Widespread Ignorance, the Religious Right, and a New Enlightenment

Link: AlterNet: Widespread Ignorance.

According to several recent polls, 22 percent of Americans are certain that Jesus will return to earth sometime in the next fifty years. Another 22 percent believe that he will probably do so. This is likely the same 44 percent who go to church once a week or more, who believe that God literally promised the land of Israel to the Jews, and who want to stop teaching our children about the biological fact of evolution.

As the President is well aware, believers of this sort constitute the most cohesive and motivated segment of the American electorate. Consequently, their views and prejudices now influence almost every decision of national importance.

Political liberals seem to have drawn the wrong lesson from these developments and are now thumbing scripture, wondering how best to ingratiate themselves to the legions of men and women in our country who vote mainly on the basis of religious dogma.

More than 50 percent of Americans have a "negative" or "highly negative" view of people who do not believe in God; 70 percent think it important for presidential candidates to be "strongly religious." Because it is taboo to criticize a person's religious beliefs, political debate over questions of public policy (stem-cell research, the ethics of assisted suicide and euthanasia, obscenity and free speech, gay marriage, etc.) generally gets framed in terms appropriate to a theocracy. Unreason is now ascendant in the United States -- in our schools, in our courts, and in each branch of the federal government. Only 28 percent of Americans believe in evolution; 68 percent believe in Satan. Ignorance in this degree, concentrated in both the head and belly of a lumbering superpower, is now a problem for the entire world.

The article by Sam Harris emphasizes the 'debate' over Intelligent Design, the way that accomodations between science and religion have only strengthened religious dogmatism, and the need for what I'll call 'a new enlightenment' that will get us out of the trap of today's new dark ages.

As I've said, he doesn't use the term 'new Enlightenment,' and, actually, I'm extrapolating pretty loosely here in order to pose the question: in a time when appeals to faith seem to be triumphing over facts, reason, and evidence, might we find a way out through a new enlightenment? (I've just started Rebecca Goldstein's book on Godel, so I might change my mind a lot by next week--Godel was a Platonist and Goldstein argues that accounts of 20th century science that lump him in with Heisenberg and a kind of radical subjectivism are mightily misplaced.)

Anyway, a new enlightenment would have to provide some kind of ways of thinking (methods, premises) that would be generally acceptable. The old enlightenment (which is of course sloppy on my part given the differences between, say, the French, German, and Scottish enlightenments, but I'm going to proceed with these stereotypes, having in mind primarily Hobbes' attempt to provide a science of politics) relied on clear and certain foundations (Descartes). There was thought to be a kind of unity and objectivity of nature on which science was based. Is it possible for people to accept this kind of foundation anymore? And, even if it is epistemologically, is this the kind of foundation that could guide public policy, given widespread political disagreement?

Would a non-foundationalist enlightenment be possible? It might be one that emphasizes probabilities over certainities. On the one hand, this empowers the polling class and statiscians. On the other, it could incite practices congenial to understanding and reading statistics, to defending probabilities, to talking about risk. Although I think this could be appealing, it allies to easily for my taste with actuarial science and makes me think of the stupid color coding alert levels of the Bush administration.

At this point, then, I don't think a new enlightenment non-foundationalist enlightenment is possible. I think at best one can try to make an argument from as many different discursive bases as possible. And, then, at the end of the day, recognize that the incommensurability is rooted in a more fundamental antagonism (class/the relations of production) that will necessarily and rightly involve skepticism and suspicion.

And: Evolution v. Religion from Slate Weird Science and the Religious Right from Alternet.

Comments

[YH]

One of the main reasons why the Enlightenments happened in the three countries you mention was down to the nature of the Universities of the time in promoting a wholistic education of which Philosophy was the prime subject. Everyone in 18th Century Scotland for example, whether they wanted to become an engineer or a pastor or a farmer, had to study philosophy. The same is true to a lesser extent in France and Germany (the work of George Davie is invaluable on this history, particularly his book 'The Democratic Intellect').

With the capitalisation of education in the 19th and 20th centuries, and the correlative growth of specialised subjects and degrees, the polymathic and generalist intellect declined correspondingly. These trends have only worsened.

There is little ground today on which a second Enlightenment could flourish.

[bat020]

Badiou's essay on Godel's Platonism is an absolute must-read on the topic - it's available in Theoretical Writings.

[Jodi]

Thanks for the Badiou cite! I will definitely look at it. By the way, do you know off the top of your head whether there is a version online?

YH--the point about the universities is terrific. It's also really frightening, especially when we think about appeals to critical thinking today. Can such appeals be meaningful? Can practices themselves provide enough to frame a new enlightenment? Since I am, like you, skeptical, I wonder if the result is continued 'religious war,' idiocy and entertainment, with some kind of fascism or whether some kind of accommodation is possible.

[Lynn]

I recall learning about evolution when I was 12 years old in 1960, a time when it was not controversial. I vacillate between being appalled and amazed about the changes in thinking since then.

What lies at the heart of the statistics quoted in the Harris article are the unconscious cognitive processes, metaphorical frameworks, and their inferrential systems that people use to arrive at those beliefs. There is a reason why almost everybody around the world is religious and believes in a god. Those beliefs ride along with the everyday normal cognitive processes that help us negotiate our physical and social world. That makes certain religious beliefs much easier to come by than scientific beliefs. Boyer's Religion Explained tackles these ideas.

Unless one can find and articulate the unconscious frameworks and inferrential systems people use to arrive at inconsistent religious belief, the game seems nearly lost for science education and advancement in the United States. It might be totally diagreeable to think this, but any real spur to science education will come from competition outside the United States, and will be reflected in the market place. Once new medical treatments can only be gotten from foreign countries and companies, you'll hear a whole lot of people change their tune. For those who say capital knows no boundaries, I reply the world is increasingly becoming a group of mercantilist trading blocs, and the logic may not apply

You mention Godel. I studied Godel's On Formally Undecidable Propositions of Principia Mathematica and Related Systems paper in my mathematical logic course in college. I have returned to it over the years because it is an elegant and beautiful piece of mathematical reasoning. I find it ironic that Godel turned to Platonism to explain where mathematics comes from.

Mathematics is another one of those enterprises that relies on imagination, and unconscious complex metaphorical structures. Lakoff and Nunez's Where Mathematics Comes From is also must reading when comes to explaining it.

[jdean]

Lynn, great comment. Thanks so much. Should I understand you to say that a need for religious explanation is somehow hard wired into people? Or, that religious explanation is an easy explanation and so a more readily accepted than the challenges of a scientific one?

Isn't it the case that most Northern Europeans are not religious to the extent that Americans are? That Americans are religious in terms comparable with Iran? And, isn't it the case that there are multiple modes of religious expression? If the answers to these questions are yes, then it would seem that religion isn't hard wired or necessarily easier. And, then one would look at the conditions under which religion and science are taught and produced.

I think your answer re markets makes a great deal of sense.

[Lynn]

Jodi,

I would say that religious thought activates our ordinary mental capacities for physical, moral, and social thought. In that sense I consider religious thought 'natural', but not necessarily hard-wired.

I remember the infamous interview the Reverand Jerry Falwell gave after 9/11. His claim was that America was being punished by god for its moral laxity. Of course, he did not stop there. He rounded up the usual suspects, gays, lesbians, and those ever evil working mothers.

Once I got a little beyond the rage brought on by his statements I started thinking about how Falwell's and the religious thought of others could activate that kind of reasoning. Falwell's ideas about supernatural moral agency use his normal capacities to reason about moral agency when it comes to thinkging about crime and such. However, our normal mental capacities were never intended for that kind of religious thought. Religious thought activities mental capacities we normally use for other things.

Another example. Children develop moral intuitions before they acquire religious beliefs. However, when children begin to acquire religious thought, religious thought uses already developed ideas about moral agency and social relationships for supernatural moral agency and supernatural social relationships. That is what I mean when I say religion 'rides along' with our normal mental capacities. Religious thought is a hitchhiker.

I suspect a lot of surveys about religion around the world. i wonder if they ask the right questions. When people participate in psychology research about their religious beliefs, the studies show there is a difference between their stated beliefs and how they actually use those beliefs to reason about the world religiously. One of my economics professors used to say, "if you want to know what's going on in bed, you have to lift the sheets." I wonder if some surveys are lifting the sheets.

The difference in religious attitudes between the U. S. and Europe is very interesting. I wonder if the religious hitchhiker might not hitch a ride on the European mind if given the right opportunity.

I see a common repetoire of religious thought that runs through all the world's religions despite the differences in their virility. A good and convincing presentation of scientific would work equally well in the U. S. and Iran. However, because religious thought is 'natural', I think that appeals to reason and rationality alone will not make the impact some people hope for.

I sometimes wonder if the old saying "you don't miss your water until your well runs dry" is the way to think about it. How many people who oppose stem cell research today will deny themselves and their families the medical treatments created by stem cell research twenty years in the future? My guess is none!

The issue of whether religious thought is hard-wired in the sense that it has been naturally selected is a tough nut to crack. However, the idea that religious thought activates normal mental capacities for uses for which they were never intended seems a much better way to think about scientific vs. religious debates. The trick is to activate the same mental capacities that religion does when debating the issues. People hold all manner of 'irrational beliefs'. Just telling a person their religious beliefs are irrational does not seem like it will get you very far.

[Jodi]

Lynn,

Religious thought as hitchhiker is a great image. My other initial thoughts are perhaps too nit-picky: it's hard for me to get around the idea of 'intended' uses for our mental capacities. That seems a very odd way to think about mental capacities, from where I sit. I do like the idea of religious thought 'activity' other capacities, especially combined with the hitchhiker (if the hitchhiker is a cowboy he 'spurs on' perhaps other anxieties, fears, uncertainties, etc and uses these religion to soothe these fears; this is a version of Nietzsche's account of the role of the priests in his genealogy of morals). That said, it isn;t clear to me whether this is a matter where science is providing instruction and illumination. But maybe it makes no sense to separate science from the metaphors that empower and guide it. (I once heard a biologist redescribe some cells as 'baby sitter' cells and it changed a great deal the sense of what was going on at the cellular level.)

[Lynn]

Jodi,

Thank you, for your generous comments about my comments. I wrote my last comment during a low energy moment which I regret. I should have been more coherent.

Suffice it to say, I agree with the scepticism you expressed in your original post about the possibility of a new enlightenment. I think your idea of trying, "to make an argument from as many discursive bases as possible," is spot on.

My thinking about religion has been greatly influenced by the work of Pascal Boyer who I referenced in my original comment. He summarizes his position in "Why Is Religion Natural?", an article written for the Skeptical Inquirer.

"Is religion "in the genes," and could it be considered a result of natural selection? Some evolutionary biologists think that is so, because the existence of religious beliefs may provide some advantages for individuals or groups that hold them. The evidence for this is, however, still incomplete. It may seem more prudent and empirically justified to say that religion is a very probable byproduct of various brain systems that are the result of evolution by natural selection.
. . .
In a sense, the cognitive study of religion ends up justifying a common intuition, best expressed by Jonathan Swift's dictum that "you do not reason a man out of something he was not reasoned into." The point of studying this scientifically is to show to what extent we can expect religious notions to be stable and salient in human cultures, not just now but for a long time to come."

Your Nietzsche comment has made me add another thing to my to-do list.

[Jodi]

Lynn, here is where I get stuck: the idea of the stability of religious notions in human culture; this suggests to me a kind of certainty about what constitutes a religious notion, a uniformity of religious function and reassure, a constancy of religious belief and its function over time and place; like, circumstances change radically, wouldn't religious belief have to function differently in these circumstances? So, to say that people want reassurance, that we have fundamental questions about life and death, about the meaning of existence, all these questions seems fundamental to me; but, I wouldn't say that religion is reducible to these questions or that we don't have other cultural products (art, science, myth, literature, philosophy, tradition) that also address these matters. Does this make sense? Anyway, I'm sure I'd be in a better position for discussion were I to read the article you suggested. Thanks for the cite.

[Lynn]

Jodi,

Part of Boyer's project is to identify those religious notions which are stable across cultures, religions, and circumstances. As I interpret Boyer, he too believes that religion is not reducible to meaning of life questions. Religion both comforts and distresses.

I hope you find it productive if you get a chance to check him out.