If You Want to Destroy My Shweder

My brother bought me a copy of Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion" for my birthday. Also, a Toby Keith Christmas CD. Seriously.)

I'm about halfway through it and enjoying it so far. (The book, not the CD. Haven't quite worked up the guts to throw that on yet.)

Dawkins case against religion is, naturally, rock-solid. It's not that hard because 99% of world religions are based on storybook logic. More interesting are the little digressions, which provide ample fodder for arguments against rabid theists.

I really enjoyed the first chapter, which debunks the popular image of Albert Einstein as devout. Though Einstein did, in fact, speak about "God," he did not mean an Invisible Sky Man, but more of a "God is Everything"-style pantheism that bears very little similarity to mainstream American faith. Here's a particularly choice Einstein quote, from page 15 of the book:

"It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

Another really useful section of Dawkins' book deals with the notion of having a moral compass without God. This topic comes up all the time in online atheism arguments (in which I have become embroiled with alarming frequency lately.)

To me, it seems perfectly obvious that humans could set general moral guidelines for behavior without a God to tell them what's right and wrong. (That word "general" will become important in a moment.)

As Dawkins points out, we generally think of moral decisions made without consideration of consequence or punishment as being more moral, not less. In other words, not stealing from a friend's wallet out of consideration for that friend is a morally superior choice to not stealing from a friend's wallet because you're afraid of getting caught. I know that, in Judaism, it works the other way as well. Charity given anonymously is a greater mitzvah than acknowledged charity, because you're not doing something good in anticipation of earning a reward. The noblest choice of all is goodness for its own sake.

Dawkins argues that morality does not depend on religion, only absolute morality. From page 232:

"Absolutists believe there are absolutes of right and wrong, imperatives whose rightness makes no reference to their consequences. Consequentialists more pragmatically hold that the morality of an action should be judged by its consequences...Not all absolutism is derived from religion. Nevertheless, it is pretty hard to defend absolutist morals on grounds other than religious ones. The only competitor I can think of is patriotism, especially in times of war."

This gets right at the heart of the moral and intellectual vacuum at the center of contemporary American fundamentalism - These people are absolutists, which is highly compatible with their religion but not at all compatible with modern life.

Dawkins goes on to quote Luis Bunuel, always a good way for any book to rise in my estimation:

"God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed."

Now, I agree with Bunuel's sentiment, but it does bring up perhaps my largest problem with Dawkins' book. Like most of my family members, Dawkins is an evangelical atheist. He's openly advocating atheism and seems to believe the world would be much better off without religion. (In the preface, he claims to merely offer the possibility of atheism as a potential worldview, but I'd say he's actively encouraging skepticism towards all organized religion in his readership.)

I'm just not convinced that the mass abandonment of religion would have some overwhelmingly positive effect. I feel like people are greedy, violent assholes and they would probably hurt one another and fight amongst themselves whether or not they believed in magical fairies who record their every movement in order to determine their post-life housing options.

Dawkins seems to feel that the elimination of religion would lead to some sort of atheist utopia. He named his recent BBC special on religion "The Root of All Evil?" The question mark notwithstanding, I'd call that kind of an extreme view. (Dawkins himself points out the absurdity of the claim in the book, concluding that, of course, no one thing could possibly be the root of all evil.) Still, I think of religion as more of an excuse for our intolerant, violent and selfish behavior rather than a root cause. It's easy enough to point out that many terrorists are religious zealots, but I still say that the Twin Towers fell because of international politics and economics, as opposed to reverence for Allah. That's just marketing.

I'll admit, it can be a delicate balance. I can't deny that I find the vast majority of religions to be entirely stupid, and that I sometimes pre-judge people if I find out they are deeply religious. (I've jumped to the wrong conclusion before, assuming a religious person was an idiot and then discovering that they are actually quite intelligent, but it doesn't happen very often.) But I wouldn't really advocate any sort of organized anti-religion movement. I think everyone should think hard about their place in the world, decide for themselves what they believe about the Big Questions and then act accordingly. If your contemplation leads you to embrace Catholicism, I reserve the right to think you're kind of weird, but it's totally your call.

I think atheist groups like the Center for Inquiry are kind of silly. As a group, atheists don't have very much in common. That's the whole fucking point! Independent thought based on rationality and personal choice! I don't really see myself as "against" religion at all, so long as it's goofy rules, archaic traditions, homophobia, misogyny and general creepiness are not being forced upon me. But if special magical underwear, organ music and wafers that substitute for your savior's body work for you...hey, enjoy yourself!

Which (finally!) brings me to University of Chicago professor Richard Shweder and his Op-Ed about atheism from yesterday's New York Times, courtesy of Amanda at Pandagon. Shweder pretends to seriously engage the question of why a rash of books (including Dawkins') are suddenly making strong cases against God, but he really just wants to get in some cheap shots at atheists and (get this...) the Age of Enlightenment. I wasn't really even sure it was possible to rhetorically attack an entire Age, but Shweder managed.

Among the cosmopolites who live in secular enclaves, religion is automatically associated with darkness, superstition, irrationality and an antique or pre-modern cast of mind. It has long been assumed that religion is opposed to science, reason and human progress; and the death of gods is simply taken for granted as a deeply ingrained Darwinian article of faith.

Shweder teaches something called Comparative Human Development, which I guess involves making a lot of general, vague assumptions about people whom you lump together in meaningless categories like "secularists." So, okay, he's talking about people like me...A non-religious person who lives in a big coastal city. And, yes, I do associate religion with superstition, Rich. Becuase it's a fucking superstition. I also associate strawberry tarts with pastry and grouper with fish. Call me crazy.

I'd like to hear Prof. Shweder distinguish between the words "religion" and "superstition." I'm not being sarcastic, either. I'd genuinely be interested in how he goes about making this distinction.

Also, New York and Los Angeles atheists aren't to blame for religion being viewed as anti-scientific and positioned against reason. If religious leaders want to stop being seen as anti-science, they should stop attempting to replace real scientific theories with alternative, fake versions in our public schools and stop lying to their followers about established scientific principles. This is reactionary identity politics of the most unsettling kind..."Those of us in the Real America love God, and those secularists in their enclaves just assume that makes us dumb! Oooh, that makes-a me so mad!"

Why, then, are the enlightened so conspicuously up in arms these days, reiterating every possible argument against the existence of God? Why are they indulging in books — Daniel Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell,” Sam Harris’s “Letter to a Christian Nation,” and Richard Dawkins’s “God Delusion” — in which authors lampoon religion or rail against the devout under the banner of a crusading atheism? Books dictated or co-written by God sell quite well among the 2.1 billion self-declared Christians and 1.3 billion self-declared Muslims of the world. What explains the current interest among secularists in absolutely, positively establishing that the author is a fraud?

Over at Pandagon, Amanda points out perhaps the single most ridiculous facet of Shweder's editorial. His whole point about atheists overstepping their bounds is based around the fact that a few atheists wrote books on their beliefs! Can you imagine the nerve of these people, writing down the way they view the world and selling it to other people? Why can't they just keep that shit to themselves, the way no other authors are ever expected to?

It goes back to a double standard that pervades the whole piece. Religious people should be free to express themselves in any way they please, but atheists who do so are elitist assholes who are intolerant and take deep satisfaction in putting down the beautiful, deeply-held spiritual beliefs of others. It's right there in that paragraph - books about God are commonplace, so what makes these dirty infidels think they should be able to publish?

The most obvious answer is that the armies of disbelief have been provoked. Articulate secularists may be merely reacting to the many recent incitements from religious zealots at home and abroad, as fanatics and infidels have their ways of keeping each other in business.

Gee, do you think so? Somebody get Dr. Shweder some grant money, pronto! This would make an excellent follow-up to his intensive five-year study on why children like ice cream. (Hypothesis: They enjoy its sweetness.)

A deeper and far more unsettling answer, however, is that the popularity of the current counterattack on religion cloaks a renewed and intense anxiety within secular society that it is not the story of religion but rather the story of the Enlightenment that may be more illusory than real.

What?

No, seriously...What?

The Enlightenment story has its own version of Genesis, and the themes are well known: The world woke up from the slumber of the “dark ages,” finally got in touch with the truth and became good about 300 years ago in Northern and Western Europe.

See, that's not the Enlightenment's version of Genesis. The Book of Genesis is a collection of myths that didn't really happen, some of which involve talking animals. It's an imaginary story about where humans came from. The Enlightenment, on the other hand, is just a term to refer to a whole bunch of events that all really happened. You can look them up. They're historical and shit.

To call The Enlightenment "illusory" is like calling "The Bronze Age" or "The Ottoman Empire" illusory. Agree with its governing principles or not, that shit happened!

As people opened their eyes, religion (equated with ignorance and superstition) gave way to science (equated with fact and reason). Parochialism and tribal allegiances gave way to ecumenism, cosmopolitanism and individualism. Top-down command systems gave way to the separation of church from state, of politics from science. The story provides a blueprint for how to remake and better the world in the image and interests of the West’s secular elites.

Science is not equated with fact and reason. It is based upon them. Is Shweder implying that scientists sit around in labs all day and just make shit up off the top of their heads, and that their formulations therefore have no more or less validity than Scripture?

Even so, I still don't see how you can argue that this Enlightenment stuff didn't happen. "I'm telling you, Rousseau never wrote The Social Contract, Or Principles of Political Right. It's all in your mind!"

I mean, maybe Richard Shweder wishes there had never been an Enlightenment (though that might impact the existence of both the University of Chicago and the New York Times). Maybe he thinks things like cosmopolitanism, individualism and a separation of church and state are bullshit. That's his opinion. But they exist as concepts or movements, and started to exist (or blossomed) during this period we refer to as The Enlightenment, for purposes of simplification.

Unless Shweder wants to seriously argue against these well-established observations, gleaned over centuries of study and analysis by actual historians based on a wealth of primary sources, what's his fucking point?

Unfortunately, as a theory of history, that story has had a predictive utility of approximately zero.

What does this have to do with anything? "Predictive utility?" That just means, "knowing about The Enlightenment has not helped humans to determine what is going to happen in the future." Ga-juh? Does he mean something like "perceptive utility" or "analytical utility," like, "knowing about The Enlightenment has not helped humans to understand the world around them?" Or does he mean that the lessons learned during The Enlightenment did not allow the period's own scholars to predict the future?

Because I don't see predictive utility as having anything to do with his argument that the Enlightenment was "illusory."

At the turn of the millennium it was pretty hard not to notice that the 20th century was probably the worst one yet, and that the big causes of all the death and destruction had rather little to do with religion.

Okay, I'm starting to get Shweder's overall message after paragraphs now of inane rambling. He apparently sees, within The Enlightenment (even though it's just a name for all the intellectual thought going on in Europe throughout an entire century or more), the promise of forging a better future, and he doesn't see that as having actually happened. Therefore, the whole idea of The Enlightenment was a fraud and we should all Go with Christ.

But this is an extremely odd approach to studying the history of 18th Century European philosophy. It's too focused on causality - these ideas are written down and then they cause positive change, and if they fail to create a significant enough amount of positive change, they are somehow invalidated. Human development is extremely chaotic and impossible to judge in that way. I mean, sure, horrible atrocities went down during the 20th Century, but the Enlightenment made some good stuff possible as well. I mean...Anaesthesia? Civil and human rights? The Internet? America? It wouldn't be fair to credit all the positive developments exclusively to John Locke and Thomas Jefferson, so it's likewise not fair to blame them for Hiroshima.

(Also, how stupid is this guy? The major causes of death in the 20th Century had rather little to do with religion? Unless you were being rounded up based on your religion and shipped to death camps, I guess.)

Science has not replaced religion; group loyalties have intensified, not eroded.

I don't think I've ever heard anyone say that science is going to replace religion or cause everyone to live together in peace. Granted, Dawkins has a bit more optimistic view of a world without religion than I, but his book doesn't try to make this case.

The collapse of the cold war’s balance of power has not resulted in the end of collective faiths or a rush to democracy and individualism. In Iraq, the “West is best” default (and its discourse about universal human rights) has provided a foundation for chaos.

Can anyone out there really follow this argument? Again, you run into trouble attacking something like "The Enlightenment" because it's only a category and has no set, objective meaning. It would be helpful if Shweder had selected a writer or two, or even a field of inquiry or two, on which to focus his attack.

Even so, he's sort of inaccurate and evasive...The end of the Cold War did bring about a rush to "democracy," if you consider the founding of several new democratic nations a "rush." I wouldn't say it's working out exceptionally well for all those countries, and some of them are turning back towards totalitarianism even as we speak, but let us not forget that global politics is complex business and capital-D Democracy isn't even necessarily an Enlightenment value. (It's a Greek word, after all...) The French Revolution was inspired by the Enlightenment and it produced an Empire, not a Democracy, and the American Revolution produced a representational republic.

The Enlightenment is best summed up as a return to the predominance of Reason pioneered during the Classical period, a movement away from the rigid doctrine and strict hierarchies of the Dark Ages towards a more rational, humanist philosophy. Shweder, I suppose, argues that the ensuing chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union proves that this rational, humanist outlook is somehow wrong or inaccurate or non-utile. I wouldn't say he does a very good job. At least, he doesn't convince me.

Even some children within the enclave are retreating from the Enlightenment in their quest for a spiritual revival; one discovers perfectly rational and devout Jews or Hindus in one’s own family, or living down the block.

Does this prove atheists are wrong? Doesn't it work the other way? Don't some deeply religious families wind up with atheist members? Does that prove there's no God? And are the children of secularists who embrace Hinduism really "retreating from the Enlightenment"? What the fuck is this guy spouting off about? There's no basis for any of the arguments he's making here, which I suppose is appropriate, because he's debating the very notion of "logic." Still, it makes for a frustrating read.

If religion is a delusion, it is a delusion with a future, which it may be hazardous for us to deny. A shared conception of the soul, the sacred and transcendental values may be a prerequisite for any viable society.

Of course, Shweder falls back on the very same idea that Dawkins spends the better part of a chapter handily debunking, the old "you can't have society without God" line. What a joke. If you want to see this argument not only refuted but pulverized, I'd highly recommend The God Delusion. It's the book Deepak Chopra doesn't want you to read!

Instead of waging intellectual battles over the existence of god(s), those of us who live in secular society might profit by being slower to judge others and by trying very hard to understand how it is possible for John Locke and our many atheist friends to continue to gaze at each other in such a state of mutual misunderstanding.

So...don't be atheist? Or, if you are atheist, don't think that those who believe in God are wrong? That seems kind of unfair. I mean, people who believe in God think I'm wrong.

Is Shweder saying I have some kind of moral imperative to support those who disagree with me, to make them feel better about our disagreement? Even, to tell them that they are right and I am wrong, so as to create a more "viable society"?

What a load of shit. Why not tell Christians that they have to be more tolerant of me? That they should be slower to judge others and try very hard to understand why Pope Joey Ratz and I don't see eye to eye? (Also, that John Locke line is just obnoxious, implying that any secular humanist necessarily agrees with John Locke about everything. As if reading An Essay Concerning Human Understanding is a pre-requisite for losing one's faith in Yahweh.)

It's amusing to me that Shweder namechecks Richard Dawkins in the actual editorial, considering that Dawkins could rhetorically disembowel him in minutes. In fact, almost all the arguments Shweder makes are torn apart in the very book he cites! And think about this unsettling quandry...If an article this guy has carefully prepared to run in the New York Times is this uninteresting and specious, what must his fucking lectures be like?