by Gary Berg-Cross
On Dec. 7th, 2013 Perry King, Deacon of the
Universalist National Memorial Church and
Don Wharton, Organizer of the DC Region Atheists participated in a 2-person
debate called: Religious Faith versus Atheism.
As debates of this kind go this was as polite as it
probably gets. Certainly there fewer pyrotechnics as with the brothers Chris and Peter Hitchens
debate or one of Dawkin's debates. Here the speakers were not kin, but still familiar with
each other from past conversations. They showed a degree of respect for each
other in the midst of a congenial audience made up of people are both sides of
the issue, but liberal minded. Indeed at times the most heat
came from intense efforts by assigned moderators to keep the 2 speakers to 5
minute time constraints. Still, it wasn't as intentionally humorous as a religion-atheist
debate among comics Jamie Kilstein & John
Fugelsang on "Totally Biased With W. Kamau Bell."
The event started with each side explaining their organizations
and what they stand for and who they were allied with. Perry could point to the
UU values from the Enlightenment - “Freedom, Reason and Tolerance.” Don Wharton faced with a liberal stance took
a clever tactic of emphasizing secular, humanist & scientific positions and
alliances such as the AHA and DC Coalition of Reason,
rather than starting with atheist ones. Indeed for most of the early debate it might
have been termed Religion vs. Secularism.
In the 2nd round each side staked out some additional
territory. King expanded from the
Enlightenment to what he at times called a Modern or Post-Modern Religion. He used relativism to jumps over the hard
search for truth with a string of statements that- “absolute truth does not exist". Realities are instead multiple, they are subjective and dependent on
an individual's worldview of framework (Drat
we should have never spent the time trying to convert those Indians). The Deacon could gesture to this idea and
rattle off some thinkers but his main thrusts came with statements like:
Religion asks the question of meaning. It’s been around a long time…Religion is not
so much a set of beliefs as a set of language and symbols about what is unknown
or transcendent.
This idea of religion knowing something about the unknown
might have generated calls for explanation, but we weren't in the Q& A so the
conversation moved on from this very sticky foundational point. It’s the type
of thinking that is hard to make progress against at time limited debates. You can choose to address 3-4 of the
arguments made but if you try to pick up this one it will consume all your
time. It’s a very asymmetrical situation
and I give Don high marks for navigating these obstacles. Faced with this
choice when he had the floor he countered King with a simple question of:
“what is real? and ‘this is self delusion’, ‘let’s
define what is real.”
(See my
blog on myths for some discussion of delusions. Rational analysis for the masses, alas, remains an
unfulfilled Enlightenment goal.)
Perry’s response was to cede the floor a bit and retreat from
knowing.
“Can any of us know what is
real?” “How did it all begin?”
Not a great response from an “Enlightenment fan” but such
stances postponed the issue till later in the debate when there was more time
for the important issues on the human capacity to know. If you draw on thinkers
of the past I like for example, Heraclitus 500 BCE whose stance on how human
understand reality included (Paraphrased by John Sowa, 2003):
“Everything is in flux. But
what gives that flux its form is the logos; the words or signs that enable us
to perceive patterns in the flux, remember them, talk about them, and take
action upon them even while we ourselves are part of the flux we are acting in
and on.”
These rhetorical questions can be taken on with a gesture
to that part of Science that studies human cognition. What aspects of Science do you believe in and
what limits do you set and why? Is continental
drift “real”? Doesn't seem likely, but
it now seems pretty certain along with mass extinctions, comets that hit the
earth, supernova and quarks. I prefer knowing the knowable, rather than
faithfully “knowing” the permanently mysterious unknown.
If Deacon King could wave at being compatible with
Science, Don could ask “What does that mean?” And he could point to Epicurus and the problem of evil which provides it own
big discussion area that is hard to take on. Each side had some of their
favorite zingers. Probably Deacon King
had more such as:
“There is no conflict
between Religion and Evolution….but Dawkins knows nothing about Religion!” or
“UU stands for the
underdevelopment of arrogant atheists who are intolerant of Religion.”
“What do I mean by
faith? It’s personal.” (Ah, I guess not subject to scientific study? Calling doctor Freud......)
It’s mean to tell kids
there’s no Santa Claus.”
The Deacon did have a host of easy to believe and popular
wisdoms to throw into the debate and could bring the sides together with a
cheery:
“The enemy is dogma in any form.”
While
agreeing on many issues of social tolerance points of real disagreement were to
be found as the conversation continued.
Don argued that Religions convince people that they are members of a
moral tribe and neuroscience supports this maximization of tribalism, which has
its downsides. See Us
Against Them: How Tribalism Affects the Way We Think .
Don threw in ideas relating religion and the idea of
purity and authority figures from Jonathan Haidt's studies
of intuitive, moral underpinning as political attitudes:
This moral foundation, which
involves having compassion and feeling empathy for the suffering of others, is
measured by asking people how much considerations of "whether someone
cared for someone weak and vulnerable" and "whether or not someone
suffered emotionally" factor into their decisions about what is right and
wrong. As you can see, liberals score considerably higher on such questions.
But now consider another foundation, "purity," which is measured by
asking people how much their moral judgments involve "whether or not
someone did something disgusting" and "whether or not someone
violated standards of purity or decency." Conservatives score dramatically
higher on this foundation.
But as we veered onto social science these too were subjects
that did not land as conversational topics for any length of time. The
impression I got was that Don’s atheist-secular side was grabbing more of the
space of the argument. If this were a
chess game the early openings had been played and Don had major pieces
deployed.
Deacon Perry was playing a different game though and
chose not to get into evidence from social and neuroscience.
“Never say “delusions” when
talking to a faith-based community,”
A good line enjoyed by the audience. I guess a comeback
might be:
“Don’t say ‘take it on faith’ when talking to
an empirical science audience.”
Before we knew it the Deacon was on a different tactic. He ceded the territory of being critical of the
Bible, but within faith. To him the
Bible is a pre-modern document, but it is the source of divine inspiration
(take it on faith, I guess). As
Christians we should only look at the “good stuff.”: I should note here that
Deacon King seems to talk about the Bible mostly in terms of the New Testament.
OK, I’ve heard this inspiration talk before and the
question that comes up in my mind is that there are separate criteria to judge
what is “good” in this or any other book.
We don’t need religious criteria for this. We've golden an silver rules for quite a while. We might agree to call the
criteria “humanistic.” That would be
good to agree on or even discuss.
What was discussed was Don’s point about beliefs from
groups like Christian Scientists. How do we confront the absurdity of their
truth claims? Perry said “we are trying to liberalize them.” He again fell back on the claim that there is
important truth in the Bible.
Don’s chess game advanced a notch again and moved to the
claim of life after death, “It’s a problem.” Group leaders use this promise to impose their
interests and notions of ethics on the community. It’s a delusion and akin to
people deluding themselves about climate change. Perry responded, “It has great
value.”
This exchange opened the doors a bit to the societal
value of Religion and the related issue of who do we blame more for what has
gone wrong (e.g. cultural conflicts, war etc.). One thinks of Paul Kurtz
observation that:
“All
the great religions have grown by attacking those about them.
To the request that we need a more secular society the
Deacon could only suggest that Norway has more suicides than the US (not true
it turns out to be true – Norway
has about the same rate.
There is an effect for the absence of sun in winter which shows up in
many countries so Finland has a higher rate than the US).
Which cultures are happiest? Don suggested the secular, Scandinavian ones.
Again this is supported by UN survey studies based on not only longevity and
prosperity but also the belief you can count in others in times of trouble,
perception or corruption, generosity etc. There were many of these statistical
skirmishes throughout but Don was clearly in better command of the facts and
supported conclusions. Take the issue of Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot all being “atheists.” Don was ready with refutations on Hitler’s
Catholic background, Stalin’s
Russian Orthodox upbringing and Pol Pot’s training in a Buddhist monastery. It was quite something to see vague claims
swatted down by Don’s knowledge. One might have added the inconvenient observation
that George Bush was “born again” and his wars killed hundreds of thousands.
It was equally interesting to see emotion-laden topics dealt
with.
When the idea of Hell was introduced as based on human
experience Don could parry that, yes, hellish experiences are real and we learn
from them but there is no supernatural Hell.
Modernity (Perry cited an atheist Freud and others here, well they aren't up to data but I guess were considered modern) and post modern ideas on religion was a topic
at times included the limitations of science – it doesn't have final answers.
One like look to A.C.
Grayling on this idea of certainty and knowledge. Yes, Science’s mindset is
always in progress and prepared to un-set and revise, but that mentality is a strength
rather than cock sure certainly that is fixed. Both Perry and Don cited the
value of critical thinking, but Perry urged that we not try to wipe out all of
tradition and world views found in myths.
They have a special truth one supposes and we should be informed by
people who came before us. Well yes,
remember those old natural religions that had thunder gods and credible displays of religious devotion, such as:
fasts, food taboos,
self-scarification, extravagant rituals and other “hard-to-fake” behaviors.
It is part of reliably
transmitted religious demonstration showing a believers’ sincere faith to
observers and potential converts. I
could see some of this behavior at the debate. Perry would occasionally invite Don to come to
service – we hope to convert you yet. Not all of us have Don’s ability to groan or sigh away these entreaties in a persuasive way. A good example of this was Don's reaction to Perry's appeal to thinkers like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin as a source of modern wisdom. Don had actually read Chardin and groaned noting that that Chardin had his own brand of confusion.
As a culture generating
species, we humans assimilate key information from our groups, and therefore
human brains probably have built in cultural learning
biases that enable us to quickly pick up the culture around us (language too).
But a pre-conscious tendency to learn from others makes us vulnerable to being misinformed
if not duped. This has been called the “evil teacher problem” but remember
preaches are teachers). Evolutionary Psychologists speculate that we have
developed a defense. Human cognition is
equipped with something called epistemic
vigilance. It’s a suite
of skills and preferences that guard against such manipulation by smooth talkers
among us. Better to be converted by
truth and not tolerate manipulation. And so on to the question of what should
be tolerated.
Perry did ask pointedly, “Can
you respect my mother who goes to church on Sunday?
Don’s response was a
re-post. Religions have more control
over women. And by the way should a LGBT person respect a homophobe? There are limits.
At this point there was
time for Q & A from the audience. One of the first ones was whether Don say
religion going away and what would replace it.
Don pointed to Sunday
Assembly as an alternative. Perry thought that we were in a Post-Christian
age and needed to redefine Religion but that it would always be with us. But a thoughtful UU member asked Don if he would be happy in effect with nothing by their total capitulation to the atheist idea.
Another question concerned
the possibility of an alliance between secularists and liberal religions like the
UUs. We might ally around climate change, peace and civil rights.
A question is whether we
can cooperate on these, while ideas of God and Religion are enshrined in laws. It's still a good question and yet this was a good, liberal minded debate.
