Here's the kicker, for me, from Scott Atran's response to some criticisms of his ideas:

"Current approaches to resolving resource conflicts or countering political violence assume that adversaries make instrumentally rational choices. However adversaries in violent political conflicts often conceptualize the issues under dispute as sacred values, such as when groups of people transform land from a simple resource into a "holy site" to which they may have non-instrumental moral commitments... We found that emotional outrage and support for violent opposition to compromise over sacred values is (a) is not mitigated by offering material incentives to compromise but (b) is decreased when the adversary makes materially irrelevant compromises over their own sacred values."

Note that b) amounts to little more than saying, "OK, you're not evil." This addresses one of my main concerns w/ the "evangelical atheists" like Harris and Dawkins who seem bizarrely convinced that their transformative psychological project for mankind is possible, and bizarrely intolerant and disrespectful of the people they want to convert.

BTW, Bill, I'm reading The End of Faith now. I find Harris much more sympathetic than Dawkins, as I think he's more eloquent and his arguments more erudite, though my basic critiques are the same for him as for Dawkins. Anyway, I'm enjoying the read.

From Harris' response to Atran in the same Edge forum...

Atran's comments, both at the Salk conference and in his subsequent essay, miss the point. The point is not that all religious people are bad; it is not that all bad things are done in the name of religion; and it is not that scientists are never bad, or wrong, or self-deceived. The point is this: intellectual honesty is better (more enlightened, more useful, less dangerous, more in touch with reality, etc. ) than dogmatism. The degree to which science is committed to the former, and religion to the latter remains one of the most salient and appalling disparities to be found in human discourse. Scientists spend an extraordinary amount of time worrying about being wrong and take great pains to prove others so. In fact, science is the one area of discourse in which a person can win considerable prestige by proving himself wrong. Of course, individual scientists may or may not be privately honest or personally deluded. But the scientific method, with its institutionalized process of peer review, double blind trials and repetition of experiments, is beautifully designed to minimize the public effects of personal bias and self-deception. Consequently, science has become the preeminent sphere for the demonstration of intellectual honesty. Pretending to know things you do not know is a great liability in science; and yet, it is the sine qua non of faith-based religion.

My point, and Atran's point, is that religious beliefs just don't function in the same way as the "rational" parts of our belief systems, and Antran points to his and others' research which backs this up. Asking, as Denett does in his response to Antran's first post, "What can Atran be saying here? Not that things ought not to be rational and evidence based," is missing the point that human beings naturally believe irrational things at various times, for probably biologically significant reasons, and that postulating an ought here that is incapable of actual implementation in a human nervous system ("human beings should only be rational all the time about everything") is pointless.

And Dawkins makes it very clear in the introduction to The God Delusion that while he would like to convince everyone of the truth (that there is no God), he realizes the folly of that goal and is instead focusing his arguments at the very large number of people who may have some vague sense of faith (perhaps left over from childhood and habit), but who haven't really sat down and considered the matter rationally. For those folks, I suspect his book will be a slam dunk.

Religious beliefs aren't rational. Right. I think Dawkins and Harris and I agree so far. It sort of sounds like you do too. What are we disagreeing about again?

Asking, as Denett does in his response to Antran's first post, "What can Atran be saying here? Not that things ought not to be rational and evidence based," is missing the point that human beings naturally believe irrational things at various times, for probably biologically significant reasons, and that postulating an ought here that is incapable of actual implementation in a human nervous system ("human beings should only be rational all the time about everything") is pointless.

Humans believe irrational things, probably for biologically significant reasons. Okay, but humans also horde food and want to fuck all the time and do shitty things to each other in the quest for a mate for biologically significant reasons too, but we still manage to overcome these urges (for the most part) because we recognize them as being bad for us, despite being in our nature. Saying that people ought not to be irrational is not pointless at all, anymore than saying tribes of people ought not to go to war. I do not believe we are incapable of doing away with many irrational ideas. Science has shown us the way with other irrational notions (like the flatness of the earth, which was demonstrably untrue for thousands of years before people caught on thanks to science and scientists).

From Harris' response to Atran in the same Edge forum...

Atran's comments, both at the Salk conference and in his subsequent essay, miss the point. The point is not that all religious people are bad; it is not that all bad things are done in the name of religion; and it is not that scientists are never bad, or wrong, or self-deceived. The point is this: intellectual honesty is better (more enlightened, more useful, less dangerous, more in touch with reality, etc. ) than dogmatism. The degree to which science is committed to the former, and religion to the latter remains one of the most salient and appalling disparities to be found in human discourse... [S]cience has become the preeminent sphere for the demonstration of intellectual honesty. Pretending to know things you do not know is a great liability in science; and yet, it is the sine qua non of faith-based religion.

And as Antran points out in his susequent post, from which I already quoted, Harris in his writings about religion constantly displays a disregard for facts; he discards any counterexamples which are inconvenient for his argument (the secular nature of the vast majority of suicide bombings, e.g., the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka -- he claims that even though the bombers' motives aren't religious, they would never blow themselves up if not for their religious attitudes about death, and his claims that murderous secular movements weren't murderous because they were secular, but because the were like religions), and when peolpe like Antran who have actually done research about the things Harris talks about which contradict things like his caricature of (presumably Muslim) suicide bombers and their families (and victims), the best he seems to be able to come up with is "they exist" or "I read". That's rational, evidence-based debate?

Take the Tamil Tigers again. So what if they would never blow themselves up if their Hindu beliefs didn't include a belief in reincarnation? Non-religious people kill themselves sometimes, and would the Tamil Tigers' bombings be less morally reprehensible if they just blew up their victims and themselves escaped? Harris' and Dawkins' whole argument is that the irrationality of religions is what produces these things, but they ignore counter-evidence; their attitudes about counter-evidence to their public claims is decidedly religious, IMHO.

It's really not. Their argument (or Dawkins' argument really -- I haven't read The End of Faith) is that God does not exist and to believe he does is irrational. This is a scientific claim, supported by a lot of evidence.

They also make the case that religion is bad for our culture and they point to bad things in the world that have occured in the name of religion. This is not a scientific claim, and as you and I have discussed before, while I am sympathetic to their arguments, I recognize that without religion, people might still inflict just as much violence and pain upon their fellow humans (as the evidence Antran speaks of suggests). I still think overcoming our irrational and obviously untrue dogmatic beliefs, while perhaps not doing away with human strife altogether, is a good thing and a step in the right direction toward that end. When we figured out that bloodletting was bad for you, it didn't cure all disease either, but stopping all the bloodletting was still a step in the right direction.

I am much more interested in discussing the fundamental issue: that there is no God. That is Dawkins' primary argument, and it necessarily trumps the others (unless you believe that religion is a good thing despite the non-existence of God, in which case we might as well pack up and go home).

Well, we may have to pack it in and go home no matter what (my fiancee is getting irritated by how much time and mental energy I'm devoting to the debate and related matters), but, for the record I believe that:

1. God exists
2. "science" doesn't say God doesn't exist
3. science does say there is no evidence of a certain type that God exists
4. some people feel that those two things are equivalent
5. whether or not God actually exists, religious beliefs serve purposes in people's lives that "science" offers no viable alternatives to and that until it does, all this talk about abandoning religion is impractical and pointless.

Butt first, a little lightweight humor and fun at somebody else's expense:

...my fiancee is getting irritated by how much time and mental energy I'm devoting to the debate...

Ha ha, that was funny. Okay, now on to some more serious stuff:

1. God exists
2. "science" doesn't say God doesn't exist
3. science does say there is no evidence of a certain type that God exists
4. some people feel that those two things are equivalent
5. whether or not God actually exists, religious beliefs serve purposes in people's lives that "science" offers no viable alternatives to and that until it does, all this talk about abandoning religion is impractical and pointless.

To talk about science, proof and god in one sentence is simply a misdirection. That's a misunderstanding of what's meant by science. Nowhere in the scientific literature is there any mention of the fact that my cat is sleeping on my lap as I write this. Woah, my cat is outside the realm of SCIENCE! Actually, cats are pretty darn weird. Woah, look at the time ... jesus will hate me if i don't get to bed soon. Sorry jesus, I'm on my way... ow!... jesus made be pull a hair out of my nose when I was picking a booger just now. damn you, oh concept of jesus, arbitrarily introduced by other people when they lack the capacity to think rationally about their own decision-making process and now haunting me with the memory of the existence of that rational justification of an irrational thought process.

Sounds right to me. (Both the argument and your claim that it's Dawkins' central one.)

> and it necessarily trumps the others (unless you believe that religion is a good thing despite the non-existence of God, in which case we might as well pack up and go home).

Here you're oversimplifying. There are a lot of examples of agnostic or atheist religionists -- e.g. the long tradition of Jewish Atheism, aspects of Jainism, Confucianism, and Taoism, not to mention the whole of Buddhism, -- which is actually fairly scientific in its insistence that beliefs are not facts and you should remain unattached to any given worldview...

In sum, there are lots of potential reasons why disbelief in God or in any particular mystical/cosmological/historical teaching of a religion is not incompatible with adherence to that religion for moral guidance, community, tradition, inspiration, shared mythology, life structure, ritual, etc.

So I say, atheism has a big tent! Let's invite in all the atheist religionists and see what we can learn about morality et al. from each other.

And here you're oversimplifying. There's been a lot of recent research into the biological origins of morality and ethics, law and justice, altruism, spirituality, community... all the things some religionists claim to have a monopoly on. I recommend listening to this WNYC Radio Lab program on morality (as well as the entire Radio Lab archive; it's excellent). Also the Wikipedia pages on Altruism and Ethics and Evolutionary Psychology.

In short, there's a myth that atheism = nihilism, which is of course completely bogus. Humans tend to self-organize into moral communities. What's religion got that we ain't got already?

Yes, of course you're right. I was assuming the definition of "religion" that Dawkins in his book and Harris and others in talks have specified. That is, belief in a supernatural, personal God that created the universe and answers prayers. It's a caveat that the people we've been discussing have all made but that I never did. Sorry for the confusion.

there are lots of potential reasons why disbelief in God or in any particular mystical/cosmological/historical teaching of a religion is not incompatible with adherence to that religion for moral guidance, community, tradition, inspiration, shared mythology, life structure, ritual, etc.

Yes, of course you're right. I was assuming the definition of "religion" that Dawkins in his book and Harris and others in talks have specified. That is, belief in a supernatural, personal God that created the universe and answers prayers. It's a caveat that the people we've been discussing have all made but that I never did. Sorry for the confusion.

And this is what I was talking about when I said "science offers no viable alternatives." Yes, it is oversimplifying as Alex says, but only a bit. Take Alex's cited alternatives: I'm aware that there is a lot of research that's been conducted about why, from a biological standpoint, we may have evolved altruistic behavior. But that description of the purpose that altruism may serve in propagation of the species is not in itself normative. It's not particularly helpful to society to tell someone, "act according to your nature; natural selection will take care of the rest." People need rules and norms. Science describes rules and norms, but it doesn't choose among them. One might argue then that religion is not necessary, only culture. My response to that is "are you more likely to run a stop sign or cheat on your wife?" At any rate, Antram spoke in his posts about some of these mechanisms, and posited that human beings innately need to construct minimally impossible worlds to resolve some of these problems.

As an example, there are those posting on this list, whom I know have the minimally impossible worldview "science will someday vastly lengthen our lives; technological progress will ensure that social problems are solved (through inherently democratizing technologies, maybe), etc." I.e., it is a "science religion," and I would argue that those beliefs about the ability of sicence to solve those kinds of problems are just as irrational as any other religion, and futhermore posit that that explains the vigor with which proponents of that veiwpoint have advanced it here (and in some of the books cited): because I'm saying that their religion is wrong.

Finally, Bill and DanZ, you seem to have a somewhat quaint, antiquated view of science: double-blind studies, predictions. Theoretical physics, for example, has moved beyond testable predictions (the putative Theory of Everything in physics will be adopted even if it makes the same predictions for small bodies at short distances as quantum mechanics and for large bodies at great distances as general relativity, because of an essentially aesthetic desire for a simpler model).

As an example, there are those posting on this list, whom I know have the minimally impossible worldview "science will someday vastly lengthen our lives"

Let me be clear that I believe there are those for whom this proposition is irrationally strengthened to the point where it's just about indistinguishable from "science will conquer death" (e.g, we'll be uploading our brains). I don't think most of us don't expect that science will lengthen our lives, or that it would provide much more comfort to those who've reached 120 that they could live to 150 than the already lengthened lives we now enjoy for those of us about to crack 40.

Well Dan is probably more qualified to answer you here but I'll take a crack. Whatever TOE gets adopted, it will only happen when that theory makes predictions that match predictions made by BOTH quantum mechanics AND relativity together. Furthermore, there are mathematically reasonable theories that do this right now (superstring theory) but they are not being adopted as a replacement of the standard model because they are untestable. Scientific theories require more than elegance to become accepted models.

That said, you do raise the interesting point that theoretical scientists do tend to favor "elegant" theoretical models over inelegant ones. This aesthetic bias may be partly artistic (and therefore unscientific), but it's also true that throughout history, when scientists have followed theory X because of its elegance, that theory is often the one that yeilds the best results. Elegant theories are therefore desirable, scientifically.

In the case of the TOE, it's the incongruity of QM and relativity that needs solving, not merely the inelegance of the standard model.

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There's always gotta be a reason for something.

JIMO, those of us former theology students refer to the God Paradox as the problem of theodicy ("divine justice"), and it can be even more simply stated as "God can't be all God and all good."

The story of Job in the Bible has an answer, which is basically that finite human beings aren't very good judges of the wisdom or goodness of an infinite being.

If you're asking if I have an answer, I certainly don't have a better one than that.

I submit there is a significant difference between the "minimally impossible worldview" that humans will one day be able to upload their consciousnesses... and the "minimally impossible worldview" that there is a dude in the sky

I hope, possibly against hope, that you don't think all or even most contemporary Christians (not least me) believe in a "dude in the sky." Here's an analysis of the history of the concept of heaven in Biblical literature and its interpretation; the Bultmann the author refers to is Ruldolf Bultmann, a german theologian who had quite a bit of influence on contemporary Lutheran theologians and ministers (myself included, though I don't go "all the way" w/ Bultmann, no pun intended -- I think some of the "myth" in Christian literature is the point. But some of if is just a carrier for the "real" ideas, i.e., I don't read the Genesis account of the fall as a history text about two historical people, rather as a commentary, profoundly insightful as to the historic and current nature of humanity).

You have made it clear in context that you are far from a fundamentalist in your faith and I was not referring to your faith specifically but to that of the nearly 50% of Americans who are young-Earth creationists (!). That's a big problem. It belies a scandalous lack of decent critical thinking and science education. The "dude in the sky" type of faith is extremely prevelent, while your more thoughtful, more incredulous (but still wrong, IMO) faith seems to be much rarer.

But ultimately, we are talking about matters of degree. You and the young-Earth fundamentalists make the same initial leap of "faith" -- that there is a God (where "God" means [at least] a supernatural creator that consciously affects things on Earth). That some believers are scientifically hip enough to reject some of the subsequently-disproved-by-science claims of the Bible doesn't mean that initial leap is any more reasonable.

That some believers are scientifically hip enough to reject some of the subsequently-disproved-by-science claims of the Bible doesn't mean that initial leap is any more reasonable.

Well, it hinges on what "claims" you think the Bible makes. I don't think that the Bible makes "claims" about geologic or cosmological history, for example, in the way that you do. I.e., I don't take the Genesis account of the creation of the earth as a claim about how it happened, I take it as a claim about why it happened. Any such claim would have to be expressed in human language in a human historical context (because if you want to communicate with humans, you do it in language, during history). So saying "And God said, 'Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters,'" could be a claim that God affected the physical material of the universe in a specific way. Or, given that the idea of the cosmos as a flat disc with water underneath and a dome of sky above (with waters above that) was just the commonly held view of the cosmos at the time, the entire claim could just be "God did it."

So, I don't think I'mr rejecting a claim, so much as determining, though interpretation, what the claim actually is. That I believe the claim, is of course a leap, as you say.

BTW that Straight Dope you linked to: that %50 is not "young earth" creationism, it's "young homo sapiens" creationism.

I stand corrected. My point remains intact.

I don't think that the Bible makes "claims" about geologic or cosmological history, for example, in the way that you do

Fair enough. You've convinced me that the Bible makes no such "claims" but is to be taken as metaphor. A very large number of Christians disagree with us.

I don't take the Genesis account of the creation of the earth as a claim about how it happened, I take it as a claim about why it happened.

As I've said before, asking "why" is begging the question, though I suppose one doesn't need to have faith in an literal diety to ask it. I personally take the (admittedly nihilistic) view that there is no answer to the "why" question. It's an absurd question, like asking "why" the Sun rises. The only meaningful answer is a description of the physical processes -- the "how." The answer "because God loves us" is blisteringly unsatisfying (to me -- this is not the heart of may argument, but a statement about my own personal outlook).

As I've said before, asking "why" is begging the question, though I suppose one doesn't need to have faith in an literal diety to ask it. I personally take the (admittedly nihilistic) view that there is no answer to the "why" question. It's an absurd question, like asking "why" the Sun rises.

What if it is rephrased as "what caused the Big Bang?" Is that an absurd question?

The only meaningful answer is a description of the physical processes -- the "how."

Is the only meaningful thing about a Bach sonata the mathematical relationship between the frequencies and duration of the notes? How you feel about it isn't meaningful? What the author intended you to feel, or think about isn't meaningful? I think it's fine for you to say that you think the answer is uninteresting, but I would take issue with the idea that your opinion of what is meaningful should be normative for me.

Perhaps. The jury is very much still out on that one. But since the question "what caused the big bang?" is framed in the context of cause and effect, and since it is possible that "pre-big bang" causes and effects did not exist, then yes, it is probably an absurd question.

Is the only meaningful thing about a Bach sonata the mathematical relationship between the frequencies and duration of the notes?

Of course not, but that's not the same question. "Why was the universe created?" and "why does the sun rise?" are not equal types of questions to "what is meaningful to you about a Bach sonata?" One might ask "why did Bach write that sonata?" That is in line with those other questions and the answers can include "because Bach was a genius" or "because Bach was sad," but in the questions about why the universe was created, there is no Bach. Or rather, the question itself presumes the existence of a creator -- it begs the question. Asking about my feelings about a Bach sonata is more akin to asking about my feelings about life, the universe and everything, in response to which I can wax poetic just as much as the next guy and still not require mythology to be literally true.

To be clear (and less glib): asking what caused the big bang is not an absurd question in the context of our discussion, but is fundamentally different from asking "why" the universe was created as oppsed to asking "how" the universe was created. "What caused the big bang" is most definitely a "how" question.

"What caused the big bang" is most definitely a "how" question.

You misspelled "who" there, Bill. ;-)

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There's always gotta be a reason for something.