Applied Epistemology

Elsewhere in today's edition, the NYT covers a recent conference at the Salk Institute on the ongoing struggle between science and religion. The current lightning rods are the books by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris urging a strong antagonism between science and religion. On the other side are a variety of less confrontational tacks.

The basic arguments against strong antagonism are something like these:

(1) it's counter-productive, only pissing off believers and stoking anti-scientific attitudes;

(2) it's bound to fail, since religion or a yearning for meaning is deeply ingrained in culture or biology; and

(3) it's wrong, since religious claims cannot be falsified by science.

If that's the best the conciliatory side can do, it's easy to see why Dawkins et al. have the upper hand in the current debate. (1) and (2) are merely disagreements about strategy, and all three are dubious in any case.

Against (1), it can be observed that accomodationist tactics have not been very productive either. Indeed, the rhetoric of "teach the controversy" or "equal time for religion and science" is a net victory for faith, since it implicitly accepts religion as a equally respectable, parallel source of truth. (I discussed a similar point a few days ago.)

And the problem with that (the "separate but equal" line advanced by folks like the late Stephen Jay Gould) is the problem with (3). Religion does conflict with science, since religions make lots of objective claims about miracles, resurrections, divine inspiration, heaven and hell, etc. There is no getting around this, since these claims are the basis for the warm-and-fuzzy values claims. As Paul correctly observed, if there is no resurrection, there's no point to Christianity. If the epistemic content of religion consists solely of unfalsifiable value judgments like "be nice to the poor and weak" or "don't stone adulterers", then there's no need to get that from religion: you can be a classical liberal or a utilitarian or a Buddhist and believe that. If you take away the empirical, falsifiable claims, then you have no reasons left to believe in an unfalsifiable God of pure faith either: the traditional arguments are all terrible, and you could believe in any religion on pure faith -- Salafist Muslim, Norse, Lovecraftian.

And (2) -- the claim that religion will never go away, that's it's just too popular -- is belied by Europe. The ancient home of Christianity is largely secular, and has been for many decades. As I wrote on another site:

What's striking [is] the extent to which atheism has gained traction. Before modernity, atheists were social and intellectual pariahs, even among highly educated classes. There simply weren't any openly atheist intellectuals before the Renaissance. But with the triumph of science from the 17th century onward, atheism has gradually become (mostly) socially acceptable. And likewise, religion has slowly receded. This trend is easy to overlook in the U.S., where religious extremism has deep historical roots and creates a lot of political smoke, but the evaporation of traditional religion is obvious in Europe and Japan.

In fact, the hot button stories in religion today make a lot more sense in the context of the growth of atheism: intelligent design is religion essaying an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" strategy to co-opt the onrushing tide of discoveries in biology and genetics. And practically half the stories in the Middle East are at some level about Islam's struggle to reconcile itself with modernity (i.e., the world where secularism has broken religion's monopoly on the public sphere).

While there might well be a neurological tendency for religious sentiment, rooted in the evolution of the human species, I don't see that this disposition need be tied to specific rituals and superstitions of the ancient Near East, or that it need be embraced as a good thing. There may be a biological basis to murder, racism, and rape, too, but part of the hard work of civilization is the gradual eradication of those primitive urges. I don't see how religion needs to get an exemption.