Alex’s Heresies - embracing a physical reality

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23918139-25132,00.html

Kevin Hart, US Profession of Theology, criticises the new atheists – the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Victor Stenger and Daniel Dennett – in his recent review of atheist books (The Australian 2 July 2008). He criticises these writers on a number of fronts. Firstly, they deliberately attack an archaic view of God as easy targets. Today’s faithful are more sophisticated with softer, more benign views of God. Secondly, terrorists like the 9/11 attackers are wrongly claimed to be motivated by faith. Hart counters that it’s much more to do with politics. Finally, atheists wrongly invoke science and the scientific method to challenge the validity of religious beliefs.

Hart presents a modernised, non-anthropomorphic God as the majority view. His God is a “free creator”, “behind nature”, “uncreated being”, “created the world” and “pure ‘to be’”. Curiously his “our father” re-introduces a more familiar patriarchal vision. The latest Pew US Survey (2007) presents a different picture. Everyday believers apparently hold more traditional views than promoted by Hart with 60% believing in a personal God; 74% in heaven; and 59% in hell. Even the holy books are seen as the word of God (63%) with 33% of responders believing in their literal truth. Hart’s claim that holy books are seen as purely “writing poetry” is simply not true.

The motivations of religious extremists are hotly debated. Most commentators, though, don’t portray them as pursuing strictly political agendas. Faith plays an important role. There seems little doubt that the 9/11 attackers saw themselves as “warriors” for Islam at the same time as fulfilling political objectives. Their faith added passion and commitment to their violence just as faith can encourage great sacrifices for worthy causes. Conveniently Hart discounts the clear pronouncements of faith by Islamic extremists as those of not the truly faithful.

Despite shortcomings science and other empirically-based areas of human study have proven to be our most successful ways of producing reliable knowledge about our physical world. As religions regularly make claims involving the physical, science has a valid and vital role in checking their veracity. So ‘historical existence of Jesus Christ’, ‘resurrection of Christ’ and so on should all be open to scientific and historical research independent of people’s faith. This is especially true when religious academics say such things as “resurrection of Jesus is a compelling 97 per cent probable”. In this situation I’d expect overwhelming secular evidence to support such a statement. We should see that simply combining material from religious sources with some intricate logical arguments is not enough for the claim to be proved.

Finally I disagree with Kevin Hart in the characterisation of people today in Western Europe and Australia as “indifferent”. I believe “irrelevant” might be a better term to represent people’s attitudes towards religious belief. Religions thrive in areas of low personal security and where people feel personally threatened. Governments in Western Europe and Australia provide environments that are less precarious and more stable. The need for supernatural reassurance seems more and more irrelevant to their lives.

© 2008 Alex McCullie