Bit of a kerfuffle over at DramaBlogs ScienceBlogs, in the wake of PZ Myers’s visit to a screening of Ben Stein’s new anti-evolution movie, Expelled. PZ apparently signed up online for tickets to a screening (under his own name), but upon arrival he was recognized by the organizers, and asked to leave. Expelled from Expelled! It’s the 21st century, we all have to re-calibrate our irony meters. Adding to the fun was the fact that the rest of PZ’s party was allowed to continue in to see the movie — and among the friends he had dragged along was Richard Dawkins, who was apparently not recognized. This is too delicious a story to pass up, and it’s already been reported in the New York Times and elsewhere.
But not everyone is amused, even on the pro-science side. Chris Mooney complains that the controversy gives a huge boost, in the form of priceless publicity, to Expelled and its supporters. People who never would have heard of the movie will now be curious to see it; the filmmakers are already gloating about all the attention.
I think that Chris is right: this is publicity for the movie that they couldn’t possibly have received any other way, and PZ and Dawkins are basically doing exactly what the filmmakers were hoping for all along.
And they should keep right on doing it.
To understand why, consider the much more intemperate response by Matt Nisbet, Chris’s partner in the Framing Science game. They have been exhorting scientists to communicate more effectively by framing issues in a way that resonate with their audiences. This sounds like very good advice, and in fact kind of obvious and uncontroversial. But when ask to give examples, Chris and Matt often choose Richard Dawkins as their poster boy for what not to do. Personally I think that Dawkins has been very good for the cultural discourse overall, but Matt and Chris fear that his avowed atheism will turn people against science, making things easier for folks who want to fight against evolution in public schools.
In his post, Matt is perfectly blatant: PZ and Dawkins are hurting the cause, and should just shut up. When called up by the media, they should decline to speak, instead suggesting that the reporter contact someone who can give the pro-evolution message in a way that is friendlier to religion.
As you might expect, neither PZ, nor Dawkins, nor any of their ilk (and I count myself among them) are likely to follow this undoubtedly well-intentioned advice, as this pithy rejoinder demonstrates. The heart of the difference in approaches is evident in the analogies that Matt brings up, namely to political campaigns:
If Dawkins and PZ really care about countering the message of The Expelled camp, they need to play the role of Samantha Power, Geraldine Ferraro and so many other political operatives who through misstatements and polarizing rhetoric have ended up being liabilities to the causes and campaigns that they support. Lay low and let others do the talking.
When Chris and Matt talk to the PZ/Dawkins crowd, they do a really bad job of understanding and working within the presuppositions of their audience — exactly what framing is supposed to be all about. To the Framers, what’s going on is an essentially political battle; a public-relations contest, pitting pro-science vs. anti-science, where the goal is to sway more people to your side. And there is no doubt that such a contest is going on. But it’s not all that is going on, and it’s not the only motivation one might have for wading into discussions of science and religion.
There is a more basic motivation: telling the truth.
What Matt and Chris (seemingly) fail to understand is that PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins are not trying to be successful politicians, persuading the largest number of people to come over to their side. They have no interest in being politicians. They are critics, and their goal is to say correct things about the world and argue against incorrect statements. Of course, they would certainly like to see evolution rather than creationism taught in schools, and ultimately they would be very happy if all of humanity were persuaded of the correctness of their views. But their books and blogs about science and religion are not strategic documents designed to bring about some desired outcome; they are attempts to say true things about issues they care about. Telling them “Shut up! You’ll offend the sensibilities of people we are trying to persuade!” is like talking to a brick wall, or at least in an alien language. You will have to frame things much better than that.
Politicians and critics often don’t get along. And the choice to be one or the other usually comes down more to the personality of the individual rather than some careful cost-benefit analysis. (You know that PZ will be regaling youngsters with the story of how he was expelled from Expelled for decades to come.) I’m very much in the mold of a critic; one of my first ever blog posts was why I could never be a politician. It’s easy enough to tell the difference: even if a critic knew for a fact that a certain true statement would harm their cause politically, they would still insist on saying it.
But one stance or the other is not better nor worse; society very much needs both politicians and critics. The job of a critic sounds very lofty — speaking truth to power, heedless of extraordinary social pressures and the hooting condemnation of a benighted populace. But if everyone were a critic, it would be a disaster. We need politicians to actually things done, and (in the rare instances where it is carried out with integrity) the role of a politician should be one of the most honored in society. A gifted politician will understand the contours of what is possible, and work within the constraints posed by the real world to move society in a better direction.
However, we also need critics. If everyone were a politician, it would be equally disastrous. In Bernard Shaw’s famous phrasing, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” The perfect can be the enemy of the good, but if we don’t have a loud and persistent chorus of voices reminding us of how far short we fall of perfection, we won’t work as hard as we can to get there.
And we should hardly be surprised that bloggers and polemicists tend to be critics rather than politicians. We should have people out there selling evolution to skeptical listeners who might be committed to religion and suspicious of science. But that doesn’t mean that sincere voices who believe that thinking scientifically sends you down the path to atheism should be told to shut up. Without stubborn critics who refuse to compromise on their vision of the truth, our discourse would be an enormously poorer place.
#13 observer: Umm…. ditto?
#21 craig: I will assume that you, like everyone else, were not born into a cultural vacuum. Most forms of atheism are negative or rejectionist in nature; that is, they are rejections of particular forms of theism or religious belief (they are “a-theisms”). Your comparison of atheism to not-believing in alien abductions or not-collecting stamps illustrates this point exactly but also belies their uselessness as appropriate examples of your point. In both cases, you have identified a very particular belief or activity and then equated atheism to its rejection or lack. Sadly, a belief in God is not so clearly defined or identified. Therefore, it’s fair to argue that, (a) you cannot be an atheist without knowing the religious system or set of beliefs that you are actively rejecting, and (b) because knowing these systems and beliefs is a complicated process of exploring cultural and historical context, the extent of a person’s atheism is correlated to the depth of their knowledge and understanding of those rejected systems.
Many fundamentalist Christians would label me an atheist, for instance, because I reject their particular notion of God; however, I do not refer to myself as an atheist because I have, by studying philosophy and theology, developed working definition of deity to describe what I do believe in. Likewise, in the early development of Christianity, Christians were labeled atheists because they believed in only one deity instead of many. Buddhists today are rarely described as atheists because they are “spiritual” or “religious,” even though the core tenants of Buddhism are entirely silent on the idea of deity in any form. Furthermore, this is the first time in history that self-labeled atheists conceive of themselves as a particular cultural group with its own community identity and socio-political aims (you wouldn’t know this, of course, if you hadn’t studied the history of atheism).
So you see, being an atheist has a lot to do with the cultural context of one’s atheism, even if one is born into it and takes that context for granted. You are, of course, free to declare that you know definitively what deity is and that, therefore, you do not believe in it. But this declaration of definitive knowledge is precisely the same kind of certainty professed by religious fundamentalists. Which brings me back to my original point, that dogmatic atheists and religious fundamentalists actually share a great deal of their assumptions in common, as much as they might disagree about what conclusions to draw from them.
#26 Stephen: Good point, I didn’t go into detail about what I think Dawkins is missing (though I did give “clues” when I referred to Descartes’ duality, for instance, and the objectionable nature of dogmatic certainty in any form, etc.). On the other hand, this was a brief reply to someone else’s blog post, and to go into detail about this issue would require not just a blog post of my own, but an entire book. I have other things to do, so I’m not planning on writing such a book. But if you’re truly interested in reading this kind of book, I would recommend Mary Midgley’s Science and Poetry. (Forgive me if I’m skeptical about most readers of this blog taking the time to read a book entirely devoted to a viewpoint they disagree with. It’s much easier to watch a movie, or complain about not being allowed to watch it, than it is to seek out the number of well-written and intelligent books already published on the topic.)
I’d also like to point out that when Sean writes:
…he doesn’t bother to give any support for why he thinks Dawkins (and others) are “telling the truth” and making correct statements, but this assertion is left largely unchallenged. I felt the need to point out that one form of expertise does not necessarily translate to all others, and it’s perfectly possible that Dawkins’ statements about society are not inherently correct just because he is knowledgeable in evolutionary biology. To be perfectly obstinate about it, I could point out that proposing this possibility doesn’t require me to prove that Dawkins is incorrect; the burden of proof lies with Dawkins’ supporters, in demonstrating exactly why his scientific expertise qualifies him as a well-informed social critic.
#48 Robin: Very amusing, and a wonderful illustration of exactly the kind of modern bias I’m talking about! Thank you!
This notion that the “nonmaterial” is equated to the imaginary/unreal–and, therefore, that any subtlety in exploring the nonmaterial realm is laughable and irrelevant–is an entirely modern idea, unique in the history of humankind. It stems largely from the Cartesian duality I mentioned in my first response (#10). Modern materialists, of course, claim that the nonmaterial has always been an illusion and that we have only just now “seen the light” and come to our senses about its meaninglessness. Personally, I find it difficult to believe that something supposedly so obvious and true could have escaped our notice for so many thousands of years, and to claim so seems a bit arrogant, bordering on willful cultural amnesia. But again, I happen to be interested in the history and development of ideas (philosophical and religious), and studying such things tends to leave a person a bit humbled in the face of millennia of diverse thinkers.
Ali, you are making a very common mistake.
You are thinking that atheism is believing that there is NOT a god. That it is a rejection of the idea. If that were the case, you might indeed assert that you would have to understand all of the possible forms or ideas of deity to make that rejection.
Many atheists may have a belief that there is no god… but its not necessary. I don’t believe there is no god (though I think its incredibly unlikely). I simply don’t have a belief in a god. I am an atheist. A non-theist. I don’t have a belief in a god.
There are an infinite number of things I don’t have a belief in. Some few of these things I will someday have a belief in when evidence of them is presented. Before 1980 I didn’t have a belief in the existence of Rubik’s Cube, for example.
If you go to godchecker.com, you’ll find a list of close to 3000 different deities that people have believed in at one time or another. I don’t know the whole list, haven’t read through it… yet I can state that I don’t have a belief in any of them. I don’t have to reject them all – if I haven’t heard of something, how can I possibly believe in it?
I was born without a belief in any gods. I still have no belief in any gods. I have no belief in anything that would ever remotely be defined by the word deity. To say that this is a fundamentalist attitude presumes that I am REJECTING all possible concepts of deity. It suggests that I feel that I KNOW something that rationally I can’t hope to know, in the manner of faith there is no god.
Wrong. I am open to anything. Give me a concept of a deity and provide some evidence for it, and if the evidence is strong enough, I’ll accept it and then be a theist.
If the evidence is not enough, I’ll remain unconvinced unless or until further evidence comes along, and I’ll remain an atheist. I have no belief in life on Mars. Find some, and I’ll be a convert. The fact that the possibility of life on mars is much greater than the possibility of a god makes no difference, its the same kind of situation.
Ali:
The central question Dawkins attempts to address is whether God exists. The history of atheism has nothing to do with whether God exists or not. Perhaps if you didn’t jump immediately to snobbery you would have realized that.
“This is wonderful! We can understand, for instance, the Romans and the early Christians as a competition between competing needs for self-gratification. A breakthrough in historical and religious studies!
This is precisely why Dawkins and Myers are deadly bores on the subject of religion.”
Religion tries to explain the universe. Why it exists, how it came into being.
There are certain things you always hear from the religious. Sometimes in reaction to being confronted with atheism, or science that refutes some of their religious beliefs, sometimes in their own stories of how they came to their religion.
“Without a belief in God, how do you have any moral guidance?”
“How can you belief that when you’re dead there’s nothing else? How can you live with that?”
“You really think we came from monkeys?”
“I was searching for some deeper meaning in my life.”
“My faith comforts me”
on and on and on.
All the same thing. Choosing their belief about how the universe works not based on evidence or what makes sense, but instead based on their own emotional needs. “I choose this ‘truth’ because it makes me happy.”
Always the same thing. Trying to force reality to serve them. Pure narcissism. The universe MUST be this way, because I want it to be! I couldn’t possibly be tiny and insignificant and unimportant and mortal.
The Christians/Romans thing doesn’t have to be fully explained by that – the infantile, narcissistic nature of religion makes it work very well to support other human vices – greed, lust for power, hatred, prejudice, fear of the outsider, etc.
Yes, it is boring. Fucking deadly boring. Enough to make you want to pull your hair out. Billions of people showing the same boring human failings, repeating the same self-centered crap endlessly as if it means something.
Snark all you want… but reality is reality. The truth behind religion is very simple, tedious and boring. Ignorance mixed with wishful thinking. The unlimited capacity of the human brain to self-deceive.
If you can’t accept that, go have fun with your make-believe.
Co-incidentally or not, I Can Has Cheezburger has a picture about Constructive Criticism.
craig,
By conventional definition you are agnostic, not atheist.
The problem with the monotheistic concept is that the absolute, the universal state, is basis, as in zero. Not an apex, as in a singular entity. So the spiritual absolute, should you care to consider one, wouldn’t be an ideal form or model of conscious, intellectual perfection from which we fell, but the raw source of awareness out of which living form arises. Both theism and atheism make the same general assumption, that awareness equates with intelligence. Theism assumes they are the property of a meta-being, while atheism assumes they develop together and one is only aware to the extent one is intelligent. I would say this isn’t true, that there are many forms of life which are extremely aware, but are not terribly intelligent. Awareness is a bottom up emergent phenomena and intelligence is a top down ordering of experience. The fact is that consciousness is a function of process and connections, whether it is between neurons or individual beings. Not just a function of the nodes creating the network, but the network creating the nodes. Given a reasonably wholistic understanding of biology, it’s is possible to argue that life on this planet exists as one large meta-organism, of which we are individual cells. That our consciousness is individuated is as much an evolutionary adaptation as the individuation of the fingers on our hands. It doesn’t take much perspective to see the extent to which most, if not all people are susceptible to herd behavior.
Here is an interesting examination of brain function, based on a neuroscientist’s personal experience with having a stroke;
http://blog.ted.com/2008/03/jill_bolte_tayl.php#more
#78, craig: I think you are still missing my point, though I don’t think it’s intentional. Your argument makes complete sense (and doesn’t really contradict anything I have written, as far as I can see) up until the point where you ask for “evidence” of deity. My point (and I don’t know how many different ways I can say this, but I’ll keep trying) is that the very idea of such an approach to the nonmaterial is an aspect of the modern, highly dualistic mindset, and this mindset directly influences the very nature of what you do and do not consider “evidence” (whether you realize it or not). The kind of noncommittal non-theism you describe would not have been conceivable as a social identity marker only a few hundred years ago, not because people didn’t leave themselves open to such uncertainty before (there have always been such individuals), but because the lack of commitment to one particular concept of deity was not defined as a kind of atheism until more recently. This in itself is a new development in the history of religious and philosophical belief, and it says something about the nature of modern Western thought (though exactly what it says, and all its implications, is still something that needs a lot of exploration).
All of this seems to be besides the point, though. To me, it’s fascinating, because it has to do with the way mythologies (and the self- and community-identities they shape) have developed in different cultures. It’s not so strange that modern Western secularists reject the notion that they have a cultural mythology of their own through which they define even the possibility of things like identity, truth, meaning and evidence. After all, almost all societies have defined myth as What Other People Have, whereas we have the Actual Truth. Your response is exactly in this vein–“I’ll believe it when you prove it to me as Actual Truth”–without considering that the mythologies within which we live set the boundaries on what counts as “proof” and “truth” and what is just so much noise in the background.
#79 Laurence, says:
Wow! Talk about anti-intellectualism! If I’m educated in science, apparently I’m allowed to have my say here, but if I’m educated in the field actually under discussion (political philosophy, theology and social criticism) apparently I’m being a “snob”?
You’ll have to explain to me sometime how the question of the existence of deity has “nothing to do with” atheism. That is certainly a surprising assertion.
Ali:
Existence of God indeed has nothing to do with the history of atheism (by the way, I noticed you altered my assertion by taking out the word “history” in your reply). The entire history of atheism could have gone completely different and it would not have the slightest bearing on whether God actually exists. Though the history of atheism may indeed be very interesting in and of itself, elucidating on it adds little value to the question of whether God exists. Just because Dawkins refused to talk about your favourite subject in the world does not mean his arguments are ineffective.
Now I shall simply display again your previous comment. If snobbery is not the correct word to use I don’t know what is.
The sad fact is that science is inherently tactical and religion is inherently strategic. So science ends up building better weapons for the politicians as they feed off the mythic yearnings of the masses, looking for narrative finality.
http://www.juancole.com/2008/03/iran-danger-and-opportunity-polk-guest.html
Much of the debate within these comments could be avoided with a simple statement: Science does not privilege atheism. Atheists privilege science.
Confuse this at your own expense.
When I advocated ignoring the anti-scientific types, I did not mean that we should not at the same time promote science. Of course scientists should promote science agressively and confidently, and be proactive in teaching science to the public. But it is a mistake for scientists to engage and debate the anti-scientific people, when not forced to do so because of political necessaity, as if their ideas were not beneath contempt. These regressive ideas would not find fertile ground were it not for the current state of ignorance of the U.S. public, which is a direct consequence of the quality of the educational system and of the U.S. media that treats supernatural phenomena as fact. It should be clear that the U.S. needs an educational Marshall Plan. It is clear, at least to me, that validating these people by creating a scene at one of their movies, which otherwise would have received little attention, will accomplish exactly nothing.
Not to detract from the usual boring theist/atheist never-ending argument or anything like that, but the post was about politicians and critics. There is a third class of persons: critics that actually try to do something. Washington state’s Darcy Burner, for instance, is a strong opponent of the Iraqi war, and ran for Congress on that basis in 2006. She lost. In 2008 she’s running again, and has joined together with about 50 other congressional candidates across the nation to create a plan for withdrawal from Iraq. The group has (fortunately or unfortunately) been given almost no publicity by America’s media. Darcy Burner and her associates may lose again–but she, and they, are critics actually doing something.
Other critics throughout the world are also attempting to do something. Osama bin Laden is obviously one of these. Another Arab example is in Kuwait, where the U.S. re-established government also has it’s critics; some of them actually want to create an electoral process! Eight such activist critics were recently arrested, and a protest march was tear-gassed (from http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/564F7174-6225-443F-815B-8BD59ADE7DFB.htm)
One might expect that the U.S. government, which calls for democracy in the Middle East, would provide support to those organizing elections, and that the American new media would publicize such attempts, but there is no evidence for that currently available.
We now return you to the interminable discussion of theism enjoyed by America’s educated elite. How many fairies really can dance on the head of a pin? Inquiring minds want to know!
Ali is not totally incorrect with one statement. Simply, if I may:
View 1: I am an atheist who does not believe in gods/deities.
View 2: I also think that gods/deities are human mind-constructs. This is based on 3,000 or so myths/tales/dreams/delusions (whether psychological or chemical or optical in nature)/cultural history of the previous stated/observation of the nature of man over centuries and the present, and so on.
This does not mean I do not have an appreciation for the cultural myths, or the sociological, psychological and sociopolitical nature of the above, nor why some maintain faith in the supernatural.
View 3: View 2 led to the thinking of View 1.
View 4: Science has informed us that there is a good amount of unassailable evidence that conflicts (and outright knocks out) with much of religious doctrine and mythical tales.
View 5: I agree with PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins about most of their views. Cultural awareness? Ha! Dawkins understands that quite well, and I think PZ does too. So I read them for both science and atheistic views regardless of what they personally assert about their atheism.
View 6: Philosophy is for a rainy day when one can’t go outside and look at the birds and bees flitting around. Yay, for naturalism!
Sorry, if I’m an annoyingly simpleminded lurker. (-:
I forgot to say that I’d change View 1 if shown evidence to the contrary.
I don’t think that the decline of traditional religion can be ascribed to the advent of Darwinism, and most historians and sociologist of religion seem to agree with me. Other factors were and are in play. On the other hand, it surely made a difference that science has provided so little support for Christianity. Circa 1800, most natural historians may not have thought that the world was 6,000 years old or that Genesis was literally true; but most of ’em expected science to reveal a world obviously guided by intelligence, a world congenial to faith. That dog did not bark. Evolution is certainly consistent with theism, especially granted the license believers give themselves for special pleading; but it doesn’t bolster the notion of providence, either. Reason enough to hate it.
The mystery isn’t intelligence, which is simply a reasonable model of physical reality, but the essential fact of awareness. Because we equate intelligence with awarensss, we assume any form of primordial beingness is intentional, when it is quite evidently aspirational. Life doesn’t know where it’s going, it functions as a parrallel processor; Lots of units blindly expanding perception and perspective. The brain moves into the future, as the mind records the receding past.
So we have these cycles of expansion and consolidation, where the old view hardens and controls future growth, until such point as it totally constrains growth and must be shed like dead skin, in order for progress to continue.
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Reproduced without permission: Jakob de Roover, emphasis added by me.
In a memorable passage, Dawkins discusses the problem of Trinitarianism in Christianity and extends it to other forms of “polytheism,” such as the cult of the Virgin Mary and the saints in Roman-Catholicism. “What impresses me about Catholic mythology,” he shares with the reader, “is partly its tasteless kitsch but mostly the airy nonchalance with which these people make up the details as they go along. It is just shamelessly invented” (Dawkins 2006: 35).
As a reader, try to bracket away all presuppositions about religion and reread the sentences. If you succeed in doing so, the impact of Dawkins’ claim dissolves. So what, if certain details of Roman-Catholicism are human inventions? What is the problem in aspects of religion being “shamelessly invented”?
From a non-Christian, neutral point of view, it is unclear why Dawkins bothers to mention this. However, anyone with a basic understanding of the history of
Christianity will note where his claim comes from: Dawkins himself reproduces a piece of theology in this sentence (apparently without knowing it). From its earliest beginnings, Christianity claimed that it was the original and pure revelation of God, first given to Adam. This original revelation had been corrupted by sinful idolaters, seduced by the Devil into the worship of the false god and his minions. This corruption, according to Christian theology, took the
form of human additions to the pure divine revelation: rites and myths, fabricated by priests and prelates.
During the Protestant Reformation, Luther, Calvin and their followers began to accuse the Roman-Catholic Church of the same sin of idolatry. They cried that the pope and his priests had invented a plethora of dogmas and rituals and imposed these on the believer as though they were part of God’s revelation and necessary to salvation. In this sense, the worst accusation one could make against Roman- Catholicism was that it consisted of “shameless human inventions.”
The Enlightenment philosophies extended such charges of idolatry to all of Christianity and to all “religions” of humanity. All of these, including the notion of God itself, were human fabrications, the atheists among them claimed. Ironically, Enlightenment atheism thus presupposed and built on the claims of Christian theology. Without the background belief that there is something intrinsically wrong in religion being a human invention—very much a Christian belief—the impact of such charges simply disappears into thin air.
At this first level, Dawkins reproduces Christian theology, even though he masks it as an atheistic insight that is supposed to liberate humanity from religion.
A second point: (and this exposition is why I find Myers, Dawkins and even Sean on this subject so poor reading):
“Discussing the theological difficulties that polytheism allegedly creates, Dawkins continues:
“How did the Greeks, the Romans and the Vikings cope with such polytheological conundrums? Was Venus just another name for Aphrodite, or were they two distinct goddesses of love? Was Thor with his hammer a manifestation of Wotan, or a separate god? Who cares? Life is too short to bother with the distinction between one figment of the imagination and many. Having gestured towards polytheism to cover myself against a charge of neglect, I shall say no more about it. For brevity I shall refer to all deities, whether poly- or monotheistic, as simply `God'” (Dawkins 2006: 35-6).
The first issue to point out is that Greek and Roman followers of the “pagan” traditions were not in the least bothered by such “theological conundrums.” This was the case, because to them the stories about Aphrodite, Venus, Zeus and Jupiter were just that: traditional stories, instead of theological doctrines (Balagangadhara 1994; Feeney 1998). To the Greeks and Romans, the stories were not subjects to truth claims; that is, the predicates “true” and “false” were simply not applicable to the many stories about the deities. Hence, many such apparently “contradictory” stories could co-exist without conflict.
It was only when the church fathers tried to show that the Greeks and Romans had “false religion” that suddenly these stories became bearers of truth value and that the so-called “contradictions” appeared. Like the Christian ancestors who shaped their thought, the Enlightenment philosophers failed to grasp that the Roman and Greek stories were not meant to be doctrines or descriptions of the world. Hence, they ridiculed these stories as “mythologies,” fictionalized and embellished accounts of human history (Hazard 1935). The difficulties that Dawkins notices are those created by Christians and Enlightenment philosophers, who tried to make sense of the traditional stories of Greece and Rome as
mythological doctrines.”
Arun – you make interesting and clearly informed points. To get a handle on it, here’s what I think Dawkins was getting at: as time goes on, believers decide to think that such and such is so about Mary the mother of Jesus, etc, and it is taken as being a doctrine worth believing in. Well, we can ask, why should anyone believe this or that about her just because various Church scholars and leaders thought it so? Sure, but we can ask that about the original core beliefs as well. I think what is suspect about specific “kitsch” type doctrines is not their being innovations upon an original revelation, but that they are detailed “peculiar” claims that aren’t as amenable to *philosophical* investigation and appreciation as say, basic and foundational ideas such as there must be an unmoved Prime Mover or Original Cause. Now I must disagree with where I think you are going, for philosophical theologians take the latter very seriously (I sure do) and certainly don’t consider them the equivalent of mere “stories.” They are about the fundamental cause and meaning of the universe and our existence.
Monotheistic systems are based upon the Abrahamist covenentism and on the Mosaic system of law. By being based on law there is the implicit notion of the system being true. After all in a court of law the purpose is to assertain the truth or falsity of a case and guilt and innocense as a result. Although now I think the legal system is set up so lawyers can make more boat payments. So this implies much more of a notion of truth than what existed in polytheistic systems. It might also be argued that this lead to a sense that if God was a king of the universe (melech) then the universe must be ordered in a lawful fashion.
Lawrence B. Crowell
I saw Expelled yesterday. It is inaccurate to call it an “anti-evolution movie”. It points out that Darwinism has well-known problems in explaining the origin of life. [The simplest conceivable form of life (of the sort we know) seems to be far too complicated to have appeared by chance]. It argues that scientists who suggest intelligent design in an attempt to address Darwinism’s shortcomings should be free to do so without losing their jobs.
It’s most controversial part is its argument that in the absence of exceedingly powerful cultural programming to respect human life, human life will be less respected. Such programming is not to be found within Darwinism. On the contrary, the “survival of the fittest” motif taken as an ethical imperative have lead to eugenics movements and attempts to exterminate races deemed inferior.
It’s most startling bit is near the end during an interview with Richard Dawkins. Dr. Dawkins seems to agree with Francis Crick that a naturalistic version of intelligent design is a reasonable solution to the origin-of-life problem.
Why I liked the movie:
It exposed me to a new idea, which is pretty rare for a movie. The idea is that for any set of physical laws there exists a most probable scheme by which life could have evolved. Highly evolved versions of that most probable scheme could have designed new schemes for life (which are presumably better than the original scheme in some way) and could have seeded other planets with these.
What I did not like about the movie:
It didn’t explicitly state that the controversy is not about evolution but about naturalism. Intelligent Design proponents are anti-naturalists in that they believe that certain aspects of reality are fundamentally unintelligible to the human mind. That is the source of the intolerance from the scientific establishment. Anti-naturalism conflicts with a tacit metaphysical assumption behind science — that we can in principle understand the whole of reality.
Oh fun. I can have talk.origins flashbacks now….
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