chastity, forgiveness, and chivalry were noble things? Why should Christians apologize for all the hospitals, schools, universities and refuges that Christians brought into being-- often when there was no equivalent anywhere? Why should Christians apologize for the contribution of monastic orders to scholarship, sanctuary, provision for the poor and the preservation and advance of Western civilization?
(It was especially cringe-inducing to see Father Michael Mernagh straining every nerve to endear himself to the female atheist, glancing over at her ingratiatingly as he lambasted the Church for its treatment of women and pointed out, over and over, that it was men who were mostly to blame for the crimes of Christianity. I know that these are strong words, and I use them advisedly. I am sure Father Mernagh is a much, much better human being than I am, and a fine priest, but this spectacle was simply painful to watch.)
Yes, an atheist can be (and often is) just as good a person as a Christian. But it's not as simple as that. The Christian has (most probably) a higher standard of morality to live up to. He is expected to forgive his enemies, to extend his charity to all, to never lie, to aspire towards sexual purity, and to strive to be morally perfect. No matter how far he falls short of this, the ideal itself tends to have an elevating effect. And it could easily be argued that society has declined in many measurable respects along with the decline of Christianity-- the murder rate, for instance, or the prevalence of easily-accessible pornography.
Having spent so long bashing the religious believers (for bashing religious belivers), I should also mention that the other guests on the show-- and the bould Vincent himself-- were not exactly scintillating. Michael Nugent, the head honcho of Atheist Ireland, is always civilized and courteous, and he dutifully made the obvious and fair arguments against religious belief. But he also made the futile and cheap argument that Christianity was partly to blame for the rise to power of the Nazis, as centuries of Christianity had schooled the Germans to unthinkingly obey authority. But what society is without authority? The same argument could be made against any social system whatsoever-- Christian, Nazi, communist or Confucian. The female atheist who appeared last night (I'm sorry I can't find her name, either) was also civil, but said nothing of any great insight or originality. Vincent Browne himself was playing the role of the bewildered plain-speaking atheist, desperately trying to pin the believers down to some definite statement of belief. His religious guests played into his hands admirably.
Worst of all, perhaps, none of the participants seemed to have prepared for the discussion to any appreciable extent. The whole thing had the air of a pub debate. Everything was discussed in the most general of terms, with hardly any focus upon specifics.
All in all, a huge disappointment. A series of intelligent televized debates on the subject of religion would be a wonderful addition to the Irish airwaves. Challenging God is not that series.
In serious debate, human beings step back from the flux of events and survey life, or some element thereof, from a higher vantage point. Not only this, but they accept the responsibility of making their ideas and beliefs public property, of translating them into terms that other people can grasp. Prejudices must become propositions, and assumptions must become arguments. Debates also make us more aware of the dignity of being human. Badgers don't have beliefs. Computers don't have convictions.
But that is all analysis, which only goes so far. Ultimately, I can't say why the spectacle of serious debate thrills me so much, but it does. Nothing is more exhilarating than to see people who care passionately about a subject, and who know a reasonable amount about it, arguing the case with each other. (I am talking about civilized debate here. Hostile and acrimonious discussion I would call argument, not debate, and witnessing it makes me want to curl up and die.)
So I was rather excited, last night, to come upon the second episode of Vincent Browne's new series on TV3, Challenging God. Although you can have a cracking debate about a highly specific subject, the general tendency is that broader topics tend to make for more exciting debates-- and no topic could be broader or more significant than the question of God.
As well as this, I think that "talking heads", despite being a rather pejorative term in TV producing, actually make for the best television. No amount of clever camera-work, in general, is as compelling as a long and in-depth interview with somebody who has something to say. I wish there were more serious panel shows and in-depth interviews on television.
Unfortunately, Challenging God has been a massive disappointment. Instead of intellectual fireworks, we have had a long series of damp squibs.
God, it has to be said, has been especially poorly represented. When I look at the guests that have appeared on the show to defend the Deity, I have to ask: "With friends like these, who needs enemies?"
On the first episode, we had theologians Fainche Ryan and James Mackey, challenged to answer the question: "Did God make man or did man make God?". In the second episode, transmitted last night, we had an Augustinian priest named Michael Mernagh and a rabbi whose name I've spent ten minutes looking for on in the internet, but can't find anywhere, defending God from crimes against humanity.
All four of the God squad-- with the occasional exception of James Mackey-- seemed to be copying the tactics of the Russian generals during Napoleon's invasion of their country-- that is, to retreat, retreat and retreat again. The difference being that the Russian generals had a sound strategy, whereas the supposed defenders of God on Vincent Browne's show seemed to have no strategy whatsoever. In fact, the atheist guest on each episode-- the ubiquitous Michael Nugent on the first, and a young atheist lady-journalist on the second-- had nothing to do but fold their arms and watch the religious believers make their case for them.
Christian apologetics in our day have truly become apologetic, in every sense of the word. These are the standard moves:
1) To stress the unknowability of reality and the limits of science.
2) To complain about a perception of God that makes him "an old man with a long white beard".
3) To contrast "religion" with faith, to the detriment of "religion".
4) To insist that the Bible is to be understood allegorically.
5) To vie with atheists and secularists in attacking the Catholic Church, the Christian churches, and organized religion in general.
6) To concede that religion does not make you a better person.
Now, there is something to be said for all of these points. But if this was all that was to be said, I would never darken the door of a church again.
Yes, ultimate reality is unknowable, and the scientific method can only discover empirical truths. But we do have other tools for the discovery of objective knowledge. There is, most importantly, metaphysics, which tells us (especially through the Five Ways of Aquinas) that our universe has a First Cause that is all-good, all-knowing and all-powerful. We also have historical knowledge, which tells us (less rigorously, but still objectively) that Christ rose from the dead and that the apostles handed down this truth, for which they were willing to die, in an unbroken tradition down to today's bishops.
Yes, God is not an old man with a beard. He is not a creature at all, but the ground of all being-- he is Being himself. And yet, as Edward Feser explains, his prophets and his Son describe him as a Father, and so should we.
Yes, religion is part of our sublunary world and is inevitably corrupted by idolatry and unworthy passions. But it is still simply the term for the organized worship of God and as such is a good thing. The Bible uses the term "religion" a lot. (James 1:27: "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." I have no idea what word the original text used, but my guess is that "religion" is a perfectly adequate translation.)
Yes, the Bible has many allegorical elements and cannot be understood in a literal, fundamentalist sense-- nor was it so understood through the long history of Christian exegesis, as the Confessions of St. Augustine tells us. Nevertheless, it is not all allegory, and to scream "literalism!" every time an unbeliever challenges us about some difficult passage of the Bible is a total cop-out. (As for myself, there are many passages in the Bible which I simply don't understand, and cannot explain-- such as the apparently genocidal instructions that God gives in the Book of Joshua, and which were raised by Vincent Browne last night. Just as I don't expect to understand a scientific theory, or even that scientists should fully understand a scientific theory, I don't expect to fully understand the Christian explanation of reality. I think it is more honest and more convincing to shrug and say, "I really don't know. What I know of Christianity is enough to convince me that it is true and that there is some explanation for these dark corners of the Bible. Besides, I don't really want a God or an explanation of the univese that isn't mysterious or challenging." Or, as St. Peter said: "To whom would we go, Lord? You have the words of eternal life.")
Yes, terrible crimes have been committed in the name of Christianity; burning of witches, religious wars, persecution of Jews, and so forth. But nothing irritates me more than the craven eagerness of many Christians to outstrip militant atheists in their condemnation of Christian history. Taking the history of Christianity as a whole, and comparing it with the rest of world history, I don't think Christians have all that much to apologize for. What other force in human history has brought so much good into the world? Who can take the merest glance at antiquity, and especially the classical world-- a world of tremendous sophisitication, in many ways-- and not feel struck, like the blast of heat from a furnance, with the great cruelty, vainglory, bigotry, misogyny, ruthlessness and ambition which was entirely unabashed at that time? Why should Christians apologize for making a great part of the world accept that charity, humility, chastity, forgiveness, and chivalry were noble things? Why should Christians apologize for all the hospitals, schools, universities and refuges that Christians brought into being-- often when there was no equivalent anywhere? Why should Christians apologize for the contribution of monastic orders to scholarship, sanctuary, provision for the poor and the preservation and advance of Western civilization?
(It was especially cringe-inducing to see Father Michael Mernagh straining every nerve to endear himself to the female atheist, glancing over at her ingratiatingly as he lambasted the Church for its treatment of women and pointed out, over and over, that it was men who were mostly to blame for the crimes of Christianity. I know that these are strong words, and I use them advisedly. I am sure Father Mernagh is a much, much better human being than I am, and a fine priest, but this spectacle was simply painful to watch.)
Yes, an atheist can be (and often is) just as good a person as a Christian. But it's not as simple as that. The Christian has (most probably) a higher standard of morality to live up to. He is expected to forgive his enemies, to extend his charity to all, to never lie, to aspire towards sexual purity, and to strive to be morally perfect. No matter how far he falls short of this, the ideal itself tends to have an elevating effect. And it could easily be argued that society has declined in many measurable respects along with the decline of Christianity-- the murder rate, for instance, or the prevalence of easily-accessible pornography.
Having spent so long bashing the religious believers (for bashing religious belivers), I should also mention that the other guests on the show-- and the bould Vincent himself-- were not exactly scintillating. Michael Nugent, the head honcho of Atheist Ireland, is always civilized and courteous, and he dutifully made the obvious and fair arguments against religious belief. But he also made the futile and cheap argument that Christianity was partly to blame for the rise to power of the Nazis, as centuries of Christianity had schooled the Germans to unthinkingly obey authority. But what society is without authority? The same argument could be made against any social system whatsoever-- Christian, Nazi, communist or Confucian. The female atheist who appeared last night (I'm sorry I can't find her name, either) was also civil, but said nothing of any great insight or originality. Vincent Browne himself was playing the role of the bewildered plain-speaking atheist, desperately trying to pin the believers down to some definite statement of belief. His religious guests played into his hands admirably.
Worst of all, perhaps, none of the participants seemed to have prepared for the discussion to any appreciable extent. The whole thing had the air of a pub debate. Everything was discussed in the most general of terms, with hardly any focus upon specifics.
All in all, a huge disappointment. A series of intelligent televized debates on the subject of religion would be a wonderful addition to the Irish airwaves. Challenging God is not that series.
Friday, August 3, 2012
What Would Prove Catholicism False?
Critics of religion often complain that it is immune to evidence. They say that religious claims simply don't open themselves up to proof or disproof in the same way that other claims do. Religious believers, they say, would cling on to their delusions no matter how much data was brought to bear against them. In fact-- or so many of these critics go on to claim-- religion holds out special praise and rewards for those who believe without evidence, or in the teeth of counter-evidence. After all, didn't Christ himself say "Blessed are those who have not seen, but have believed?"
I think there is certainly a case to be answered here. There may be rare individuals, such as C.S. Lewis, who are dragged kicking and screaming into religious belief against their strongest inclinations. But I think it is true that most religious believers want to believe. They are, to be blunt, prejudiced in favour of God, and in favour of their particular creed.
But is this really so strange? Is there any human being on this earth who is not similarly biased? It is true that there are plenty of people who (as they admit) would like to believe in God, but don't. (I was one of those people myself once; or at least, I thought I was.) Nevertheless, I think even those people would have various pet theories of their own-- perhaps socialism or libertarianism or the dangers of dairy products. And they probably welcome evidence that supports those theories and are suspicious of evidence that doesn't.
(Of course, almost everybody alive has one specific pet theory; the implicit theory that they are somehow special, more insightful, more deserving, especially unfairly treated, and so forth-- and this particular theory is more tenacious than weevils.)
Those who reject religion in favour of a scientific worldview often claim that the existence of God is a hypothesis like any other, and should be treated in the same objective manner. I don't think this is fair. I think it would make more sense to compare theistic belief, not to this or that scientific hypothesis, but to the scientific worldview itself. The corresponding question for those who demand scientific proof is; What would it take you to abandon the scientific worldview? It is obviously conceivable that the most important truths might not be the kind of truths you can prove or disprove in a laboratory. It is at least conceivable that these ultimate truths have been deliberately placed beyond empirical testing. The scientific worldview, at least in its rationalist and anti-religious sense, is in this sense a hypothesis itself.
As I say, I can understand why non-believers sometimes become impatient with believers. It does often seem as though we are having our cake and eating it. Let's say that I pray to find a job during a long spell of unemployment. The next morning I am called to interview for my dream position. I thank God for answering my prayer. But, the sceptic complains, I wouldn't have held it against God if the prayer had apparently gone unanswered. I would have decided that my unemployment was a spiritual testing ground, or something like that. Heads God wins, tails unbelief loses. And isn't this true enough, as far as it goes?
Another example is the famous "criterion of embarrassment" which Christians sometimes apply to Bible criticism. There are undoubtedly passages in the New Testament that are embarrassing to Christians, such as Christ's apparent claim that he would return before one generation had passed. Christians often point out that the very existence of these texts, and their survival through the centuries, shows that the whole Jesus story wasn't one cooked up by the disciples. Because why would the disciples give ammunition to their critics?
At this point, the sceptic throws his hands in the air and says, "You can't have it both ways. You can't leap on evidence when it suits you and then say sacred things are above evidence when it doesn't suit you. You can't jump on Bible verses that seem to contain fulfilled prophecies and then take an unfulfilled prophecy and claim that as support as well. There's just no arguing with you. The deck is rigged from the start."
How to respond, now that I have accepted the prima facie case of the exasperated unbeliever?
One response is that it is ridiculous to expect a settled worldview to be open to revision at every moment. A man or woman's religious faith is usually the result of long experience and reflection. Often it is based upon some insight or event that the believer deems to have been mystical. Why should such a commitment be perpetually tested? What prisoner is permanently in the dock? What friendship is always hanging in the balance?
Another thing I would say is that faith, even faith in the face of apparently hostile evidence, is often seen as a virtue in purely secular contexts. If we go to see a "buddy movie", and we see that one character continues to believe in his friend's honesty and integrity even when the rest of the world has him written off as a villain, we are touched. If we read of an artist who has faith in his own talent in the face of rejection and ridicule, we are inspired. And when we read Anne Frank's famous words, "In spite of everything, I still believe people are good at heart", we are moved to tears. Who could take such a beautiful sentiment as simply a correct or incorrect evaluation of the available evidence-- a good or bad "call"?
I have to be honest. I don't think anything could shake my belief in God. I don't think any scientific discovery or natural disaster or historical event could make me an atheist. The universe seems too beautiful, too marvellous, too intricate to require no explanation. The existence of consciousness, of man's thirst for the sublime and the transcendent, also seems to point to a Divine Creator. And, yes-- I admit it-- I would be desolate without God.
But I can imagine situations in which my faith in the Catholic Church might be strained or even shattered. I don't for a moment expect such situations to come about, but I can conceive of them.
If Pope Benedict released an encylical tomorrow morning in which he denied that abortion was always a mortal sin, or that Christ's resurrection had been an historical event, or that eternal damnation was not possible, I would cease to be Catholic. Even if the Pope or the magisterium were to change Church doctrine on a non-dogmatic matter-- for instance, the ordination of women-- my faith would be shaken.
I believe the same is true of many thousands, perhaps millions, of Catholics around the globe. The Church's iron refusal to change its message, in the face of all persecution and tyranny and unpopularity, is compelling to us. And I believe this is why-- to use language that some might find offensive or at least ridiculous-- Satan and his angels are constantly pushing at the door of heresy, just as he urged Christ to turn stone into bread.
There are other eventualities that might undermine my Catholic faith. If the canonisation process no longer required a certified miracle-- as John Cornwell, and possibly other liberal Catholics, recommend-- my confidence in the Church would be rather diminished. If the Church ceased to produce saints and martyrs, that too would make me anxious. If there was a spectacular reversal in the miraculous spread of the Church across the world, that would also-- to a lesser extent-- give me pause for thought.
If one of the visionaries that the Church has declared worthy of belief was proven to be a fraud (and I feel dirty even typing those words), that would seriously compromise my Catholic faith.
I don't have the slightest expectation that any of those things will happen. I only mention them to counter this claim, which is so often made, that religious belief is immune to evidence or disproof.
And what if the sceptic says, "Come on, you are making it easy for yourself! You know and I know that none of these things will ever happen!"?
Then I think I would reply: "My friend, I believe that your own words prove that-- deep down inside-- you also have faith."
I think there is certainly a case to be answered here. There may be rare individuals, such as C.S. Lewis, who are dragged kicking and screaming into religious belief against their strongest inclinations. But I think it is true that most religious believers want to believe. They are, to be blunt, prejudiced in favour of God, and in favour of their particular creed.
But is this really so strange? Is there any human being on this earth who is not similarly biased? It is true that there are plenty of people who (as they admit) would like to believe in God, but don't. (I was one of those people myself once; or at least, I thought I was.) Nevertheless, I think even those people would have various pet theories of their own-- perhaps socialism or libertarianism or the dangers of dairy products. And they probably welcome evidence that supports those theories and are suspicious of evidence that doesn't.
(Of course, almost everybody alive has one specific pet theory; the implicit theory that they are somehow special, more insightful, more deserving, especially unfairly treated, and so forth-- and this particular theory is more tenacious than weevils.)
Those who reject religion in favour of a scientific worldview often claim that the existence of God is a hypothesis like any other, and should be treated in the same objective manner. I don't think this is fair. I think it would make more sense to compare theistic belief, not to this or that scientific hypothesis, but to the scientific worldview itself. The corresponding question for those who demand scientific proof is; What would it take you to abandon the scientific worldview? It is obviously conceivable that the most important truths might not be the kind of truths you can prove or disprove in a laboratory. It is at least conceivable that these ultimate truths have been deliberately placed beyond empirical testing. The scientific worldview, at least in its rationalist and anti-religious sense, is in this sense a hypothesis itself.
As I say, I can understand why non-believers sometimes become impatient with believers. It does often seem as though we are having our cake and eating it. Let's say that I pray to find a job during a long spell of unemployment. The next morning I am called to interview for my dream position. I thank God for answering my prayer. But, the sceptic complains, I wouldn't have held it against God if the prayer had apparently gone unanswered. I would have decided that my unemployment was a spiritual testing ground, or something like that. Heads God wins, tails unbelief loses. And isn't this true enough, as far as it goes?
Another example is the famous "criterion of embarrassment" which Christians sometimes apply to Bible criticism. There are undoubtedly passages in the New Testament that are embarrassing to Christians, such as Christ's apparent claim that he would return before one generation had passed. Christians often point out that the very existence of these texts, and their survival through the centuries, shows that the whole Jesus story wasn't one cooked up by the disciples. Because why would the disciples give ammunition to their critics?
At this point, the sceptic throws his hands in the air and says, "You can't have it both ways. You can't leap on evidence when it suits you and then say sacred things are above evidence when it doesn't suit you. You can't jump on Bible verses that seem to contain fulfilled prophecies and then take an unfulfilled prophecy and claim that as support as well. There's just no arguing with you. The deck is rigged from the start."
How to respond, now that I have accepted the prima facie case of the exasperated unbeliever?
One response is that it is ridiculous to expect a settled worldview to be open to revision at every moment. A man or woman's religious faith is usually the result of long experience and reflection. Often it is based upon some insight or event that the believer deems to have been mystical. Why should such a commitment be perpetually tested? What prisoner is permanently in the dock? What friendship is always hanging in the balance?
Another thing I would say is that faith, even faith in the face of apparently hostile evidence, is often seen as a virtue in purely secular contexts. If we go to see a "buddy movie", and we see that one character continues to believe in his friend's honesty and integrity even when the rest of the world has him written off as a villain, we are touched. If we read of an artist who has faith in his own talent in the face of rejection and ridicule, we are inspired. And when we read Anne Frank's famous words, "In spite of everything, I still believe people are good at heart", we are moved to tears. Who could take such a beautiful sentiment as simply a correct or incorrect evaluation of the available evidence-- a good or bad "call"?
I have to be honest. I don't think anything could shake my belief in God. I don't think any scientific discovery or natural disaster or historical event could make me an atheist. The universe seems too beautiful, too marvellous, too intricate to require no explanation. The existence of consciousness, of man's thirst for the sublime and the transcendent, also seems to point to a Divine Creator. And, yes-- I admit it-- I would be desolate without God.
But I can imagine situations in which my faith in the Catholic Church might be strained or even shattered. I don't for a moment expect such situations to come about, but I can conceive of them.
If Pope Benedict released an encylical tomorrow morning in which he denied that abortion was always a mortal sin, or that Christ's resurrection had been an historical event, or that eternal damnation was not possible, I would cease to be Catholic. Even if the Pope or the magisterium were to change Church doctrine on a non-dogmatic matter-- for instance, the ordination of women-- my faith would be shaken.
I believe the same is true of many thousands, perhaps millions, of Catholics around the globe. The Church's iron refusal to change its message, in the face of all persecution and tyranny and unpopularity, is compelling to us. And I believe this is why-- to use language that some might find offensive or at least ridiculous-- Satan and his angels are constantly pushing at the door of heresy, just as he urged Christ to turn stone into bread.
There are other eventualities that might undermine my Catholic faith. If the canonisation process no longer required a certified miracle-- as John Cornwell, and possibly other liberal Catholics, recommend-- my confidence in the Church would be rather diminished. If the Church ceased to produce saints and martyrs, that too would make me anxious. If there was a spectacular reversal in the miraculous spread of the Church across the world, that would also-- to a lesser extent-- give me pause for thought.
If one of the visionaries that the Church has declared worthy of belief was proven to be a fraud (and I feel dirty even typing those words), that would seriously compromise my Catholic faith.
I don't have the slightest expectation that any of those things will happen. I only mention them to counter this claim, which is so often made, that religious belief is immune to evidence or disproof.
And what if the sceptic says, "Come on, you are making it easy for yourself! You know and I know that none of these things will ever happen!"?
Then I think I would reply: "My friend, I believe that your own words prove that-- deep down inside-- you also have faith."
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Following the Truth Wherever it Leads-- Why?
I am watching the latest Journey Home (EWTN's interview programme with converts to the Catholic Church). This one features Jennifer Fulwiler, a well-known blogger who was once an atheist and (as she explains at the beginning) was never really anything but an atheist, even as a little child.
I am very interested in conversion stories, but only from atheism. Journeys from Protestantism or some other Christian denomination, or from some other religion, are doubtless very valuable, but-- and I can't think of any way of saying this that doesn't seem insulting or dismissive-- only atheism and Catholicism seem to me like coherent worldviews.
What I find interesting is that, at the beginning of the programme, Mrs. Fulwiler describes how her father (who, I surmise, is still an atheist) always encouraged her, and still encourages her, to seek truth wherever it may be found.
I've never really understood this attitude. Why? You may say there is some disinterested, essentially human need for truth. But isn't that just a theory, a theory that can be tested like any other? Or perhaps this drive towards truth is an instinct, or a mere cognitive tendency? If thought is to be truly free why should it be bound even by truth?
I am in danger of being misunderstood, I realize. As a Catholic the truth of my creed is of unutterable importance to me. It is of no value at all unless it is true. I would have next to no interest in it as some kind of metaphor or artistic tradition or set of "values" floating free of transcendent truth.
But before I became a Catholic, I had little interest in truth per se, nor did I see why I should have had. Truth was what killed you in the end. Truth was what bumped into you a thousand times a day whether you cared about it or not. Sure, it was of practical value-- I wanted to know whether a business was a reputable business before I gave it my money, for instance-- but I had no special concern for truth for its own sake. I still don't see why I should have had, given my non-religious worldview at the time.
Apparently Isaiah Berlin once said that there was no guarantee the truth, when it was found, would be interesting. He was right. Especially in the field of philosophy, I found theories interesting because they were striking or elegant or original. I suspected Ultimate Truth would be duller than cat photographs.
It seems to me that only on a theistic view of the world do the values we all hanker after-- truth, beauty, goodness, justice etc.-- necessarily converge in the Divine. Otherwise, they are almost inevitably in conflict, and you take your pick. Why shouldn't I prefer beauty over truth? Or justice over goodness, by refusing to forgive my enemies, say?
The other reason I find myself thinking about this is that I am reading The Strings are False, the (abandoned) autobiography of Louis MacNeice, the poet. I find MacNeice interesting, not only because he wrote some of my very favourite poems, but because he had a non-religious philosophy of life that still managed to respect sacred traditions and mythology, and that refused to bow before any secular idols such as science or politics. In fact, MacNeice tells us that in his undergraduate days he was hostile to both religion and science, which seems quite a feat of independence of mind. (He believed aesthetic values were all that really mattered-- as an undergraduate, not as a mature man.)
What is the moral of this little reflection? None, really. Perhaps I am even revealing my own innate wickedness, or shallowness, or goodness knows what. But there it is-- truth only became something I got to caring about when I began to suspect that reality surpassed the wildest, most romantic of fantasies.
As they say, sue me.
I am very interested in conversion stories, but only from atheism. Journeys from Protestantism or some other Christian denomination, or from some other religion, are doubtless very valuable, but-- and I can't think of any way of saying this that doesn't seem insulting or dismissive-- only atheism and Catholicism seem to me like coherent worldviews.
What I find interesting is that, at the beginning of the programme, Mrs. Fulwiler describes how her father (who, I surmise, is still an atheist) always encouraged her, and still encourages her, to seek truth wherever it may be found.
I've never really understood this attitude. Why? You may say there is some disinterested, essentially human need for truth. But isn't that just a theory, a theory that can be tested like any other? Or perhaps this drive towards truth is an instinct, or a mere cognitive tendency? If thought is to be truly free why should it be bound even by truth?
I am in danger of being misunderstood, I realize. As a Catholic the truth of my creed is of unutterable importance to me. It is of no value at all unless it is true. I would have next to no interest in it as some kind of metaphor or artistic tradition or set of "values" floating free of transcendent truth.
But before I became a Catholic, I had little interest in truth per se, nor did I see why I should have had. Truth was what killed you in the end. Truth was what bumped into you a thousand times a day whether you cared about it or not. Sure, it was of practical value-- I wanted to know whether a business was a reputable business before I gave it my money, for instance-- but I had no special concern for truth for its own sake. I still don't see why I should have had, given my non-religious worldview at the time.
Apparently Isaiah Berlin once said that there was no guarantee the truth, when it was found, would be interesting. He was right. Especially in the field of philosophy, I found theories interesting because they were striking or elegant or original. I suspected Ultimate Truth would be duller than cat photographs.
It seems to me that only on a theistic view of the world do the values we all hanker after-- truth, beauty, goodness, justice etc.-- necessarily converge in the Divine. Otherwise, they are almost inevitably in conflict, and you take your pick. Why shouldn't I prefer beauty over truth? Or justice over goodness, by refusing to forgive my enemies, say?
The other reason I find myself thinking about this is that I am reading The Strings are False, the (abandoned) autobiography of Louis MacNeice, the poet. I find MacNeice interesting, not only because he wrote some of my very favourite poems, but because he had a non-religious philosophy of life that still managed to respect sacred traditions and mythology, and that refused to bow before any secular idols such as science or politics. In fact, MacNeice tells us that in his undergraduate days he was hostile to both religion and science, which seems quite a feat of independence of mind. (He believed aesthetic values were all that really mattered-- as an undergraduate, not as a mature man.)
What is the moral of this little reflection? None, really. Perhaps I am even revealing my own innate wickedness, or shallowness, or goodness knows what. But there it is-- truth only became something I got to caring about when I began to suspect that reality surpassed the wildest, most romantic of fantasies.
As they say, sue me.
Friday, April 13, 2012
Whatever Happened to the New Atheists?
William Reville has an article in this week’s Irish Catholic headed “Religion is not Anti-Scientific”. It goes over some very well-trodden ground indeed (has anybody anything original left to say on this subject?), but what struck me was the very first line: “The New Atheists claim that religion is inherently anti-scientific...”
The New Atheists! Remember them? Richard Dawkins, the biologist. Christopher Hitchens, the journalist. Dan Dennett, the philosopher of mind. Sam Harris, a professional atheist with no other obvious claim to fame. AC Grayling, the British philosopher. Philip Pullman, the writer of children's fantasies who drew on Milton and Dante to attack the central doctrine of those authors. PZ Myers, a particularly nasty science blogger who profaned the Eucharist for kicks. And a whole supporting cast of sympathizers, some of whom had been damning and blasting religious belief for decades, but who suddenly seemed to have caught the wind of the zeitgeist; the Amazing Randi, Stephen Fry, Ian McEwan, Ian McEllan, Terry Pratchett, Ricky Gervais, and a whole gaggle of other notables-- not to mention an apparently innumerable swarm of bloggers, protestors, letter-writers and lurkers on various internet sites.
To mangle Byron:
We counted them at break of day--
And when the sun set, where were they?
I shouldn’t be too flippant, as one of their luminaries (Christopher Hitchens) tragically died last year. But even before that the movement seemed to be losing steam, and now it seems downright quaint to hear the name invoked in the first sentence of a newspaper article. I think the New Atheists have joined the Y2K bug , video nasties and Swine Flu in the Museum of Failed Apocalypses.
And that they were an apocalyptic movement is beyond doubt. They may not have heralded a literal end of the world, but they certainly seemed to proclaim the end of one era in human history and the dawning of another (although backward people in poor, ill-educated parts of the world might have been expected to take some time to catch up).
Scientific rationalism was now the gold standard of knowledge, and reason was by definition anti-supernatural. Religion wasn’t just an embarrassment, it was potentially lethal. If someone thought they were in touch with a supernatural entity, after all, what limit could logically apply to their nuttiness? The apple-cheeked old lady at the parish cake sale was a not-so-distant relative of Osama Bin Laden.
Rudeness towards believers was not only permitted, it was positively a duty. There had been too much wishy-washy tolerance. The searing light of rationality would penetrate into all the murky corners of supersition, and soon nobody would get away with proclaiming a belief in the soul, miracles, Providence, or grace. It would not even be allowed as a pious fiction or a figure of speech.
What amazes me in retrospect is how much their clamour intimidated me. I was a religiously-inclined agnostic when I read Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, the anti-Bible of the New Atheists. Even at the time of reading it, before I started really delving into the arguments for and against religious belief, I found its logic unconvincing. (I also had no idea, before reading it, that the scientific case for religion was so strong—even in attempting to rubbish it, Dawkins couldn’t help publicizing it.)
But it wasn’t the logic or the arguments that hit me in the solar plexus. It was the bitterness of the rhetoric, and also its confidence. The message was stark: religion was to be driven beyond the pale. Faith in God was no longer intellectually, culturally or socially respectable.
And for a while, it really seemed like that.
But now, the spell seems to have been broken.
The would-be blockbuster film taken from Philip Pulman's atheistic fantasy, The Golden Compass, flopped at the box office, while Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia-- all fantasy franchises with an unabashed Christian message-- triumphed.
The Pope visited Britain and Germany, to almost universal acclaim. Predicted widespread protests turned out to be a damp squib.
The recent Irish census revealed that nine out of ten Irish-born people consider themselves Catholics. Not many more than five per cent described themselves as non-religious, and the high-profile campaign of Irish atheist groups encouraging respondents specify that they were atheist or agnostic (there was apparently no box for this on the census itself) only resulted in about three thousand such declarations.
All of the candidates in the Presidential election supported the broadcasting of the Angelus bells on RTE. Even the liberal candidates spoke of their spiritual values.
I visited the GPO over Christmas, and was happy to see the Christmas crib still enjoying pride of place, despite grumblings about this from God-bashers.
The closing of the Irish embassy to the Vatican has drawn a backlash from the public way beyond what might have been expected.
Every other day, it seems, there are lively discussions on religion, especially the Catholic faith, on the opinion page of the Irish Times. The topic seems an almost ever-present in the Letters to the Editor section. Is the interpretation of Christ's message, in our day, any less a matter for burning public debate as it was in the time of Newman and the Oxford Movement?
A new RTE radio show on religion, the God Slot, has proved very popular, while the BBC have produced an acclaimed documentary on the lives of Catholics that apparently (I have not seen it) is sympathetic and objective in tone.
Even in the field of British comedy-- apparently a New Atheist bastion if ever there was one, with the likes of Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais, Simon Pegg, Alan Davies, David Baddiel, and many others making rather a meal out of their unbelief-- there has been a change in the wind. Frank Skinner has recently appeared on stage with the Archbishop of Canterbury, while the situation comedy Rev takes faith seriously and has won prizes and rave reviews, as well as cameo appearances from stars like Ralph Fiennes and Richard E. Grant.
So the mood seems to have changed, and to reveal that the moment of the New Atheists, after all, was only that-- a mood.
What lesson to draw? Simply, I think, that believers should not be too impressed by these ebbs and flows of public opinion. I am reminded of these lines by GK Chesterton, from a poem dedicated to his friend Edmund Bentley, in which he remembers the rationalism and decadence of the Victorian era in which he grew up:
A cloud was on the mind of men
And wailing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul
When we were boys together.
Science announced nonentity
And art admired decay;
The world was old and ended:
But you and I were gay...
Life was a fly that faded,
And death a drone that stung;
The world was very old indeed
When you and I were young.
(...)
This is a tale of those old fears,
Even of those emptied hells,
And none but you shall understand
The true thing that it tells—
Of what colossal gods of shame
Could cow men and yet crash,
Of what huge devils hid the stars,
Yet fell at a pistol flash.
The New Atheists! Remember them? Richard Dawkins, the biologist. Christopher Hitchens, the journalist. Dan Dennett, the philosopher of mind. Sam Harris, a professional atheist with no other obvious claim to fame. AC Grayling, the British philosopher. Philip Pullman, the writer of children's fantasies who drew on Milton and Dante to attack the central doctrine of those authors. PZ Myers, a particularly nasty science blogger who profaned the Eucharist for kicks. And a whole supporting cast of sympathizers, some of whom had been damning and blasting religious belief for decades, but who suddenly seemed to have caught the wind of the zeitgeist; the Amazing Randi, Stephen Fry, Ian McEwan, Ian McEllan, Terry Pratchett, Ricky Gervais, and a whole gaggle of other notables-- not to mention an apparently innumerable swarm of bloggers, protestors, letter-writers and lurkers on various internet sites.
To mangle Byron:
We counted them at break of day--
And when the sun set, where were they?
I shouldn’t be too flippant, as one of their luminaries (Christopher Hitchens) tragically died last year. But even before that the movement seemed to be losing steam, and now it seems downright quaint to hear the name invoked in the first sentence of a newspaper article. I think the New Atheists have joined the Y2K bug , video nasties and Swine Flu in the Museum of Failed Apocalypses.
And that they were an apocalyptic movement is beyond doubt. They may not have heralded a literal end of the world, but they certainly seemed to proclaim the end of one era in human history and the dawning of another (although backward people in poor, ill-educated parts of the world might have been expected to take some time to catch up).
Scientific rationalism was now the gold standard of knowledge, and reason was by definition anti-supernatural. Religion wasn’t just an embarrassment, it was potentially lethal. If someone thought they were in touch with a supernatural entity, after all, what limit could logically apply to their nuttiness? The apple-cheeked old lady at the parish cake sale was a not-so-distant relative of Osama Bin Laden.
Rudeness towards believers was not only permitted, it was positively a duty. There had been too much wishy-washy tolerance. The searing light of rationality would penetrate into all the murky corners of supersition, and soon nobody would get away with proclaiming a belief in the soul, miracles, Providence, or grace. It would not even be allowed as a pious fiction or a figure of speech.
What amazes me in retrospect is how much their clamour intimidated me. I was a religiously-inclined agnostic when I read Richard Dawkins's The God Delusion, the anti-Bible of the New Atheists. Even at the time of reading it, before I started really delving into the arguments for and against religious belief, I found its logic unconvincing. (I also had no idea, before reading it, that the scientific case for religion was so strong—even in attempting to rubbish it, Dawkins couldn’t help publicizing it.)
But it wasn’t the logic or the arguments that hit me in the solar plexus. It was the bitterness of the rhetoric, and also its confidence. The message was stark: religion was to be driven beyond the pale. Faith in God was no longer intellectually, culturally or socially respectable.
And for a while, it really seemed like that.
But now, the spell seems to have been broken.
The would-be blockbuster film taken from Philip Pulman's atheistic fantasy, The Golden Compass, flopped at the box office, while Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia-- all fantasy franchises with an unabashed Christian message-- triumphed.
The Pope visited Britain and Germany, to almost universal acclaim. Predicted widespread protests turned out to be a damp squib.
The recent Irish census revealed that nine out of ten Irish-born people consider themselves Catholics. Not many more than five per cent described themselves as non-religious, and the high-profile campaign of Irish atheist groups encouraging respondents specify that they were atheist or agnostic (there was apparently no box for this on the census itself) only resulted in about three thousand such declarations.
All of the candidates in the Presidential election supported the broadcasting of the Angelus bells on RTE. Even the liberal candidates spoke of their spiritual values.
I visited the GPO over Christmas, and was happy to see the Christmas crib still enjoying pride of place, despite grumblings about this from God-bashers.
The closing of the Irish embassy to the Vatican has drawn a backlash from the public way beyond what might have been expected.
Every other day, it seems, there are lively discussions on religion, especially the Catholic faith, on the opinion page of the Irish Times. The topic seems an almost ever-present in the Letters to the Editor section. Is the interpretation of Christ's message, in our day, any less a matter for burning public debate as it was in the time of Newman and the Oxford Movement?
A new RTE radio show on religion, the God Slot, has proved very popular, while the BBC have produced an acclaimed documentary on the lives of Catholics that apparently (I have not seen it) is sympathetic and objective in tone.
Even in the field of British comedy-- apparently a New Atheist bastion if ever there was one, with the likes of Stephen Fry, Ricky Gervais, Simon Pegg, Alan Davies, David Baddiel, and many others making rather a meal out of their unbelief-- there has been a change in the wind. Frank Skinner has recently appeared on stage with the Archbishop of Canterbury, while the situation comedy Rev takes faith seriously and has won prizes and rave reviews, as well as cameo appearances from stars like Ralph Fiennes and Richard E. Grant.
So the mood seems to have changed, and to reveal that the moment of the New Atheists, after all, was only that-- a mood.
What lesson to draw? Simply, I think, that believers should not be too impressed by these ebbs and flows of public opinion. I am reminded of these lines by GK Chesterton, from a poem dedicated to his friend Edmund Bentley, in which he remembers the rationalism and decadence of the Victorian era in which he grew up:
A cloud was on the mind of men
And wailing went the weather,
Yea, a sick cloud upon the soul
When we were boys together.
Science announced nonentity
And art admired decay;
The world was old and ended:
But you and I were gay...
Life was a fly that faded,
And death a drone that stung;
The world was very old indeed
When you and I were young.
(...)
This is a tale of those old fears,
Even of those emptied hells,
And none but you shall understand
The true thing that it tells—
Of what colossal gods of shame
Could cow men and yet crash,
Of what huge devils hid the stars,
Yet fell at a pistol flash.
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