[Seeking an Interior Life] Faith in Modern Life
I haven't read any of the "New Atheist" books or even any of the old atheist books. Hell, I wouldn't even know what the old atheist books are. But, I've had a bit of a question sort of niggling at me.
The problem of religion which the New Atheists seem to identify is that it's people accepting certain ideas on faith. (This is not universally true. I can think of at least two religions - Judaism and Buddhism - where thinking about things is half the point, and the Quakers, do as well, and Unitarian Universalism and Ethical Culture deliberately foster personal inquiry.) And a lot of religions where the ritual is more important than the profession. But, let us pretend that the New Atheists are not, by and large, disgusted and disaffected Christians/children of Christians/neighbors of Christians, and accept the premise that it is unexamined belief in unknowable things, combined with the (mis)direction of people who claim to have more knowledge
about these unknowable things, that is the source of religious mischief.
It seems to me that science has reached the point where even an educated gentleman of leisure, with no other real responsibilities, the sort of person who would have been a naturalist in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, has to do that with some areas of SCIENCE. That is to say, even a strictly rational person simply doesn't have time to understand all of the scientific discoveries of the age, even the strictly hard science-y ones. If you want the sort of deep understanding which helps you examine exotic claims, like atomic-sized transistors or stem cell research or the anti-bacterial properties of the brains of cockroaches or the latest developments in biodegradable plastics or new additions to the Linux kernel. It isn't that our proverbial natural scientist is incapable of studying enough about a
discipline to evaluate any one of these areas of attention, but it's no
longer possible to know ALL of the science.
Which means that we have to accept some of the science on faith, and, for the limited understanding we have time for, bow to better trained scientific intermediaries to explain things to us. I do think that, on the whole, this exercise of modern faith in cognoscenti, where received knowledge is questioned continuously (if irregularly) for practical benefit, has increased the store of things that someone actually knows to be true as opposed to the coincidences people invoke to make themselves feel better when things go wrong.
But I am trusting some other person to be the cognoscenti for so much, I am trusting the scientific method to work, and it is a trust, I'm placing. I'm holding faith in my fellow human beings, and this despite knowing that there are those out there who are bad at the scientific method, even in science, that scientists, because they assume they are rational and unprejudiced, can be so set in their assumptions and prejudices that they can't recognize them as assumptions or prejudices.
I am, frankly, not entirely sure this makes me less foolish than someone who believes in a woo woo religious system that people can't prove doesn't work. I have my faith in something that I know goes wrong.
Original post at Dreamwidth. Read (
) comments or reply there using Open ID.
The problem of religion which the New Atheists seem to identify is that it's people accepting certain ideas on faith. (This is not universally true. I can think of at least two religions - Judaism and Buddhism - where thinking about things is half the point, and the Quakers, do as well, and Unitarian Universalism and Ethical Culture deliberately foster personal inquiry.) And a lot of religions where the ritual is more important than the profession. But, let us pretend that the New Atheists are not, by and large, disgusted and disaffected Christians/children of Christians/neighbors of Christians, and accept the premise that it is unexamined belief in unknowable things, combined with the (mis)direction of people who claim to have more knowledge
about these unknowable things, that is the source of religious mischief.
It seems to me that science has reached the point where even an educated gentleman of leisure, with no other real responsibilities, the sort of person who would have been a naturalist in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, has to do that with some areas of SCIENCE. That is to say, even a strictly rational person simply doesn't have time to understand all of the scientific discoveries of the age, even the strictly hard science-y ones. If you want the sort of deep understanding which helps you examine exotic claims, like atomic-sized transistors or stem cell research or the anti-bacterial properties of the brains of cockroaches or the latest developments in biodegradable plastics or new additions to the Linux kernel. It isn't that our proverbial natural scientist is incapable of studying enough about a
discipline to evaluate any one of these areas of attention, but it's no
longer possible to know ALL of the science.
Which means that we have to accept some of the science on faith, and, for the limited understanding we have time for, bow to better trained scientific intermediaries to explain things to us. I do think that, on the whole, this exercise of modern faith in cognoscenti, where received knowledge is questioned continuously (if irregularly) for practical benefit, has increased the store of things that someone actually knows to be true as opposed to the coincidences people invoke to make themselves feel better when things go wrong.
But I am trusting some other person to be the cognoscenti for so much, I am trusting the scientific method to work, and it is a trust, I'm placing. I'm holding faith in my fellow human beings, and this despite knowing that there are those out there who are bad at the scientific method, even in science, that scientists, because they assume they are rational and unprejudiced, can be so set in their assumptions and prejudices that they can't recognize them as assumptions or prejudices.
I am, frankly, not entirely sure this makes me less foolish than someone who believes in a woo woo religious system that people can't prove doesn't work. I have my faith in something that I know goes wrong.
Original post at Dreamwidth. Read (
) comments or reply there using Open ID.