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.
There is a simple reason why we aren’t living in an atheistic society, see here.
Count,
I could extend “your thoughts” into the work of others like Brian D.Josephson, but then, I might be playing into hands about which “senility of scientists” would, as if some of our youth espouse on reason, had been overtaken?
Those who lead working models of science, like that used in the Josephson effect, now defunct, thinking wise?
Somewhere these ole folk according to those who have a agenda, missed the “science process” and yet, they offer some evidence to the contrary of that youtfful thinking?
Einstein, likewise?
“Possible” tunneling from other universes? “Atheist indoctrination” about which the irresponsibility is spoken in regards to science?
Okay, I added that last little bit for thought. 🙂 Just wondering.
Simon,
I just asked a similar question here, but my idea is that atheism is indeed compatible with science.
I believe we can make and prove a better theory than yours. We can’t make theories about supernatural phenomena in the absence of observations that helps us define them. We know however that natural phenomena obeys energy and probability conservation laws. Let’s call the remainder anatural phenomena. The anaturals will include all possible supernatural phenomena.
By testing a massive amount of different systems (for example chemical and gravitational ones) one can confirm or falsify “beyond reasonable suspicion” whether anaturals can be observed as breaking conservation laws. If they aren’t, the best theory will be that they don’t exist.
In conclusion, I can’t see why “methodological naturalism” can’t eventually show “ontological materialism’ as a correct theory by observations?! Perhaps you can help me understand if this is wrong.
If this idea is good, it should indeed be possible to put experimental limits on the existance of gods. In fact, we can already amuse ourselves by making an armchair prediction, admittedly with very low sensitivity, since you asked for it.
Television has been around for some time and people watch and presumably report oddities in shows from natural surroundings. Very few has reported and followed up on gross violations of energy conservation in gravity in television frames. When I did a rough calculation I ended up with more than 6.2 sigma certainty that no gods exists to kick around objects or mess with gravity.
There are no gods. At least, that’s my prediction from observations. 😉
Since the discussion here got me more interested in the subject, was rooting around and came across this article, which I thought was germane to the “science of morality”, if you will:
http://www.carlzimmer.com/articles/2004/articles_2004_Morality.html
Moral sense could be rooted in genes and accumulated experience quite literally shaping our brains, and feelings of moral certitude may have less of a rational basis than many would care to admit. Worse, these neurophysiological differences might make it extremely difficult for for those harboring different moral precepts to even comprehend one another, much less agree upon anything, causing certain conflicts to seem insoluble. The featured researcher, Dr. Greene, speculates that understanding the neurological basis of morality might help people achieve a measure of rational detachment, which could facilitate conflict resolution. Science to the rescue? Maybe not, but I still figure learning about the nature of our sense of right and wrong might possibly be of some assistance when we’re faced with so-called moral dilemmas.
Morality in humans can only have arisen one way, through evolution (selection for it). There is no other way unless you are prepared to allow something like religion which is not a useful hypothesis to add to the mix. The idea of a “universal” morality or why we have the morals we have (and recognizing that they have changed through “cultural evolution” is best addressed through evolutionary psychology or philosophy, not fairy tales.
I am atheist, in other words not a theist, agnosticism seems to me like a cop-out. As an atheist I do not see the need to postulate a supernatural explanation for anything, it is not about “belief” that there is no god, any more than I believe in the existence of tables, they are, they do not require my belief in oder to exist. The universe does not require my belief either, it is.
Your belief in an external universe at all is just as dubious. You can’t know that the external universe exists (of course, assuming that it does seems to be the best option in terms of the results we experience, but you can’t know that it exists).
I’m not equating belief in God with belief in an external world, incidentally. I am just pointing out that all of us rest our intellectual framework on belief. Picking your belief based on ‘it worked well last x times’ is just induction, which in itself isn’t on a firm footing. Clearly, we have to make assumptions to do anything at all, but we should be clear that we’re making them. It’s the flip side of addressing the ‘it’s just a theory’ nonsense, in fact; ‘theories’ are all we have.
Simon,
I just learned that “ontological materialism” is probably a bad and deliberately skewed concept, since it rests on a dualistic assumption of natural vs supernatural.
It seems that “philosophical materialism” is a workable simpler definition that directly implies a closed natural universe, and is consistent with methodological materialism.
It’s not a directly explicitly falsifiable theory due to it’s closedness. On the other hand, ideas of supernaturals “dies of a thousand cuts” since every explained observation strengthens the use of the theory. And the idea I presented is a rough sieve which supports the philosophical naturalism theory naturally and falsifiably, without supposing the dualism as such.
To answer accordingly, again, the idea I presented gives much less confidence than we can have about nonexistence of supernaturals. But it’s an easily expressed one; it gives you the limits you asked for.
Your ‘dies of a thousand cuts’ idea sounds rather like induction, to me. I would say that it ‘continually fails verification’ and leave it at that; at best, though, that kills a particular supernatural theory. Mind you, I think that attempts to disprove supernaturalism in general are as misguided as the attempts to prove it (the latter sort of thing is still, although it’s not talked about so much, basically an official doctrine of the Catholic Church, that you can know God through ‘natural reason’).
More generally, and not addressed to anyone in particular, I also don’t understand the missionary zeal that some people on either side (atheists or believers) have. I like debating points to improve my own understanding and cohere my own views (this is also why I am content to play Devil’s Advocate), but I don’t care if I change anyone else’s mind, so I guess that I am not much of a missionary. Discussion benefits us all because we at least get to enforce internal consistency on our body of opinions through the examination that the debate provides; where our ideas fail, we have to repair them and yes, maybe, sometimes we chuck the lot away. But that’s an internal process, merely stimulated by the debate; I don’t understand why people would enter the debate with the aim of changing other people’s minds*, but that’s just a reflection of my own approach, I think. I also don’t have believe that, on matters like this that are essentially undecideable, that dialogue between two ‘reasonable’ parties leads to some synthesised approximation to truth. The best we can hope for, it seems to me, is that each side understands the other better and improves the consistency of their own views, or at least is more aware of where the inconsistencies lie.
*Unless there was a political sort of motive, which might be entirely justifiable, like ‘leave me alone, you condemnatory pricks’.
#57
You had to understand that the induction part is really half of a cyclical process, from inductive/deductive reasoning, for our “striving” to make us whole? 🙂
Perfecting morally and rightously, until we are each satisfied/ nothing further initiated?
Without further knowledge, how is it, that you could have moved, or, changed in your belief?
An atheist/cateloic/buddhist might continue to form logic, around his status? Not want to change, or has found nothing convincing.
Induction is perhaps necessary but it’s not a route to truth; it can’t be, because saying ‘well, this happened x times so it’ll happen again’ presupposes the underlying rule that makes it happen and you can’t prove that a rule is true from ‘verification’ of predictions from it, you merely fail to rule it out (and there is, of course, a sort of regression starting with the certainty of the falsification, too). The upshot is that we can’t really know anything with certainty, but that’s just a pill that we have to swallow.
Adam:Induction is perhaps necessary but it’s not a route to truth; it can’t be, because saying ‘well, this happened x times so it’ll happen again’
The basis of what I am saying is in the idea of cyclical natures being realized. Not that it is right/wrong but would be consistent with our assessment of the deeper moves into assessing our realities. Theoretical induction and experimental deduction.
Plato:You had to understand that the induction part is really half of a cyclical process, from inductive/deductive reasoning, for our “striving” to make us whole?
Maybe you choose to ignore it?:)More on name
I didn’t ignore it, I have no real idea of what you mean. ‘Inductive/deductive reasoning’? I’m not denying that we do it, I’m not denying that we have to do it, I’m saying that you can’t say that it will lead to truth. Furthermore, I don’t know what ‘theoretical induction and experimental deduction’ means (it seems that it should be more the other way around, given that induction is based to some extent on observed repetition). ‘Deeper moves into assessing our realities’ sounds to me like it should be accompanied by incense and repeated use of the word ‘wow’, but that’s just my prejudice. We are, I suspect, operating from different assumptions in some regards.
I don’t see why the infinite regress is ‘impossible’, either. It’s certainly inconvenient, but we don’t get to pick.
That anything is ‘self-evident’ is a dangerous idea. We pick assumptions that feel right and yield deductive results that we like, but we shouldn’t assume ‘self-evident truths’. Once we’re clear about the fact that we are basing our reasoning on assumptions, things become a lot more transparent. There are plenty of basic assumptions that we all seem to like, so in general we aren’t in too much trouble, but I think that it’s worth remembering at least occasionally that these are, in fact, assumptions (I didn’t say ‘just’ for the same reason that I don’t like ‘just a theory’, i.e., it’s all we’ve got).
The plate shown talks about euclidean realities?
If such regression, and in this case reductionism is taken down to a certain level, I see where you might run into problems.
It’s the “first principle” I am drawing your attention too. It’s a leap of sorts, after having entered the loop. What is the foundational basis that people want?
So you do not accept such intuitive leaps? I know “Wow” is not acceptable, but model creation is:)
So you choose? I believe that this choice is the “longing” in all of us.:)Science may have no room for such psychologies, but it might understand the deeper motivations that would fuel a scientist who is seeking a truth.
Hopefully I may not have overstep the boundaries of this blog. So I’ll pull back now, and let others have ago at it.
I agree with you that we appear to share certain ‘longings’ and that’s not a bad base to pick, I don’t think. I just don’t have any particular reason to believe that our ‘longings’ map into a route to truth. I am a scientist myself, after all; I’m driven by the same interests as most other scientists, I think. My background is in Quantum Mechanics and there you’ll find quite a lot of people that don’t bother much about ‘truth’ so much as ‘it works in our predictions’ and frankly, we tend to pick the model that produces predictions with the least amount of maths, which is why you’ll find old-fashioned Copenhagen QM being practised even while we have other models (‘many worlds’, decoherence, etc) that essentially can produce the same results and are more intellectually ‘pleasing’, to some at least (the rest just pursue the ‘easiest route to verifiable predictions’ route).
Maybe the basis is the recognition that “uncertainty” might be part of a larger picture?
It is troublesome that such motivation might have had one wonder about this in an inductive/deductive way.:)
Thanks
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