Apathy Sketchpad

I am listening to former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey chatting a lot of nonsense about atheists (link is to WMV). He has this to say:

We now live in a very dangerous and divided world. The urgent challenges facing us today is to build bridges of understanding and hope, and the religions have a very sturdy role to play in this regard but then, their contribution is being hindered not only by deep misunderstandings between the faiths, but more worryingly by a troubling polarisation between two intellectual worlds: faith and secularism. Or, if we prefer, faith and science.

I can’t find a transcript anywhere, so I have typed the relevant bits out myself (by which I mean, all of it except for i discourse on Darwin which I have little interest in discussing. For the sake of readibility, I have resisted the temptation to spell science ’sarnce’ which is what he actually says. (He sounds a lot like Brian Butterfield.) I’ve also been fairly generous with his mistakes, such as referring repeatedly to someone called ‘Hitchings’. It’s pretty long, so skim it or skip it if you like, but basically it’s an exercise in quotemining, so the fact I’ve reproduced it in its entirety ended up pleasing me.

…September the eleventh 2001, or 9/11 as we now call it is a key date in modern history. It can be taken to represent a watershed between West and Islam, and that is certainly true, but… it is also the date that symbolises a growing split between faith and reason, illustrated in the hostility to all religions by Richard Dawkins and others.

What amazes me the most about this entire speech is that he can casually refer to “a growing split between faith and reason” without ever wondering if that might mean that faith is unreasonable or if he should switch sides.

The attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon and the White House woke us up, all of us, to a resurgent and militant Islam which remains an active presence in the world today. Last week’s attacks in Mumbai sadly will not be the last of such atrocities. For some writers, such events are an illustration of the evils of religion – and all religions. I’ve no doubt that one can trace a direct link from 9/11 to the strident and agressive tones of such writers as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and many others.

This is entirely correct. It is, of course, simply not true that Richard Dawkins wrote Viruses of the Mind in 1991. It is completely impossible that John Lennon wrote Imagine in 1971. It is furthermore wholly false that Lucretius wrote “…but ’tis that same religion oftener far hath bred the foul impieties of men” before Jesus was even (supposedly) born. Because there was no anti-religion movement prior to 2001. Someone who believes in a magic man who made the world has no doubt of it.

And the result is a widening gap between religion and science, an unwillingness to engage, concluding in a dialogue – a literal dialogue – of the deaf. And the purpose of such writers is to pour scorn on religious belief. They want to eradicate it, although they differ as to the chances of acheiving it. Hitchens, perhaps the most polemical of the writers, believes that monotheism is a plagiarism of a plagiarism of a hearsay of a hearsay of an illusion of an illusion extending all the way back to the fabrication of a few non-events. How ridiculous.

Ooh, great comeback. I appreciate you were talking to people who believe in Christianity’s various nonsenses, but even so, if that’s the best defence of them that you’ve got then what are you for? You’re the worst Archbishop ever.

Someone wrote, a journalist, about Hitchens recently that he takes the verbal equivalent of an AK47 to shoot down hallowed religious figures, questioning whether Mohammed was an epileptic, declaring Mahatma Gandhi an obscurantist who distorted and retarded Indian independence, Martin Luther King as a plagiarist and an orgiast and in no sense a real Christian, while the Dalai Lama is a medieval princeling who is the continuation of a parasitic monastic elite. Well, there you go.

Right, so you’ve quotemined him. Well done you. Do you have any idea what happens when someone takes all the nasty bits of the Bible out of context? (If not, the answer is that you get basically the Old Testament.)

And common to all this, seems to be a loathing of increasing religiosity in the United States’ politics which has, in their view, contributed to what is seen to be a disastrous presidency, and which has undermined scientific understanding.

I don’t think you still have to pad that claim with the phrase ‘what is seen as’. Watch how carefully Carey avoids explicitly endorsing any opinion at all in this speech. It’s masterful. At this rate, I imagine his pencil will run out of phrases like ‘might’ and ’some say’. It’s like listening to Wikipedia giving a speech. (I might start reading Wikipedia in his voice from now on.)

Dennet excoriates the madness of a faith that looks forward to the end of the world and the return of the Messiah — well, we are in the middle of Advent, aren’t we? Or starting of Advent. What Dawkins hates is that most Americans still haven’t accepted evolution and support the teaching of intelligent design. According to one poll, 50% of the US electorate believe the story of Noah as literal. And Dawkins argues that there’s nothing to choose between an Afghan Taleban and the American Christian equivalent.

Hence the phrase ‘equivalent’.

The genie of religious fanaticism is rampant in present day America. And Sam Harris, the author of two best-sellers, The End Of The World — sorry, The End Of Faith –

I shall resist any pop-Freudian analysis here, and further resist drawing attention to the Dennet reference earlier and the amusing juxtaposition of these two things. That would be mean of me.

–and Letter to a Christian Nation, similarly draws an analogy between Muslims and the American Christian. “Non-believers,” he said, “like myself, stand beside you dumbstruck by the Muslim hordes who chant death to whole nations of the living, but we stand dumbstruck by you as well. By your denial of tangible reality, by the suffering you create in the service of your religious myths, and by your attachment to an imaginary god.” And Harris is prepared to go [yet] further. He writes, “some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.” This extraordinary statement–

Before you go any further, I feel it’s only fair to remind you that Deuteronomy 13:6-9 says you should kill anyone who believes in any god but yours.

–is only slightly worse that that of Richard Dawkins’ opinion that labelling children by the religion of their parents is a form of child abuse.

Richard Dawkins’ well-reasoned and carefully justified opinion, let’s not forget. An opinion which you have neither managed nor attempted to counter with anything more compelling than an implicit dismissal. For someone who keeps banging on about conversations, you’re making a very poor job of engaging anyone at all.

Well, as one New York commentator put it, “we’re familiar,” he said, “with religious intolerance; now we have to recognise irreligious intolerance.” Well, it’s not hard to conclude that New Atheism, as it’s been called and if there is such a genre as that, is unpleasant and reactionary. The polemical and violent language is not an invitation to a calm debate, but belongs to the worst excesses of Hyde Park Corner oratory, and some of us have been there.

Well, of course it’s reactionary: it’s atheism. If there was no religion, we wouldn’t realise we were atheists, because the idea that there might be a god would never have occured to us in the first place. Anything done ‘in the name of atheism’ is by definition a reaction to religion. And let’s not forget that I could dredge up any number of quotes that would paint religion, and even God, in much the same unpleasant light. Cherry-picking quotes is not helpful.

Now, to some degree these writers do have a point, and we can sympathise to some degree when they challenge Creationism. Creationism is the fruit of a fundamentalist approach to scripture, ignoring scholarship and critical learning, and confusing different understandings of truth–

You mean, confusing things that are actually true and things you would like to be true.

–so in some parts of the United States there is one form called Young Earth Creationism. And this is the most literalist end of the scale, where the account in Genesis actually refers to seven 24-hour days. And according to this view, the world is really just a few thousand years old rather than millions, thus explaining away the fossil record and the geology of the planet.

It is a little known fact that the word ‘thus’ is a fantastically efficient logical shortcut. In mathematics, this is known as ‘proof by invocation of the word “thus”‘, and the journal Thus publishes upwards of a dozen, usually very short, papers which use this proof every month.

There’s another form called Old Earth Creationism, which accepts geological ways of dating the Earth by translating the days of creation to square with the evidence. And the battle in the United States has been visceral, and long-running, and raises questions such as the constitutional separation of church and state, as well as the internal debate in the academic community between the respectable world of science, and pseudoscience. Listen to the words of Dr Malcolm Brown, who’s director of the deparment of public affairs of the Church of England. And he wrote very recently, “at a university in Kansas, I asked a biology professor how he coped with Darwin’s theories with students whose churches insisted that evolution was heresy and whose schools taught creationism. And he said “no problem,” he replied. And, “the kids know that if they want a good job, they need a degree. And if they want a degree, they have to work with the evolutionary theory. Creationism is for the churches, as far as they are concerned; here in the university, they are Darwinists.”" Now, that’s breathtaking because such dualism is to be greatly regretted in the long run. It will undermine the intellectual integrity, not only of those students, but of the churches as well.

Well yes, but it’s a university’s job to teach, not proselytise, and if the students choose to learn without accepting then that’s their prerogative, and while the university should encourage them to accept evolution, there’s really nothing it can or should do to force them. If the churches suffer then that’s quite incidental. Let’s not forget that it is the churches in this story who are being dicks about it.

The theory of intelligent design has emerged as a more acceptable form of Creationism in recent years, partly to circumvent the bans in some parts of the United States when Creationism is being taught, and certainly more academically respectable, but criticised for its lack of scientific method–

So, not at all academically respectable, then.

–that is to say, its inability to test its hypotheses. Proponents of intelligent design look for evidence of an intelligent designer, rejecting the materialism of contemporary science. Thus they are always looking for clues of a designer in the complexity of genetic biology, and arguing for patterns and relationships. And the argument for intelligent design may have some appeal to many Christians, but is ultimately a negation of what science is all about, which is to make a hypothesis from what is observable, and then to conduct experiments in a constant process of testing. Now, this is not to say that the case for intelligibility in the universe… cannot be made, but care has to be taken that the scientific method is not subverted, and that faith itself is [not] brought into disrepute for a cavilier treatment of the evidence.

Good.

Just as science is in danger of assuming an arrogance in proposing that it can solve all of the universe’ mysteries, when the more humbe and realistic practicioner realises science is not well-equipped to tackle the metaphysical, so theology itself, aided and abetted by pseudoscience, can get above itself.

Not quite so good. Although it is true that science can only discuss things that are true.

As far as the controversy over Creationism in the United Kingdom is concerned, while some academies are said to have taught Creationism, the issue was not a serious problem in the Britain until very recently. In Septembert the distinguished scientist professor Michael Reiss suggested that Creationism — you may have followed this debate in the Times and some of the other papers too — in September, he argued that Creationism should be debated in the classroom if the subject is raised by the pupils. And unlike some of the newspaper reports, he did not suggest that it should be taught in science classes. And a lobby of high-profile so-called atheists campaigned against his remarks, and he was forced to resign as director of education of the Royal Society for bringing it into disrepute. And this tawdry opening of a rift between science and religion owed almost nothing to the facts, and indeed the way the Royal Society acted has brought it into disrepute.

His observation was that banning all discussion of Creationism could backfire. In fact his argument was that Creationism was not a scientific theory but an alternative world view.

I haven’t checked, but if that really was his argument then his argument was so dumb that he probably did bring the Royal Society into disrepute. Would someone explain the difference between a ’scientific’ hypothesis and a ‘world view’? (I’ve substituted the word ‘hypothesis’ because he has already used established he’s using ‘theory’ in the non-scientific sense.)

So if you have followed my argument so far, and agree that a serious and sustained conversation is lacking today, largely inspired by different kinds of fundamentalism, including that of the new atheists, what kind of conversation do we want to encourage in our universities? In our schools, in our workplaces? How can we open up this debate, which is in danger (as I said) of becoming a dialogue of the deaf?

And I want to offer you three possibilities, constructively. I think the communication we need, first of all, is to encourage a positive, respectful, and critical attitude towards good science. We have nothing to fear, although sometimes the results can be very challenging. Darwin’s world does usher in much questioning, which challenges insecure faith. We think of our universe. How can we possibly take it in? We are told it’s 14 billion light years across, and what do we mean by ‘across’? At least 93 billion light years — I’ve just mentioned that.

I really have no idea what this bit is about. I’m just typing the words in the order that he said them.

And it’s only in the last few seconds of the evolutionary clock that humankind has appeared. Our place, then, in this amazing and largely — still largely incomprehensible — universe, our knowledge is miniscule. It rebukes our humours. Even that of Richard Dawkins — all of us. How can we contemplate, attempt to make man the measure of all things? At best, these claims have a very hollow ring about them.

And when we turn our attention to the human body, we find a similar mystery within. The human genome project has already mapped all the genes in the human body — incidentally directed by a practicing Christian. And confronted by the incomprehensible size of the universe, out there as well as within us, there is a baffling quality about who we are, where we are, what we are, that wonder and awe are the natural reactions. How puzzling it must seem to some atheists and agnostics then, when some religious people talk with such ease about the ways of the almighty as though it were self-evident.

That is puzzling. It is one of many, many puzzling things that religious people do. Puzzling and dumb.

But a more troubling fact for all of us, because I’m wanting us to face up to hard facts, more troubling element is the evil that’s present in our world. We may be grateful inhabitants of a remarkable world in a vast universe noted for its beauty and order, but it’s one where terrible things happen, and where the helpless and the innocent are most likely to suffer. We think of environmental disasters, which can at a stroke wipe thousands off the map. Where were you when the tsunami struck the Indian Ocean on Boxing Day 2004, killing over 225,000 people? Darwin’s world seems to be a random world of chance; one of indifference to human suffering, and one where all things lead to futility.

Oh, sure, it’s God’s world when everyone’s happy, but the moment it kills a quarter of a million people it’s Darwin’s world? This is why the children fight!

At a more personal level, which of us have not had the experience of deepest tragedy, which defies logic and rationality? Many of us who minister to others as clergy and pastoral workers will know all about this. I once ministered to a dying young woman of 32, dying of cancer with three young children. And what words about the love of God make sense in the cruelty of that moment? So one part, you see, of the conversation, I’m suggesting, is to listen to that kind of painful story. Darwin’s world should not be trivialised, or softened: we have to face facts as they are. But–

“But” is an interesting word to follow “we have to face facts as they are” with.

–there’s another story that has to be heeded too, although I doubt very much that the new atheists will trouble themselves with it. Either because they lack the philosophic awareness, or perhaps, more likely, they’ve already made up their minds. And this approach raises, or asks the question, ‘how do we best account for the data all around us?’

Richard Dawkins is an evolutionary biologist and you imagine he’s never asked himself how to account for data? You’re right, theology can be arrogant.

That is to say, we live in a universe endowed with powers and laws when apparently none of this has to be. How do we account for the capacity of the fundamental stuff of the universe to evolve not only life and conciousness, but also minds, intelligence, personality? How do we best account for the fact of the apparent objectivity and claim on us of a moral law? How do we best account for the universe’s capacity to come up with Dante, Shakespeare, Mozart? How do we best account for the universe’s capacity to give us great thinkers, philosophers and saints? How do we best account for the extraordinary ability of homo sapiens compared with other animals?

A good first step is to stop pretending it exists. We can think, fish can swim, cheetahs can run, and cockroaches are indestructible. What makes thinking so special? The answer, it turns out, is a massive misunderstanding of the anthropic principle, a really very simple idea which Carey seems to have missed so completely that he seems to have confused the idea with the question it aims to solve:

And during the last 20 years or so, a view called the anthropic principle has become fashionable, indicating that the conditions for intelligent life depends on a very narrow range of parameters, thus suggesting that intelligence is part of the structure of the universe. I found out most recently in a recent edition of Discover, there’s an interesting article by Tim Folger entitiled Science’s Alternative To An Intelligent Creator. And the article begins by noting an extraordinary fact about the universe: its basic properties are uncannily suited for life. And physicist Andre Linday puts it, we have a lot of really, really strange coincidences. And all of these coincidences are such that they make life possible. Too many coincidences, however, implies a plot. And Folger’s article shows that if the numerical values of the universe, from the speed of light to the strength of gravity, were even slightly different, there would be no universe, and no life.

And recently scientists have discovered that most of the matter and energy in the universe is made up of so-called ‘dark matter’, and ‘dark energy’. And it turns out that the quantity of dark energy seems to be precisely calibrated to make possible not only our universe, but observers like us who can comprehend the universe. Even Stephen Veinberg, the Nobel laureate, in physics, and actually an outspoken atheist, remarks, ‘this fine-tuning, that seems to be extreme far beyond what you could imagine just having to accept as a mere accident,” and the physicist Freeman Dyson draws the appropriate conclusion from the scientific evidence: he says the universe in some sense knew we were coming. Now, Folger admits in that article that this line of reasoning makes a number of scientists very uncomfortable. He says physicists don’t like coincidences. They like even less the notion that life is somehow central to the universe, and yet recent discoveries are forcing them to confront that very idea. So this is an argument worth taking seriously because it challenges the assumption that’s been around for at least two centuries that man does not occupy a privileged position in the universe, and now, according to the anthropic principle, it seems that he does.

Got all that? Excellent. Did you at any point notice the actual anthropic principle creeping in? I certainly didn’t.

Believers would argue that it does seem to be a lot to swallow, that from absolute chaos, moral confusion, chance and futility, has emerged intelligence, moral awareness, and beauty. Well, we have to think about that, that part of the conversation.

In a recent book by Professor Keith Ward, a book I commend to you, called The Big Questions in Science and Religion, I think he speaks for many of us when he says evolution is wholly compatible with belief in creation, even in a strictly neo-Darwinian form.

Yes: it predicts it.

I think there’s another conversation we need to open up, and there’s a conversation about the role, or the usefulness, of religion. Have you picked up in the press recently that shortly billboards are going to appear from London to Washington saying, ‘There’s probably no god. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’

This is at about 36′30″ in the video in case you want to cut it out and play the quote repeatedly and out of context. I mean, I don’t really approve of quote-mining, but fair’s fair.

Another Humanist group in the States are mounting a similar campaign, which goes something like this — well, it goes exactly like this: ‘Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.’ Now, the inference from both campaigns is that actually, religion makes us pretty miserable; that religion is bad for human flourishing. They are diseased, and atrophied vestiges of human life, and the sooner we get rid of them, the better. They make us miserable; they do little good. For Dawkins, Roman Catholicism is a virulent virus–

That’s the worst kind of virus!

–that should be erradicated as doing great harm to young people, and even Anglicanism, from which he emerged, incidencally, is but a milder form of the same disease. Hitchens, as I’ve already mentioned, has a more aggressive approach to religion, which ranges from the very crude to the most opinionated, and I have to say that the polemical language of such people reminds me of the Chinese proverb ‘do not use a hatchet to remove a fly from your friend’s head.’ In other words, a gentler approach will open up a conversation. So, a reasonable, a careful conversation is needed for us to overcome the infantile and trivial way matters of ethical behaviour are being addressed today.

To those who believe that religion is regressive, the question has to be put: then why is religion, and particularly Christianity, so active socially in the world, and in society, and why is it that its contribution to social capital is so highly regarded and applauded?

Is it because the people doing the applauding are overwhelmingly religious themselves? I might provide a metaphor for what they are doing there, but I try not to use the quite horrible phrase ‘circle-jerk’.

Roy Hattersley, and I want to quote him, wrote in the Guardian, 18 months ago, in his view, that ‘most believers are better human beings than atheists’. And reluctantly, he acknowledges that unbelievers are less likely to care for the poor, and spend time with outcasts of society.

They’re also less likely to kill you, by a quite preposterous margin. There’s some truth to the saying that there are no atheists in foxholes: it’s a reflection on how much harder it is to talk us into murdering the inconvenient.

And he writes these words which I put on the screen, “Good works, John Wesley insisted, are no guarantee [of] a place in heaven. But they are most likely to be performed by people who believe that heaven exists.” Now those are [Hattersley's] words, and he’s not known as a practicing Christian.

In fact, he’s an atheist. Although in this case not one that I agree with (since we’re allowed to think for ourselves).

Now this candid admission is remarkable, and it shouldn’t detract from the fact, and I want to make this very clear, and to be heeded, that a large number of Humanists, agnostics and atheists are also good people who seek to create a better world.

That’s mighty big of you, Archbishop Holier-Than-Thou.

My argument is not polemical.

I think we shall be the judge of that, Lord Believers Are Better Human Beings Than Atheists.

It is to say that those who want to erradicate the world of faiths have to percieve them as they really are, and recognise the tremendous contribution they are making to the world. But does religion make a personal difference to people? Well, let me go back to professor Keith Ward, in a different book, and a book which is also a fairly recent one, called Is Religion Dangerous?, and he says emphatically that religion does make a personal difference. He cites a survey carried out in the States by the Pew Foundation that shows that spiritually committed people are twice as likely to be very happy than the least religiously committed person. Now we can take this even further: church attendance improves health. Now what about having that as a campaign outside some of the churches?

You’ve got churches; try it. See if I report you to the ASA. Go on.

Church attendance improves health. On both sides of the Atlantic, studies have shown that this is to be the case.

Here is how that study would go: get two groups of people, one which attends church and one which does not. Take half of each group and mix them, to make two new groups with equal numbers of church attenders and church non-attenders. Assess their health. Send one to church and bar the other from any church for a few months or a year or whatever. Then assess their health again. The assessors should not know which group is which. Compare the results critically. Has this ever been done? Not to my knowledge, although it probably is true that churchgoers are, on average, healthier than the general population for other reasons (or at least, a sample of the general population of equivalent age: church attenders tend to be getting on a bit these days, so possibly church attendence causes old age).

The graduate of public health at Pittsburg University has established a consortium on faith and health, which concludes a study with the words “people who regularly attend religious services have been found to have lower blood pressure, less heart disease, lower rates of depression, and generally better health, than those who don’t attend.

…thus implying causation.

And when we move from personal health to the health of societies, a similar argument can be mounted: young people who are engaged in church communities or church programmes are less sexually promiscuous,

You mean, less sexually attractive. (If you don’t count to the clergy’s unwanted affections.)

less involved in drug activities, engage in less binge drinking, less likely to play truant from school, and are involved in less crime. This doesn’t make them ‘goodie-goodies’. They remain happy, ordinary teenagers.

There’s no such thing as a happy, ordinary teenager. Pick whichever adjective you like, but you can’t have both.

But their lifestyles are healthier, their life prospects more promising. And that, too, is part of the conversation we need to have with others in our society. If it is true that committed Christianity and, by the same token, it may be true of other faiths as well, leads to sound and healthier lifestyles, this is something that should lead us all to a more positive view of religion in general.

One could make the same argument for facism.

However, a final area for discussion takes up the third matter in my title: diversity. How may faith communities themselves open up deeper and more candid conversations where differences and similarities are explored? And I can report that this is work in progress, but much remains to be done. Darwin’s world reveals a creation that is as diverse as it is mysterious. Different forms of life flourish, and it is no different in human living as well. Those forms that fail to adapt, even intellectual aspects of social activity will wither, and die.

Islam has got to come face-to-face with modernity, and face up to the serious intellectual challenges that are coming its way. The shocking intellectual deficit in most Muslim countries is shown in a UN report that the scientific and intellectual output of the +300 million population of the Arab league countries is far less than that of the 6 million citizens of the state of Isreal. So I think I’m able to say with some confidence that Darwin’s great publication would not even be published in any Muslim country today.

I remember when I was on a BBC programme with Richard Dawkins last year, I said to him, ‘how many copies of your books have found their way into Egypt, and Iraq?’, and he laughed. And he said they won’t publish them. And it’s very interesting, and we could open a debate about that as well.

Although it would be a very short debate. Nobody worth listening to agrees with such bans.

Unless faiths are part of the public square, and able to meet others on equal footing, and engage in vigorous debate, they too will be pushed to the edge and die. For Christians, it may be a challenge to those of us who claim that title, to be more confident in our message, less church-centred, more open to debate, with reasonable Humanists whom, I suspect, at least the reasonable Humanists will be more open-minded than some Christians realise.

Now does this mean that diversity equals settling for uncertainty, as well as accepting that all roads lead up the same mountain? I think not. I think not. A confident message will always respect others, seek to find common goals. It doesn’t mean that we shall find agreement on all matters. That’s less important than the fact that a conversation on ultimate matters that affect us all is continuing. Well, quite recently I came across a book written by two scientists, and I, towards the end of this book found this statement which says was the scientists’ worst nightmare: “He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; and as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” Well actually I don’t even know that that will be the case, but I want to tweak the story. I would like that scientist, as he pulls himself over the final rock, and sees that band of wise people, that he might see among them the familiar face of Charles Darwin, who has more right than most to be heralded as one of the greatest Englishmen and human beings of all time.

Your story no longer makes any sense.