I’ve recently noticed the ubiquitous use of a particular argument in defense of religion—in periodicals, books, and reviews of books; in discussions among family and friends; from pundits, politicians, and celebrities. It goes something like this: While doctrinal religion may be outmoded, science is every bit as unable to disprove the existence of a spiritual realm as it is unable to tell us absolutely everything about the universe. Proponents of this argument also like to point out that some scientific studies have found benefits associated with religious or spiritual belief and participation in religious communities. These benefits range from the psychological and physical well being of individuals (often attributed to diminished stress levels in believers), to the more cooperative, altruistic behavior of citizens within a community.
Let’s dispose of the latter point quickly. This is a bit like saying that alcoholism has certain benefits, such as the reduced stress levels of alcoholic individuals and the increased amount of merriment they generate in social settings, while ignoring the fact that alcoholism has catastrophic consequences for individuals, families, and societies. More importantly, it fails to acknowledge that, whatever science may be unable to disprove, whatever the alleged benefits of religion, whatever the alleged consequences of irreligion, no amount of rationalization will ever render any particular set of religious beliefs more true. (Besides, mightn’t any benefit actually just be evidence that it’s easier to join the parade than to be right? I would estimate that my quality of life is diminished by about 30% just from living in a world where most people believe in a bunch of crazy shit. And that’s just from the extreme cognitive dissonance that results from observing their irrational, hypocritical, unproductive behavior—never mind their attempts to impose their beliefs upon everyone around them. Perhaps I could regain those precious lost points by getting myself re-brainwashed into one cult or another, or by simply convincing myself that it’s all harmless and hunky-dory, or by binge drinking Drano. For now, I’d rather be right and miserable than ignorant and happy.)
Getting back to the broader point: One recent essay best exemplifies the argument and it will be my pleasure to dissect it here for you. It is an excerpt published in Harpers (April, 2008) from David Berlinksi’s book, The Devil’s Delusion: Athiesm and Its Scientific Pretensions. The author’s primary strategy consists of repeatedly setting up straw men and then taking target practice on them. He begins with the title of his book, which paints all atheists into the same corner, ignoring the vast majority of us who don’t require science to prove the unprovable in order to justify our failure to choose from a smorgasbord of puerile fairy tales within which to immerse our identities.
Berlinksi starts by demeaning all efforts at progress: “Like democracy or justice, science is a word exhausted by its examples.” This, of course, leads to the conclusion that we should consider an immediate return to tyrannical monarchy (which undoubtedly had its advantages and none of the unfortunate failings of systems which strive to achieve better results). “Since the great scientific revolution…we have been vouchsafed four powerful and profound scientific theories—Newtonian mechanics, James Clerk Maxwell’s theory of the electromagnetic field, special and general relativity, and quantum mechanics. These are isolated miracles, great mountain peaks surrounded by a range of low, furry foothills.” It appears that Berlinski means to disparage those low, furry foothills, and to hold them up as proof that science isn’t nearly as cool as geeky scientists think it is. He deems it irrelevant that those four powerful and profound “miracles” were built upon the low, furry foothills that came before them, and that new, powerful and profound “miracles” will likely be built upon today’s low, furry foothills—all of them increasing our knowledge in incremental but important ways.
“These splendid artifacts of the human imagination have made the world more mysterious than it ever was. We know now better than we did what we do not know and have not grasped. We do not know how the universe began. We do not know why it is here...We cannot reconcile our understanding of the human mind with any trivial doctrine about the manner in which the brain functions. Beyond the trivial we have no other doctrines. We can say nothing of interest about the human soul.”
Berlinski’s attempt at patronization would be offensive it it weren't so embarrassingly transparent. He gives compulsory praise to the accomplishments of “the human imagination,” careful to couch the language in ethereal tones, so as to appropriate them into his mystical worldview, while writing them off as artifacts. “We cannot reconcile our understanding of the human mind with any trivial doctrine about the manner in which the brain functions,” careful to portray science as the same sort of doctrinal enterprise that prevents Catholics from eating meat (except for fish) on Fridays…during Lent, (or maybe the kind that leads some Pilipino Christians to have themselves crucified each year on Good Friday). These are the first signs that rhetoric is the only weapon in his arsenal. He can bring no evidence to the table, but he can talk in circles.
“On these and many other points as well, the great scientific theories have lapsed. The more sophisticated the theories, the more inadequate they are. This is a reason to cherish them. They have enlarged and not diminished our sense of the sublime.” Well…the great scientific theories have lapsed only insofar as they have failed to address themselves specifically to Berlinski’s questions, all of which are grounded in a perspective that takes the paranormal for granted. “We can say nothing of interest about the human soul,” because many of us do not presupposes the existence of a mystical entity called the soul.
Knowing that the accomplishments of science cannot be ignored, he strives to reduce it to a loveable little bugger, working its poor butt off to answer the great mysteries of life while he and his esteemed colleagues watch with compassionate pity, knowing that it’ll never get there without some sort of stopgap belief system involving a watchmaker. What Berlinski either doesn’t understand or wishes to confuse his audience about is the fact that Science is not trying to answer his questions. Science is trying to answer the next question. Science takes what we know and tries to reach the next plateau. Science takes what we think we know and deliberately tries to disprove it, hoping to either confirm or invalidate its hypotheses before moving on to the next stage. Science is too busy dealing with reality to give two shits about Berlinski’s silly questions.
“If science stands opposed to religion, it is not because of anything contained in either the premises or the conclusions of the great scientific theories. They do not mention a word about God.” Nor, Mr. Berlinski, do they mention a word about the existence of albino leprechauns in my underwear drawer, but I daresay that science stands tacitly and comfortably opposed to the veracity of that rumor. “They do not treat of any faith beyond the one that they themselves demand. They compel no ritual beyond the usual rituals of academic life, and these involve nothing more than the worship of what is widely worshipped.” Again, rhetorical efforts to bring science down to the level of religion—by conflating acceptance of scientific theories with faith; by equating religious rituals with scientific method; by likening respect for empirical evidence with the worship of invisible beings—bespeak either a profound ignorance about the actual work and intentions of science or a deliberate attempt to mislead the masses.
“Confident assertions by scientists that in the privacy of their chambers they have demonstrated that God does not exist have nothing to do with science, and even less to do with God’s existence.” I challenge the author to find me a single reputable scientist who claims to have proved that God does not exist. He may find a handful, like Richard Dawkins, who go perhaps a bit too far in making the case that the probability of God’s existence is very low, (which strikes me as comparably futile to proving that God does exist), but that is a very different proposition from the one Berlinski is attempting to link all atheists to. Besides that, it takes more than a little intellectual dishonesty to pretend that he doesn’t understand the conceptual approach that Dawkins and his colleagues have taken. Their work can be read both as a response to and a satirization of the pseudoscientific drivel of Behe, Dembski, and Berlinski—the Intelligent Design crowd.
Berlinski uses W.K. Clifford’s injunction that “It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence,” to illustrate his interpretation of science’s position on God. “If God exists,” he imagines the atheist to argue, “then His existence is a scientific claim, no different in kind from the claim that there is tungsten to be found in Bermuda. We cannot have one set of standards for tungsten and another for the Deity. If after scouring Bermuda for tungsten we cannot find any of the stuff, then we give up on the claim.” While I couldn't agree more that we should have uniform standards for the validation of knowledge, Berlinski’s analogy has a fatal flaw. We know of a substance called tungsten. We know of a place called Bermuda. We know nothing of this (or any) Deity. He is conjured out of thin air and cannot be evaluated in any context, using any standard, by any rational person.
“While science has nothing of value to say on the great and aching question of life, death, love, and meaning, the religious traditions of mankind have a good deal to say, and what they do say forms a coherent body of thought.” Really? I must admit that I am so dumbfounded by the straight-faced assertion that the religious traditions of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism, Scientology, et al form a coherent body of thought, that I have nothing of value to say in response. If, however, you think that science has nothing of value to say on “the great and aching questions,” you’ve not been paying attention to the people who actually do science. Game theory is used to study the motives of people in myriad interactions; Brain mapping and neuroimaging give us a glimpse into the physiological side of human emotions; Economics can help us understand the way we respond to psychological incentives; Evolutionary biology helps us to understand the genetic basis for many of our baser predilections, in the context of human (and pre-human) history. Drugs—legal and illegal, natural and manmade—can chemically trigger, enhance, diminish, and/or abolish the full range of feelings that are often attributed to the existence of a soul. (We can actually watch this happen with the help of high-tech equipment—undoubtedly assisted by more than one of the four powerful and profound miracles.) Any man who has ever experienced profound sadness while taking a shit, or any woman who has ever broken down in tears immediately after an orgasm, have experienced the depth of our understanding about the neurological basis of our emotions, (thanks to the nerves in his prostate and her clitoris, respectively).
Here's the sad part. Berlinski trots out his academic credentials by explaining “The universe in its
largest aspect is the expression of curved space and time. Four
fundamental forces hold sway. There are black holes and various
infernal singularities. Particles pop out of quantum fields. Elementary
particles appear either as bosons or fermions. The fermions are divided
into quarks and leptons. Quarks come in six varieties, but are never
seen, confined as they are within hadrons by a force that perversely
grows weaker at short distances and stronger at distances that are
long. There are six leptons in four varieties.” This would be
impressive if he didn’t immediately make himself a martyred apostate of
his own mind.
“This is not an ontology that puts one in mind of a
longshoreman’s view of the world. It is remarkably baroque, and it is
promiscuously catholic. For the atheist persuaded that materialism
offers him a no-nonsense doctrinal affiliation, materialism in this
sense comes to the declaration of a barroom drinker who says, I’ll have
whatever he’s having, no matter who he is or what he is having. What he
is having is what he always takes, and that is any concept,
mathematical structure, or vagrant idea needed to get on with it.”
So
why did you waste all that time at Princeton and Columbia, Dr.
Berlinski? Shall we assume that you are a recovering barroom drinker?
We know so much more than Berlinski wants to acknowledge. He is so desperate to establish an intellectually coherent context for his own need to believe that he has no choice but to sacrifice knowledge at the altar of faith. His attempt to cast all science as pseudoscience is a dangerously reckless conflation—one that helps explain why more Americans believe in a virgin birth than in the theory of evolution. It makes people more susceptible to deceptions of all kinds and then invites them to participate in the charade with spiritual impunity.
His argument is not designed to defend Christianity and hold it up as the correct belief system. (Even the good doctor realizes that it is impossible to construct such a defense.) His only option is to put forth a case that is ultimately (and desperately) designed to protect Christianity by defending anything which science cannot disprove. Perhaps he justifies this equivocation by telling himself that his book is primarily geared toward the current American conversation about belief. Regardless, he seems not to realize that his argument is ripe for exploitation by extremists of all stripes.
I’ve spent this much time with Berlinski because, while his argument is not new—in fact it was first made popular in America in the late 1800's by Herbert Spencer, a British critic and contemporary of Charles Darwin—he embodies the most current incarnation of this mentality. It has become effective across the religious spectrum, from the devout evangelical who believes, ironically, that it forms a scientific basis for his belief, to the passive agnostic who does not wish to impose her skepticism upon believers. It says, in its simplest form, “Hey…until you can explain exactly how and why the universe began, what’s the harm in letting people believe what they want to believe?” How about genocide, jihad, ethnic bigotry, slavery, oppression, discrimination against homosexuals and women, the spread of AIDS (via the discouragement of contraceptive use), the sexual abuse of children (in cultish Mormon sects, and in the safe haven for closeted homosexuals and pedophiles known as the Catholic priesthood), the manual retardation of schoolchildren achieved by creating confusion about the validity of evolutionary theory? Show me a way to avoid those catastrophic consequences and even I might be willing to let people believe what they want to believe.
The catch-all argument proffered by Intelligent Designists, like
Berlinski, offers believers a cafeteria-style selection of defensive plays, all of which are rooted in a perversion of science, philosophy,
and epistemology. They cannot be consistently or rationally executed.
If a traditional approach to the validation of knowledge is not
sufficient, many bad outcomes must be expected. If people are
encouraged to search for whatever greater truths most appeal to them,
with no regard for the ludicrousness of the source material, the
motives of its past or present protagonists, or the consequences of
implementing their prescriptions, then one must be willing to sustain the kinds of unpleasantries listed above, all of which can be justified by any
number of interpretations of religious texts and sermons.
The current debate about religious belief is ultimately about the value we place on knowledge. Yes, knowledge can be used for good or for bad, but it is inherently neither good nor bad. Knowledge simply is. (Serious epistemological discussions address the question of what, exactly, knowledge is, while detracting nothing from the fact that, for practical purposes, a duck is a duck, or that the [round] earth rotates around the sun.) The best way to encourage and ensure its use for good is to place a high value on it. The best way to promote or sanction its use for bad is to undermine its worth. Berlinski is working to devalue it for his He may have the best of intentions. Others do not.
