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Monday, November 27, 2006
Atheism on Steroids
I recently attended a symposium at the Salk Institute entitled "Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival." I expected to hear from a politically-correct mix of theists and atheists talking about the relationship between science and religion. In fact, the atheists in the room far outnumbered the believers (perhaps the name of the event gives this away, but I missed that). Here's a snippet from the NYT:
Somewhere along the way, a forum this month at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, Calif., which might have been one more polite dialogue between science and religion, began to resemble the founding convention for a political party built on a single plank: in a world dangerously charged with ideology, science needs to take on an evangelical role, vying with religion as teller of the greatest story ever told.
. . .
“Every religion is making claims about the way the world is,” [Sam Harris] said. “These are claims about the divine origin of certain books, about the virgin birth of certain people, about the survival of the human personality after death. These claims purport to be about reality.”
By shying away from questioning people’s deeply felt beliefs, even the skeptics, Mr. Harris said, are providing safe harbor for ideas that are at best mistaken and at worst dangerous. “I don’t know how many more engineers and architects need to fly planes into our buildings before we realize that this is not merely a matter of lack of education or economic despair,” he said.
You can click over here to video of the event, an op-ed in today's NYT addressing the substance of the issues raised at the symposium, and some thoughts on this event from my USD colleague, Tom Smith at the Right Coast Blog.
Posted by Adam Kolber on November 27, 2006 at 01:21 PM | Permalink
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Comments
Patrick:
You're right that if a given atheist thinks that people's behavior wouldn't be much better or worse if they believed in God or not, that atheist probably wouldn't be as assertive in trying to dispute religious claims.
Still, when I read these debates, I often hear people saying a couple of things. First, there's the line, "but if there was NO God, there would be no objective basis for morality, and life would be bad." Most responses to that argument get stuck on debating the premise ("oh but there would be valid alternative ways to base morality"), rather than saying, "Maybe yes, maybe no, but that doesn't mean there is a God."
Second, there's the line, "belief in religion has caused people to do lots of bad things, from the Inquisition to the fanatics who flew planes into buildings on 9/11." Most responses to that argument get stuck on debating whether non-believers have done even worse (Stalin and maybe Hitler -- subdebate ensues over whether Hitler was religious). Again, you don't hear as much, "maybe yes, maybe no, but that doesn't mean there isn't a God."
Posted by: Joseph Slater | Nov 29, 2006 10:19:03 AM
Slater-
While your arguments are correct, it is worth noting that the second question is very relevant as to whether the first question is important.
Posted by: Patrick | Nov 29, 2006 9:43:42 AM
Some of the arguments in the linked pieces seem to conflate or at least mix up two distinct issues:
(1) Whether certain religious claims are "true," factually or not (God exists, certain claims about what God has done are accurate); and
(2) Whether belief or lack of belief in God/religion causes people to act better.
Without getting into my opinions on those issues, I will say that it's not a good proof of the existence of God to argue, even convincingly, that people would behave in a worse manner if they didn't believe. Similarly, the question of whether more evil has been done by believers or nonbelievers is not relevant to the question of whether God exists.
Posted by: Joseph Slater | Nov 27, 2006 10:05:56 PM
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