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Dawkins: Is Science a Religion?
Just found a really good article by scientism-apologist Richard Dawkins, entitled “Is Science A Religion?” I’d like to reproduce quotes from it here, so that my own goofball theories about the technocratic philosophy will be propped up by way of a real live expert. In particular, compare what he says here to what I said in my recent article about The Freedom of Materialism.
Dawkins talks about how religious people at lectures will always accuse that science itself is no different from religion because it requires a type of faith in its own workings. In response he says, “Faith, being belief that isn’t based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion.” And he goes on:
Well, science is not religion and it doesn’t just come down to faith. Although it has many of religion’s virtues, it has none of its vices. Science is based upon verifiable evidence. Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops…
One reason I receive the comment about science being a religion is because I believe in the fact of evolution. I even believe in it with passionate conviction. To some, this may superficially look like faith. But the evidence that makes me believe in evolution is not only overwhelmingly strong; it is freely available to anyone who takes the trouble to read up on it. Anyone can study the same evidence that I have and presumably come to the same conclusion. But if you have a belief that is based solely on faith, I can’t examine your reasons. You can retreat behind the private wall of faith where I can’t reach you.
Dawkins is a brilliant man, I think - even if he does seem to have a stick up his ass a lot of times about religion. But I think his attitude would have fit right into Enlightenment thinkers such as Adam Weishaupt, founder of the Illuminati, who wrote:
This is the great object held out by this association; and the means of attaining it is illumination, enlightening the understanding by the sun of reason which will dispell the clouds of superstition and of prejudice.
Or, as I explored in my Freedom of Materialism post:
Because materialism (along with behaviorism, etc) tends to free you from having to worry about things you can’t see. And you can’t see, touch, feel or measure interior states.
But you can measure things that appear in our common material reality. We can all agree that there are twelve inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, and so on. Measurement, in its purest sense, is entirely democratic, because the same data is available to and easily provable to anyone. Anyone can get the same results, and thus materialism becomes the new standard of truth and objectivity.
What’s more important than proving my own speculations right though is dismantling what Dawkins is saying and learning something new from it. First of all, Dawkins broadly asserts that religion is founded exclusively on faith. Though this is a popular argument about Christianity, it is by no means universally true about all aspects or history of the Christian religion, or of religion in general. It is instead an attack on one very narrow and weak interpretation of Christianity and does nothing to explore much more elastic and interesting traditions such as gnosticism, Christian mysticism or other esoteric strains.
Curiously, Dawkin’s arguments against Christianity’s invisible and impossible “faith” are also the arguments that orthodox Christians originally leveled at various gnostic groups. Christians argued that gnosticism wasn’t fit for general public consumption because it relied on “secret knowledge” which was only accessible to certain members of the populace: in other words gnosis. So it is highly ironic that in modern times, orthodox Christianity itself is being attacked by that same logic: that “faith” is an esoteric internal state which is not freely open to all comers. In other words, anyone can easily try to have faith but many fail to do so - it is not automatically granted by all seekers.
And I would wager that it is on this exclusivity, this spiritual elitism, which Christianity will ultimately (and has already) give way to scientism.
I realize though, we have not answered the question which Dawkins shoots down about science being a religion. According to his viewpoint, science is not a religion because it relies on external data which can be independently verified by anyone and religion relies on internal states which are intangible, ineffable, and therefore meaningless. But is that an adequate definition of religion? Hardly, for interior states are only an aspect of religion; they are not religion itself. And science too relies on esoteric internal states which can’t really be completely shared with others: the processes of mentation, acting on hunches, deeply thinking about ideas, the act of discovery - just to name a few. And in the case of religion just as in the case of science, those internal states give narrative explanation to those outward external data which are available to all. So, by his own criteria, science really is a religion.
I’ll be damned if he ever admits it though!
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August 3rd, 2006 at 12:08 pm
I’d say Science fulfils all the requirements of a Religion, it has it’s prophets, the teachings, a priesthood that interprets the greater reality for the lay folk, rituals, creates or participates in the creation of laws based on it’s doctrines, has places of worship, even has a creation myth! And let’s not forget it banishes or ostracizes those who stray from the status quo.
It is basically impossible for a single individual to examine and test all the evidence to date regarding science, and while some of the more readily demonstrable physical phenomenon is easily verified, alot of the applied results in society are not. A lot of people simply believe the scientific explanation for a lot of things on “faith”, and when challenged react like any other rigid zealot. Many people “believe” Einstein was right even though they have almost no idea after a certain point what he was talking about.
Perhaps the main difference is that the “Creator” is more depersonalized and not so anthropomorphic, more a “force” like in some eastern religions and the teachings (hypotheses) have a built in Zen like loophole where they can always be proved false in the future, and that is sold as continuing enlightenment (progress) on the road to the promise land (a future scientific utopia promising omnipotence and eternal life through technology)
I think Science is just religion for materialists and is so successful because it’s a Religion with the highest amount of control over phenomenon that the majority of people don’t understand. It really is a priesthood that knows more about the universe then its flock, it’s a religion that works because it takes the center out of the individual and put’s it on more easily explained phenomenon.
August 3rd, 2006 at 12:58 pm
It’s unfortunate that you used the inch, foot, and yard as examples of objective metrics. One of the reasons that the meter was established was to move away from measurements that were based on the length of a royal body part.
Science doesn’t have to be religious. Come to think of it, religion doesn’t have to be religious either. One group practices idolatry and calls it religion. Another group practices idolatry and calls it science.
August 3rd, 2006 at 1:18 pm
This argument seems to be deliberately missing the point. Sure, many of the most important scientists in history were nutjob occultists who applied their crazy experiences to scientific advancement, but it’s the output -> independently replicable and independently verifiable results - that is the sole concern and sole domain and sole defining factor of science. None of those esoteric mental states really matter, from within the analysis of the domain, because they are not available to review and replication by another under the same set of guidelines that define the domain.
The only way I ever see this changing is if there is developed a technological device for the recording and playback of subjective experience, probably requiring complete real-time simulation of an entire brain. Hell, that may not even cut it.
This leads to a funny paradox though: to be a brilliantly innovative scientist (as opposed to just a technically proficient one) one might have to have a mind blowingly transcendent experience of one sort or another; however they had better remember to leave it the fuck out of their thesis papers and peer reviewed journals!
That same nutjob occultist could have instead applied their visionary experiences into religion, but once again, that’s just a different output or application. And, in my opinion it’s pretty silly to compare the narrative explanations of religion to that of science. Which one made our remote electronic conversation today possible?
Probably both, actually, if you look at the sociological guidance of organized religion throughout history, but my point is, they operate in entirely separate, though not mutually exclusive domains. Personally, I’d add the third domain of spiritually, between them, overlapping both slightly. Most religion is emphatically not spiritual, just as most science isn’t either.
I think this third domain is actually what you speak of.
August 3rd, 2006 at 1:27 pm
Perhaps we need to make some distinctions.
The Scientific Method is not relgious. It is a ritual that requires the premise to be defined and the outcome to be hypothesized when variables change, and then proven correct or incorrect based on experimentation. No faith required.
Scientists, however, are required to possess esoteric knowledge. My mathematics stops at High Algebra: Anything else looks like magic. I know as much about the inner workings of a star as I do about summoning a demon (layman’s knowledge, probably incorrect). This certainly qualifies them as some sort of gnostic.
I could learn about the insides of a star, just as I could learn about summoning a demon, but without the background knowledge (chemistry, physics, mathematics) I’m lost, and I have to take the scientists word ON FAITH.
That’s where scientism comes in. I think many of the people claiming “a scientific worldview” and writing articles don’t actually know that much about how science works. I’ve tried to wrap my head around calculus, quantum mechanics, and certain other terribly difficult scientific topics, and I just don’t get it. But I understand that my computer processes electrical charges in such a way, due to the properties of materials that make up the computer, to allow me to talk to you. However, I couldn’t DO it, and if it breaks, I have to go to a specialist. I take it on faith that they know what they are doing.
The Scientific Method is great for hard, material, physical, mathametically modeled things. It gets less good at the extremes (Beginning, end) and when dealing with, for lack of a better term, ’squishy sciences’ like economics, psychology, or sociology.
That said: To a true scientist, science is not religious, and science will lead them where the scientific method leads them. To the layperson, science might as well be magic, beyond a certain point. And many people who aren’t scientists cling to it with a relgious fevor I rarely see except in Fundamentalists. Dawkins may be a scientist and understand the ‘fact’ of evolution, but I have to take it on faith.
August 3rd, 2006 at 1:30 pm
…spiritually…lol, i meant spirituality, of course
August 3rd, 2006 at 1:45 pm
i hope you’ll excuse me for linking and running but i really can’t lay it down any better than the bald demigod himself, ken wilber.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6782237207349223370
hehehe
August 3rd, 2006 at 2:39 pm
verify and repeat the big bang or one species becoming another. matter forming from an explosion?
August 3rd, 2006 at 4:57 pm
I can’t find the quote, but it goes something like this:
Relativity came from a “feeling in my muscles.” Einstein
It’s also interesting to consider that psychoanalysis used the galvonometer to measure changes in the skin of a subject when they heard different words, in effect using the scientific method to catalogue “inner states” as they are starting to do in earnest with MRI’s when people are thinking different thought patterns.
August 3rd, 2006 at 6:51 pm
Good point: neurotheology ought to be brought into this as well:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005/06/15/neurotheology/
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005...6/26/persingers-neurotheology-busted/
As you’re pointing towards, we are getting closer and closer to being able to “objectively” catalog and replicate interior states - which I think will utlimately be the crux of this issue.
One other thought based on a comment above. Somebody said something about how religion doesn’t use the scientific method. Ken Wilber had some interesting points on that - saying in essence that “the best” type of religion DOES make use of the scientific method. I expanded on it a little here:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2005.../27/evangelism-the-scientific-method/
August 3rd, 2006 at 8:10 pm
Just wanted to hold onto this for safe-keeping. It is about Auguste Comte, founder of sociology, and relates to the ideals of the Positivists:
http://www.victorianweb.org/philosophy/comte.html
It seems in a lot of ways that Dawkins may consider himself an heir to some of this type of thinking. In addition to neurotheology which I mentioned above, I also realize that memetics, sort of the brainchild of Dawkins, is another attempt to catalog and replicate interior states.
August 3rd, 2006 at 9:24 pm
But is that an adequate definition of religion?
Dawkins games the question in his favor. And he is entirely too convinced of how scienterrific he is.
For a counter to Dawkins, see Mary Midgley on how he talks out of both sides of his mouth when it comes to science and religion. (E.O. Wilson too.)
August 3rd, 2006 at 10:10 pm
Yeah it’s more his attitude than his thoughts on the subject that gets to me. I saw some documentary with a segment where he interviewed I think a mega-church pastor or something. He was trying to trap the pastor and make him look stupid, but really he just came off as a giant dick, I thought.
August 3rd, 2006 at 10:23 pm
Yup, I have the same reaction. I still suspect he staged the whole being thrown off the church campus thing. (I never could make out what Haggart was saying.)
I hear he’s quite a different guy in his books. So which Dawkins is the real one?
August 4th, 2006 at 8:16 am
His books have editors.