Godless common sense
A wide-ranging interview with atheist conservative Heather Mac Donald. Excerpts:
I also wondered at the narcissism of believers who credit their good fortune to God. A cancer survivor who claims that God cured him implies that his worthiness is so obvious that God had to act. It never occurs to him to ask what this explanation for his deliverance says about the cancer victim in the hospital bed next to his, who, despite the fervent prayers of her family, died anyway.
I find it depressing that every organ of conservative opinion reflexively cheers on creationism and intelligent design, while delivering snide pot shots at the Enlightenment. Which of the astounding fruits of empiricism would these Enlightenment-bashers dispense with: the conquest of cholera and other infectious diseases, emergency room medicine, jet travel, or the internet, to name just a handful of the millions of human triumphs that we take for granted?
When multiculturalism hit the academy (several years after I had graduated), I was appalled that barely literate students were allowed to trash the most astounding creations of Western civilization before which we should all be on our knees.
I have to recognize that this is the best of all possible times to be alive. I don't know how many of us would give up our astounding array of choices, despite their costs above all in family stability, to go back to a time of more restricted individual autonomy.
Up to half of the conservative writers and thinkers whom I know are non-believers. And yet because of the rule that one may never ever question claims made on behalf of faith, they remain in the closet. At some point, however, they may emerge to challenge the idea that without religion, personal and social anarchy looms.
Read the entire interview -- it's well worth it.
I also wondered at the narcissism of believers who credit their good fortune to God. A cancer survivor who claims that God cured him implies that his worthiness is so obvious that God had to act. It never occurs to him to ask what this explanation for his deliverance says about the cancer victim in the hospital bed next to his, who, despite the fervent prayers of her family, died anyway.
I find it depressing that every organ of conservative opinion reflexively cheers on creationism and intelligent design, while delivering snide pot shots at the Enlightenment. Which of the astounding fruits of empiricism would these Enlightenment-bashers dispense with: the conquest of cholera and other infectious diseases, emergency room medicine, jet travel, or the internet, to name just a handful of the millions of human triumphs that we take for granted?
When multiculturalism hit the academy (several years after I had graduated), I was appalled that barely literate students were allowed to trash the most astounding creations of Western civilization before which we should all be on our knees.
I have to recognize that this is the best of all possible times to be alive. I don't know how many of us would give up our astounding array of choices, despite their costs above all in family stability, to go back to a time of more restricted individual autonomy.
Up to half of the conservative writers and thinkers whom I know are non-believers. And yet because of the rule that one may never ever question claims made on behalf of faith, they remain in the closet. At some point, however, they may emerge to challenge the idea that without religion, personal and social anarchy looms.
Read the entire interview -- it's well worth it.
posted by Infidel753 at 1:05 PM
4 Comments:
I would contend that Christianity is not hostile to many of the great achievements of Western civilization referenced in the article, but rather that Christianity fostered these developments along with the modern scientific explosion itself.
And also, that a fitting antagonist to intelligent design is not the Enlightenment but methodological naturalism, which intelligent design proponents believe has inherent philosophical flaws.
And lastly, that the bashers and destroyers of Western values and civilization have been largely the secular philosophers espousing relativism, subjectivism, and anti-rationalism.
They were the well-spring from which multi-culturalism gushed forth to drown the very clear and objective truth that Western civilization in general has had the greatest measure of success in every human endeavor.
What do you think?
Science remained stagnant in Europe during the millennium when Christianity was most dominant. Only when the Enlightenment began to loosen Christianity's grip did science manage to move forward, and Christianity opposed most of the major advances (see Copernicus, Galileo, etc.), as some Christian groups continue to resist the reality of evolution.
The most effective way to debunk pseudo-scientific garbage like "intelligent design" is to refer to the vast body of evidence which proves evolution to be a fact. The collection and analysis of this evidence is a part of modern science, which in turn is basically a product of the Enlightenment. I linked to one good text on this subject here:
http://atheistgirl.blogspot.com/2007/01/counter-creationism-handbook.html
The achievements Mac Donald mentions are all achievements of technology. Technology is based on science. Religion contributes nothing to it.
Science certainly does not espouse "relativism, subjectivism, and anti-rationalism." I know there are people who do, but that just proves that there are other forms of garbled anti-Enlightenment self-delusion out there besides the religious ones. It has nothing to do with science and technology. Christianity certainly does preach anti-rationalism. Multiculturalism is stupid, but if Christianity had defeated the Enlightenment and remained dominant, today we would still be living in the Dark Ages and most of those great achievements of Western civilization would not exist to argue about.
A lot of far-right Christians have as much contempt for Western civilization's liberation of man as the multiculturalists do -- they are always fulminating about how it represents "moral decline" (basically meaning it won't let them beat up on atheists and people with unusual sexual practices any more).
As for Western values, one could argue that they suffered their first serious blow more than a millennium ago when we allowed this alien cult from the Middle East to infiltrate our societies.
I think it's fair here to make a distinction between the religion of Christianity itself (which I see as an ideology/worldview/set of truth claims)and those who claim to represent it. The issue is not whether some or even many right-wing Christians disdain individualism and liberty, but whether that view is warranted by Christian ideology itself (which I would say is best represented by the library of books that is the Bible).
I think if it's fair for you to say that not all secularists represent Enlightenment values, then it is fair to say that not all religionists represent Christian ones. As a side point, please do not misunderstand my statements regarding relativism, subjectivism, and anti-rationalism. I pointed to (post-modern) philosophy (and its precursors) as the culprit, not science (but I would add that its influence has extended to and corrupted much of post-modern science).
I also contend that the time of Christianity's dominance of Europe that you speak of was rather the dominance of the largely apostate, corrupt, un-Biblical, and un-Christian Roman Catholic Church. Individual freedom of conscience, the scientific explosion, liberal government, the revolution in the arts: all of these were the result not of the secular Enlightenment, but the Reformation which brought real, Biblical Christianity into the market of ideas with great force.
Biblical Christianity has a profoundly civilizing influence. It is not anti-rational, but quite the opposite. It supports reason, individualism, scientific inquiry, and creative productivity. You mentioned Copernicus and Galileo, and they were both devout Christians. So were: Newton, Mendel, Kepler, Boyle, Pascal, Linnaeus, Euler, Dalton, Kelvin, Joule, and Boole. So also, were John Locke, George Washington, Patrick Henry, and the vast majority of those in attendance at the United States' Constitutional Convention.
The leading philosophers, scientists, artists, social architects, and thinkers of the modern world include among their ranks, a huge number of devout Christian men; the resulting freedoms, prosperity, and discoveries of the modern world were made possible by the premises of true, Biblical Christianity.
With regard to ID and evolution, I disagree with some of your statements, but that's a whole different topic to cover and I've really typed quite enough!
I've heard this collection of claims many times before, but it's wrong. Science, which is a set of techniques for objectively extracting conclusions from evidence while filtering out any observer bias, cannot be said to be derived from religion, which is a set of propositions which are either demonstrably false or else formulated in such a way as to be untestable, and which are supposed to be accepted on faith (this is why it is utter nonsense to say that Christianity supports reason or scientific inquiry). The fact that some scientists are also Christians does not contradict this. Individual humans are capable of thinking very rationally about practical matters while keeping a set of supernatural beliefs "off limits" to the kind of testing against evidence which they apply in other fields. This does not change the fact that science and religion have diametrically opposite approaches to understanding reality, with the religious one being worthless while the scientific one produces innumerable practical and useful results, such as those cited by Mac Donald. Again, science only started thriving in the West after secularism took root and started weakening the grip of religion on the Western mind. Religion resisted progress at every step and continues to do so today, with its opposition to evolution, abortion, stem cell research, etc.
(I would also dispute whether some of the people you list can really be considered "Christians". For one thing, openly admitting to atheism in those days would have been extremely dangerous, and even today many conservative thinkers are hesitant to do so, as Mac Donald mentions.)
The claim that the dominant Christian belief system for most of Christian history was not real Christianity reminds me of the claim by Communists that their ideology cannot be blamed for the atrocities of the Soviet and Maoist regimes, because the people who ran those regimes were not "true Communists". The only Christians or Communists that I or you or anyone else can claim to know anything about are those who have actually appeared and acted in the material world, such as the Popes and Luther and Cromwell and Lenin and Stalin and Mao. Ineffable Platonic abstractions like "true Christianity" or "true Communism", which don't have much connection with the actual flesh-and-blood Christians and Communists who inhabit the real world, are a concept I don't find useful.
Lumping together secularists (or atheists) in general is absurd. Atheism is not a coherent belief system like Christianity or islam is. It is merely a lack of belief in one particular thing. To try to make general statements about atheism or secularism based on the foolish beliefs of some atheists or secularists is like saying that, because some people who don't believe in unicorns have said or done foolish things, the entire concept of disbelief in unicorns is somehow thrown into disrepute.
Christianity had a civilizing influence? We in the West had an advanced civilization, that of Rome (and Greece before it) which thrived in paganism for a millennium. After adopting Christianity as its official religion, the Roman Empire fell in a matter of decades. The transition from the pagan Roman Empire to the Christian Dark Ages was one of massive collapse and regression. In standards of literacy, hygiene, urbanization, and civilization in general, western Europe did not recover to Roman levels until the 18th and 19th centuries, after many generations of the Enlightenment and secularization.
Christianity has done much evil, and all the good it can claim to have done would probably have happened without it. It certainly has nothing useful to contribute today, any more than a belief in unicorns would.
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