Alex’s Heresies – embracing a physical reality

This is one of the popular “con-jobs” commonly used by Christian leaders and writers to attack religious non-belief.

The Christian attack on materialism is a convenient and deceptive conflation of two separate uses of the word, “materialism”. As a philosophical worldview, materialism is the belief that all aspects of reality have a material or physical source. Modern science shows that matter resolves to mass and energy so this worldview is often better referred to as physicalism or naturalism. Therefore people are seen as physical beings interacting with a physical world. Believing in materialism or naturalism does not deny that we have feelings, moral sensibilities and ambitions. This worldview sees only physical sources and denies any non-physical postulations commonly referred as god or gods. All empirically-based sciences from physics and chemistry to the human sciences use this materialist assumption about the world and knowledge.

However many Christian writers deliberately confuse this meaning, which most atheists and agnostics hold, with an everyday usage of materialism as excessive consumerism, as reflected in Madonna’s song, “A Material Girl”.

Religious and non-religious people alike seem to condemn or embrace today’s consumerism. Christians are quite comfortable benefiting from the consumption of others and would be hypocritical of Christian writers to claim otherwise. One could argue separately about the role of capitalism and globalisation as contributors to this problem. However the harmful consequences for humanity and the world are part of a total human problem and have little or nothing to do with religious belief.

In a recent speech Pope Benedict XVI attempted this very deception. He somehow claims that Christian religious belief has the high moral ground on caring for the environment and that atheism and by implication materialism are leading to the destruction of our planet. Critics would rightfully see this newly-found custodianship as blatantly hypocritical. Look at a short sample of his speech:

Experiencing the shared responsibility for creation (Cf. 51), the Church is not only committed to the promotion of the defense of the earth, of water and of air, given by the Creator to everyone, but above all is committed to protect man from the destruction of himself. In fact, “when ‘human ecology’ is respected in society, environmental ecology also benefits” (ibid). Is it not true that inconsiderate use of creation begins where God is marginalized or also where is existence is denied? If the human creature’s relationship with the Creator weakens, matter is reduced to egoistic possession, man becomes the “final authority,” and the objective of existence is reduced to a feverish race to possess the most possible.

Alex McCullie

One of the great challenges for intellectual thought is resolving the apparent dissonance between our rich inner lives in which we play starring roles, our first person view, and our relative insignificance in the external world, the third-person view.

Religions have attempted the resolution by positing real external analogues of our inner world. Separate non-physical personalities, with intentionality and purpose, like human-type god or gods, evil and good spirits, existent heaven and hell, and angels are comforting projections of our internal world onto an indifferent, largely inanimate world, thereby harmonising it with our internal lives. To be credible, though, these projections needed to be consistent with our every-day perceptions. So they had to be invisible and physically indetectable, essential qualities for any credibility. Religions then relied on human wish-fulfilment to take care of the rest.

Philosophy similarly has struggled with this first-person/third-person dichotomy with dualisms, idealism and realism/anti-realism, mind-body problems and conflicts between free-will and causal determinism to name a few. As an example, the mind-body problem seems to revolve around two questions. Firstly, how can a purely physical explanation of the brain, chemicals, electricity, neurons firing, truly reflect my rich inner life, and, secondly, how does a separate consciousness, sounding similar to religious-like projections, actually manipulate the physical body, without resorting to another higher-order projection like god?

The sciences, on the other hand, avoid the problem by simply taking a third-party view with humans being part, often small, of a much broader reality.  Look at cosmology to see our relative insignificance. So most sciences are not in the first-person business, though, perhaps, psychology sits part-way in the continuum. The success, credibility and consequent influence of science have created serious problems for human-centred explanations from religion and philosophy. Today most people live in a truly scientific-world view, at least in the countries of Western Europe as well as Australia, New Zealand and US to name a few.

The problem for religions and philosophy, in their 2500 to 4500 years of effort, is that they have been remarkably unsuccessful at solving the dilemma. At the same time science with its strictly third-party perspective has been devastatingly successful over the last 200 years at telling more about the world we inhabit. This assessment is based on science’s ability to generate reliable knowledge. Criticisms, often from religious and philosophical sources, about uses of the resulting technologies seem irreverent to this assessment. Human uses of the knowledge genuinely raise important issues to be addressed separately.

Therefore we need to change our reliance of the authenticity of our inner first person to meet new realities of the twenty-first century. We should question whether god or gods, consciousness, soul, free-will, morality, spirituality and the mind are simply constructs, rather than separate ontological realities, to make an indifferent physical reality seem more palatable to over-inflated senses of self-worth.

Alex McCullie

PS Try this thought experiment. What was God doing more than 150,000 years ago before any recognisable humans evolved on this planet? Did morality, angels, satan, the Word, after Earth’s formation? Or could they simply be our creations?

Conversations with Zak

I never found out where he came from, but Zak wanted to know about us – humanity. After reading books on science, technology, psychology and sociology, he continued “Progressive and updatable, that’s good. Most commendable. Now, what is religion?”

 “I can tell you about Christianity. But there are many others”, I said tentatively. I explained that Christianity is about seeking another world that is everywhere, but cannot be seen or touched. However we know that God – he is all powerful and morally perfect – resides there with his son, Jesus. Other religions don’t believe that about Jesus though.  Zak looked sceptical. “How do you know?”

“Well, we have a book that says so. The Holy Bible describes God, Jesus, life after death, heaven and hell, how to behave, and what to worship. I had to explain that ‘worship’ meant something like feeling unworthy, and serving God and then feeling constant gratitude. “Curious” was all I heard from Zak. And then “Tell me more”.

I explained that the Bible was written some 2000 to 3000 years ago based on some events in the Middle East: after a bit of searching, I showed where on the map. The Christian part is about God’s son, a man called Jesus, sort of half-man, half-God. In fact he is the same God as well – it’s a bit confusing, I said somewhat awkwardly. He was executed after one year of preaching or, perhaps, three, but that was enough to start Christianity. He exorcised demons, reanimated dead bodies (that happened to him as well) and performed other magical feats like walking on water and solving food shortages. “Do you have demons?” Zak asked. Well no, I explained. “Maybe Jesus got rid of them all.” Zak suggested, somewhat sarcastically, I suspected.

“Can I see this Bible?” “The originals were lost a long time ago, but we have copies” “Who copied the Bible?” Zak asked. I explained that Christians don’t know, but they believe that it’s totally accurate; in fact, many see it as the literal word of God – that’s part of their faith. “Do Christians change the Bible after learning more about the world?” “No, there is no need. The Bible already represents absolute truth.”

Zak left dismayed to continue the conversation another day.

Alex McCullie

Lawrence Krauss in his Internet article God and Science Don’t Mix argues that there are fundamental incompatibilities between science and religion in seeking explanations to the world. He also argues that it is quite rational (and reasonable) for scientists to apply materialist techniques from scientific research to existence in general. Science has been so successful at producing reliable knowledge so it seems reasonable to apply similar (no God) approaches to life in general. Even religious scientists seem to face conflicts on specifics in this area. In a panel with two highly-regarded religious scientists, Krauss described how he posed to them how they reconcile the virgin birth with basic knowledge of biology. They attempted to describe the birth as having important mythic qualities but presented no explicit defense of this core Roman Catholic belief.

See my previous post on this topic.

Alex McCullie

Two popular “science versus religion” debates have raged recently in blogland. Firstly, science is accused of having an atheistic agenda by excluding supernatural explanations in its purview. Secondly, some historians have weighed into the debate by saying that the traditional conflicts between science and religion have been grossly exaggerated.

Despite many writers emphasising the ability of science and religion to coexist, I see science and religion as fundamentally incompatible and likely to clash when attempting to explain the same phenomena.  I should clarify that by “science” I am referring to a diverse range of secular research activities from physics to history, and, importantly, where there are no theological imperatives.

Over the last 500 years science has embodied a naturalistic or materialistic methodology, in which scientific research seeks physical explanations using observations and reason.  Prior to the enlightenment thinkers and scientists like Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton saw scientific research as a means of discovering God through his work in nature – a sort of natural theology. Since then, however, science has moved towards a secular approach indifferent to any supernatural beliefs. So, despite critics attempting to brand science as atheistic, methods of science work independently of religious beliefs rather than denying them. Scientific knowledge is built on empirical research with mathematical and logical reasoning. Despite all its failings, science tends to be open, self-critical and, therefore, self-correcting.

Religion derives its explanations from revealed knowledge – scriptures and interpretations by religious fathers and authorities – combined with personal reflection and feelings. More than science, religion emphasises tradition and continuity, where religions comfortably base current day prescriptions on sacred texts often thousands of years old. By contrast science emphasises new knowledge and new developments where a 2000 year old scientific work may be admired as an interesting curiosity. It would not be taken as having any scriptural authority. So scientific thinking has much less respect for the past than the revered approaches taken by most religions.

Many have argued the philosophical merits of science taking a physical approach to its research and avoiding and supernatural explanation. Put simply, the underlying assumption of science that all things are knowable in theory contradicts religion’s comfortable embrace of the “mystery”. However I prefer pointing to the success of the scientific project. No other method offers anything comparable to producing reliable human knowledge. Our lives inexorably depend on and have been improved by the understanding and technology that flow from scientific endeavours.

Clashes between science and religion are inevitable. Science provides natural descriptions and explanations of our world. More and more science explores all aspects of our existence, even areas seen as traditionally inaccessible such as mind-body dilemma and human moral behaviour. By contrast religions provide prescriptions and explanations claimed from divine authorities through sacred ancient texts, inspired historical and modern-day interpretations and appeals to personal feelings and reflections. As science seeks to provide natural explanations for religious “mysteries” and thereby directly threaten religious beliefs, there will be clashes. The on-going evolution verses creation debates exemplify this type of conflict and that will continue on many other issues as well. One can imagine clashes will continue over human morality and free-will as well  human similarities to other animals to name only a few.

Finally people should to actively resist any attempt to “infect” science with religious beliefs. Deferring to religious mysteries and sensibilities will impede the independence and progress of science and return science and our thinking to being the “hand-maiden” of particular religious traditions. Simply put, science does not need religion and is infinitely better off without it. We should resist its intrusions where ever possible.

Alex McCullie

Prior to the European Enlightenment most people accepted the Bible’s account of history. There was no question that the world was created in six days or that the 600,000 or more Hebrews escaped from Egypt after God had orchestrated a series of plagues on the hapless and arrogant Egyptians. Since the Enlightenment we have come to expect a more scientific world-view where truth and actuality are in some way associated with verifiable evidence. Claims of revealed knowledge are seen as more and more embarrassing to modern Western sensibilities.

So what has that done for biblical scholarship? Over the last 200 years many biblical scholars have, at least nominally, applied techniques of historical research to the biblical texts – Jewish scriptures (Old Testament, Tanakh or Hebrew Bible) as well the Christian scriptures (New Testament). Firstly, the historical perspective has been applied to the construction of the texts themselves. Scholarship tries to identify multiple authorships, editors and copyists from earlier-sourced documents and oral stories. They also apply historical research to the social and political settings of the authors to understand their worlds and motivations better. So would this be the same as examining any other historical document? No and that is the problem.

Whether scholars are in strictly religious institutions – many are – or attached to secular universities, they are typically seeking greater theological meaning from their scriptures: that is why they started their studies in the first place. They are hardly disinterested researchers. Many biblical scholars today malign historical methods as being either ineffectual or moving too far away from the messages of the divine word. Much of their understandings come from the supernatural aspects of the biblical histories and historical methods like those of science do not recognise any non-physical events. So commonly these scholars promote literary or theological methods as more effective. I see this as coded language for less threatening. Even those advocating historical research (and they are getting fewer) seem to be less dispassionate and seek to approach their research with “sensitivity”.  This isn’t surprising as truly critical scholars of the past have lost their teaching posts in retribution.

Am I too cynical? Apparently not, for John Barton in Historical-critical approaches (The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation p14) says

“… the general impression an ordinary historian is likely to form after reading books dubbed ‘historical-criticism’ by theologians is that they are predominantly literary in their interests.”

Ironically, though, I too believe that biblical historical research has been relatively ineffective, though for quite different reasons. It is the case of asking too much from too little. Apologists often claim that there are more surviving manuscripts, whole and partial, of biblical texts than other historical texts. And that’s true. However theologians often seek draw highly detailed interpretations from the word-use nuances that we do not with other historical texts. I regularly come across optimistically detailed interpretations, such as Paul used this Greek word here while Luke used a similar but slightly different one here and that also differed from Mark’s use here and all this means that…. This is all on the amazing assumptions about the accuracy of particular manuscripts as well as our detailed understanding of language usage and writer motivations at the time. It is worth commenting here that we have no original manuscripts of even the last books written in either scripture, only copies of copies of copies and so on.

From an historical perspective there is very little extrabiblical evidence supporting the detailed (or in many cases even the broad) claims made by either scriptures. The historical reality is that the Israelites were of little importance in the ancient world and therefore not written of by others. Their lands were surrounded or invaded by the true superpowers of the day – the Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman empires. We may see the Jewish and Christian as history important today through our religious education, but that is far from the reality of the ancient world. Their achievements seem insignificant compared to their neighbours.

Jesus is a good example. The evidence outside of the Christian sources confirms that people subsequently believed that he existed and was executed as a criminal. Followers believed he was divine. However we have no records of birth or execution and no contemporaneously written accounts of his deeds that appeared so momentous according to Christian scriptures. So, if he did exist, then the best we can say is that he was one of many self-declared prophets who raised the ire of the Jewish leadership. The rest comes from the Christian scriptures that were written thirty to eighty years after his death and by people who wanted to promote his divine status. I must say in fairness that many biblical scholars have designed criteria to assess the potential reliability of scriptural text. Does the story come from multiple sources? Is it unpleasant for Christians? Is it consistent with first century Middle East and so on? However, often, these criteria are ignored when there are other overwhelming needs to include the text. The liberal Jesus Seminar is often criticised in this regard.

Ultimately biblical scholars may be better not pretending to do historical research or at least acknowledge the inherent limitations applying it to scripture. The theologians continue derive detailed interpretations from the biblical texts “as is” regardless on any historical reliability – that’s what they do. Ultimately they face the dilemma that Christianity considers itself a religion based on historical fact. Either way historical research is never going to get them closer to their God.

Alex McCullie

From good old OZ comes an excellent example of ‘do as I say and not as I do‘ …

CAMDEN’S Christian leaders have united to condemn the Quranic Society, which wants to build an Islamic school in Camden, for espousing views which are “incompatible with the Australian way of life”.

The leaders of the St John’s Anglican, Camden Presbyterian and Camden Baptist churches and the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary signed a letter to Camden Council arguing that the proposal was not in the public interest.

“Camden is increasingly becoming a multicultural community, but when one part of the community seeks to dominate the public space, as we have seen in Auburn, Bankstown, Lakemba and more recently Liverpool, the social impact is unacceptable,” says the letter, which was read at the Quranic Society’s appeal to the Land and Environment Court yesterday.

“Our concern is the Quranic Society inevitably advocates a political ideological position that is incompatible with the Australian way of life. This includes promoting Quranic law as being superior to national laws and regarding followers of any rival religion as inevitably at enmity with it.”

Quoted from the SMH web site

Alex McCullie

According to the national survey of religious belief from Pew Forum 33% of people in the US believe that their respective scriptures are the literal word of God. The highest believing group is the ‘Historically Black Churches’ at 62%. Some of the lowest groups are Hindus, Buddists and Jews. Christian groups dominate the literalists.
(Pew breakdown here.)

Alex McCullie

Staff at Cambridge University have a web-site with Darwin’s correspondence (see site) and one specific section dedicated to Darwin and Religion (site).

Alex McCullie

Pew has a series of reports about Evolution and Religion in the US as part of Darwin’s 150 years celebrations (opening summary screen). Evolutionary theory, though accepted by the vast majority scientists in the field, continues to be rejected by many Christians (and other religious believers) in the US as contrary to own religious stories. This is so even though so many religious organisations like the Roman Catholic church have adopted at least a partial acceptance with typically that evolution is part of God’s plan.

Religious leaders now explain that God works behind the scenes through complicated, convoluted evolutionary processes rather than simply creating the species as required. On that basis there’s been a major re-interpretation of scriptures turning readings from literal to metaphorical – the more metaphorical the better if you ask me. Incidently the very large and powerful South Baptist Convention simply rejects evolution outright.

Here’s a denomination-by-denomination breakdown of support (or lack of) across the US:

Alex McCullie