By Science Junkie – June 05, 2011
I don’t get it – never did, never will. On second
thought, saying “never will” sounds a bit arrogant,
too much like the pronouncements of the deluded religious-right ideologues I’m
always criticizing. Of course I can’t predict my future with certainty; but
then neither can you, or anyone. Especially not those religious fanatics who are always so
spectacularly and embarrassingly wrong about everything. (Considering
the preposterous claims they make, it’s hard to believe they even have the
capacity to be embarrassed; but they are certainly an embarrassment to the
rational citizens of this nation).
The “it” I don’t get is the whole concept of a supernatural
realm – ghosts, angels, demons, gods, etc. Here I’ll focus on theism,
which has the distinction of being the dominant world view in this hyper-religious country. Theism is the entirely speculative belief that
there is an invisible creator-god who takes an active role in earthly affairs
and maintains a close relationship with humans, whom he created from dust and
ribs as the proud culmination of his work. In other words, a
personal god who created us human mammals in his own image. And please
note that theists make many testable claims about the nature of reality, one of the most grandiose being that their
holy book is literally true in every particular. Also note that this absurd and
provably false position forces theists to invent the most stupendous
rationalizations, all too often with an air of pretentious, solemn piety
implying that they understand something of cosmic significance that you better
accept if you know what’s good for you.
Anyway, in the spirit of “Never say never,” and also in the
much more important spirit of skeptical, scientific openness to new evidence, I
must leave room for at least a smidgen of doubt. So I’ll just say that in all
likelihood I will never get it. Of course there is always the possibility of a
dementia-induced, deathbed conversion. But as Christopher Hitchens said, that wouldn’t really be me, so pay no attention if that should come to
pass.
Understand that I’m not talking about deism, the belief in a
creator/intelligent designer that does not intervene in the world. And
while I can’t agree with them, I have no quarrel with deists, as long as they
aren’t lending support to the fundamentalists/evangelicals (fundagelicals)
who are trying to reverse the Enlightenment and turn our society into some kind
of a non-thinking, science-denying theocracy in alliance with oppressive,
right-wing politics. Jesus hates social programs, dontcha know?
From a practical standpoint, it seems to me that deism is
virtually indistinguishable from agnosticism or atheism. How’s that? Well, the
major point of contention between deists and nonbelievers seems to be how it
all got started in the first place. Beyond that, deists are free to embrace the
scientific account of nature, including evolution, in its entirety. They don’t
claim to know the mind of some god or to know all the “revealed” answers to the
meaning and purpose of life. And they don’t generally claim that features of
living organisms (the eye; the notorious bacterial flagellum) reveal the hand
of an intelligent designer who tinkered with the ongoing process of evolution.
Unlike theists, they are not arrogant. And make no mistake about it: fundagelical theism is a supremely arrogant belief system.
What else can be said of people who claim to know the absolute truth about all
the big questions without a shred of solid evidence?
So if deists prefer to believe that a hidden and
undetectable supernatural being designed and created the cosmos, I can’t prove
them wrong, and I really don’t care to try. Unlike theists, their philosophical
arguments and speculations are not shallow and dogmatic, but neither are they compelling. Deists have not marshaled enough real-world
evidence to prove their hypotheses, and their god-in-hiding remains an
inference.
To me, the only sound position is not to claim to know the
answers to the big questions. In that respect I go along with Richard Dawkins,
who points out that any intelligent designer would be far more complex –
and therefore even more improbable – than an undesigned,
natural universe. In the absence of evidence, postulating a creator doesn’t
explain a thing but just pushes the origin question back to another level that
itself requires explanation. Who’s to say what may have transpired in the
fullness of time? The possibilities seem limitless. For example, it can be
shown mathematically that in a multiverse that
generates universes with different physical laws, everything that can happen
eventually will happen. It is possible that a hugely powerful intelligent
designer of this universe was the product of a lengthy period of evolution in
another universe that itself was designed. Or that humans (or their successors) a million years from now
will be designing their own universes. And so on. Who knows? It’s all
speculation, isn’t it? But you’ll
never hear that from a theist. They’ve got their culturally privileged, shallow
little story and they’re sticking to it.
The late, great Carl Sagan took this position: Anything,
however improbable, is possible, but only as long as the claims being made are
general. When they start getting specific (miracles, the efficacy of prayer,
prophecies), evidence must, of absolute necessity, come into play and be taken
seriously. Which strongly implies that the hypothesized creator/intelligent
designer of the deists bears almost no resemblance to the anthropomorphized,
interventionist god who “speaks” to the Christian fundagelicals,
the Mormons, and the Muslims. Of course Christians, who typically grasp at any
straw that seems to support their presumptuous claims, want to include deists
as their allies when it suits their purposes (example: appropriating the
founders’ rhetorical term “nature’s God” as evidence they intended to establish
a Christian nation, which is the exact opposite of the separation of church and
state they really intended.) The idea that deism
supports Christian dogma is, to put it bluntly, self-serving bullshit. Deism is
much closer to a secular, naturalistic world view than
it is to theism. Deism doesn’t make absurd claims about a six-thousand-year-old
universe, talking snakes, virgin births, angels and demons, a Garden of Eden,
heaven and hell, etc. It doesn’t deny established science. It is simply the
position that, all things considered, it seems more likely to them that the
universe came from conscious design rather than natural processes. I think most
deists respect evidence and would agree that the evidence we have doesn’t prove
the existence of a god and certainly doesn’t support the mythology of the
petulant, jealous, vengeful, and fickle god of the Abrahamic religions. In contrast, theists look for any support they can dredge up to
bolster their politicized claim that this is a Christian nation. It’s all a big
god tent when they want something; the rest of the time they preach that all
those others are going to burn in hell for worshipping the wrong gods, the
wrong version of a god, or no gods. No one I know of has made this point better
than Sam
Harris.
Being a practical person, I’m inclined to go along with
Thomas Jefferson, a deist, who said, “But it does me no injury for my neighbor
to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks
my leg.” Now there’s an example of the kind of tolerance that needs to be more
widely practiced in this diverse culture. Unfortunately, tolerance is anathema
to U.S. fundagelical leaders who are hankering to
replace our Constitutional democracy with a Bible-based, oppressive, theocratic
system of law.
Let us not overlook Mormonism, a newer (circa 1830) theistic
faith that makes specific, testable claims. Among other provably false claims,
their scripture says that three groups of immigrants sailed to the new world
from the near east, starting with refugees from the Tower of Babel in 2200 BC,
followed much later by two other groups from Jerusalem, around 600 BC. After a
series of wars, so the tale goes, the unbelievers in Christ (never mind that he
had not yet been born on the other side of the world) prevailed to become the
ancestors of today’s native Americans. Now get this:
Shortly after his crucifixion in Jerusalem, Jesus came to America, ministered
to and converted the inhabitants. (Bet you didn’t know that!) And the whole
crazy story goes on and on from there. Of course those clean-cut young men in
the white shirts and ties who come to your door with the Mormon message won't
be telling you all that. They probably won't mention magic underwear,
either, or the Mormons’ pivotal role in bankrolling the successful opposition
to gay marriage in California.
But of course in the U.S. we’re supposed to respect others' religious beliefs. Which leads me to ask just what is meant by respect?
And why do prominent religious leaders keep saying and doing things that are
impossible to respect? What the term seems to mean in the U.S. is something
like this: “Keep your big freethinker mouth shut so we can continue to enjoy
our privileged status and pursue our theocratic agenda without having to
justify our unsupported beliefs.” In the case of the Mormons and
Scientologists, it's also so they don't have to publicly reveal much of the
weirdness that conflicts with comfortable, traditional beliefs. That unfamiliar
stuff might drive away prospective converts before they have been softened up.
Better to suck them in first with feel-good appeals until they've made a
commitment, then let them in on the bizarre secrets of
the inner sanctum.
Anyway, if I had lived in the 1800’s, 1700’s, or earlier, I
probably would have been a deist, along with Jefferson, Madison, and other
enlightened figures of the time. The world and the life on it certainly have
the “appearance of design,” as Richard Dawkins has said; and before Darwin,
there were few, if any, plausible naturalistic hypotheses to explain the
bewildering complexity and intricate organization of the natural world. It
really does look like it was designed. Charles Darwin certainly thought so
before his painstaking observations and research led him to the idea of
evolution by natural selection, which has been called the greatest idea anyone
ever had. What a remarkable man; what an intellectual giant! Naturally, the
ignorant, contemptible fundies demonize him along
with what has become the established fact of evolution.
Now that I’m all worked up again over the ignorance and
arrogance of the toxic religious right, I’m really looking forward to writing
Part 2, in which I’ll refute the provably false claim that religion is the
foundation of morality. That column will also deal with the slanderous
religious-right meme that atheists and agnostics cannot be moral. Which leads
me to reprise the following quotation from “Unknown”:
“Morality is doing what’s right regardless of what you’ve
been told; religion is doing what you’ve been told regardless of what is right.”