I thought of a fun, hopefully-offensive-to-the-religious-right bumper sticker today:
Who needs God when we have SCIENCE?
I then thought that probably others on the Internet had already utilized this phrase for some purpose or other, and tried Googling it, but no hits. Without the quotes was more successful, yielding several interesting articles.
The first was the open letter to the Kansas school board regarding the Flying Spaghetti Monster theory of Intelligent Design, which is the most efficient, scathing rebuke to Intelligent Design that I’ve seen (though still not quite as entertaining as the theory of Unintelligent Design). I recommend giving it a read if you haven’t already seen it.
The second was an article written by some Australian guy entitled Who Needs God When We’ve Got America?, and it is on this article that I am compelled to comment today.
The piece starts out with some well-written criticism of the Bible, which I always enjoy reading. But then the writer goes off the rails.
When most people talk about atheism, they’re talking about it as a denial of Christian mythology. … The “self-actualization” movement trains us to believe that we are our own gods, which is even worse than believing in a single all-powerful God with dominion over us all. Many atheists are happy to self-actualize. Many more are inclined to believe in the infallible word of science. This might simply be for linguistic convenience, but for many it is simply more reassuring to believe that we are masters of our own destinies.
No atheist I have met corroborates the author’s claims here. Those I know who are rational enough to realize that religion is fiction would not believe in free will simply because it is “more reassuring.” On the contrary—many atheists and agnostics I know are either determinists or undecided on the matter. If anyone reading this rant is both an atheist and an adherent to free will, please comment, because that combination seems quite odd to me.
America is the most fundamentally religious country on earth, and their fundamentalism is divided into two camps - rabid belief in the holy word of God, and rabid belief in the holy word of science. … Either you entirely denounce all gods and side with science, or your entirely denounce all science and side with God.
Though I will not deny there is a huge gulf in this country between the “Heartland” and the “Smartland,” the above statements are absurd. First of all, what is “the holy word of science,” anyway? All science provides is a set of procedures for constructing theories of truth based on observable evidence. It is one tool, but not the only tool, of rational men.
The author quotes John Gray:
Science does not yield any fixed picture of things, but by censoring thinkers who stray too far from current orthodoxies it preserves the comforting illusion of a single established worldview.
A little research on Gray reveals that he is a British philosopher who strongly opposes the idea that humans are different from or superior to other animals. From Booklist’s review of Gray’s book:
Human vanity, he complains, has even converted science (which should teach us of our insignificant place in nature) into an ideology of progress.
So Gray’s complaint is not with science itself, but with the politics associated with modern scientific practices, and the ostracization of scientists with minority views.
Thus, it is likely that the author’s language above is referring to current scientific theories, rather than the practice of science itself. In that case, perhaps his claims can be considered. But anyone who slavishly holds to current scientific theories as indisputable fact is a total hypocrite, completely missing the point of science, and betraying the very nature of rationalism itself. If these people are the target of his criticism, fine, but he insinuates that all American atheists fall into this category, which is an insult to millions of highly intelligent people.
Lastly, if the author actually means rationalism rather than just science, then he may be right. I am a slavish adherent to rationalism, because anything else would be irrational. Ideas like “truth does not objectively exist” degenerate utterly into a universe where knowing or predicting anything is impossible. The utility of rational thought is tautological and inescapable. (As an aside, everyone actually adheres to rational thought, whether they know it or not—people are just capable of deluding themselves by rationalizing contradictory ideas).
“I have come to the conclusion that the world is fundamentally comprehensible—but in a way that rules out the possibility that any ultimate explanation can be discovered. For the latter would necessarily be in terms of entities and attributes which themselves cannot be explained. I expect every true answer to create not closure, but a better question. To seek a final answer is to hope that everything beyond that is incomprehensible. And since that move is always available to shore up any false theory, it must be a mistake.”
—David Deutsch