However, his attempts to reconcile science and religion are met with little success. His arguments are in no way novel, and his primary argument for the existence of a deity is based off of C.S. Lewis’ argument from Moral Law; that we all have an intrinsic moral sense, and this moral sense must have been given to us by God. Now, the fact that I disagree with the Moral Law argument wouldn’t be as bad if it didn’t seem that Collins had not read any further on theology than reading Lewis. He merely quotes Lewis as a justification for this belief and doesn’t address any criticisms of it.

Though this book claims to be written in opposition to recent authors (such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett) who espouse a purely materialistic worldview, it doesn’t appear as if he’s actually read their books. None of their arguments are directly addressed, which make the book immanently unsatisfying.

Occasionally, Collins manages to get going when talking about science and how wonderful the mysteries and discoveries of science are, but then trips himself up when discussing his theological conclusion. For example: after explaining the implications of damage to the FOXP2 gene with regards to language, an interesting story demonstrating the explanatory power of science and genetics, he then states, “The comparison of chimp and human sequences, in interesting as it is, does not tell us what it means to be human. In my view, DNA sequnce alone, even if accompanied by a vast trove of data on biological function, will never explain certain special human attributes, such as the knowledge of the Moral Law and the universal search for God.” He later expounds on this as his major argument for the existence of God, which is that our innate Moral Law is something that science is unable to explain, therefore God must have given it to us.

Now I agree that DNA sequencing alone is probably not sufficient to explain a moral sense or consciousness, but who would make the claim that DNA sequencing would explain all human attributes? Genetics is not the only field dedicated to understanding human evolution, behavior and cognition. It is not possible that developments in the fields of evolutionary development, social psychology or neurology might one day answer these questions? Even now there are strong theories in various fields pointing to scientific explanations of moral traits.

This type of argument for god is know as the ‘god of the gaps’ argument. The idea that there is some particular characteristic of the natural world that science alone cannot explain, therefore some sort of god stands as an explanation in its place. This has been acknowledged even by theologians as a terrible argument for god. What’s ironic is that Collins seems to know its a bad argument and even argues against a ‘god of the gaps’ later when discussing intelligent design.

He states, “[Intelligent Design] is a “God of the gaps” theory inserting a supposition of the need for supernatural intervention in places that its proponents claim science cannot explain…Advances in science ultimately fill in those gaps, to the dismay of those who had attached their faith to them. Ultimately a “God of the gaps” religion runs a huge risk of simply discrediting faith. We must not repeat this mistake in the current era.”

This is only one of many poorly argued points in this book. This book is perhaps fine for those who already believe in the compatibility of science and religion and aren’t too concerned with asking uncomfortable questions, but for those who are looking for a serious, in-depth look at these issues, I cannot imagine this book being terribly satisfying.

Let the buzz begin. Not that “Expelled’s” intentionally incendiary tone will need much help from the pastors and religious-school teachers in attendance at yesterday’s meeting. From the clips and trailers they showed, the film presents a world of–to use a quote I heard repeatedly yesterday–”the new scientific movement” (Intelligent Design, in case you weren’t sure) vs. the tired, old “theory” of evolution. Relying on news-clip montages, interviews, even cut-away shots of concentration camps, “Expelled” talks of faithful scientists and other believers losing jobs, losing grants, even losing friends in defense of ID. And, relying on footage of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and other atheists du jure, it sets up a worldview of ID vs. atheism, with no gray areas in between.

And, taking it even further, it posits that, without God, there can be no source of morality, no reason not to “stab someone on the subway,” to borrow another phrase I heard a couple of times yesterday (and which explained, according to Lauer and Logan, the concentration camp scenes, since the film will explore the influence of Darwinism on Hitler). So the battle for ID to be taught on par with evolution is no more, no less than a battle for the legitimacy of morality itself.

Just a furthering of anti-science bigotry. I’m getting rather tired of people saying that I can’t be a moral person just because I reject their notion of God. Just because an atheist doesn’t believe in God doesn’t mean that they don’t also experience pain, feel compassion towards others, and wish to get along with their fellow man. So not only are these people not being honest in their depiction of science or religion for that matter (equating belief in God with Intelligent Design creationism), they’re also spouting hate and bigotry. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

For instance, this passage from the introductory essay:

Ah, say the atheists, see, we told you exclusivist faiths like Christianity are forces for evil. So let’s get rid of faith, replace it with rationality and science, and all shall be well, or at least vastly better. But the atheist solution has its own problems. In “Letter to a Christian Nation,” Harris likens himself to an abolitionist and religion to slavery, but who is to say that a wholly scientific world would not itself soon produce dogma and strife over the findings, interpretations and applications of experiments and research? It is possible, even probable, that science would become a kind of religion, with creeds and convictions and arguments over the nature of reality. Labs would replace cathedrals, brain scans holy books. It would be different, but would it necessarily be better?

Arguments like this one seem to characterize atheism or, more specifically, science, as just one religion among many. It fails to take into account that science, for all intents and purposes, is the opposite of religion, at least as far as acquiring knowledge is concerned.

Now, I can see how people could end up creating something resembling a religion out of almost anything, including celebrities, and football teams, but the methods of science itself would make it difficult for any religion-izing of it to take place. Any dogmas and creeds that a scientific world would generate, would themselves be inherently unscientific. Science searches for knowledge that can be discovered only through reason, observation and experience, regardless of the preconceptions of the observer. No dogma is necessary for science to work, indeed dogma stands explicitly in the way of the process of science.

Regardless, the potential consequence of one view over the other has no bearing on its veracity, which is what we are discussing here.

I also have problems with this particular passage:

Theocracies—that is, governments organized around religious dogma—are not conducive to the cultivation of the kinds of societies many Americans value. But history teaches us that religion need not be entirely barred (as if it could) from public life in order to build a culture of liberty and freedom of inquiry and conscience. The key is how a culture manages the different factions contending for influence in a given time and place. The brilliance of the American experiment lies in its creation of a republican arena in which all manner of forces—religious, economic, geographic, what have you—can take their stand within the confines of a system in which checks and balances limit the possibilities of radicalism of any kind. Our government is slow, cumbersome and resistant to reform—by design.

Liberty and republican values are the guardrails against extremism, either religious or secular. Religion should not dictate education or science policy, for example, but there is nothing wrong—and there is much right—with its being one voice among many in the shaping of our public lives. One cannot be for one group’s right to speak out and exert influence and be against another group’s right to do so. The battles must be fought on the merits, and religion should be one force on the field, not the only one.

This moderate solution pleases neither the atheists nor the fervent believers, which may recommend it even more. The more conservative faithful think centrists are squishy, and some atheists argue, as Harris puts it, that “religious moderates are themselves the bearers of a terrible dogma: they imagine that the path to peace will be paved once each of us has learned to respect the unjustified beliefs of others … all we can say, as religious moderates, is that we don’t like the personal and social costs that a full embrace of Scripture imposes on us.”

This passage appears to equate atheism with extremist theocrats, as two extreme options where the centrist position is preferable. As such, it implies that there is an equally extremist atheist position who also wish to use the power of the government to promote their own particular philosophy. I personally do not know any individual atheist, nor any atheistic organization that wishes to use the power of the government to eradicate religion from public life. My own position is that the government needs to remain entirely secular, as put forth in the Constitution, in line with the views of the Founding Fathers. Neither promoting nor restricting private religious views, nor promoting or restricting any atheistic philosophy.

Regardless, the introduction ends, the debate begins. I noticed throughout that Warren does these little dances around certain topics in order to, prevent alienating many evangelical christians, as well as to make sure he doesn’t sound like a total loon. Take, for instance, this passage:

Is the Bible inerrant?
WARREN: I believe it’s inerrant in what it claims to be. The Bible does not claim to be a scientific book in many areas.

I’m really not sure what this mean. Does the Bible claim to be inerrant in some passages and errant in others? Are there some areas where the Bible does claim to be a scientific text?

He sidesteps the next question as well:

Do you believe Creation happened in the way Genesis describes it?
WARREN: If you’re asking me do I believe in evolution, the answer is no, I don’t. I believe that God, at a moment, created man. I do believe Genesis is literal, but I do also know metaphorical terms are used. Did God come down and blow in man’s nose? If you believe in God, you don’t have a problem accepting miracles. So if God wants to do it that way, it’s fine with me.

Who brought up evolution? If Genesis is literal and uses metaphor, doesn’t that ultimately make it metaphorical? Where does the metaphor end and the literalness begin? How do you decide which is which? Again, by avoiding any specifics, he avoids offending those who might have a more literalist/young-earth-creationist point-of-view, without having to openly agree or disagree with them.

Unfortunately, with the next exchange, he walks right into a common conundrum for those promoting the idea of an interventionist God:

WARREN: One of the great evidences of God is answered prayer. I have a friend, a Canadian friend, who has an immigration issue. He’s an intern at this church, and so I said, “God, I need you to help me with this,” as I went out for my evening walk. As I was walking I met a woman. She said, “I’m an immigration attorney; I’d be happy to take this case.” Now, if that happened once in my life I’d say, “That is a coincidence.” If it happened tens of thousands of times, that is not a coincidence.

There must have been times in your ministry when you’ve prayed for someone to be delivered from disease who is not—say, a little girl with cancer.
WARREN: Oh, absolutely.

So, parse that. God gave you an immigration attorney, but God killed a little girl.
WARREN: Well, I do believe in the goodness of God, and I do believe that he knows better than I do. God sometimes says yes, God sometimes says no and God sometimes says wait. I’ve had to learn the difference between no and not yet. The issue here really does come down to surrender. A lot of atheists hide behind rationalism; when you start probing, you find their reactions are quite emotional. In fact, I’ve never met an atheist who wasn’t angry.

On the one hand, Warren attempts to provide evidence for his God by telling a story about a woman getting an immigration attorney (a wholly improbable event, I’m sure), but then is stumped by God allowing an innocent girl to die. One of God’s actions (the one with a happy ending) is proof positive that God exists, and instead of the opposite occurrence (the one with a tragic ending) being proof against God’s existence, instead it only implies that we have no idea what God is really up to. It’s an inconsistent reasoning, one that’s not disprovable. In reality, the best explanation is simply that good things and bad things happen in this world, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Pretending good things are evidence of God’s existence only works if you concede that bad things are evidence of his non-existance.

So, his last thought about atheists hiding behind rationalism is actually very telling about his own position. Rather than atheists hiding behind their rationalism, it appears that Warren is hiding behind his faith, unable to truly follow where his rational thoughts might take him. He then has the gall to accuse atheists of being angry. It’s a complete non sequitur, and ad hominem argument that comes out of nowhere.

Fortunately, Harris takes it all in stride, and doesn’t reciprocate. Warren says Harris’s books are angry, Harris responds simply, and then tries to get back on topic:

HARRIS: I would put it at impatient rather than angry. Let me respond to this notion of answered prayer, because this is a classic sampling error, to use a statistical phrase. We know that human beings have a terrible sense of probability. There are many things we believe that confirm our prejudices about the world, and we believe this only by noticing the confirmations, and not keeping track of the disconfirmations. You could prove to the satisfaction of every scientist that intercessory prayer works if you set up a simple experiment. Get a billion Christians to pray for a single amputee. Get them to pray that God regrow that missing limb. This happens to salamanders every day, presumably without prayer; this is within the capacity of God. [Warren is laughing.] I find it interesting that people of faith only tend to pray for conditions that are self-limiting.

Harris comes back to the topics Warren was hoping to avoid, and makes well-reasoned arguments against both the power of prayer, and the unremarkable nature of so-called ‘miracles’.

Here’s another example of Warren attempting to really side-step the subject at hand:

Rick, if you had been born in India or in Iran, would you have different religious beliefs?
WARREN: There’s no doubt where you’re born influences your initial beliefs. Regardless of where you were born, there are some things you can know about God, even without the Bible. For instance, I look at the world and I say, “God likes variety.” I say, “God likes beauty.” I say, “God likes order,” and the more we understand ecology, the more we understand how sensitive that order is.

HARRIS: Then God also likes smallpox and tuberculosis.

WARREN: I would attribute a lot of the sins in the world to myself.

HARRIS: Are you responsible for smallpox?

WARREN: I am responsible to do something about it. No doubt about it. I am responsible to do something about the 500 million who get malaria every year and the 40 million who have AIDS, because I will be held accountable for my life. And when I say, “God, why don’t you do something about this?” God says, “Well, why don’t you? You were the answer to your own prayer.”

He totally bypasses the question proposed by the moderator, and goes off into his own tangent. Then also side-steps the responses to his own tangent.

I could go on and on with examples from the interview, but that would make this post longer than it already is.

I’ll mention briefly examples of standard theological arguments that Warren raises. He brings up this tired argument that atheism is responsible for more crimes/deaths than religion, something Harris is always good at refuting. He then brings up the standard canard that atheists cannot have morality. Fortunately, the moderator (or perhaps the editor of the article) keeps things concise, not allowing the conversation to be bogged down too much with arguments that could fill volumes by themselves.

It would have been nice if the same old stereotypical arguments against atheists wouldn’t have been brought up time and time again, but I think Harris does an excellent job of getting his own points across succinctly and honestly. An example, when answering a question about the majority of the world who believe in a god, and how that is evidence in and of itself for some kind of god to exist:

HARRIS: It is quite possible for most people to be wrong—as are most Americans who think that evolution didn’t occur.

WARREN: That’s an arrogant statement.

HARRIS: It’s an honest statement.

One more good one from Sam:

HARRIS: How is it fair for God to have designed a world which gives such ambiguous testimony to his existence? How is it fair to have created a system where belief is the crucial piece, rather than being a good person? How is it fair to have created a world in which by mere accident of birth, someone who grew up Muslim can be confounded by the wrong religion? I don’t see how the future of humanity is in good care with those competing orthodoxies.

Warren was given the last word, and I can’t imagine many theists were pleased with his conclusion.

WARREN:…We’re both betting. He’s betting his life that he’s right. I’m betting my life that Jesus was not a liar. When we die, if he’s right, I’ve lost nothing. If I’m right, he’s lost everything. I’m not willing to make that gamble.

It’s a simple application of Pascal’s Wager. An bad argument for the existence of god, which, if Sam was given a response, I’m he could have easily addressed.

Overall, it’s an entertaining read, and, though I feel that Sam came out on top, it’s usually a matter of opinion in debates like this.

“In God We Trust.” To have this on our currency is to say that we trust in something higher than ourselves, namely God. For those who wish its inscription removed, I would ask them where we should put our trust and most importantly, to whom we are accountable.

It’s as if removing a phrase of private devotion to the God of your choice on the public currency of a secular state somehow diminishes their own faith.

I am accountable to those around me and to myself. I far prefer being accountable to those who are actually affected by my actions rather than to some invisible omnipotent being.

Many people have said that the result of the November election was a wakeup call that the government, and namely the president, is still accountable to the American people. I would agree, but then we face the question: To whom are the people accountable? Themselves? Look at what happened in Nazi Germany. Hitler did atrocious things, but with the people behind him, inspired by their leader whom they elected. Perhaps we are accountable to the rest of the world, but what if the rest of the world had joined in on the call to exterminate this “inferior” race? Would it still be wrong? It would not have been if we as humans are only accountable to ourselves.

That line of thinking might almost make sense if it weren’t for the fact that putting a phrase on money has no bearing on it’s validity, nor makes people actually believe it. If you’re so concerned with people believing in God, go out and try to convert someone, but putting it on my money is not going to convince any atheist to believe in God.

The argument might also have validity if people who believed in God were good, and those who don’t, bad. One need only look at the religious convictions of Muslim terrorists, or Catholic Inquisitors, or pedophile priests, or televangelists, or any other number of immoral religious people to see that it isn’t the case.

Oh, and you also have to deal with the fact that the Nazi movement wasn’t entirely secular either. Many, if not most Nazis were Christian in some form or another. Nazism rose with help from the German Christian community, and Nazi soldiers wore the inscription “God With Us” on their belt buckles.

Now, you can argue about someone having true religious convictions, or what “true” Christianity is, but that’s not what this is about. If Muslim terrorists who say “God is Great” throughout their lives can commit atrocities, and German soldiers who wear symbols saying “God With Us” can commit genocidal acts, how is putting “In God We Trust” on our money going to ensure all Americans are “good”?

If anything, these symbols show how dangerous putting our accountability into a deity can be. When you put your sole accountability in God, the actual consequences of your actions can be ignored as long as your faith is strong enough. I’d much rather put my trust in those who are concerned about accountability in this life, where their actions have consequences, rather than in an afterlife where they don’t.

Update:
My friend Bruce has written a rebuttal in the Journal-World.

With that philosophy, I try to treat all fantastic claims with the same skepticism I would any other. Just as I find the claims of any conspiracy about UFOs or 9/11 or even The Da Vinici Code lacking in evidence, so do I James Cameron’s claim that he has found the tomb of Jesus Christ.

Of course, my own reasons for doubting these claims are mostly separate from the religious. Unfortunately, as a Roman Catholic priest said on CNN yesterday, most people wouldn’t change their minds about Christ even if there happened to be good evidence to the contrary.

I’ll still watch the documentary, I wouldn’t want to judge it prematurely, but the facts presented don’t really seem to have the support of anyone besides James Cameron and the people who worked with him.

I’ve recently been reading a book on the same subject called The Jesus Dynasty by James D. Tabor. He is an archeologist and Biblical scholar who makes the same claim that these tombs might be related to the family of Jesus. Unfortunately, even though his book is treated as a scholarly work, I hardly find his claims compelling. As it seems with pseudoscientific claims, as well as conspiracy theories, a very flimsy footing is all that is required to get a full-blown conspiracy in the works.

The evidence, as far as I can tell seems to fall under some spurious DNA evidence and some apparently weak statistical analysis. They’ve got these ossuaries that have the names of a few people on them like Jesus, Joseph and Mary, which is supposed to be shocking right there. But these happen to be some of the most popular names among Jews at the time. Their DNA comparison consists of the existence of two Marys in the tomb which don’t seem to be blood-related, therefore one of them has to be Mary Magdalene, which supposedly implies that she was married to Jesus, and that because one of the ossuaries says ‘Judah, son of Jesus’, then they had a kid together. You can see that any normal chain of logic in no way necessarily leads to the claims being made.

However, the possibility does still exist that the claims being made by James Cameron is true, but I would much rather see issues of science be debated by experts in the field within an academic realm peer review, rather than by a film-maker.

I wouldn’t mind seeing evidence, if you could ever produce any, that the tomb of Jesus Christ had been found. I have no particular theological or ideological interest one way or the other. But to think that some spurious claim like this will somehow shake the foundations of Christianity to its core, is just wishful thinking. I’m sure they’ll get a lot of people to watch the show, and make tons of money off of it, but if someone’s faith can be reinforced by finding the face of Mary in a grilled-cheese sandwich, it’s gonna take a lot more than a few empty boxes to get people to change their mind about their most deeply-held beliefs.

The Atheist Ethicist delves deeper into the moral implications of presenting evidence of scientific claim in such a sensationalist manner:

Being convinced by this documentary would be like being convinced of a suspect’s guilt while sitting on a grand jury. A grand jury only hears the prosecutor’s case – all expertly wrapped to make it look as pretty as possible. No doubt, the message in this documentary will be well packaged to make it look as attractive as possible, to get unthinking people to buy it.

In saying that the documentary will not provide us with sufficient evidence to make an informed decision, I am not saying that Cameron’s conclusions have a 50% chance of being true. Actually, they are far more likely to be false. There is going to be a long list of possible explanations for this data. These odds alone give the Cameron explanation a very low chance of being true.

Yet, those who hold that Cameron’s chances of being wrong are 100%, rather than some smaller number, because their religion will not tolerate him being right, are also mistaken. There is a very real non-zero chance that Cameron’s claims are accurate. The dogmatic Christian who says that Cameron cannot be right because the Bible says so is no lover of truth.

These conclusions speak to a certain amount of justified moral condemnation for James Cameron and his crew. If they are lovers of truth, then they would not be telling their audience, “In 45 minutes, we can give you enough information to make decisions that professional archaeologists do not feel qualified to make.” How wonderful it would be if one of us can get the equivalent of a PhD in archaeology just by watching one documentary. Consider the tons of information that cannot be presented in a forum such as this.

Any attempt to claim truth based on ideology rather than evidence, is not looking for truth. Whether it be Christians who will say Cameron is wrong before looking at the evidence, or anti-religious ideologues who will grab hold of any claim that contradicts religious claims before first verifying their validity.

What should be true of skeptics “in general” […] is that the love of truth itself is more important than the love of any given belief, such that the belief can be accepted or rejected based on the evidence. A certain amount of condemnation would be appropriate for any who love a belief more than they love truth.

(I think I’m going to put this last quote on my quotes page.)

UPDATE:

Carl Zimmer presents his take on the story related to the role of journalistic integrity in science.

“I felt totally discriminated against, like I wasn’t good enough to talk to,” Tasha Childress said, “like he didn’t have to give me any reason for not wanting to see my daughter because I have tattoos and piercings.”

The little girl had to suffer through the night because her insurance policy referred her to this man.

This man isn’t a doctor, he’s a megalomaniac. He’s too concerned with his own power to actually do the right thing.

Merrill said he will continue to enforce the rules he has in place, which even include no chewing gum in his office.

He said if they don’t like his beliefs, they can find another doctor.

PZ Myers brings up a good point:

Way to represent your faith, doc! He ought to read the Gospel of Luke—there’s an obscure story in there about some guy beaten up and left to die by the road, and a priest and a Levite, the people Dr Merrill must model his life after, walk by and leave him there to die. He can stop reading right there, though…there’s some other bit that follows with a fellow from Samaria that isn’t all that important.

Further evidence to me that those who are more sanctimonious about their beliefs, are more likely not to have any idea about what the Bible actually says.

But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Matthew 18:6

Three CD players hidden under a cathedral’s pews blared sexually explicit language in the middle of an Ash Wednesday Mass, leading a bomb squad to detonate two of the devices.

Authorities determined the music players were not dangerous and kept the third one to check it for clues, said police Capt. Gary Johnson.

Oh really?! A CD player wasn’t dangerous?

The recordings, made on store-bought blank discs, featured people using foul language and “pornographic messages,” Johnson said. He would not elaborate because of the ongoing investigation.

Church staff members took the CD players to the basement and called police, who sent the bomb squad, Johnson said.

The bomb squad blew up two players outside and kept the third one to test for fingerprints or DNA and trace its components, he said.

Jesus Christ, literally. It’s a damn prank. No one got hurt. Just turn the damn things off, and throw away the CDs.

Despite my obvious disgust if such allegations are true, I also wish to be cautious. I believe it’s possible that many of the Roman Catholic scandals might have been exaggerated. I’m not denying that these sorts of things happen, but widespread panic can create imaginary crimes where none were committed. Think of the satanic ritual abuse scare of a few decades ago. No evidence of any such cult activity was ever discovered, yet trials were held, and convictions were made. These types of mass delusion can quickly infect the social consciousness, and people start seeing things that were never there in the first place.

I certainly hope that if any such abuse has occurred within baptist churches, that those responsible are punished to the full extent of the law. I just don’t want it to turn into a witch-hunt, proceeding with little or no evidence.

Now, the Southern Baptist claims difficulties in policing its own due to a lack of centralized structure like the Roman Catholic Church. True, but the Salon article delivers a scathing conclusion which I will post in full here:

What’s striking is that in almost any other context, SNAP’s allegations would have the taint of paranoia run amok: All those nice men in those nice communities preying on children and more nice people knowing about it and doing nothing. Can you imagine a similar campaign about schoolteachers? Or doctors? Or social workers? It would look like insanity. Of course, no profession is immune to criminals who use their social standing to cover their abuse. But these professions all have things called background checks, independent professional boards, government oversight and perhaps less of a sense of innate moral righteousness. The Southern Baptist Church, like many of our religious organizations, has none of these things.

But since hundreds of cases revealing that the Catholic clergy was a haven for egomaniacal pedophiles, we’ve all become inured to a weird reality about the duplicitous niceness of our God-fearing nation. On the one hand, it’s well known that sex sells, violence is ubiquitous and porn funds most Internet portals. At the same time, we’re told that America is filled with God-fearing, upstanding “communities of faith.” But the facts are simple: Most churches have little independent oversight. In the end, when confronted by scandal they often seem more worried about institutional survival, appearances and reputation than the morality they preach. [emphasis added]

He begins his most recent post with the following quote by Reinhold Niebur, “Religion is a good thing for good people and a bad thing for bad people.” I am reminded of a similar quote by Steven Weinberg, “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

While similar, these quotes differ in the amount of significance placed upon religion regarding the ills of the world. I tend to agree more with the latter quote, but perhaps the language we are using is imprecise. True, religion can be a peaceful ritual for good folk who love their neighbors and live in peace, but it can also be the justification for slavery, or the murder of someone outside your own ethnic/religious group. Is religion one more than the other? I believe that depends on what religion means to you. If you view religion as a social tradition that fosters a good sense of right and wrong and a positive environment for children to grow up in, you might find the arguments of Sam Harris a dim caricature of what religion is. However, religion for many others is the firm belief that their their holy book contains a set of rules depicting what is holy and what is sinful. Anyone who violates those rules deserves (often severe) punishment.

I believe those like Sam Harris who use the word religion as the primary target of their animosity might be doing themselves and other freethinkers a disservice. It’s not that their arguments are wrong, it’s just that the words they use might end up turning off the very persons we’re trying to convert. I’m talking specifically of those who associate religion with the first, warm and fuzzy example.

It seems to me that the primary arguments that Sam puts forth are against dogma, superstition and blind faith, something I’m sure Josh can agree with. However, when Sam puts these things together under the rubric of ‘religion’ the message gets lost since it doesn’t seem to include the warm/fuzzy attributes of religion.

Josh quotes from a recent excerpt from a book by Chris Hedges describing his view of why religiosity has been on the rise in this country for quite awhile.

The engine that drives the radical Christian Right in the United States, the most dangerous mass movement in American history, is not religiosity, but despair. It is a movement built on the growing personal and economic despair of tens of millions of Americans, who watched helplessly as their communities were plunged into poverty by the flight of manufacturing jobs, their families and neighborhoods torn apart by neglect and indifference, and who eventually lost hope that America was a place where they had a future.

This despair crosses economic boundaries, of course, enveloping many in the middle class who live trapped in huge, soulless exurbs where, lacking any form of community rituals or centers, they also feel deeply isolated, vulnerable and lonely. Those in despair are the most easily manipulated by demagogues, who promise a fantastic utopia, whether it is a worker’s paradise, fraternite-egalite-liberte, or the second coming of Jesus Christ. Those in despair search desperately for a solution, the warm embrace of a community to replace the one they lost, a sense of purpose and meaning in life, the assurance they are protected, loved and worthwhile.

I wouldn’t think of arguing against the view that economic despair can drive one towards religiosity, but that doesn’t make the religiosity itself any less dangerous, it might in fact be more dangerous. However, we shouldn’t take the simplistic view that economics itself is enough to explain the intensity of one’s religious beliefs.

Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins both proffer a worldview in which religion motivates al Qaeda’s soldiers, and I find that hypothesis less compelling than what I sketched out above. The hypothesis that religion is somehow causative of the cold culture war within the US, or the very hot conflict between cultures on the world stage leaves a lot of hanging threads. If religion – and when I say religion, I mean what Dawkins and Harris refer to in terms of faith in supernatural beings and causation – is causative of such harm, how could many of the greatest forces against such authoritarianism also have religious origins? How could Amnesty International and al Qaeda share a common cause? How could Benito Mussolini and Martin Luther King, Jr. have shared that vital causation?

From what I understand, most of the 9/11 hijackers did not come from impoverished conditions, but indeed had come from relatively well-off families, been to college and held degrees. Osama bin Laden himself is a member of the Saudi royal family, who at the beginning of his militant career had great wealth at his disposal (which he put to good use in supplying the mujahadeen in Afghanistan against the Soviets). It was his religious beliefs, not his economic situation that spurned his jihadist world-view.

As far as people like Martin Luther King, Jr. are concerned, it is the adaptation of religion to secular reforms that tends to bring about moderation within religion. Questioning religious dogma, not following it allows reforms to be made. Dr. King studied Ghandi as a major influence regarding his non-violent civil disobedience. Finding verses promoting the equality of the races in the Bible is quite a challenge, and finding any propositions of civil rights is nearly impossible. Important ideas which we cherish so much in this country, promoting the rights of men, equality of women, emancipation, etc., stems much more from enlightenment philosophy (those who rejected traditional religion) than from any holy book.

Josh continues:

It is clear how the Italian public, like the public in Germany and even the United States in the 1930s, could feel great despair. There was a global depression, and Europe was still recovering from a brutal war. In that context, it’s little wonder that people turned to the promises of strong leadership, even though those leaders were rarely (never, if you do not consider Roosevelt to have fit this mold) deserving of such trust.

This is the very reason why I find religion so dangerous. One of the main premises of the ‘great’ Abrahamic religions is that rules and law come from powerful authorities who cannot be questioned, and if you dare dissent, you will be punished for heresy, treason, etc. Religion keeps these ancient ideas, which are largely antithetical to modern ideas of human freedom, at the forefront of peoples minds when they should be ripe for ridicule and disdain.

The language Sam Harris uses might seem overly broad and overly critical to some, but viewed in the way in which Sam seems to use it, it is very clear to me that what he is arguing against is dogma, superstition and blind faith, not charity, community and morality. As such, political movements such as Communism and Fascism do easily fall prey to these same arguments, but I do not believe this provides grounds to dismiss these arguments, to me it shows their powerful reach into closely related realms human activity, of which religion seems the most perverse.

I say most perverse because I do not believe political ideologies press themselves into everyday affairs, nor have the same absolutist fervent hold over people that religion does. Religion not only deals with how we behave in public or how we spend our money, but pervades deep within our consciousness. It causes deep-seated guilt in many millions of people for simply contemplating ideas. And, at least within our own contemporary society politics are much more open to debate than religion is. Which to me is why arguments against these religious ideas I’ve been discussing are of such great importance.

More from Josh:

Religious moderates do not, as Sam Harris claims, “tacitly support the religious divisions in our world.” Nor do they “refuse to deeply question the preposterous ideas of those who ['fly planes into buildings, or organize their lives around apocalyptic prophecy'].” Indeed, they do the opposite. Their moderation is a rejection of such actions and ideas. If moderate Episcopalians – pro-science, gay marrying female bishops and all – are enabling al Qaeda simply by virtue of endorsing religion, why not claim that America was enabling Nazism by endorsing government over anarchy?

This seems a mischaracterization of Harris. His argument, which is spelled out fairly explicitly in The End of Faith, isn’t that moderate religion promotes ideas of flying planes into buildings or apocalyptic prophecy, it’s that they’ve built up around themselves this idea that religions of any kind are completely sacrosanct, and should be isolated from inquiry. That questioning someone’s religious ideas is tantamount to bigotry. This mindset prevents the kind of probing critical inquiry into other religious views which might be more pervasive and dangerous. They do indeed reject the more silly and hateful notions of some extremist religions, but they’re doing so more in line with secular moral thought, not because of their religious texts.

It may be the case that churchgoers are more susceptible to authoritarian politicians than non-churchgoers. I’m sure someone has attempted the study. I do know that fascism has tended to wrap itself in religion. But correlation does not imply causation, and I would argue that this is a case of common causation. Religion and authoritarian politics may well attract a common subset of the population, making religious venues an excellent place for authoritarians to recruit.

Both offer certainty and absolve their followers of responsibility for the ills that befall them. In times of despair, such certainty must become even more appealing, driving people simultaneously to the religious and the political authoritarian. The persistent mingling of authoritarian politics with authoritarian religions makes that combination dangerous and difficult to root out. But focusing on religion when we all agree that the political battles are where the problems manifest seems entirely pointless, to me.

I suppose my argument is that though these problems manifest themselves in political battles, their root appears to lie within religion. Isn’t Josh’s view what we’ve already been doing? Instead of bothering to question the religious motivations of those promoting creationism or intelligent design, we’ve just been dealing with it in courtroom political battles. I think religion is why this won’t go away, not politics. Politics is simply the means to enact your pre-existing beliefs into society/government. In order to have an educated political conversation, we need to be able to talk about and question beliefs, and this is what I’ve always seen as the thrust of Harris’s argument.