Establishing Our bearings: Is it okay to dismiss people from intellectual conversation because they
Establishing Our Bearings: Is it okay to dismiss people from intellectual conversation because they have different religious beliefs?
Whenever one is attempting to determine what sources they can trust, it behooves them to know where the author (in this case me) stands in regards to political positions, religious convictions, moral reasoning, etc. This blog is an attempt to give the reader an idea of what my starting points are in regards to religious conviction and if it's reasonable to ostracize people based to these convictions.
Bias-a symptom of human intelligence that allows us to make inferences that are critical for survival in one case, but these inferences fail us in situations when the relevant inferences are not at play. Due to the ease at which various sources seem to have let this symptom of their intelligence get the better of them and ultimately destroy their credibility, I would like to try to distinguish myself from sources that are biased in one way or another. Particularly in regards to the big question about the man in the sky. Does a God exist? Maybe. However, my position wasn’t always so lackadaisical. Throughout much of my life I was certainly convinced of the Christian God’s existence. During high-school I studied theology in Bible class and creationism in Biology. I was a born-again Christian who had been baptized and had devoted my life to serving Christ. College, however, seemed to have different plans for me.
As happens to many people when they apostatize out of a religion, I became angry at Christianity. I was angry at my family and friends who had been feeding me this apparent nonsense since I was an infant. I felt personally attacked and betrayed. So much so that I relished at any opportunity to talk with a Christian to try and convince them of their folly. I talked with many pastors, members of the church, and academics. I even went to see a professional debate on God and the beginning of the universe between Cosmologist Sean Carroll and Theologian William Lane Craig (bonus points if you can find me asking a question towards the end of the video). I also talked at length with Christian apologists such as Frank Turek and John Haught. The list goes on, but the point is that I was angry and looking for answers.
After losing some Facebook friends and making my family gatherings quite awkward, I started to cool off from my “militant atheism”. It started to dawn on me that despite my relentless argument and criticism, religion wasn’t going away. Not only was it not going away, but there were extremely intelligent people holding deeply to their religious beliefs despite the criticisms. Take for example the devout Christian and MIT Physicist Ian M. Huttchinson. This is a scientist who—although considered a minority in the field—is one of the best scientists in history. Indeed, many of the greatest scientists in history were Christian or religious in some way. This idea forced me to arrive at the conclusion that being religious wasn’t a symptom of some lack of intelligence or some other form of stupidity. Clearly more intelligent people than I were taking seriously the positions atheism and theism. So was I truly justified in being as upset as I was? If I were pushing back against stupidity or ignorance I might be justified in my anger, but the stupidity and ignorance wasn’t there.
What, then, accounts for the radical difference in belief? I have some ideas, but for now I can be sure that it is not just ignorance. Because guess what? Much to my annoyance, there are just as many ignorant atheists as there are theists. In another blog I might delve deeper into my psychological hypotheses about religious belief and non-belief, but for now I want to just establish our bearings.
Do I believe in the Christian God? No. As science has progressed over the course of human history it has continually encroached upon the explanatory usefulness of Christianity. This encroachment has only been in one direction and it seems as though it will continue in that direction. Furthermore, the spirituality that people claim to experience when they participate in religious practices is known to not be religion specific. You can more or less achieve the same types of spiritual experiences from a variety of different religions—giving us reason to suspect that these experiences aren’t due to religion but rather to some natural phenomenon.
One caveat to my position is that I cannot say with certainty that it is impossible for a God to exist. I don’t find it unreasonable to say that perhaps once physics or philosophy arrives at a thorough enough analysis of the natural world, a God might be found. But this is not to suggest that I suspect this God might be playing a causal role in the natural world. As I mentioned before, the explanatory power of religion has been dwindling and seems will eventually become extinguished due to the influence of science. If it happens to be the case that a God exists beyond our perception then so be it. But as the aforementioned physicist Sean Carroll said during his debate, “In science, if it doesn’t do anything and doesn’t have an effect on anything, it doesn’t exist.”
In reality, there exist a variety of religious beliefs (or lack thereof) that are compatible with intelligence. I don’t believe it is intellectually healthy to dismiss people’s opinions solely because they are religious or non-religious. Lay your biases to the side, listen to the argument and give them a chance.
Chris
*If this works out to where comments can be posted, I'd be very interested in hearing people's opinions about when it's acceptable to dismiss someone from contact or intellectual discussion just because you know that they are religious/non-religious.
