Melissa Fletcher Stoeltje takes an unflinching look at a small, quiet community that seems to be gaining in numbers in the unsuspecting coffee shops of San Antonio — atheists!
She wears stylish glasses, and her thick black hair is swept up in a ponytail; the only hint of a slightly rebellious streak is the tattoo that peeks from under her shirtsleeve. He is a slight, soft-spoken man with a laid-back demeanor and a full beard.
Melissa and Chanse are young atheists. They don’t believe in God. As such, they’re part of a small but substantial minority that swims against the overtly religious mainstream of America, a spiritual tenor that has grown more strident in recent times as issues of faith increasingly become entangled with politics and public policy.
Of course they are stylish! And only slightly rebellious, at least on the surface. In fact it’s a very nice article, the point of which is that atheists and agnostics, despite being a tiny minority (about 3 percent), constitute the fastest-growing category of religious “belief” in the United States.
This cheerful demographic fact ties into a discussion between Chris Mooney, PZ Myers and others a little while back, on how we should speak about science and evolution and religion in the public sphere. Chris suggested that, since we live in a very religious culture, it’s to our own benefit to emphasize the compatibility of religious belief with a scientific worldview. PZ replied that there is no reason to dilute our message just to win some temporary battles. And the truth is that, while there are some staunchly religious scientists who also believe in evolution, and there’s no reason not to have such people be fighting for the cause of science, most scientists are somewhat agnostic if not downright atheist, and there’s no reason to hide that fact. Chris’s response correctly identified the underlying disagreement, which is completely about tactics. (Be sure to read Chris at Mixing Memory on the use of “framing” in this context, and John Rennie at Scientific American on the Dover trial.)
If I may put words into their mouths, Chris is a strategist, looking for the most politically effective ways of fighting the battle currently before us, which is defending evolution in schools. PZ is playing the role of the intellectual, for whom strategy and tactics will always take a back seat to telling the truth. If it makes a few people uncomfortable, that’s their problem. This is why Richard Dawkins generates such emotional responses among people who are clearly on his side when it comes to the truth of evolution; intellectuals admire his fierce determination to call it as he sees it, while strategists cringe at his blatantly anti-religious rhetoric.
I am on the uncompromising-intellectual side of this debate (big surprise there), but I think that the truth-telling attitude has its strategic benefits as well. The fight over teaching evolution in public schools is a tiny skirmish in a much broader cultural conversation. (See? We don’t have to call it a “war.”) We do live in a religious society, remarkably so when we are compared to similar countries elsewhere in the world, and there are complicated reasons for that. But increasingly, a lot of folks are wondering whether their supernatural beliefs are really warranted by the evidence, or whether they’re not just going along because that’s what everyone does. To young people wondering about the meaning of it all, it can be extremely powerful to hear someone say that it’s okay not to believe in God. Everyone always says that you will never talk someone out of their religious beliefs by lecturing about the scientific method; that’s certainly true for a wide range of people who are very confident in their positions, but there are also a huge number of people who are legitimately questioning what to believe. In the long run, the way to squelch the political effectiveness of the intelligent-design movement, the anti-abortion movement, the anti-gay-marriage movement, and so on, is to relegate them to insignificant minority positions within the populace, and one good way to do that is to undermine their supernatural foundations. It’s an extremely long-term project, to say the least, but one worth keeping in mind.
The only time I think the Stoeltje article stumbles is at the very end:
But what, exactly, do atheists believe in, if not in God?
In a nutshell, atheists believe in reason alone, in those things that can be arrived at through intellect and the scientific method. Concrete evidence for God, they argue, simply doesn’t exist. They don’t cotton to leaps of faith or anything that involves a supernatural being reaching into human lives. They believe you can live a happy, respectable life based on human ethics that were derived not from God handing down a tablet but from a code of rules that emerged naturally through an evolutionary process in which humans learned how to live together successfully.
The idea that atheists replace “religion” with “science” is an unfortunately common misunderstanding. Religion plays many roles — it tells a story about the workings of the universe, it suggest moral and ethical guidelines, and it provides social and cultural institutions and practices. Science does not play all those roles, nor should it pretend to; it talks about how the universe works, but is of no help with morality or culture. However, the moral and cultural roles of religion do not stand independently of its beliefs about the universe (existence of a caring supernatural being or what have you) — if that part of the story isn’t true, the other teachings of the religion (homosexuality is a sin, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven) aren’t necessarily any better or worse than any other set of non-religious cultural practices, and should be evaluated on that basis. Science can’t tell us how we should treat other human beings. What it can do is to free us from the mistaken idea that the correct way to treat other human beings can be found in scripture or in church teachings or in the contemplation of God’s will; we human beings have to solve this hard problem all by ourselves.
I am not sure. Society “might not” be as advanced to some, without these atheist principles?
Or, is the “complexity” less likely to be understood with all the things around us, hiding some “unifying principal?” 🙂
So out of our ignorance, arises this fear about spooky things Did Anton find that in this entangled way, such determinations used would lead to all the ideas about that complexity?
In the presence of the gravitational field, the photon is ? Why not our choices in a eventual outcome from a simple choice made? Who would have known the probable outcome, yet it suited just you?
Some might not have cared about how it all began. Even further, to ask what came before that, could have instigated the outcome now.
Venezianno pondered this with responsibility, yet, some would just assume the universe began “this way” and out of it, the standard model way of seeing all things.
To me, it’s nice to see people think “outside” the box.:)
Science can’t tell us how we should treat other human beings.
I wonder. There may be a lot of testable insights from game theory, for inastance, and/or evolutionary psychology about how and why behaviors generally regarded as “moral” or “ethical” are so commonly recognized as such, to the point that antisocial behavior is regarded in the modern context as a pathology rather than a mere choice. As some so-called normative behaviors are mirrored in our mammalian relatives (esp. other hominid primates), who otherwise display no evidence they harbor spiritual beliefs or engage in ritualistic behaviors we associate with religiosity, there’s reason to suspect human morality has a neurological basis that is, like all biological traits to some degree, the product of natural selection. One might meaningfully ask what behaviors, in terms of both individuals and populations, are adaptive or maladaptive, and assign value to those behaviors according to the degree to which they enhance survival of the individual and the species.
Do behaviors we commonly label “good” or “bad” correspond to adaptive or maladaptive, respectively? These are, again, testable hypotheses, and the study of such matters could conceivably provide solid, empirically-rooted prescriptions for behavior that enhances the subjective quality of life (generally speaking), perhaps without the baggage of moral codes derived from peculiar Type-I errors of the religious sort. I think the preliminaries of the above are already the subject of promising scientific research and intense debate.
But whether or not behaviors that are traditionally labeled good/bad are found to correspond to adaptive/maladaptive, that doesn’t actually make them good/bad in any objective sense. Who says we should be adaptive? Ultimately you have to have some moral first principles, and these are not grounded in any conceivable fact about the real world; they are human choices.
The math of game theory is a legitmate process that extends into the everyday world. While “some” might have battled the demons, segregation from society(Andrew Wiles i his search), the essence of the “underlying principals” are valid, as John Nash demonstrated for us.
How casual the observance then, in the social conditions of the bar, that this process would underly “all interactions” seen in a socially constucted way.
Bargaining processes.
I speculate of course. One had to have “a eye” for these kinds of things.
One can still believe there is something “spiritually inhernet”, about life? Such a “progression seen in our responsiblity” that would make us better human beings? That, such outcomes are possible.
Why would we dream? To think these are just signs of the times, and not, “possible outcomes” to such choices made?
Very eloquent, Sean. Some of us, though, reconcile the strategist with the intellectual: agnostics. Agnosticism is often depicted by atheists as a cop-out, but for me it is the position most consistent with my intellectual understanding of the limits of rationally acquired knowledge.
George
I suppose the phenomenon of perception of “good” and “bad” might be reflected in a truly objective, measurable change in brain activity. We can simply recognize that “subjective values” may have their objective correlates. Emotions needn’t be seen as etherial, and perhaps to the degree we’re “wired for pleasure”, we’re machines that seek it in a manner that is explainable in terms of adaptation. Happiness can reduce stress hormones, and hence protect the immune system, which therefore enhances survivability, just as an example. One can legitimately ask what’s so great about survival, I suppose. To the extent that there would be no life without the ability to adapt and survive, I tend to wonder if we have a choice in the matter of whether or not to “want” it. If a behavior is triggered by a cascade of signaling in the brain corresponding to “pleasure”, perhaps there’s really nothing more to the motivation for “goodness”. It’s kind of B.F. Skinner, I know, but maybe the guy had a few good points, and a moderated behavioral paradigm isn’t so crazy, or so repressive as to be yet another subjective tyranny.
It’s annoyingly philosphical stuff, I admit, and quite worthy of doubt for that very reason. I’m just saying maybe we can’t close all empirical doors when it comes to the subject of morality, and precriptions for behavior. There’s a lot about the brain that is within our power to learn.
Hmm… I’m not sure atheists are gaining any ground, no matter how I would like that to be the case. And unfortunately, I suspect that people like Dawkins hurt our “cause” quite substantially by being, quite frankly, abrasive. I find myself in the camp of the uncompromising truth tellers, but we should be patient, polite, and try to explain the beauty of science. It’s mighty hard sometimes, but intolerance is an ugly trait in everybody.
On moral principles: A balance between the good for the individual and the good for the group is probably something that arises in social groups via evolution, and can be considered an objective moral rule derived from science. Otherwise, if you insist on an objective moral rule outside science, you need to identify a source for that moral rule. And then we’re back to square one.
Faith is rotted optimism.
Click on name. I puzzle as to “ingenuity” moving through such tight spaces:)
Well, subjective as “emotive content” might be within abstract thought processes, there is some “inherent truth” that no matter who we are, there are “such remmants” that follows the thinking process, into memory?
Makes an impact?
So “such mixing” would be of interest, from a entangled state recogniton(emphemeral quality to mind)?
Did we think thought, as a substance of the evolutinary scale of moral conduct, belonged to some brain mattered state assigned to evolutinary progression?
We are more “then animals” in the brain’s capacity? More then the Monkey’s social constructive behavior.
Focused forward, what would allow the mind to move it’s capacity, into such a new direction? A “Phase change” possibly 🙂
I had a reasonably successful conversation with a few religious friends after asking them to watch this interview with E.O. Wilson
No belief structures were changed, but two of the three admitted that you don’t need to have religion in order to be “good” … neither would have admitted that before the conversation.
It’s little surprise that some theologians and philosophers find the whole idea of sociobiology repugnant, for the very reason that objective goodness (and its opposite) is an irrelevance in empirical study of morality.
I am a long-time fan of the “fastest growing” statistics, a sure sign of being marginal (small but proud sample) is having large statistical fluctuations…For example, I hear that the fastest growing demographic in western Canada is Israeli-born Physicists, unless of course I am out of town.
We should focus on science education for children. Primary school children are hardly taught anything about science. If they hear anything about the origin of life, the earth or the universe it is the Biblical creation story, and not a story based on scientific knowledge. This has to change.
Count Iblis:- “We should focus on science education for children.”
Bingo!
-cvj
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Going back to George Musser’s comment,
I believe that agnotism, not atheism, is the compatible ‘belief’ with science.
Although, paraphrasing Laplace, “We have no need of that (god) hypothesis”,
supernatural influence can also not be ruled out by any experiment.
So, following standard scientific practice, we posit the non-existence of god, but openly admit that we could be wrong. ie. take the stance of agnostics.
on that note, does anyone know how to put experimental limits on the existance of god? I’d love to have that in my PDG, particle physics booklet!
Where did the number of 3% come from? Last I heard it was around 20%.
coturnix, that’s what it said in the article. These numbers are always extremely sensitive to how you phrase the question and who you lump together, so it’s not surprising that there are dramatic differences.
Science has EVERYTHING to do with morality and good deeds. You repeat what makes you feel good- in other wors what makes your brain secrete feel good chemicals- and you do not repeat what makes you feel bad- again chemically based.
That is certainly the shortened version, but in animal studies- chimps dogs rats- that is exactly what happens when they play, eat and copulate.
Simplified and extremely cool-
impatientpatient–
I’m not sure if that notion of morality is satisfactory to most people, or even a very useful notion of morality, since morality itself seems to need a sense of universality that some notion of ‘feels good’, ‘feels bad’ would never be able to offer.
For example, the notion of feeling good as a notion of THE GOOD makes no reference to acknowledging others–I cannot truly feel the things that another does. It would take quite a bit of work to even establish that murder is immoral under this system, without creating weird, non-observable entities.
If you propose to me a system of ethics that is not universal (at least in the sense that it applies to an entire community of some form), I say that that is not a system of ethics.
I have no real comment; I’d just like to thank you two (?) years later for “Moments in Atheism.”
Not this atheist. Embedded in the question is a faulty assumption: one must “believe” in something. In this context, belief obviously connotes a form of faith, or adherence to a body of tenets, rather than the mere mental acceptance of an actuality. I do not believe in reason any differently than I believe in cheese. I believe in the big bang to the same degree I believe dinosaurs existed. This form of belief is not a low-cholesterol God-substitute. It’s 100% fantasy-free skeptical goodness.
Many say science is merely a new form of religion, no better than any other. I once had a devout Christian, and close friend, tell me that one day ‘my books would fail me.’ He apparently couldn’t understand that my world view did not depend on physics texts in the same way his did on the bible. I wonder, to what extent, the religious public can correctly conceive the atheist’s position; it is not in their imaginative repertoire.
Interesting discussion about morality. I tend to think there are two different questions being posed here, and it’s important not to confound them. One is the basic question of what is moral behavior, and the second is how did humans come to have a moral sense. The second question is certainly in the domain of science, and evolutionary psychology (or neurology, or whatever) may lend some significant insight into it. But, like Sean, I don’t think answers to this second question really have much bearing on the first.
If you want to have science tell you what moral behavior is, you have to accept what it tells you. If you were to construct an appropriate game theory model of a human population I believe you would find the emergence of some behaviors we consider “moral” (like avoidance of senseless violence, or rampant theivery). But you might also find that a certain small fraction of “cheaters” (whom we would consider sociopathic) are tolerated, because it was to their individual organism’s benefit to take advantage of the basic trust in society. From an evolutionary standpoint, then, we could consider that behavior “natural”, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it moral.
As to PK’s remark on the origins of moral reasoning, personally I take two major principles to be axiomatic: (a) that suffering is bad, and to be avoided, and (b) that other human being’s experience is similar to my own. From that comes the golden rule, and a large portion of my moral code. It may seem like cheating to take these rules as given (dare I say “on faith”?), but note that science doesn’t save you from this conundrum. Even science rests on the basic metaphysical assumption of the existance of an objective, rule-based reality. It can make for stimulating, late night discussions over beers to question those assumptions, but in the end I don’t think it really gets you anywhere.
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I cannot truly feel the things that another does
But you kid yourself that you do when you say you have empathy. And to an empathic individual, doing harm, or even contemplating harm, can produce an aversive emotional response. Characteristic “moral” behavior follows. I could be wrong, but empathic sentiments (as illusory as they may be) seem to be pretty universal among humans, and may be among other apes. Those who lack it are generally regarded as being socio- or psychopathic.