A Pernicious Confusion
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The launch of “The God Delusion” by ‘Darwin’s rottweiler’, Richard Dawkins, has me thinking of the nonsense that Macleans apparently features on its cover this issue - a seeming drive-by titled “The Internet Sucks”. I haven’t read it (and were it not for ITBusiness.ca’s coverage, probably wouldn’t have learned of it - the last Macleans I read was in my doctor’s waiting room and was 3 years old). But I’ll take Shane Shick’s word for it on this point:
Given that it’s easy to talk about what’s wrong with the Internet, [Macleans writer Steve] Maich spends precious little space talking about what’s working. Based on the authority of a single professor, he concludes that the Internet is useful but has failed to offer anything new to the world. “The internal combustion engine, refrigeration, even air conditioning, had profound impacts on our lives, making the impossible practical. The Web does nothing of the sort,†Maich writes. “E-mails replace faxes and phone calls. Online shopping replaces sales that used to be made through a catalogue. And for all but the most socially isolated, every hour spent trolling through chat rooms replaces an hour that might otherwise have been spent in real, live conversation.â€
I’ll leave the evisceration of this breathtakingly trivial argument to others - Shane is off to a pretty good start (is Mike Masnick in the house?). But Dawkins’ new book does provide a timely example of why the internet is so important - it could get Dawkins’s arguments - and his extraordinary gift for clarity - in front of every human on the planet who has access to a connected computer. And from them, to everyone else. And if there is a better way of arresting our descent into tribalism, mysticism and superstition, I haven’t heard it.
By the way, “a pernicious confusion” is from the Salon interview with Dawkins, and is Dawkins’ description of the confusion that religion exploits to claim that phenonomena for which there is not yet an accepted scientific explanation must have a mystical origin:
There are two ways of responding to mystery. The scientist’s way is to see it as a challenge, something they’ve got to work on, we’re really going to try to crack it. But there are others who revel in mystery, who think we were not meant to understand. There’s something sacred about mystery that positively should not be tackled. Now, suppose science does have limits. What is the value in giving the label “religion” to those limits? If you simply want to define religion as the bits outside of what science can explain, then we’re not really arguing. We’re simply using a word, “God,” for that which science can’t explain. I don’t have a problem with that. I do have a problem with saying God is a supernatural, creative, intelligent being. It’s simple confusion to say science can’t explain certain things; therefore, we have to be religious. To equate that kind of religiousness with belief in a personal, intelligent being, that’s confusion. And it’s pernicious confusion.
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Very interesting and thought-provoking post, Rob.
What do you mean by “And if there is a better way of arresting our descent into tribalism, mysticism and superstition, I haven’t heard it.” If I was to guess, I suspect you are saying that if more people read about the ‘God Delusion,’ there might be less in the way of tribal and religious warfare around the world.
It’s interesting to consider that statement next to the ideas about increasing globalization that are common in many of your threads … on the one hand, we are becoming more and more connected, aware of others, flatter. On the other, we are becoming more and more regional, self-interested, rounder (?). How do you reconcile those two extremes? (Do you actually think the tribal, mystical, and the superstitious among us are going to debate Dawkins on the internet?)
The tone of this line also suggests that tribalism, mysticism, and superstition are problematic, at least in some cases. Why? In my experience, people are quite able to live locally and globally at the same time. In fact, people tend to interpret global trends and ideas in local ways. (That’s Marshall Sahlins’s idea, anyway. As an anthropologist working in a small aboriginal community in northern Canada, I tend to agree.)
By the way, have you ever looked at Steven Jay Gould’s short essay called Non-Overlapping Magisteria (NOMA)? He argues that science and religion do not have to be in conflict … what would really help is if scientists stuck to doing science and theologians stuck to doing theology. It is a really useful piece to have in mind during debates like the one Dawkins raises. Here’s the text:
http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html
On the last point first :), Dawkins considers the two magisteria idea to be a cop-out and I’m inclined to agree. Religion fundamentally (no pun intended) makes claims about the world that are scientific in nature - always has, always will. Has to - because it ultimately has to reconcile physical with metaphysical (science of course makes no such claim). SJG’s view strikes me a little as a plea for everyone to get along. I don’t believe that’s possible, and I believe we’re accelerating towards irreconcilable conflict.
My original point is that the Internet - ubiquitous information and communication - will inevitably haul us up out of superstition - you can’t control people with dogma - not for long, any way - if they are exposed to it. I see us as still lurching out of the dark ages, and every few hundred years we take a big step forward. It took many years to pry us from the fiercest grip of organized religion in the middle of the last century, but we did it. Shame about Galileo, though. Still, the Church is sorry, so there’s that.
On your other point, perhaps it depends on one’s world view. I’m sure there’s no question that some people can be happy in ignorance of the world around them. But the Gene Roddenberry in me is inclined to think that one of our most powerful instincts is a deep and relentless curiousity about our world, and that the most compelling question we face - about everything - is “why”? Mysticism, superstition and xenophobia represent, to my mind, an inchoate state of being because they involve an acceptance of less than truth - curiousity unfulfilled, essentially.