A few years ago, as a newbie assistant professor, I was visited in my office by an editor at The Free Press. He was basically trolling the corridors, looking for people who had interesting ideas for popular-science books. I said that I liked the idea of writing a book, but I didn’t really want to do a straight-up cosmology tome. I had a better idea: I could write a book explaining how, when you really think about things scientifically, you come to realize that God doesn’t exist. I even had a spiffy title picked out — God Remains Dead: Reason, Religion, and the Pointless Universe. It’s not any old book that manages to reference both Steven Weinberg and Friedrich Nietzsche right there on the cover. Box office, baby.
The editor was actually intrigued by the idea, and he took it back to his bosses. Ultimately, however, they decided not to offer me a contract, and I went on to write another book with more equations. (Now on sale at Amazon!)
All of which is to say: I totally could have been in on the ground floor of all this atheism chic. These days, between Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris, and Victor Stenger, you can’t swing a cat without hitting a prominent publicly-outspoken atheist of one form or another. That could have been me, I tell you.
These guys have gotten a lot of attention — especially Dawkins, who was recently voted Person of the Year by at least one reputable organization. Of course, some of the attention has been negative, especially from folks who are unsympathetic to the notion of a harsh, materialistic, godless universe. But even among self-professed atheists and agnostics (not to mention your wishy-washy liberal religionists), some discomfort has been expressed over the tone of Dawkins’s approach. People have been known to call him arrogant. Even if you don’t believe in God, so the argument goes, it can be a bad strategy to be upfront and in-your-face in public about one’s atheism. People are very committed to their religious beliefs, and telling them that science proves them wrong will lead them away from science, not way from God. And if you must be a die-hard materialist, at least be polite about it and respect others’ beliefs — to be obnoxious and insulting is simply counterproductive. Apart from any deep issues of what we actually should believe, this is a separate matter of how we could best persuade others to agree with us.
I’m sympathetic to the argument that atheists shouldn’t be obnoxious and insulting; in fact, I think it’s a good strategy in all sorts of situations. You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar, etc. But it does not follow that we should keep quiet about comforting illusions because those are the only things standing between the poor dears and overwhelming existential anxiety. If people ask whether, as scientists, we believe in God, we should respect them enough to tell the truth — whatever we think that is. That doesn’t mean we have to go door-to-door spreading the good word of the laws of nature. It just means that we should be honest about what we actually think, giving the best arguments we have for whatever that may be, and let people decide for themselves what to believe.
Arrogant or not, as a matter of fact Dawkins and company have done a great service to the cause of atheism: they have significantly shifted the Overton Window. That’s the notion, borrowed from public-policy debates, of the spectrum of “acceptable opinion” on an issue. At any given time, on any particular question, the public discourse will implicitly deem certain positions to be respectable and worthy of civilized debate, and other positions to be crazy and laughable. The crucial part of this idea is that the window can be shifted by vigorous advocacy of positions on one extreme. And that’s just what Dawkins has done.
In other words, by being arrogant and uncompromising in his atheism, Dawkins has done a tremendous amount to make the very concept of atheism a respectable part of the public debate, even if you find him personally obnoxious. Evidence: a few years ago, major newsmagazines (prompted in part by the efforts of the Templeton Foundation) were running cover stories with titles like Science Finds God (Newsweek, July 20, 1998). Pure moonshine, of course — come down where you will on the whole God debate, it remains pretty clear that science hasn’t found Him. But, within the range of acceptable public discourse, both science and God were considered to be undeniably good things — it wasn’t a stretch to put them together. 
Nowadays, in contrast, we find cover stories with titles like God vs. Science (Time, Nov 13, 2006). You never would have seen such a story just a few years ago.
This is a huge step forward. Keep in mind, the typical American thinks of atheists as fundamentally untrustworthy people. A major network like CNN will think nothing of hosting a roundtable discussion on atheism and not asking any atheists to participate. But, unlike a short while ago, they will eventually be shamed into admitting that was a mistake, and make up for it by inviting some atheists to defend their ideas. Baby steps. Professional news anchors may still seem a little befuddled at the notion that a clean, articulate person may not believe in God. But at least that notion is getting a decent public hearing. Once people actually hear what atheists have to say, perhaps they will get the idea that one need not be an amoral baby-killer just because one doesn’t believe in God.
For that, Richard Dawkins, thank you.
Like so many, having refused to be brainwashed (although I didn’t know the word) at age five, I searched for years to find something that could possibly make sense among religions: Catholicisn, Protestantism, Christian Science, Buddhism, you name it. Okay, not Jainism; gave Confucius a pass. All this took years and proved fruitless. However, the writings of Seth, via Jane Roberts, turned out to validate my reasons for rejecting religion and clear up a lot more–without resorting to sin, guilt, fear, dogma, superstition, or any of the rot fouling so many religions. It also avoids rejection of others by virtue of personal piety or sanctimony (superiority for believing what the guys tell you to believe without question, thus being crowned with the ludicrous title, “the faithful”). It took me most of a year to read and absorb the first book, Seth Speaks, and the major opus, The Nature of Personality. It was as if I’d always known how things really are and had somehow forgotten. If you are a rationalist with an open mind, some of you folks might give it a try. It’s refreshingly clear and direct. No Saturday shul, no catechism, no bible study explaining away by repetition the thousands of (mutually-contradictory) tales that religions concocted and then borrowed from one another and now foist on the unwary as “God’s word.” And don’t get me started on those who take it upon themselves to tell us what their god wants. Or act as gatekeepers to that god.
“However, the writings of Seth, via Jane Roberts, turned out to validate my reasons for rejecting religion and clear up a lot more—without resorting to sin, guilt, fear, dogma, superstition, or any of the rot fouling so many religions.”
What has been cleared up for you without resorting to these concepts?
“It also avoids rejection of others by virtue of personal piety or sanctimony (superiority for believing what the guys tell you to believe without question, thus being crowned with the ludicrous title, “the faithful”).”
I have lots of experience with religious people and groups who don’t reject others by that virtue, or feel or act superior for believing what they do. Sometimes the beliefs are passed on from one generation to the next all the way back from the very founders of the religion, and their belief/knowledge is based on events they claimed to have happened. So, people today simply believed that those events did, in fact, happen, and that the truth of those events, along with the teachings surrounding them and their significance for humanity, have been preserved to the present day.
Karmadrive says:
> The problem with materialist reductionism is that it takes existence for granted.
Oh dear.
As Arthur Schopenhauer observed, the belief that there is no objective reality “would need not so much a refutation as a cure”. For people who don’t believe in an existence beyond their subjective perception, there is no value to making observations except for personal amusement, much less to systematic natural science.
We can’t “prove” an existence governed by the universal mechanisms of nature, but all civilizational advancement has come from the fact that throughout history, people concerned with building, growing, maintaining, understanding, organizing and inventing the things in our lives were going about their business as if we could (albeit often inconsistently). That’s enough for me to give provisional assent.
Its not as if everyone has to accept one particualr philosophy (e.g., materialist reductionism) if they want to be an atheist or be a contributor to society. As the idealist Thomas Green said “The fact that there is a real external world- is one which no philosophy disputes”.
How can you use a set of observations that presuppose existence to produce cause for ‘provisional assent’ for, hmmm, existence?
The ‘does the external world exist?’ question can’t be answered. Yes, we all make the same assumption/working hypothesis (‘it does’) but the people that then build on this a platform of more assumed certainty aren’t learning the lesson of considering the business of the existence of an external world in the first place, to wit, don’t be too certain of anything. Additionally, be clear about the items of which you can’t be certain.
It is ironic that Descartes introduced doubt that the external world existed (through his ‘dream demon’) towards the eventual goal of demonstrating that God exists, failed, and now some atheists appear to skate over the very same question.
Unproveable beliefs are a fact of life; we all have them. At best, evangelical atheists are saying that there are some that you needn’t, and shouldn’t have, for [insert unspecified mysterious reason here]. I’d like to see a listing of which unproveable beliefs are ‘good’, which are ‘bad’, and which don’t matter, with explanations. Where does ‘human morality’ sit in that lot (which laws of objective existence cover morality)?
As far as I’m concerned, people can not only believe what they want, they’re welcome to believe what they want. Sure, actions I’ll have an opinion on, but if you want to believe that God is hiding in the San Pelligrino bottle in your refridgerator door, be my guest. Just don’t try to sacrifice my cat to appease it.
Chinmaya Seth #130. When we assume that the external world exists, though, what else do we assume? If someone wishes to assume an omnipotent and omniscient God as the creator of that world/universe, it’s not only undisproveable, it’s impossible to assess likelihood that they are right*. The lesson of this, to my mind, is to leave off caring about what other people believe unless it results in actions which affect you and where it does result in those actions, address the actions. People should be able to believe what they want, firstly, and secondly, I have no idea why atheists would want to convince other people to become atheists.
I believe the external world exists. As you say, everyone does. The issue is why we should wish to convince anyone else as to how or why it does; we can teach science as I think that it should be taught (‘this produces verifiable predictions’) without attempting to make bigger claims about what is.
*Exactly as if we assume a deityless universe governed by physical law; we can’t use the empirical success of our models for physical laws as evidence because it’s in our assumption (which assumption, for most of us, probably came itself from the empirical success of models for physical laws; our interest in empirical success is presumably instinct).
Adam, as I’ve said, I agree with your post. Maybe there was a time gap.
It’s not a question of belief. The scientific attitude one should take on any subject is whether it is true.
Why should the atheists think He is not? The air is filled with music that is caught by the radio – music that otherwise they would not know about.
And so it is with God. He is with them every minute of their existence, yet the only way for them to realize this is to meditate.
Chinmaya Seth #134: My fault, too rushed in reading. I mean, I stand by what I wrote, I just shouldn’t have directed it AT you.
Barry Steer #135. It might be that God is only broadcasting on AM, which is nowadays only listened to by right-wing nutcases. Or something.
The fact(!) that anything does exist is a source of infinite awe for me. It is something that science does not touch. Dawkins tried to touch the subject in one of his public talks (I’ve lost the Youtube link) but what can he do but babble about multiverses and superstrings and try to argue that religions are just as confused as he is.
Call it “quantum mysticism” or whatever but I think we’ve been shown a new direction where we can advance when we accept that consciousness precedes matter – not the other way around, which as an assumption is just a blip in the history of cosmology. You can make a thought experiment: try to imagine a space with some phenomena but without an observer. Isn’t it atleast intuitively tempting to think that existing and observing are the flipsides of one thing – consciousness.
I don’t think that the fact that we can or can’t imagine or understand any particular scenarios means anything other greater than the fact that we have abilities and limitations, personally. I can’t imagine the Kansas City Royals winning anything ever again, but that’s not to say that it won’t happen*.
*It won’t happen.
#138: Ok. Let’s put it like this: the state of existing is always defined in relation to an observer i.e. in relation to consciousness whereas consciousness… you want to hear the rest?
It’s the cogito ergo sum issue.
There are three things to consider the observer, the instruments of observation and the thing observed.
By repetition we learn the most and so a truth is always worth repeating…
It’s not a question of belief. The scientific attitude one should take on any subject is whether it is true.
Why should the atheists think He is not? The air is filled with music that is caught by the radio – music that otherwise they would not know about.
And so it is with God. He is with them every minute of their existence, yet the only way for them to realize this is to meditate.
#140. Yes. But the ‘cogito’ is a very absolute statement, which I guess has guaranteed its fame. It’s a good bumper sticker, but it’s not, say, a project plan or a road map. IMHO it is more constructive to study the blurry line between the psyche – the conscious and the subconscious – and the cosmos than just jump to some absolut statement for the sake of mere intellectualism.
I avoid worrying about the psyche or the mind-body problem, myself. It’s an argument that circles faster and faster until it disappears… you know what comes next.
oh yes, and when you folks talk about consciousness, it is perhaps worth pointing out that in addition to everyday consciousness, there is the sub-conscious, then there is super-consciousness, Christ Consciousness (or in Sanskrit Kutastha Chaitanya), and finally Cosmic Consciousness. Have fun replying to this one, or not.
well done sir. now tackle climate change?
http://climatechange3000.blogspot.com/
Chris:
Sorry for a late response. FTIW:
“First, Larry’s the one who envoked apologetics post-Augustine, so I wasn’t moving anything.”
He did that after his main answer, to discuss your position I believe.
“And really, if the question is, what are the barriers to being a religious scientist, apologetics are valid.”
Not in the sense of a coherent view. Presumably it will help a scientist being a scientist, btw.
“Next, as to Wilkins’ use of the phrase “bounded rationality,” it’s not his. It’s Simons’, and it doesn’t apply to world views, it applies to people.”
I’m aware that it’s not Wilkins invention – I mentioned it because he has a good exposition on his blog.
I’m also aware that it applies to people, which are the ones that hold world views. Wilkins use it exactly in this capacity; people may be bounded rational in some mind set, and not in another. There may be a difference in where Simon and Wilkins draw their bounds, but I don’t see how that invalidates Wilkins or mine usage.
“So my reply still stands: there are rational arguments for religion, so it’s not irrational.”
That wasn’t in question, as I conceded that religion may be bounded (my use) rational. What I claim is that a person being a scientist and a theist may have an incoherent and irrational world view.
“So if the ignorance of the volk makes religion irrational, then atheism is in the same boat (as, again, is virtually any world view/philosophy).”
Again, that wasn’t in question. In fact, in my view any increased knowledge of religious arguments makes it more irrational against at the same time holding to science rationality.
And what I have seen, most atheists are aware of the arguments for and against theism. Since atheism can be neutral (“don’t know”), I’m not sure how you construe that atheists necessarily needs arguments for atheism.
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Dawkins is Arrogant. And its not so much that its impolite to be upfrotm with your Atheism, Stephen J. GOuld was. The Problem with Dawkisn is, was, and remains always, that he makes uncritical claims supported by nothing in his unnessisary and unwarrented attacks on hose who merley disagree with him.
As an example, Dawkisn said “Anyone who beleives in God is Scientificlaly illeterate”, and brazenly proclaimed that no one can beleive in boht science and God.This is, of ocurse, a popular notion repeated int he above article, where the author said that , if yo think abou thtings scientificlaly, youd relaise God doesn’t existy.Yet, many scientistss do, in fact,beleive in God and many who think of things scintificlaly do come to the conclusion.
The arrogance of Dawkins is not so much his forthrightness in his beleifs, but his ridicule of others in the name of domenatign the ocnversaiton in faovur of his own unproven assertions, most of which arne’t scientificlaly proven.
IE, Dawkins hedonistic view of sex is not proven by one shred of sudy, and Psycology acutlaly confirms older moral codes as superior. Casual sex for mere enjoyment is not the route to happiness or Health and folks ar ehapper in stable, monogemosu relaitomships, and few sex partners in there life.
Dawkisn writes, hwoever, about “ENjoying sex” and means casual sex is A-OK. A decideldy Anti-Sceintific notion that flies itn eh face of contemproary Psycological studies.
Dawkisn also misrepresents many rleigiosu beelifs, thenature of what faith is (It snot beleif withot evidence, but confidence) and often beleifs abotu God. He didnt even get THomas Aquinas’s arguments right.(His “Ultimate stinkiness” argument is case in point.)
Dawkins ridicules anuone who beleives in God, and doesnt even listen to there arguments. His cheap, ad hominim attacks and self servign raitonalisaitonzs ar what make him arrogant.
Not his openness tobeign an Atheist.
These list commons by Zarove dimonstrant who dufficlit it is to crimpyhand a post writed by sumwon how canute spill.
God damn you! After I spent all that effort trying to make sense of yuor tronspased letters, I fnid taht yuo’re tlaking billhooks.
“Belief with confidence”? Hang on, I think my anus just prolapsed. “I really believe it, lots and lots, oh yes, look at how much I believe it.” This is entirely irrelevant to its truth status.
I sincerely hope that I have just misunderstood your post, and that it is actually a genius piece of parody.
Oh… bugger it, I simply can’t let it go. What is “unscientific” about wanting to enjoy sex? How do you get from “enjoy sex” to “casual sex is ok?” Is this the same kind of leap you kind of people make from “You can’t prove there isn’t a god” to “Jesus was born of a virgin, performed miracles and was the son of god”?
Aaaaaarrrrggggghhhhh! Ooops, hold on, that’s my ARSE falling out again.
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Thank you, Richard Dawkins, for showing us how thoroughly unsophisticated your atheist dogma really is.
The radical empiricism of the Dawkinite herd is logically self-defeating. It is thus no surprise that he does not systematically address basic questions of epistemology in his great big book. And so we should thank Richard Dawkins for his unreflective, unserious tome.