Questioning the Authority for Advocacy on Public Policy

The posts

• Greece v. Galloway and a Fernando Wood in the making: Senate Chaplain Barry Black,
• Prayer at Public Meetings: A Bad Idea and 
• On Bill O'Reilly's 'War on Christmas', Spielberg's 'Lincoln', Pathos, Ethos and Logos 

all address the central theme of individuals using the rhetoric of pathos and ethos when advocating public policy.

History tells us its perilous to listen to the likes of Congressman Fernando Wood ("Congress must never declare equal those whom God created unequal") with the authority they argue has been divinely bestowed upon them.

Equally so, it is perilous to give credence to the most recent economic policy recommendations made by Pope Francis (Pope demands 'legitimate redistribution' of wealth).

If the Pope is going to advocate a global re-working of the capitalist system, he opens himself up to having the facts that directly lead to the authority by which he makes the advocacy challenged.  Specifically:

• A virgin birth;
• Resurrection of a dead human;

All of the Pope's authority hinges on these extraordinary biological claims.  And, as Carl Sagan rightfully argues, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".

Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson asserts, the Pope's belief and faith may have "evolutionary utility":

...The empirical evidence points to substantial group-level benefits for most enduring religions.

Benefits include defining the group, coordinating action to achieve shared goals and developing elaborate mechanisms to prevent cheating. The same evolutionary processes that cause individual organisms and social insect colonies to function as adaptive units also cause religious groups to function as adaptive units. Religious believers frequently compare their communities to a single body or a beehive. This is not just a poetic metaphor but turns out to be correct from an evolutionary perspective....

 However, as one can see with Congressman Fernando Wood,  it is a two-edged sword.

Related: The Clergy Project:

The Clergy Project is a confidential online community for active and former professional clergy/religious leaders who do not hold supernatural beliefs. The Clergy Project launched on March 21st, 2011.

Currently, the community's 582 Forum Participants use it to support, network and discuss what it's like being an unbelieving professional in a religious community or being an unbeliever as ex-clergy in their world.

The Clergy Project’s goal is to support Forum Participants as they move beyond faith. Forum Participants freely discuss issues related to their transition from believer to unbeliever including:

The Clergy Project is referred to by Daniel Dennett in his presentation: How to Tell if You're an Atheist

Advice for a zealous atheist

Zealotry is not a behavior limited to religous individuals. Atheists can also be zealots. Take the case of P.Z. Myers:

...Myers is a biologist at the University of Minnesota at Morris who has a national following for Pharyngula, the blog on which he regularly exposes and lambastes efforts by creationists to undermine the teaching of evolution. A few weeks ago, he wrote a blog entry in which he defended a University of Central Florida student who protested the presence of religious groups on his campus by taking a Eucharist — the small wafer blessed in Roman Catholic services and then seen as the body of Christ — and removing it from the service rather than consuming it. Myers, in an entry entitled “It’s a Frackin’ Cracker” — questioned why this was such a big deal.

Ever since, Myers and his university have been bombarded by e-mail and other messages attacking him and calling for the university to punish him for insulting Catholic teachings.

On Thursday, Myers responded by staging what he called a “great desecration.” For the desecration, he took a communion wafer (sent to him by a supporter in the United Kingdom, who removed it from a church there), and pierced it with a rusty nail. ("I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date,” Myers quipped on the blog.) He then threw it in the garbage with a banana peel and coffee grounds, symbols of refuse. But to show that he wasn’t picking on Catholics, Myers added to his mixture some ripped out pages of the Koran. As a proud atheist, Myers isn’t a member of a faith that he could desecrate at the same time so he took a text he does cherish — The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins — and tore some pages out and added them to the trash...

Atheist like Professor Myers should keep in mind that many fellow scientists are making the case that religion itself is an evolutionary phenomenon. David Sloan Wilson, for one, has taken on none other than Richard Dawkins for his derision of 'God' delusionists.

In the search for greater understanding, which should be the primary goal of any scientists, an appreciation for religion - both its contributions and its detractions to our humanity - should inform the rhetoric.

There is something to be said for the psychology inherent within the old adage: You attract more bees with honey than with vinegar. Ridicule of religon may just activate a primative 'fight' response rather than the rational, disspassionate critical thinking atheists should be striving for.

NYT: Pope Cancels Speech After Protest at University

Students at Sapienza University in Italy protested a scheduled presentation by the Catholic Pope for his position on Galileo (via NYT):

...The pope’s speech at the university, which was founded by Pope Boniface VIII in 1303 and is now public, was to mark the start of the academic year. But professors and students objected, citing specifically a speech that Benedict gave in 1990, when he was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, on Galileo, condemned by the Inquisition in the early 1600s for arguing that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

In that speech, Cardinal Ratzinger, who would become pope in 2005, quoted the Austrian philosopher Paul Feyerabend as saying: “The church at the time was much more faithful to reason than Galileo himself, and also took into consideration the ethical and social consequences of Galileo’s doctrine. Its verdict against Galileo was rational and just.”

In the speech, Cardinal Ratzinger did not argue against the validity of science generally or take the church’s position from Galileo’s time that heliocentrism was heretical. But he asserted, as he has often since elected pope, that science should not close off religion and that science has been used in destructive ways.

Marcello Cini, a prominent physicist at the university who led the protest, was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying he was “satisfied” at the cancellation. “I thought, and I continue to think, that his visit was ambiguous and an attack on the independence of culture and the university,” he said.

Papal appearances are rarely canceled, and usually for reasons of security or illness. In 1991, Pope John Paul II also faced small protests in his only visit to La Sapienza.

Atheists Must Be Careful not to Throw Out the Baby Christ with the Bath Water

Today's Washington Times quotes Reason Magazine editor Nick Gillespie on atheism as the "topic du juor":

..."The rise of militant Islam revived questions as to where does faith lead people?" Mr. Gillespie said. "It all proceeds from September 11, which in many profound ways was a religious act."

Plus, he added, the current administration has given religion-friendly policies a bad name.

"To the extent that this administration has been seen as a complete failure," he said, "on the right, you'll see a reach for a new kind of conservatism. It will have more in common with atheism that says religion should not be part of politics."

Our country will be served well by public policies that are logic-based and areligious. However, atheist would serve themselves well by acknowledging that religion, as a cultural and self-governing philosophy, has had its merits throughout human history. Like most things that are man-made, it's a two-edged sword.

Religion is part of our Evolutionary success up to this point, and as such merits an open-minded approach to its role in our society. It is appropriate that atheists like David Sloan Wilson call out their fellow atheists and remind them that a holistic analysis of the human condition is in the true 'spirit' of the Scientific Method.

One doesn't have to believe the mythology of the virgin birth, walking on water and the holy trinity to know that a Nazerene's philosophy to follow the Golden Rule has merit; both philosophically and scientifically.

To all that are guided by Jesus of Nazarus' message to 'love thy neighbor as thyself'...Merry Christmas.

Poison or Cure? Religious Belief in the Modern World

Video of a debate, dialogue, and discussion with Christopher Hitchens and Alister McGrath at Georgetown Univeristy via RichardDawkins.net. Poison or Cure is a false dichotomy, becuase Religion is a man-made, two-edged sword.



Related:

• The Scientific Method at its best: A fellow atheist takes on Richard Dawkins
• The Top Ten Myths of Intelligent Design
• Michael Shermer on believing strange things
• Creation Museum is built on a foundation that belies its mission
• Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton debate religion
• Religion: A man-made, two-edged sword
• What is wrong with Intelligent Design?
• Neil deGrasse Tyson: The Perimeter of Ignorance
• Must See TV!: C-SPAN BookTV: Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion"
• Conservative Culture and Porkopolis debate Intelligent Design
• Response to "If there is no God, then why be moral?"
• Intelligent Design is not Science
• Intelligent Design is just religion under the covers
• Where's the 'Hypothesis' for Intelligent Design?
• Editorial: The false choices of Intelligent Design
• It's not anti-Creationism; It's anti-anti-Scientific Method
• District Court Ruling on Intelligent Design
• WSJ Opinion Journal: Faith in Theory
• Ohio reverses Evolution mandate
• WSJ Science Journal: Two New Discoveries Answer Big Questions in Evolution Theory
• CoyoteBlog: Advice for the "Reality-Based" Community

The Scientific Method at its best: A fellow atheist takes on Richard Dawkins

The Scientific Method is one of mankind's greatest discovery. If you're reading this blog post, you have benefitted from the methodology that provides a path to truth that each reasoning individual can independently journey on.

As noted on the University of California Riverside discusssion of the Scientific Method:

...The great advantage of the scientific method is that it is unprejudiced: one does not have to believe a given researcher, one can redo the experiment and determine whether his/her results are true or false. The conclusions will hold irrespective of the state of mind, or the religious persuasion, or the state of consciousness of the investigator and/or the subject of the investigation. Faith, defined as belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence, does not determine whether a scientific theory is adopted or discarded...

Peer Review is a major component of the Scientific Method. Evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson's provides an excellent example of peer review along with the unprejudiced and open-mindedness approach to scientific inquiry in his essay 'Beyond Demonic Memes Why, Richard Dawkins is Wrong About Religion' (HT: Andrew Sullivan)

Wilson challenges his fellow atheist Richard Dawkins to get back to the basics of science and do more than just express his loathing for followers of religion and calling them delusional (great presentation here and here). Professor Wilson lays out a well reasoned case for being true to the discipline of the scientific method in analyzing the role religion has had from an evolutionary perspective and rightly reminds Dawkins that the methodology is key:

...Toward the end of The God Delusion, Dawkins waxes poetic about the open-mindedness of science compared to the closed-mindedness of religion. He describes the heart-warming example of a scientist who changed his long-held beliefs on the basis of a single lecture, rushing up to his former opponent in front of everyone and declaring “Sir! I have been wrong all these years!”

This inspiring example represents one end of the scientific bell curve when it comes to open-mindedness. At the other end are people such as Louis Agassiz, one of the greatest biologists of Darwin’s day, who for all his brilliance and learning never accepted the theory of evolution. Time will tell where Dawkins sits on the bell curve of open-mindedness concerning group selection in general and religion in particular. At the moment, he is just another angry atheist, trading on his reputation as an evolutionist and spokesperson for science to vent his personal opinions about religion.

It is time now for us to roll up our sleeves and get to work on understanding one of the most important and enigmatic aspects of the human condition.

There's more than meets the eye in Wilson's essay. As you read it, consider the question: Do any of the world's major religions have a built-in mechanism like the scientific method that allows a peer to review and challenge the pronouncements of an individual with the prominence Dawkins has in the scientific community? This is science at its best...valueing truth and process over personality.

Mr. Dawkins may have been taken down a peg by his colleague, but in the end both Dawkins and science are all the better for it.

A related argument to Wilson's holistic view of religion was made in a prior post: 'Religion: A man-made, two-edged sword':

...Religion [the belief in and reverence for a supernatural power or powers regarded as creator and governor of the universe] is a man-made institution; a meme that offers humanity, like many man-made things, a two-edged sword.

The first edge has been used to create a more harmonious and prosperous society when individual rights conflict:

• Don't like the way a neighbor's cattle keeps eating your crops...Thou Shalt not kill him.
• You're already married but you think your neighbor looks kind of cute...Thou shalt not commit adultery, etc.

It can be argued that the 'Golden Rule', a foundational principle of many religions, is the chicken to the egg of cooperation as an evolutionary survival strategy .

The second edge of the sword has historically been used as a justification for violence and subjugation. Examples include the Inquisition, Taliban's brutality to women and the Islamic theocracy in Iran. Humanity's challenge today is the terroism justified by religion; more specifically, by Isalmic Facist...

Update: Great analysis on the scientific method: Bad Science Journalism and the Myth of the Oppressed Underdog

Related:

• The Top Ten Myths of Intelligent Design
• Michael Shermer on believing strange things
• Creation Museum is built on a foundation that belies its mission
• Christopher Hitchens and Al Sharpton debate religion
• Religion: A man-made, two-edged sword
• What is wrong with Intelligent Design?
• Neil deGrasse Tyson: The Perimeter of Ignorance
• Must See TV!: C-SPAN BookTV: Richard Dawkins' "The God Delusion"
• Conservative Culture and Porkopolis debate Intelligent Design
• Response to "If there is no God, then why be moral?"
• Intelligent Design is not Science
• Intelligent Design is just religion under the covers
• Where's the 'Hypothesis' for Intelligent Design?
• Editorial: The false choices of Intelligent Design
• It's not anti-Creationism; It's anti-anti-Scientific Method
• District Court Ruling on Intelligent Design
• WSJ Opinion Journal: Faith in Theory
• Ohio reverses Evolution mandate
• WSJ Science Journal: Two New Discoveries Answer Big Questions in Evolution Theory
• CoyoteBlog: Advice for the "Reality-Based" Community