Theres a lot of interesting and quality discussion in the last posts that I want to stick my oar in. Oh will the inuendos dry up? I doubt it. So, apologies for not quoting directly, I'm too damned lazy.
nfe, I think our divergence is in our respective characterisations and perceptions of intensity, for want of a better term, and prevelance of religious belief as opposed to an a priori disgreement in the validity of those perspectives. I mentioned a while back that we have no good reliable way of gauging the religiosity of this ostensibly secular country. We all agree that its secular, because its bloody obvious, but we have by and large personal experience to draw on as to the nature of religious belief here, with a perhaps a handfull of statistics. This is woefully inadequate to draw reliable conclusions. I really dont know how many christians are what I'm going to term 'casual' christians that feel some sympathy with some of the philosphies in the bible and what I'm going to call 'nutters' that think that its true, or more importantly their interpretation is true, and its a far more universally viable guide on life and reality than our best current information suggests.
Im gonna set that aside for a minute and have at some of the evidence/faith and religion as anti-science discussion, because I think its a usefull way of getting a foothold on a more crystalised perepective on what a 'nutter' is, and why its often corrosive to quality of life to be a 'nutter'.
The problem to my mind is not that...I'm gonna have to stop saying nutter, it was funny for a bit but in my own head I'm starting to sound like a 'tw@t', but since terms like 'strongly religious' are in contention (rightly so) and 'extremist' and 'fundamentalist' are equally inflamatory, contentious and potentially subjective I'm gonna go with 'Literalist', which I dont even really mean to be someone that thinks the bible (or other religious text) is literal truth, but someone that will place greater importance on it as an authority and source of information than anything else...Scripturalists, I'm gonna call them scripturalists...where was I? Right, the problem to my mind is not that sripturalists dont agree on the statements, broad or detailed, of science, its that they have a fundamental epistemilogical dissonance with it. They start with their answer. Thats it in a nutshell. Science cant start with an answer. Free enquiry cant start with an answer...but I'm getting ahead of myself there. They may be the more liberal sort that accept pretty much everything that science says happened/happens but always tag on 'Its great that god did it like that, aint he just swell?'. Nice and unfalsifiable, ostensibly innocuous. They might be the sort that throw all modern science and scientific methodology out of the window and scramble desperately with bogus evidence and fatuous analogies to satisfy themselves that the earth is 6000 years old and the only major change its seen in that time involved a global flood and a floating zoo. Doesnt matter.
To frame exactly how much it doesnt matter, I'm just gonna go ahead and say: science, in its curent set of models and statements is wrong. Now I dont know that to be the case, you know I dont know that, thats not the point. The point is that thats a perfectly tenable position in science. The reason being its always open to being proved wrong and will be changed if new evidence comes to light that says a model is inadequate or incorrect. Its happened before, it WILL happen again. 100 years ago we didnt even know that there were other galaxies. We thought they were nebulae, clouds, within a universe that was pretty much homogeneously distributed stars. Oops. Easy proved wrong. That universe dwarfs the geocentric, firmament covered model of ancient times that was, however incredibly poorly to our eyes, quite empirically sensible, or understandable at least, at the time. In 100 more years we may have better substantiation for models that are currently hypothesese that make the expanse of the known cosmos look samller than and as primitive as that poxy little earth and firmament model of the bronze age.
With a religious belief of the 'scripturalist' type, that sort of revision of understanding is impossible. It always gets 'god did it' tacked on at the start, like an extra little self serving post-it note that must be attached to everything for it to have full validity and perspective. Nothing really changes. The important thing, really, is that you can allow what you think you know to change, by giving questions new information and different foundational assumptions and approaches. This cant be the case if you always start with the answer.
I've seen this 'thinking' in one of my more intelligent religious friends. Hes an aerospace engineer. He designs planes. Or helps at least. Hes a bright chap. Hes told me that hes capable of considering a matter based on the evidence and empirical experience alone (when I say empirical by the way, I dont mean measurable, I mean within the bounds of common and reasonably reproducible physical sensory experience). He also told me that when he "catches myself thinking without god" he feels shame. Shame fercryin outloud, that he didnt have 'god' as his answer and prime mover for all considerations at all times. One example is hardly national statistics, but this (anecdotal, inadmissible) report is indicative of the kind of 'god as answer first' thinking as something dissonant with independant thought and corrosive to consideration of the avaiable facts on their own merit.
Now, again, that in and of itself is fairly unthreatening. But. Oh, theres a but: thats symptomatic of an unwillingness to think and consider the world around you as you find it that extents far further than physical models of reality. That sort of unwillingness to question and inability to assimilate new evidence and experience and allow it to change your worldview applies socially and ethically as well.
I mentioned earlier (something I learned quite recently, or at least have been convinced of for the time being, previously thinking that ethical considerations could be entirely rational) that ethical decisions cant be made by rational consideration alone, that we use evidence to inform our most desired outcome and try to bring it about, but doesnt tell you whats desireable. Simplistically at least. Science gives the best information about nature and reality. If you close yourself off to that, then you can risk causing or allowing serious harm. Stem cells come to mind pretty quickly. I dont think thats a point of great contention here, just whos the bigger tosser, the homeopath or the faith healer, lets count the number of people they give shitee information to that are quite probably suffering poorer quality of life as a result. I have no problem with that, since I have massive problems with such new age bunk as well. But what I havent seen is an addressing of the root cause of this resistance to recieving the best information to inform our, quite common, standard issue human compassion - putting a greater, and incontestitble authority before and above the evidence we find around us. The link between how you think, how you derive your view of the world, where from, what baggage it may come with, and getting the best information for your ethical compass is a link too infrequently made. I think its real and very important - how you think, indeed, that you think has a very strong connection with consciencious compassionate action.
Which leads to - we learn new values. All the time. I'd like to think that we, over the last few hudred years, have become less tollerant of violence, have taken great measures to combat disease and poor living conditions. I dont think that science made us do it, I think that its facilitiated it, and by and large our more tollerant and accepting societies can be traced to wider communication and travel, and empathy taking its natural course. Mostly. Consider the objections to things like gay marraige. Now, some secular people have misgivings but by far the more vocal are religious. Objections to family planning and birth control; again, religious. The deriviation of ones beliefs, both in in the nature of reality and in ethical authority from an incontravertable supreme arbiter prevents us learning new values. Or some of us at least. The scripturalist is more likely to hold the precepts he finds in his scripture above the 'evidence' or what he may learn from experience directly and exclusively (in these examples that gay people just find the same sex attractive and love is love, leave them be, its not really any different than you, and overpopulation and mandating bringing children into impoverished and potentially dangerous circumstances (to them and their development) because they have a fully human immortal soul from the moment of conception is basically worsening life for the living for the sake of the not yet living...there are many more similar examples one can think of where a belief in an primary authority from which you derive your answers leads to behaviours and practices that make life worse for many people; one doesnt need to resort to the media-friendly trigger happy bomb making extremists).
So, while the intellectual dishonesty of your average Young Earth Creationist (or indeed crystal healing idiot or medium) infulriates the hell our of me, and they are demonstrably wrong and flagrantly idiotic, that isnt the most pernicious force at work, to my mind. Its the facilitiation of suffering and inequality which is deeply connected to an unwilligness to learn or abandon certain authoritarian starting points in 'inquiry' (if it still deserves the name, which is doesnt). It degrades free enquiry in a very general sense, with very real repurcussions. Kids not believing evolution because their pastor says its a lie is kinda niether here nor there, in the first part; the disbelief in the scientific model. In the second part; because their pastor, in effect conduit and interpretor of Gods authority, said its a lie and they buy that because of the simple fact of it being said by a religious authority and that overrides any further learning. If those same children in 50 years time get cancer and refuse, or worse, campaign against embryonic stem cells being used to grow new organs for transplants, or food for all of us (each quite real possibilities) because they never learned to outgrow that shiteety authoritarian non-thinking then they're going to suffer for it, and quite possibly the rest of us as well.
On reflection I really neednt have chosen a hypothetical futuristic example, but I've gone and typed it now. Could have just gone with the abortion thing, its obvious and easy enough, or religious reasons (biblical or not; the same 'religious authorty comes up with answer before any real questioning, real consideration of the problem circumvented' thing applies with the catholic churches stance on contraception (with respect to birth rate and control of STDs), the attitudes that are fostered between many religious people (I know lots of 'moderate' christians that think that muslims are basically sub-human, animalistic, and, surprisingly they dont know and dont want to get to know any muslims; they actively avoid all members of a group of people they just already know are universally repugnant) and so on and so forth.
Also, its worth noting that 'evidence' doesnt mean the same thing to them as us. To them it often means, if not usually to always means, 'interpretation'. That doesnt mean the same thing to them as us either. I see an anti-clockwise decaying spiral in a detection chambers magnetic field, I interpret that evidence as an electron. Actually it might be a proton, I'm a bit rusty. They leave their car unlocked while shopping, come back to find it still there (and discover its unlocked) and interpret that as god protecting their property, further evidence for His existance. Before anyone calls that as a stupid example, its a real one, from my own experience. They see a schizophrenic and can quite readily (not much in proportion, but many in number) interpret that as demonic possession (Edit: this is not a werid little novelty of religion, or a quaint anacronism; people have been killed in modern times in barbaric rituals trying to drive out demons. Demons for $%&# sake./edit). These interpretations are just more answer-precedes question thought circumvention, so much confirmation bias, and that is 'evidence' to the *ahem* 'strongly religious'. In my experience and observation at least. I know a lot of christians that are much less quick off the mark with their mumbo-jumbo interpretations, but none that dont use them as a cornerstone of their worldview.
This probably gives a better definition of what I think a 'strongly religious' person is, why I dont that that religion should be tolerated as a daft unthreatenting novelty, and why the whole thing is quite utterly egregious.
And I'll lump in all the astologers, mediums, crystal-whatever-the-hell-they-are people, new age mumbo jumbo spouting cretins, homeopathists, and so on and so forth. Imbeciles to the last, often dangerously so.
Recommended reading if this overwritten polemic of a post wasnt enough for you - carl sagan, demon haunted world. Hes cleverer, better informed and nicer than me, and that book is basically on the same subject; critical thinking as a vital and undernourished aspect of modern life.
