The battle under way in America is not between religion and science. It is not between those who embrace the rational and those who believe in biblical myth. It is not between Western civilization and Islam. The blustering televangelists and the New Atheists, the television pundits and our vaunted Middle East specialists and experts, are all part of our vast, simplistic culture of mindless entertainment. They are in show business. They cannot afford complexity. Religion and science, facts and lies, truth and fiction, are the least of their concerns. They trade insults and clichés like cartoon characters. They don masks. One wears the mask of religion. One wears the mask of science. One wears the mask of journalism. One wears the mask of the terrorism expert. They jab back and forth in predictable sound bites. It is a sterile and useless debate between bizarre subsets of American culture. Some use the scientific theory of evolution to explain the behavior and rules for complex social and political systems, and others insist that the six-day creation story in Genesis is a factual account. The danger we face is not in the quarrel between religion advocates and evolution advocates, but in the widespread mental habit of fundamentalism itself.
via Chris Hedges (HT to Ayse)
And, we eat it up because it’s easier than dealing with the real problems out there.
First of all, I agree. Fundamentalism is dangerous.
However, it doesn’t seem that anyone knows what fundamentalist means anymore.
It is a term that came out of the Fundamentalist-modernist controversy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist%E2%80%93Modernist_Controversy
It is still defined primarily as a reaction of traditional theology against modernism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamentalist
Yes, sometimes Harris might go too far in his critique of “the other”. He often seems to assume all Muslims believe what the Quran says (and hence are “fundamentalists”). First of all, I’d like to say this view does not apply to all the “new atheists”, as the article asserts, and is fairly unique to Harris.
Secondly, if you’ve ever tried to read the Quran (or Old Testament) as “fundamentalists” do, both Islamists and Jews/Christians *are* in fact really scary. I think it is quite easy to argue that there’s nothing worse for the world than people who actually believe in divine command theory. Even more so because it is intellectually untenable(see the Euthyphro dilemma).
If you don’t have the fundamentalist view of scripture, how can you prove to other members that your more tolerant view of the world is correct? Why should they cherry pick the nice loving verses, and leave out (for instance) the ones where Jesus and Paul both claim Adam and Noah were historical figures? You are trying to argue your enlightenment values are better then God’s revealed truth. The fundamentalism-modernism controversy has been going on for long before my grandma was born, and it’s still long from over. The most literal, intolerant ideas have incredible staying power, and easily flare up as has happened with Islam in the last half century. Whether it’s a return to the fundamentals as is true of Christian Fundamentalists or a newfound intolerance is somewhat up for debate. In either case, it’s hard to argue against what your primary texts say.
Atheists do often argue that religion does have a strong correlation with societal disfunction, but we can back it up with facts:
http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07398441_c.pdf
(there’s a number of other studies also, but they are behind paywalls)
Of course, there’s many potential reasons for this (the rich harden their hearts, etc) and causation is harder to prove. However, a recent study seems to indicate that income inequality comes first, then the wealthy use religion as a hammer to keep the poor in line. This is supported in the paper by statistics from a dozen countries. I think it is interesting to note that the books “fundamentalism” is named for were provided for free to clergy and others by an oil barron.(Cited in wikipedia link on top.)
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.prox.lib.ncsu.edu/doi/10.1111/j.1540-6237.2011.00777.x/abstract
(I have the full-text of this through the NCSU library if anyone has questions about it. Stupid paywalls
Moving on: The author’s definition of fundamentalism seems to be:
Someone who “already know what is true and what is untrue. They do not need to challenge their own beliefs or investigate the beliefs of others.”
99% of atheists in the US (including the vocal ones mentioned in the article) are skeptics first, and believe what we believe because we have studied and looked at the data. If you can provide good evidence to the contrary, we would (and do) change their mind on many issues. I very much wish someone would provide me good evidence for YHWH (especially if it can’t be used equally well to point to Krishna or the FSM).
As to the second point, polls consistently show that atheists know more about religion then religionists themselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28religion.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general
I agree fundamentalism is dangerous. I feel I must protest applying that label broadly to a group of people who base their belief on what we have good evidence for, just because you think they are too certain of the few things they claim to know. BTW, whether there is really a God is not one of them, only that we have no credible evidence which god of many to pick.
Remember, Dawkins, one of the “new atheists” created a belief scale, and puts himself as a 6(sometimes 6.9 on a snarky day), meaning “I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectrum_of_theistic_probability
I’ve never seen the group the fundamentalism label was originally coined for do such a thing with regard to their own certainty of belief. It would literally be unthinkable.
Being reasonably sure of what you do and do not know is not fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is clearly defined. Yes, atheists can be strident in that we’re rather sure nobody has good proof their religion is the one true one. We’re also pretty sure evolution happened, and that there couldn’t have been a real first man Adam or worldwide flood. There are mountains of evidence for this, which I’d be happy to share(contact info at the bottom).
If anything, we’re the anti-fundamentalists. Being confident because we have good evidence is different from fundamentalism. You can call us evangelical. You can call us militant if you like. But fundamental is well defined, and we don’t fit.
Perhaps most relatedly to the article: Of course, I might be wrong. I’m sure I sound wrong to many of you. It’s hard to know if I am or not, because feeling certain is totally disconnected from actually being right. One of the most disconcerting things discovered in recent neuroscience and psychology research is that being wrong *feels* exactly the same as being right(because the parts of the brain involved are separate), and the actual strength of the evidence is only one factor in the feeling of rightness.
http://www.ted.com/talks/kathryn_schulz_on_being_wrong.html
That is precisely why science is so important. Science is what we call the collection of the best methods we’ve figured out to overcome our biases. However, as much as am able, I’d love to change my mind if anyone can provide good reasons I should.
I am an atheist. I was a Christian for 25 years. Ask me anything. Provide evidence anything I’ve said is wrong. Please. If you’re local, I’ll even buy you lunch.
Sorry for the wall of text.
If anyone wants to take me up on further discussion (and perhaps food), you can find me on reddit as spinkham or email and google+ as steve.pinkham (over at the geemale dought com) (Phonetically.. You’ll figure it out 