They still don’t get it

Another day, another attempt to discredit resurgent atheism.

Roger Scruton, philosopher and research professor at the Institute for the Psychological Sciences, Virginia, has written a piece entitled “The Sacred and the Human” (which can be found linked through the wonderful Butterflies and Wheels).

Scruton’s position is that the arguments against religion made by Harris, Dawkins, Hitchens, et al. miss the grand point of religion; religion is not to be taken literally, he argues. By contrast, we should be looking at the anthropological origins of religion; regarding religion as we might regard the myths of classical Greece. In this way, Scruton argues, Hitchens and co entirely miss the point of religion.

Scruton writes:

What is a little more surprising is the extent to which religion is caricatured by its current opponents, who seem to see in it nothing more than a system of unfounded beliefs about the cosmos—beliefs that, to the extent that they conflict with the scientific worldview, are heading straight for refutation. Thus Hitchens, in his relentlessly one-sided diatribe God is Not Great, writes: “One must state it plainly. Religion comes from the period of human prehistory where nobody… had the smallest idea what was going on. It comes from the bawling and fearful infancy of our species, and is a babyish attempt to meet our inescapable demand for knowledge (as well as comfort, reassurance and other infantile needs).”

Scruton goes on to contrast Hitchens’ views with those of post-Enlightenment thinkers, who didn’t call for the abolition of religion, but rather a more appropriate view of the proper context of religion. Scranton tells us that these thinkers found that “the monotheistic belief systems were not related to ancient myths and rituals as science to superstition, or logic to magic. Rather, they were crystallisations of the emotional need which found expression both in the myths and rituals of antiquity and in the Vedas and Upanishads of the Hindus.”

I can almost get behind Scruton’s thinking to this point. I agree that a more appropriate way to view religion is as myth; the attempt to explain the existence of physical and/or moral truths in a manner that was understandable to the populace of the day. The fact that flood myths and virgin births, for instance, are so pervasive in religious myth should count as evidence that many of the world’s religions were attempting to use these stories as vehicles to convey specific teachings. The nature of these teachings are, of course, dependent upon the story (and perhaps the intended audience), but there is no question that there is considerable overlap in the moral and ethical (if not scientific) teachings of many of the world’s religions.

Speaking specifically about the Judeo-Christian tradition of Genesis , Scruton writes that “[Genesis] is easily refuted as an account of historical events: how can there be days without a sun, man without a woman, life without death? Read as a myth, however, this naive-seeming text reveals itself as a study of the human condition. The story of the fall is, Hegel wrote (in Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, 1827), “not just a contingent history but the eternal and necessary history of humanity.” It conveys truths about freedom, about guilt, about man, woman and their relationship, about our relation to nature and mortality.”

But herein lies the fatal flaw in Scruton’s argument. Scruton seems to be mired with a common affliction (and one that I have been accused of on several occations): academia. The whole religion-as-myth hypothesis is wonderful on paper, but falls flat as soon as you realize begin speaking to real people. Even if we simply look at Scruton’s example of Genesis, we must recognize that there are a significant number of people who believe that it is not metaphorically, but literally true.

58% of Americans are “absolutely certain” that god exists, while another 21% are “somewhat certain”.

A 2004 poll showed that 79% of Americans believe in the literal truth of the virgin birth of Jesus (that’s over 235 million people, if you’re keeping score). According to the same poll, 52% of Americans believe that Jesus will return to Earth, as the Bible tells us, with 15% of Americans believing that this will occur during their lifetime. Furthermore, 62% of people favour teaching creationism in public schools; that means 186 million Americans favour teaching dogmatic gibberish in favour of (or at least along side) fundamental, evidence-based modern biology.

I could go on and on like this all day. The point is clear: people believe in the literal truth of this stuff. It would be lovely if Scruton’s position were true. Unfortunately, the position of Dawkins et al is not “caricature”, as Scruton puts it. Thousands of people in sub-Saharan Africa will die today because of what the Catholic Church tells us about what how the creator of the universe views condoms. The suffering of literally millions of people with any number of extraordinarily painful diseases will be needlessly prolonged because of the views of religious politicians on the nature of “the soul” of an 8-cell blastocyst. Hundreds of people will die this week because of differing opinions about the life and death of a nomadic “prophet”.

These things are real; real people will have their lives destroyed because of conflict between mutually incompatible fairy tales. To paraphrase Sam Harris, the ridiculousness of the situation in which we find ourselves is precisely the same as if we were killing each other over the superiority of Mac OS X over Windows.

Scruton continues:

In many Old Testament stories, we see the ancient Israelites wrestling with this sacrificial urge. The stories of Cain and Abel, Abraham and Isaac and Sodom and Gomorrah are residues of extended conflicts, by which ritual was diverted from the human victim and attached first to animal sacrifices, and finally to sacred words. By this process a viable morality emerged from competition and conflict, and from the visceral rivalries of sexual predation. To repeat: religion is not the source of violence but the solution to it—the overcoming of mimetic desire and the transcending of the resentments and jealousies into which human communities are tempted by their competitive dynamic.

Open your eyes, sir. Read Deuteronomy, or Leviticus, or 2 Kings, and then talk to me about morality. Scruton tries to separate religion from god. I agree with this in principle, but doing so ignores the vast evidence suggesting that this is not what people really do. People literally believe this stuff. How should we respond to a book that teaches us that sending bears to eat children is fine by god? No one is denying that religion can be a source of moral teaching; but this requires that we ignore all of the blatent immorality that peppers all of our most sacred works.

Of course, no anti-atheist article would be complete without a little Hitler/Stalin straw-man. Scruton writes:

“The 20th century was the century of resentment. How else do you explain the mass murders of the communists and the Nazis, the seething animosities of Lenin and Hitler, the genocides of Mao and Pol Pot? The ideas and emotions behind the totalitarian movements of the 20th century are targeted: they identify a class of enemy whose privileges and property have been unjustly acquired. Religion plays no real part in the ensuing destruction, and indeed is usually included among the targets.”

How do I explain it? I explain it thus: dogmatism, plain and simple. To say that religion plays no real part is enormously misleading. The gas chambers and gulags were not the product of too much rational thinking; they were the result of dogmatic adherence to cults of personality and other views that were deemed to be inerrant. Notwithstanding the obvious Christian undertones of Nazism (and Hitler’s well-documented religiosity), the point here is simple: religion may not have been directly implicated, but the same factors were at play. Religion, in its actual, practiced form, is one form of dogmatism. It is the latter which is the real culprit. And our only weapons against it are logic, skepticism, and rational thought.

Scruton goes on to claim that religion is the antidote to, rather than the cause of, violence. There is little to no empirical data to suggest this is true, though I’m quite certain that Scruton believes it. By contrast, there exists a centuries old historical record testifying to the harmful, and sometimes flat out violent, effects of honest, dogmatic religious belief.

To be sure, no one (I hope) is saying that religion is the root of all evil; Richard Dawkins’ documentary of the same name was posed as a question, not as a statement, and Dawkins has gone on record as stating that no one thing is the cause of all evil. But religion, as a predominant form of dogma, must bear a large portion of blame for much of humankind’s most violent tendencies.

Perhaps what Scruton means here is that the idea of religion, rather than its practice, is the antidote to violence. In a sense, I agree. There are lessons in morality to be learned from most of our “holy” books. Unfortunately, we must do a far amount of cherry picking to find them; each of us could improve the Bible in countless ways, simply by removing vast stretches of the Old Testament. And those who believe that the New Testament sets everything straight would be wise to consider Paul’s view of the place women and slavery (and the failure of Jesus to utter so much as word of condemnation).

Scruton simply misses the critical point that there are people who actually believe the literal truth of these books, and who would like to see strict adherence to these works become a central tenet of government. More potentially damaging is the fact that Scruton’s views actually facilitate fundamentalism. We must be prepared to call these religious notions what they are: fables, with no more evidentiary support than for the existence of Santa Claus. We must be prepared to engage theists who claim certain inerrant truths about the whims of the creator of the universe; to say “how do you know?”, and to avoid taking “By faith” as a suitable response for anything. We must be prepared to fight the teaching of gobbledygook posing as science.

There is no question that we would be far, far better off if our modern religions were placed in the pantheon of myth, along with Thor, Zeus, Ra, and the rest. Unfortunately, there are simply too many people who believe the literal truth of it all. Perhaps one day we will reach a point at which our modern religions suffer this fate; where we can see the folly of the non-evidentiary belief in a mystical sky fairy. When this day comes, it will, undoubtedly, be due to the efforts of Hitchens, Dawkins, Harris, and the like.

We are nowhere near this day.

Sam Harris – Aspen Ideas Festival

I’m swamped today (almost grant season again!), so I’m just passing along a link that might be of interest.

Sam Harris, speaking at the Aspen Ideas Festival.

The video is about 1h long, but well worth it. It’s typical Sam; witty, insightful, and dead on the money. I just wish he wouldn’t begin every talk by “apologizing” for insulting anyone in the audience for insulting (i.e. providing justified criticism to a particular delusion) their religious beliefs. We’re way past that now, Sam. And besides, no one would be insulted if you criticized their favourite sports team, or their favourite sandwich, or even their favoured political party. Those are fair game; but unjustified “knowledge” of what the creator of the universe mandates with regards to work, sexuality, or biomedical research is verboten?

To be fair, Sam has a unique view of spirituality, which has landed him in some hot water with dyed-in-the-wool skeptics such as James Randi (read Sam’s response to Randi’s claims here). I personally tend to agree with Sam in some respects; we can be aware of our own “spirituality” without presupposing anything on insufficient evidence. In other respects, however, Sam occationally goes off the deep end, and provides what appears to be unjustified support for certain Eastern philosophies which, although they don’t by definition suggest the existence of a personal god, do make evidence-free claims about the nature of the universe.

For my part, these criticisms do not detract from the central message espoused by Sam: there is no evidence to suggest the existence of any particular god or of god in general. I would argue that such evidence cannot exist, though some would disagree. Nevertheless, Sam’s point is clear: our civilization cannot survive the unmitigated coexistence of Bronze Age ideas about morality and 21st century technology of warfare. The longer we allow religious dogma to go unchallenged; the more we privilege faith over all else, the closer we move toward the efficient commingling of these two destructive forces. Thankfully, there are people like Sam, Richard Dawkins, AC Grayling, Christopher Hitchens, and PZ Myers (to name a few) who have started to speak against this ridiculous scenario in which we now find ourselves.

No matter what your religious persuasion, do yourself a favour and listen (really listen) to what Sam has to say, and consider the reasons why you “know” the things you think you do.

Berkowitz ‘truth’

Peter Berkowitz has written a review (of sorts) of Chris Hitchens’ ‘God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything’, which is now available from the Wall Street Journal Online.

Now, I will be the first to admit that Hitchens is not my favourite person (his views on the Iraq war are, to put it mildly, somewhat out of step with my own), nor was ‘God is Not Great’ my favourite of the new crop of atheist literature. Richard Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion’ spoke much more to me as a scientist, although as a piece of science literature, it fell short of Dawkins’ previous works (such as ‘The Selfish Gene’ and ‘The Blind Watchmaker’, which ought to be manditory reading for all 3rd and 4th year undergraduate biology students). Sam Harris’ ‘The End of Faith’ and ‘Letter to a Christian Nation’, on the other hand, were the most lucid of the bunch; while Hitchens writes in flowery prose, Harris’ words are succinct and deadly accurate in effect.

Harris and Dawkins take a far more rational approach to the argument; they claim (rightly so) that there is simply no evidence to support the existence of god; they freely admit that disproving god is likewise impossible, but point out that that the burden of proof lies with the party making the positive claim (the theist), and that, moreover, one cannot disprove the existence of Thor, Zeus, Ra, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I would go one step further and argue that not only is there no evidence for the existence of god, but there is also no a priori reason to even hypothesize that god exists. I would also argue that any ‘evidence’ for the existence of god (alleged miracles, for instance) must, by definition, presuppose the existence of god. This simply begs the question; if circular arguments are invalid, they are always invalid. But I digress, and this is a topic for another post.

My goal here is to discuss Berkowitz’ review of Hitchens’ book.

Berkowitz starts out well, showing the latest sales figures for the “new” atheist literature that has come out in the last 2-3 years:

But one stunning new development under the sun is that promulgating atheism has become a lucrative business. According to a recent article in The Wall Street Journal, in less than 12 months atheism’s newest champions have sold close to a million books. Some 500,000 hardcover copies are in print of Richard Dawkins’s “The God Delusion” (2006); 296,000 copies of Christopher Hitchens’s “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” (2007); 185,000 copies of Sam Harris’s “Letter to a Christian Nation” (2006); 64,100 copies of Daniel C. Dennett’s “Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon”; and 60,000 copies of Victor J. Stenger’s “God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows that God Does not Exist” (2007).

It is true; atheism is popular once again, and we are all better for it. If nothing else, it has gotten atheists to stand up and say what they’ve always felt; there is simply no good reason to think that god exists. Some of us go one step further and suggest that religious beliefs do not automatically deserve respect simply because they are religious. Richard Dawkins claims that the late Douglas Adams was his first, and probably only convert; this trend is likely to continue. Most theists are unlikely to lose their delusion (and I find no reason not to use this term to describe this evidence-free belief in a mystical sky fairy or 1st century cosmic Jewish zombie), but many atheists have been empowered by these books. We don’t have to accept ridiculous Bronze Age ideas about morality; we don’t have to sacrifice our freedom of speech simply because we are “offending” someone’s beliefs (although why someone would be offended by slights against god is beyond me; presumably god can take care of god without any help).

Anyway, I digress once more. Back to Berkowitz:

Unlike the classical atheism of Epicurus and Lucretius, which rejected belief in the gods in the name of pleasure and tranquility, the new new atheism rejects God in the name of natural science, individual freedom and human equality.

The “new” atheism (Zeus, I hate that term!) rejects god on the grounds that there is no evidence to support god. That’s all. Science provides a mechanism for understanding complicated things in a rational manner, without needing to invoke god. Philosophy can provide moral teachings without presupposing anything on insufficient evidence.

Unlike the Enlightenment atheism of the 18th century, which arose in a still predominantly religious society and which frequently went to some effort to disguise or mute its disbelief, the new new atheism proclaims its hatred of God and organized religion loudly and proudly from the rooftops.

I don’t think any of the new atheists ‘hate’ god; they may hate the idea of god (as Hitchens clearly does), and they may hate the result of irrational belief, but they don’t hate god: they simply don’t believe that there is a god to hate.

And unlike the anti-modern atheism of Nietzsche and Heidegger, which regarded the death of God as a catastrophe for the human spirit, the new new atheism sees the loss of religious faith in the modern world as an unqualified good, lamenting only the perverse and widespread resistance to shedding once and for all the hopelessly backward belief in a divine presence in history.

I’m not sure that Dawkins or Harris (to pick two) have ever called for the immediate abolition of religion, but rather the immediate uptake of rational thought. The death of religion, in the minds of Dawkins and Harris (and this is an opinion I share), will come through the gradual realization that rational, evidence-based thinking is a far better way to understand the true nature of reality (and, I would argue, to deal with death, the ultimate ’cause’ of religion, in a more appropriate way), than is religious superstition. The immediate death of religion would be catastrophic; its gradual replacement would be a godsend (ahem…). Of course, we may not have time to wait for this gradual process; Bronze Age ideas about morality do not mix well with 21st century tools of warfare, which is why it is so important for atheists to stand up and proclaim the idiocy of religious superstition in all forms.

To be fair to Berkowitz, however, it would seem that Hitchens is far more willing to immediately abolish religion. Needless to say, I think this would be a mistake.

They contend that from the vantage point of the 21st century, and thanks to the moral progress of mankind and the achievements of natural science, we can now know, with finality and certainty, that God does not exist and organized religion is a fraud. The disproportion between the bluster and bravado of their rhetoric and the limitations of their major arguments is astonishing.

Fighting words, indeed. Let’s read on…

But [Hitchens’] arguments do not come close to disproving God’s existence

Oops, a misstep in the first paragraph. Does Berkowitz, a professor of law at George Mason University, really believe that all things are true unless disproved? Is the onus not on those who claim the existence of a particular phenomenon to provide evidence to support that claim? Why should Hitchens or anyone else be required to disprove anything? Has the theist side made out its prima facie case for gods existence? The answer seems to be a clear ‘no’, as evidenced by the number of times you will hear the “well you can’t disprove god either’ argument coming from theists who think they’re being clever.

Consider Mr. Hitchens’s contention, elaborated at length and with gusto, that religion by its very nature compels people to behave cruelly and violently. According to Mr. Hitchens, religion educates children to hate nonbelievers, encourages grown-ups to engage in slaughter and conquest for God’s greater glory, and obliges the “true believer” to restlessly circle the globe subduing peoples and nations until “the whole world bows the knee.”

The bloody history of oppression and war undertaken on behalf of the gods and God, from time immemorial, makes all decent people shudder.

Ahh, we agree. There is no question that people have done enormous harm in the name of religious dogma (and in the name of other dogmas, as we will see…). Good to see that Berkowitz does not dispute this.

But Mr. Hitchens knows perfectly well that human beings are not born in Rousseauian purity and freedom, and then made savage by the imposition of the chains of religion. Therefore, he should have asked whether and to what extent the varieties of religion have inflamed or rather disciplined humanity’s powerful built-in propensity, attested to by social science, to fight and kill. But he didn’t.

A fair enough critique of the book. But even if we accept that religion simply causes the manifestation of a hypothetical latent “propensity” to murder and rape, does this absolve religion of guilt? Certainly not. The fact remains that religion was necessary, if not sufficient, for the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, and any number of other horrors committed throughout the ages.

Mr. Hitchens mocks the crudity of the biblical principle known in Latin as lex talionis, or an “eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot.” But suppose, as Jewish teaching suggests, that the biblical principle put an end to the practice of taking a leg for a foot and a life for an eye, and in its place established a principle that, though differently interpreted today, remains a cornerstone of our notion of justice — that the punishment should fit the crime.

What Berkowitz is saying, in essence, is that “an eye for an eye” is better than the previous system of “a life for an eye”. But this is heinous cultural relativism. Yes, we still “let the punishment fit the crime”, and as Berkowitz correctly points out, we have modified this slightly since biblical days. But why have we done this? Because we (feeble human beings) have recognized that “an eye for an eye makes the world go blind” (ironic that I should use a line from Gandhi, considering his treatment at the hand of Hitchens in the same book!). If we had it god’s way, we’d all be blind, toothless, and limping. You see, if we accept Berkowitz’ premise here, we must absolve those who choose to accept god’s true version of morality. But if we accept that “an eye for an eye” (in the literal sense) is wrong, then it is always wrong, full stop.

The fact is, god’s prescription for punishment is immoral. That is Hitchens’ point; it doesn’t matter if “an eye for an eye” replaced an even worse system; an omnipotent, omniscient god should be able to do better.

Similarly, Mr. Hitchens heaps scorn on the biblical story of Abraham’s binding of Isaac, in which, at the last moment, an angel stays Abraham’s hand. What kind of barbarian, wonders Mr. Hitchens, would prepare to sacrifice his son at God’s command, and what kind of morally stunted individuals would honor such a man, or the deity who made the demand? Yet Mr. Hitchens’s categorical claim that religion poisons everything is undermined by the common interpretation according to which God’s testing of Abraham taught, among other things, that the then widespread practice of child-sacrifice was contrary to God’s will, and must be put to an end forever.

Very clever, Mr. Berkowitz. Very clever. But notice what is going on here; Hitchens has made the argument that Abraham’s act, at god’s behest, is one example of the immorality of religious teachings. Berkowitz is prepared to simply wave away this issue by stating a “common interpretation” is that the Abraham incident was actually a good thing. But on what grounds can Berkowitz make this claim? Why does his claim have any more veracity than Hitchens’? If anything, Hitchens’ claim has more veracity because it is based on what the book actually says. I am, of course, free to interpret any book however I choose. But the problem with interpretations of religion is that they aren’t based on anything tangible. Did god stay Abraham’s hand to show that child-sacrifice was immoral, or was he truly asking Abraham to kill his son? How would we know?

At the same time, Mr. Hitchens has next to nothing to say about the historical role of religion, particularly Christianity, particularly in America, in nourishing the soil in which our widely and deeply shared beliefs in liberty, democracy and equality took root and grew strong

This is a common point made by theists (particularly American theists), but I have yet to read a convincing argument that suggests that Christianity has anything to do with the development of liberty, democracy, or equality. Someone please point me in the direction of a single line of scripture that claims that democracy is god’s will. Someone please show me a single line of scripture that says that all people are equal or should be free to do and say as they please. By contrast, I can point you to several places in the Bible that suggest that god has no interest in any of these concepts, but instead was a great fan of slavery, autocracy, and maintenance of the superiority of the Jewish people.

Mr. Hitchens anticipates that critics will point to those crimes against humanity, dwarfing religion’s sins, committed in the name of secular ideas in the 20th century. He attempts to deflect the challenge with sophistry: “It is interesting to find that people of faith now seek defensively to say that they are no worse than fascists or Nazis or Stalinists.” But who is behaving defensively here? Mr. Hitchens is the one who unequivocally insists that religion poisons everything, and it is Mr. Hitchens who holds out the utopian hope that eradicating it will subdue humanity’s evil propensities and resolve its enduring questions.

And now we come to the big one; the last-ditch argument that will always come from theists when you’ve really got them on the ropes; the Stalin/Hitler/Mao/Pol Pot defense. Let me summarize this for you: Stalin (to pick one; Hitler was most certainly not an atheist, but a staunch Catholic to the end) was an atheist and supported state-sponsored atheism (none of this is in question, by the way). Stalin was also responsible for tens of millions of deaths (also not in dispute). Thus, atheism causes atrocities as well.

First off, it is, as Hitchens points out, laughable that the faithful would reduce their argument to what amounts to “well, you’re as bad as us”, as though that strengthened their case (they’re supposed to be divinely inspired, remember!). But more importantly, it misses one enormous thing: atheism had nothing to do with the atrocities of Stalin (or any of the others).

The next reason this line of thinking is wrong is that it commits the fallacy for which this site is named: post hoc, ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this). Stalin was an atheist and a mass murderer, therefore his atheism caused him to murder. Stalin also had a moustache, as did Hitler. Perhaps that is the real culprit…

The bottom line is, correlation does not imply causality.

What causes virtually all atrocities to be committed is one thing, and one thing only: dogma; that is, the belief in the absolute, inerrant truth of a particular point of view. For most people, this dogma takes the form of religion. For others, it takes the form of communism, or national socialism, or what-have-you. But there is no question that only bad things can come from dogmatic adherence to a particular world view.

Atheism (and certainly the “new atheism” with which Berkowitz deals here), on the other hand, is absolutely non-dogmatic, and posits only one argument: there is insufficient evidence to suggest the existence of a supernatural entity called god. I know of no atheist (and certainly not Dawkins, Harris, or Hitchens) who would not change their views in a heartbeat should sufficient evidence be proffered.

All we know, we know through evidence. How do we know that DNA is the genetic material? Because over 100 years of molecular biology lead us to this conclusion. One could postulate otherwise, but would then be forced to explain the mountain of data suggesting the importance of DNA to heredity. But if an alternative theory was proffered and sufficient evidence presented, I would change my belief in an instant.

This is the absolute definition of non-dogmatic thought. One must always be ready to alter or abandon one’s fundamental views in the presence of evidence. That is what the new atheists do, and what theists do not.

Interestingly, Berkowitz seems to see this connection:

Nor is his case bolstered by his observation that 20th-century totalitarianism took on many features of religion. That only brings home the need to distinguish, as Mr. Hitchens resolutely refuses to do, between authentic and corrupt, and just and unjust, religious teachings.

Yes, 20th century totalitarianism did take on the features of religion, because they were both based on dogmas.

But what is an “authentic” religious teaching? Perhaps what Berkowitz means is “palatable” religious teaching; ignore the teachings that are at odds with our modernity, accept those that serve us well? Now where did I read the line about “nothing added, nothing taken away”???

Noting surveys that showed that half of all scientists are religious, Gould commented amusingly that “Either half my colleagues are enormously stupid, or else the science of Darwinism is fully compatible with conventional religious beliefs — and equally compatible with atheism.”

Berkowitz is discussing Stephen Jay Gould, who was a brilliant scientist, but a shameless religious apologist. Darwinism is fully compatible with religious beliefs, if and only if one is prepared to do some seriously heavy mental gymnastics.

This notwithstanding, appeals to authority get us nowhere.

Gould was correct to think that both conventional religious belief and atheism are compatible with natural science, in part because “there are many questions that by their very nature must be recognized to lie beyond the legitimate scope of the scientific method.” Such questions — toward which the mind naturally wanders, though it is susceptible to ambush by the crude scientism of which Mr. Hitchens occasionally avails himself — include: Where did the universe come from, and is it governed by purpose?

Yes, there are questions that lie outside of science (although ‘where did the universe come from?’ isn’t one of them). But what good does it do us to say “god-did-it” and then move on? How does this advance the discussion?

And let us not forget that religion does not limit itself to these hypothetical “beyond-science” questions, as creationism testifies. Theists regularly impose their evidence-free beliefs on the natural world, which is solely the realm of the scientific method. Go ahead and speculate about the “purpose” of life; just stay the heck away from reality, thank you.

As for his claim that the Bible abounds in falsehood and contradiction, Mr. Hitchens makes great sport with an old straw man. Yes, traditions teach that Moses wrote the Pentateuch, yet the Pentateuch refers to Moses in the third person and tells the story of his death. Yes, Matthew and Luke disagree on the Virgin Birth and the genealogy of Jesus. And so on. The literalness of Mr. Hitchens’s readings would put many a fundamentalist to shame.

I fail to see how valid contradictions are “straw men”. Berkowitz continues:

However, isolating the supposed religious significance of the Bible from the communities and interpretive traditions that have elaborated its teaching is invalid. It is like deriving the meaning of the Constitution today by reading its provisions without reference to “The Federalist Papers,” which provides authoritative commentary on its principles; without reference to the two centuries of cases and controversies through which the Supreme Court has sought to construe its meaning; and without reference to the two centuries of experience through which the American people have sought to put the institutional framework it outlines into practice.

Berkowitz is claiming that the bible should be read as (to use a Canadian term) a living tree ; that is, it should be interpreted with later writings. I agree with this with respect to constitutions, but the bible is the word of an omnipotent, omniscient god. Moreover, it contains explicit instructions not to add or take away.

And it is not a straw man to say that millions of people currently believe that the bible should be interpreted 100% literally. Perhaps Berkowitz isn’t familiar with Fred Phelps? And before you say “but Fred Phelps is a nutjob fundamentalist”, let me ask you: how do we objectively determine whose faith is more “correct”? Perhaps Berkowitz contention that we should view the bible in light of later teachings is correct; perhaps not. How would we know? In science, we’ve figured this out: new theories are welcome, but they must explain why the old theory appeared correct. Religion has no such mechanism. There is no objective way to determine whose version of faith is right. Is god a moderate or a fundamentalist? Seriously.

Of all the Bible’s sublime and sustaining teachings, none is more so than the teaching that explains that humanity is set apart because all human beings — woman as well as man the Bible emphasizes — are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).

…and Berkowitz shows his hand. The theist can never, ever, make an argument without resorting to biblical references. Mr. Berkowitz, what is the extra-biblical evidence that Genesis 1:27 is literally correct? Without such evidence, there is no reason to think any more of your own creation myth that we do of the myths of the Norsemen or of classical Greece.

That a teaching is sublime and sustaining does not make it true. But that, along with its service in laying the moral foundations in the Western world for the belief in the dignity of all men and women — a belief that our new new atheists take for granted and for which they provide no compelling alternative foundation — is reason enough to give the variety of religions a fair hearing. And it is reason enough to respect believers as decent human beings struggling to make sense of a mysterious world.

Finally, we come to the end.

It would seem that Berkowitz believes simply because it makes him feel good. Indeed a sublime and sustaining teaching doesn’t make it a true one. Why would I choose to languish in a lie, when I can set about an honest, open exploration for the truth?

There is no question that god is not the source of morality; for that, at the bare minimum, god would have to exist. In the absence of any evidence to this, we must provisionally conclude that god does not exist.

Berkowitz is right, though. We should respect believers. They, too, are on a quest to understand the literal nature of our existence. Of course, this does not imply that we must respect the belief.

To once again paraphrase from Richard Dawkins, simply because two opposing points of view are expressed with equal vigor, does not imply that the truth lies somewhere in between. It is possible for one to simply be wrong. There are many reasons to think that the universe operates according to natural, definable laws, which are made evident to us through the thoughtful application of the scientific method. It is also true that science cannot answer all questions; for that we have alternatives, such as moral philosophy and law.

But the tie that binds is the ability to speculate and explore this beautiful existence without assuming anything on insufficient evidence. The idea of god may make us feel good; this doesn’t make it true.

I remain,

Michael