Fundamentalism Is religion dangerous? “WHAT'S WRONG WITH RELIGION? WHY BE SO HOSTILE?” Richard Dawkins,The God Delusion, Chapter 8. Other naturalists ask Dawkins: “Why are you so hostile? What is actually wrong with religion? Does it really do so much harm that we should actively fight against it? Why not live and let live, as one does with Taurus and Scorpio, crystal energy and ley lines? Isn't it all just harmless nonsense?” • And they sometimes continue: • “Doesn't your hostility mark you out as a fundamentalist atheist, just as fundamentalist in your own way as the wingnuts of the Bible Belt in theirs?” • Doesn’t a fundamentalist have to be religious? • What is meant by “fundamentalist” here? Dawkins on fundamentalism • Fundamentalists are dogmatic. (“…they know, in advance, that nothing will budge them from their belief”) • Fundamentalists form beliefs on the basis of authority (e.g. holy books) rather than empirical evidence. • Dogmatism is actually ok, Dawkins says, when based on overwhelming evidence. E.g. that New Zealand is in the southern hemisphere. • (So dogmatism as such isn’t a feature of fundamentalism?) • I guess dogmatism without evidence is a characteristic of fundamentalism. “Evidentialism” • Evidentialism is the view that beliefs are justified only to the extent that they’re supported by evidence. • “Evidence” here includes things known by sense perception, memory, introspection, and logical truths. “Philosophers, especially amateurs with a little philosophical learning, and even more especially those infected with ‘cultural relativism’, may raise a tiresome red herring at this point: a scientist’s belief in evidence is itself a matter of fundamentalist faith.” • N.B. The evidentialism that seems required here goes far beyond “a scientist’s belief in evidence”. • Also, Alvin Plantinga (one of the “amateurs with a little philosophical learning”?) has argued that evidentialism is self defeating. • (Evidentialism doesn’t seem to be supported by any evidence.) • Dawkins’ response to his critics: “All of us believe in evidence in our own lives, whatever we may profess with our amateur philosophical hats on.” This completely misses the point of the objection. Straw man fallacy. • Dogmatism is also not the same thing as being passionate. Being passionate is ok. I might retort that such hostility as I or other atheists occasionally voice towards religion is limited to words. I am not going to bomb anybody, behead them, stone them, burn them at the stake, crucify them, or fly planes into their skyscrapers, just because of a theological disagreement. (Watson: “This polarization of the religious and non‐ religious may not explicitly prescribe violence, but it encourages hatred and derision of the religious. ) (sociologists) Collins and Pinch Fundamentalist religion is: “… mysterious, revealed, hierarchical, exhaustive, exclusive, omnipotent and infallible. The language is that of the Crusade or the Witch Hunt; victory, confession and retraction are the goals wherever heresy is encountered." (The Golem: p. 152) • They’re talking about (some) scientists, however! Here’s the full quote: “The science warriors who hate or scorn the Golem notion will countenance no alternative view of science. They seem to think of science as like a fundamentalist religion: mysterious, revealed, hierarchical, exhaustive, exclusive, omnipotent and infallible. The language is that of the Crusade or the Witch Hunt; victory, confession and retraction are the goals wherever heresy is encountered.“ Science!TM Simon Watson, sociologist “Review Essay: Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Atheist Fundamentalism”, Anthropoetics 15, no. 2 (Spring 2010). “In his 2006 bestseller, The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, presents an argument against “God” that mirrors the rhetoric used by the religious fundamentalists he sets out to criticize.” “… like the Christian fundamentalist who misrepresents and oversimplifies Darwinian evolutionary science, Dawkins presents a monolithic and oversimplified straw man of "religion," which he belittles and denigrates. Generalizing from religious extremism and fundamentalism to all religion, Dawkins demonstrates a deafness to the religious other and an inability to step outside his Darwinian “Theory of Everything,” …” (Simon Watson, p. 1) Religion has actually convinced people that there's an invisible man—living in the sky—who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and cry forever and ever 'til the end of time ... But He loves you! —GEORGE CARLIN, quoted in GD, p. 317. (Straw man) • Watson characterises fundamentalism as a reaction to an external, sinister threat. “The term "fundamentalism" emerged in early twentieth century American Protestantism after the publication of a series of twelve mass-produced booklets called The Fundamentals (1910-1915). Organized by Reverend A. C. Dixon, these booklets presented the conservative stand of an influential group of British, American, and Canadian writers against the ever-growing influence of continental European theologians such as Albrecht Ritschl, Martin Rade, and Adolf von Harnack.” • Similarly, says Watson, Dawkins is reacting to the threat of the power of the religious right. He speaks in crude binaries, distorts evidence, and oversimplifies complex realities. Preaching disdain and intolerance, he stokes the fear that feeds religious extremism. Christian fundamentalism “Those who refuse Jesus are not only dumb but also different, dangerous, and possibly contagious. The believer is obliged to rub up against the taint in the commandment to convert, which implies a conquering of death. But to stay with that death too long can be a dangerous affront to the self.” • (Strozier, quoted in Watson, p. 3) • “Replace the word "Jesus" with "the atheism of Dawkins" and this paragraph could very easily apply to The God Delusion.” Should Darwinians be humble? “Michael Ruse also recognizes the limitations of reason and logic and the evidence of the senses. … the Darwinian knows that our limitations come from having evolved in certain ways. These are ways appropriate to our station as "midrange primates who came down out of the trees and went into the garbage and offal business" (140). … A Darwinian, then, should be dubious that his selection-based powers and attributes, including mental attributes and powers, can provide total insight into ultimate physical reality (141). Dawkins, however, like the religious fundamentalist who believes that he knows and carries out the will of God, fails to recognize human limitations.” (Watson, p. 5) Misrepresenting “faith” • Dawkins says: "Faith is an evil precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument"; people who have faith are not "taught to question and think through their beliefs" (308). • “Yet, according to the classic definition of Christian faith, theology is fides quaerens intellectum, “faith seeking understanding” (Anselm)” • Richard Harries states that the idea of faith and reason being inherently opposed to one another is "mind- boggling in its lack of historical perspective" (19). He notes that all philosophers, ancient and modern, have believed that reasons can be adduced for and against a religious view of life: "Most of them have, in fact, believed in God but all have thought religious belief a matter of rational argument." • Watson also criticises Dawkins for acting like a fundamentalist: • “Dawkins overlooks and distorts evidence that does not serve his proselytizing agenda.” The case of Kurt Wise American geologist • B.A. in geology at the University of Chicago • M.A. in geology at Harvard • Ph.D. in paleontology at Harvard, supervised S. J. Gould • As Dawkins tells the story, after getting his Ph.D., “tragedy struck”. Somehow his fundamentalist upbringing reasserted itself, and Wise became a creationist. “I had to make a decision between evolution and Scripture. Either the Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true and I must toss out the Bible ... It was there that night that I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever counter it, including evolution. With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science.” (Kurt Wise) • Dawkins: “All he had to do was toss out the bible. Or interpret it symbolically, or allegorically, as the theologians do. Instead, he did the fundamentalist thing and tossed out science, evidence and reason …” (As Dawkins notes, most theologians, even conservative ones, shake their heads here as well.) Chronology is wrong • While Wise gets the earth’s chronology wrong, Dawkins gets Wise’s chronology wrong. • Wise cut up his bible with scissors in high school (grade 10) not after he finished his Ph.D. at Harvard. (According to Wise’s own account, which Dawkins quotes from.) http://creation.com/kurt‐p‐wise‐ geology‐in‐six‐days • So, while studying at U. Chicago and later Harvard, Wise was already committed to a young earth. (This changes the story considerably.) Wise’s reasoning • Wise initially liked the idea that each ‘day’ in Genesis 1 was really a period of millions of years. But the order of events didn’t correspond to the scientific account either.