I chanced upon this completely bizarre article by Melanie Phillips, on the Science / Religion schism. I don't actually know why I actually even have to describe it as bizarre. I mean what else did I think it was going to be? I was alerted to it by a blurb on a conservative leaning magazine, whose name I've forgotten in Sainsburys today. (Northernbloke inspirations can pop up pretty much randomly.) It was as delightfully full of holes as I expected. I think Mel could be described as a "cargo cult intellectual." She tries to use the right words to dress it up as a serious academic expose on the hypocritical entrenched irrationality of the new atheists / rationalists /the left/ supporters of anthropogenic climate change. Tick whoever fits the thing she disagrees with in the respective point in the article. But in the end it is just a hodge podge of superficial straw men, tortured logic, double standards, and passive aggressive intellectual buck passing. (count how many times she uses the "Anyone who disagrees with X is branded a bigot by X argument. NB Try and argue your corner a bit more then!) What also strikes me is her complete scientific illiteracy, and ability to turn the article from a diatribe against militant atheists, to an anti euthanasia screed, to a climate change denial piece, to a Britain's going to the dogs rant. It really boils down to a "The liberals are the real bastards" piece, with the standard "guilty as charged." right wing memes chucked in. It is a staggeringly silly article!
Ready for the knockdown? Here goes:
"It is a truth universally acknowledged that reason and religion are mortal foes. Reason deals a death blow to religion; religion is clearly irrationality on stilts. "
They can be mutually exclusive, and often are. But reason (the ability to use rationality and a systematic outlook to assess a thing) and religion (the belief, and belief structures in place, in a divine force that controls the destiny of the material world / humans) can go hand in hand. It was; when the major religions formed, ostensibly reasonable to believe in a force that created the universe (for want of a better explanation.). Religious doctrines can have rational origins (the Islamic taboo against booze is sensible for a religion founded in a desert region.) The real, bare bones schism of analysing the universe is between "science" and "faith" and "knowledge" and "belief ". Science is a methodology, a way of looking at the universe, by hypothesis and objective observation of evidence. Faith is a belief (it could be drawn from a rational analysis.) system. It sets out with a presumption of truth. It may even survive things that disavow this truth, or it may shoe horn parts of evidence to bolster a truth. These two doctrines are utterly different ways of looking at the universe (this doesn't mean they are automatically hostile. And that the "other" camp is "bad". A thing that Mel has not taken to heart.). And really are a meeting, - not of opposites, but of two incompatible paradigms, that are of two worlds. (I emphasise they are not enemies. Just totally different.)
"If only religion didn’t exist, reason would rule the world and there would be no more wars, tyrannies or murderous hatreds. It follows therefore that religious people are either stupid or unbalanced and are inimical to progress, modernity and happiness.
Well, this universal truth isn’t true at all. In fact, reason is underpinned by religion — at least the Biblical variety. Without Genesis there would have been no Western science, no equality and human rights and no liberal belief in progress."
Religion doesn't cause these bad things. Human nature does. Irrationally based world views and exclusive religious doctrines can (and do) compound these things. That is the real root of reasonable objections to doctrine and faith based analysis. (not always the domain of the religious.) True reasonable thinkers are above such generalisations about religion being solely the cause of human ills.
The claim that the bible has naturally brought about modern science and "enlightenment values" is also very dubious as well. The Genesis creation myth is; even by the standards of its own time, a pretty poor hypothesis about the creation of the world. There is no mention of ancient Greek disciplines such as those of Aristotle and Plato, which if anything (it would be hard to say one specific thing created "Enlightenment values.") contributed the most to establishing modern scientific paradigms. Or other great cultures that predate the New (and Old in some cases.) who seemed to have both grasped science and culture. Indeed the "golden rule"* (Treat others as you wish to be treated.) was likely external to the Abrahamic faiths.
She continues on:
"Indeed, the paradox is that some of our most noisy advocates of reason say a lot of things which are demonstrably absurd.
Take those scientists who promote not science but scientism — the belief that science can deal with every aspect of existence. The scorn and vituperation they heap upon religious believers is fathomless. And yet their materialism leads them to say things which are just… well, nutty.
For example, Professor Richard Dawkins told me he was ‘not necessarily averse’ to the idea that life on earth had been created by a governing intelligence — provided that such an intelligence had arrived from another planet. How can it be that our pre-eminent apostle of reason appears to find little green men more plausible as an explanation for the origin of life than God? "
Mel drops herself in it a bit here. She has for once, cited an example of one of her "accusations" against the Antichrist of atheism himself no less. It is fairly easy to hypothesise that life may exist off Earth. The fact that life exists here is proof that life exists somewhere. This means that given the right conditions and chemical raw materials that it could be hypothesised that it exists elsewhere. Extrapolate up to sentient life (though your perhaps best to wait before evidence of life off Earth before seriously doing this.) and them seeding life elsewhere. Hypothesising the existence of a superbieng (who can break the laws of physics) with no real physical proof of its existence is a bit harder. Melanie Phillips cannot objectively analyse varying hypothesis, and relies on personal opinion. A bit of a bummer, for an article on assessing the scientific method.
"Contrary to popular myth, Western science was not created by Enlightenment secularism. It grew out of the revolutionary claim in the Bible that the universe was the product of a rational Creator, who endowed man with reason so that he could ask questions about the natural world."
That doesn't really stand up. For a start most people can figure out that the world seems to obey some kind of natural laws, and lots of things consistently behave in a routine way. There's an order in place, (though most revealed religious beliefs fall a bit flat on trying to figure out what this order may be.) and that people can study that order to figure it out. Hey Mel, that applied even back then.
I'm not going to slate the Bible totally. I think Jesus had a few good ideas, and smoothed over some of the sillier cruelties of the Old Testament. Although not a believer myself, Christianity has given nice hymns and churches. It can be inspirational and uplifting. It is also often intolerant and divisive to the point of inciting hate, and hypocritical. But one thing that is consistent about it (and it's Islamic and Jewish cousins) is it's inherent irrationality. These three faiths are concerned with the parochial. They are didactic, revealed from authority and are (to the practitioners) exclusive to the truth, to the extent of the contrary (in English this means they are self evidently the truth, and contradictory things should be ignored /revised accordingly.) This doesn't provide an atmosphere clement to rationality.
We get these nuggets that pretty much speak for themselves.
"This is because ideology [secular], by wrenching evidence to fit a prior idea, is inimical to reason and sacrifices truth to power. That’s why environmentalism’s most famous offspring, man-made global warming theory, is totalitarian gobbledegook. There is no evidence to support it, plenty of evidence against it and even more evidence that much of the ‘science’ on which it is based is fraudulent."
None? None at all? Even though Carbon Dioxide (even natural CO2) is a well documented greenhouse gas? No evidence?
"But like other ideologies, it appears immune to challenge, however compelling the case against it."
Circular logic.
She then comes out with this.
"It can’t be [why "militant athiests" dislike religion] that religion has committed terrible atrocities, because atheism has committed terrible atrocities too. Maybe it’s the fear that Biblical morality fetters the freedom to be footloose and fancy-free. After all, if genes are selfish why should they alone have all the fun?"
Oh look, it's the "Hitler and Stalin were atheists too" canard. It's been debunked better elsewhere, so what about the "selfish gene" comment? Its a misunderstanding on her part. The "selfish" only means that a species genes have no "purpose" beyond being perpetuated. It doesn't mean that selfish genes (they're mindless protein chains, and physically couldn't "feel" anything anyway.) beget selfish species. Jeez someone by this woman a science book!
"But since Biblical religion actually underpinned reason and morality, the decline of religion means the erosion of truth and conscience. If religious totalitarianism was rule by the Church and political totalitarianism was rule by the ‘general will’, this is cultural totalitarianism, or rule by the subjective individual.
In Britain, the effects are plain to see. Everything is upside down: the transgressive becomes the norm while the normal is discriminatory; victims become aggressors while aggressors are indulged; education leaves children in a state of noble savagery; broken families are promoted as lifestyle choice.
And a brutal utilitarianism means elderly or coma victims are starved and dehydrated to death, with anyone who dares to mention the sanctity of human life dismissed as a Bible-bashing nut-job."
Let's put aside that religion and morality are somehow physically intimately bound at the seems; - my brain is really starting to hurt now. Seemingly completely interchangeable right wing memes are being mashed up together with tortured logic to produce a horrid anti - science mess.
I realised that in the end I had to throw the towel in a bit with this stuff. I mean how can you possibly counteract an article that berates its opponents for treating the world as divided into two impermeable factions, their opponents being horrid bigots. - By splitting the argument into two utterly opposing camps. The other side being horrid bigots. I mean for Gods sake:
" In Manichean fashion, the left divides the world into rival camps of good and evil. Anyone who is not on the left is ‘the right’ and thus beyond the moral pale. But much that is demonised in this way as ‘right-wing’ is simply an attempt to uphold truth, reality and liberty against the distortions, fabrications and bullying of ideology."
Takes one to know one Melanie.
I need a bloody drink now.
*There is some evidence to suggest that Jesus may have been influenced by Hellenic disciplines. It is thought that Joseph was no humble carpenter, but a master tradesmen, with JC as his apprentice, travelling around the world, and immersing himself in foreign disciplines (even perhaps what is now England). The "son of God" thing may have been Jesus applying Helenic systematics to a local religion. Him seeing himself as a gateway between God and ordinary "Joe Palestinians" A kind of Bronze Age mathematical out the box thinking.
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