20 Comments on Me, my team, God and the enlightenment

Kevin Mooney on Wed, 24th Mar 2010 10:06 pm


I am hoping it will eventually appear on i-Player as I only caught the end and at the moment it says it is not available.

Matt on Wed, 24th Mar 2010 10:14 pm


I caught the last half of your programme as I was making my tea. It was fascinating. Sadly, it’s not available on iPlayer. Is there any way I can hear it again?

JamieC on Thu, 25th Mar 2010 9:13 am


Such is the delight of iplayer – it allows the appreciation of the beautiful game in real time without having to make the compromise of missing out completely on intellectually stimulating programming!

Very interesting programme, am looking forward to the second part. Certainly the presence of ritualistic behaviour in other species seems to indicate a support for the adaptionist approach. Given the community interactions which underpin humanity’s development it can be suggested that the shared rituals of religious belief served a very useful role in bonding disparate human beings together.

Of course religious belief has been misused but it is crucial to examine its positive roles as well. As you mention in your blog above there can be a tendency, particularly in the current climate where the extremes of religious and athiest belief seem to be dominating debate, for each side to instantly dismiss the other. As with most aspects of 21CE what is required is the creation of space for open debate where differing viewpoints can contribute and, hopefully, grow.

James Horn on Thu, 25th Mar 2010 9:43 am


Very interesting programme, Matthew – I’ll be listening to the rest when they’re on (through the joys of iPlayer too I suspect).

I am always intrigued by research into religious beliefs (which I would say is different to faith) and how the analysis of it is so often based firmly within the paradigms of human knowledge. Surely if you are looking at something that purports to be beyond the understanding of the human mind (or indeed outside reason) such as ‘spirituality’, then a consideration needs to be be made that aspects of human belief may be outside the realms of contemporary science?

I’m not saying that we should blindly accept anything, rather that a true scientific analysis should accept the theoretical existence of the belief in question, in order to be sufficiently thorough.

I suspect you’ll either get lots of comments on this, or none – we shall see…

Interesting to see how in the long term it fits with the 21ce stuff too…

mas on Thu, 25th Mar 2010 10:25 am


It was interesting – although I thought the example about apes was nonsense. I don’t think we have a predisposition to believe stuff other than how the environment and culture we’re brought up in shapes us and nothing in the programme convinces me otherwise – I refuse to believe The bit at the beginning about how secular people increasingly believe in the supernatural was intriguing though, I always use the argument that I’m not a non believer, I just don’t believe in organised religion and for that matter am sceptical of much science, but I do like to believe there are things we don’t understand – so maybe there’s something to do with curiosity coupled with those who tend to believe those who seek out answers. As ever with this kind of stuff I prefer to think it’s the relationships between people that have a stronger influence than either how our brains are wired or whichever higher power is felt to be influencing us.

Ged Parker on Thu, 25th Mar 2010 4:18 pm


When did we invent religion and why?
As we are the same as we were c200,000 years ago with the same intellectual capability to ask the big questions my guess is when we understood the passing of time before our births and after our deaths. Understanding our mortality and that the earth and its contents and creatures existed before and after us there had to be greater powers tocreate the universe Therefore our existance must have fitted within the context of a greater plan. By appeasing and worshiping these powers not only could we determine explanations for the wonders of nature but also derive meanings to our existence.
Though science now just about completely explains the history of the planet and our evolution, religious observation still delivers great comfort to those who require meaning to their lives. Deliver my Thought for the Day but don’t try and justify the Haiti earthquake.
The second role of religon is to control reproduction. We are told ours is the most complex; females that have limited opportunities to carry small numbers of babies, long gestation periods and even longer rearing periods before the next generation can start again, preferably with at least 3rd or 4th cousins outwards. Religion evolved to codify these processes, contolled by a priesthood- who, critically, were the sperm carrying version of the species with theevolved strength and power instincts rather than nuturing instincts.
Again science and technology has undermined this function. Many women control their own fertility, the distinction between mens’ jobs and womens’ jobs is disappearing, we are at the point of minimising genetic defects, women are clearly not the inferior sex.. It’s no accident that organised religon struggles to hang onto control of sexual behaviour with male controled rules.
The emergence of religion did deliver huge evolutionary benefits but as we now know what we don’t know religon is reduced to ceromonies for those rites of passages in our lives, and possibly wagging the finger to stop us using science and technology to extingush ourselves!

Christine Sherrington on Thu, 25th Mar 2010 9:35 pm


I suppose in my way, I tend to stay out of conversations and then drop in, from time to time. Forgive me if I “speak my mind”, in response to your description of the program, Matthew, and not after having listened to the program, itself.

Perhaps it is fashionable to openly speak about not being religious or spiritual, or believing in God, in this “21st century” period. I agree with you that belief has played a crucial role in our development as a species. Belief about who we are, where we come from and where we are going is the lifeblood for all human societies, controlled by us or otherwise.

I personally have lived in urban and rural environments, only in the North American context. To teach a population through mediums that there is no God, that we are it, that we are the most important living thing on earth, that we have the power to make life and to take it away, can have dangerous consequences to young people who need to know about right and wrong. And yes, Right and wrong, not just a world of maybes. Like a tree, we cannot grow if we have no solidity, (which is where believe of self and other I think come in). The maybes are just the conditions in which the tree grows.

God exists beyond the picture of a big man with sandles, and God exists even within the world of those who esteem not to believe in Him.

With due respect to all those comment and to the conversation I have not listened to – sometimes the best listening comes from not listening in linear fashion, but in listening with your gut, and knowing what is right.

Sincerely,

mas on Fri, 26th Mar 2010 11:02 am


“sometimes the best listening comes from not listening in linear fashion, but in listening with your gut, and knowing what is right.”

listening to the programme would be a good start prior to giving lectures on listening!

matthew taylor on Fri, 26th Mar 2010 6:49 pm


Thanks to those who listened and commented (and even to those who didn’t and still commented!). I hope you enjoy next week’s. What the programmes taught me is that religious belief is a fascinating topic which offers many insights into the way we work as a species. It doesn’t incline me more to faith but it does make me impatient with thsoe who think religious conviction can and should be dismissed as anachronistic mumbo jumbo

Kevin Mooney on Sat, 27th Mar 2010 2:36 pm


I thought it was a great program, Matthew & I look forward to the other one. I wish there were more like it. It has helped me develop my own thinking.
My take away from it, as a Humanist, is that we maybe need to concentrate more on building non-religious alternatives to the things that people value from religion, rather than just convincing them that God does not exist (which would be rather like telling a small child that Father Christmas doesn’t exist).
Having said that, religion really is mumbo jumbo! You made the point that our religious belief is based on its use to us, rather than whether it is true. And someone on your program very wisely said “people have a strong bias to believe certain things, and will lap up anything that confirms their belief”. We tend to want to cling on to our ‘psychological crutch’. It is interesting to observe that the previous comments to your blog have exhibited this trait of avioding the uncomfortable spotlight of critical reason. James suggests that there are aspects of belief beyond reason & that’s OK. Mas doesn’t believe in ‘organised’ religion & much of science (!). Christine says we need religion to bring up our children, and best not to listen to other people.

mas on Sat, 27th Mar 2010 7:24 pm


My interpretation of “critical reason” is to try & remain open minded to both spirituality and science – I said I was sceptical of much science, not that I didn’t ‘believe’ in it. For me, to blindly accept science is little different than those who in previous times accepted the preachings of religion – not least because so much of science questions or disputes what was previously considered scientific fact.

I agree very much with “we maybe need to concentrate more on building non-religious alternatives to the things that people value from religion”

I think the move away from religion has meant a loss in lots of good things that are very valuable to society. I’m interested with this for example that so many faith based schools seem to excel and wonder if this is because they are able to base what they do on strong principles and beliefs – now really you’d think this should be possible without having to subscribe to a particular faith, but is it? This is the sort of thing I thought the introduction of citizenship to the national curriculum would encourage, but possibly because of the desire of the education system to accredit and assess everything it hasn’t turned out that way.

Livy on Sun, 28th Mar 2010 5:56 pm


Mas, interesting points.

Kevin, good stuff.

Christine, bunk.

It’s nothing to do with living in a fashionable age of not believing in God. Non believers do respect your religious beliefs. But only to the same extent that they respect your opinion that your children are intelligent.

David Hume understood that extraordinary claims should produce extraordinary evidence, but what actually happens is that extraordinary claims lead to extraordinary conviction.

“No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish” (An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1758).

I think this is what Christopher Hitchens means when he says (wonderfully bluntly) in debates, ‘what can be asserted without evidence, can also be dismissed without evidence’.

Christine Sherrington on Tue, 30th Mar 2010 9:10 pm


“I think this is what Christopher Hitchens means when he says (wonderfully bluntly) in debates, ‘what can be asserted without evidence, can also be dismissed without evidence’.” Good point, Livy, but I have a question for you:

Do you love your children? Prove it.

Livy on Wed, 31st Mar 2010 1:00 am


Christine,

The response Professor Dawkins or ‘The Hitch’ would give you is that a mentally healthy person who is fairly certain somebody loves them would be able to qualify their certainty based on an accumulated set of demonstrable evidence. The actions, words, trust, body language, reciprocity and care can be empirically observed. In cases where a person truly believes somebody else loves them despite a complete lack of evidence for that belief, that person is often diagnosed as mentally ill.

Proving an emotion and proving the existence of an omniscient supernatural being are separate questions. I wouldn’t ask you to prove that you love your God as I have no reason to doubt your sincerity, and if I had children I could easily demonstrate their physical existence by making an introduction. In terms of an apples and apples discussion I’m afraid the burden of proof would then rest firmly on your side of the divide; it is the role of the believer to provide evidence for his or her claims, not the role of the non-believer to prove the believer is wrong.

Prove to me that unicorns don’t exist.

Prove to me that Zeus, Apollo, Thor, Wotan, Hathor and Lord Shiva don’t exist.

They are all un-disprovable, we can never actually prove the non-existence of anything. However, no sensible, reasoned people think the hypothesis of their existence is as plausible as the hypothesis of their non-existence.

You just attempted what’s often regarded (for reasons passing understanding) as a knock down argument against atheism. The last time I was in a room with people discussing William James somebody responded to the point by saying, ‘love doesn’t ask me to send money to a man on television’.

oldandrew on Tue, 6th Apr 2010 8:11 am


The trouble with these sorts of programmes is that they rarely stop to identify what religion actually is.

As far as I can tell something is a religion if it consists of a worldview, rituals and ethical values. Only the second of these, as it is about behaviour not beliefs, is likely to be particularly well explained by neuroscience.

The neuroscience of beliefs and values is unlikely to be particularly different for a religious person and a non-religious person. As a result we tend to have reductionist views of religion, and we try to identify religion by particular actual beliefs. Using this method every religion becomes just a variation on the one people know best (usually Protestant Christianity). Alternatively, people relate religion, a concept they haven’t defined, with another difficult to define concept like “the supernatural” or “religious experiences”. It never ceases to amaze me when people don’t recognise that a Hindu, a materialist atheist and a Christian might refer to fundamentally different things by the word “supernatural” or by the term “religious experience”.

You aren’t going to be able to say anything interesting about neuroscience and religion without first saying something profound about the philosophy of religion.

oldandrew on Tue, 6th Apr 2010 8:14 am


“Non believers do respect your religious beliefs. But only to the same extent that they respect your opinion that your children are intelligent.”

When Richard Dawkins publishes a 400 page rant entitled “The Intelligent Children Delusion” I’ll accept that point.

Until then I’ll observe the obvious fact that the sectarian atheist movement goes a long way further than polite and respectful disagreement.

oldandrew on Tue, 6th Apr 2010 8:32 am


“In terms of an apples and apples discussion I’m afraid the burden of proof would then rest firmly on your side of the divide; it is the role of the believer to provide evidence for his or her claims, not the role of the non-believer to prove the believer is wrong.”

This to me is a fundamental misunderstanding of religion.

As Alasdair MacIntyre put it:

“To believe in God is not to believe that in addition to nature, about which atheists and theists can agree, there is something else, about which they disagree. It is rather that theists and atheists disagree about nature as well as about God. For theists believe that nature presents itself as radically incomplete, as requiring a ground beyond itself, if it is to be intelligible, and so their disagreement with atheists involves everything.”

Livy on Tue, 6th Apr 2010 7:27 pm


Andrew,

Sorry, no dice.

I inferred from your writing that by ‘God’ you mean the God of the Old Testament, the Abrahamic God, and not what New Age / spiritualist movements imply?

Just so I’m clear.

Whether you like it or not the fact remains; the question of whether or not God exists is a scientific hypothesis. We either live in a world that is 10,000 years old, created by a superhuman omnipotent, omniscient celestial entity – or we do not. They cannot both be true.

Unless you’re prepared to recognise that as a fundamental starting point then any kind of rational discussion thereafter is next to impossible; even if I had ten lifetimes worth of wisdom I wouldn’t succeed in breaking down the walls of somebody’s rigidly compartmentalised mind, or counteracting emotional volatility with logical reasoning.

Livy

Kevin Mooney on Tue, 6th Apr 2010 9:11 pm


Andrew,

“To believe in God is not to believe that in addition to nature, about which atheists and theists can agree, there is something else, about which they disagree. It is rather that theists and atheists disagree about nature as well as about God.”

I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of reallity!

To paraphrase Julian Baggini, I think you need to come to terms with the fact that there are no rational grounds whatsoever for belief in God. You can then choose between a ‘leap of faith’, or to abandon your belief. That’s up to you.
But I think saying you take a different view of nature is just a fudge to try to mentally cope with the irrational. Sorry.

oldandrew on Tue, 6th Apr 2010 10:50 pm


I don’t know what response I was expecting from my last post. I had hoped that quoting the argument from a very eminent philosopher rather than in my own words, would make people hesitate before dismissing what I said out of hand as obviously wrong without any kind of rational critique.

Clearly, this was naive of me.

The issue I have here really is with atheists declaring how the thought of theists is structured. It amounts to “you must think of it like this, so we can tell you how wrong you are”.

The trouble is that people who believe in God are under no obligation to think in the way people who don’t believe in God suggest. It is not more rational; it is certainly not science; it is a difference in philosophical worldview, and while I am not claiming that wordviews are impossible to compare or are all equally valid, you have to acknowledge what a worldview says in its own terms (as opposed how it appears when your own assumptions are mixed in with it) before you can actually make a coherent critique of that worldview.

Atheists who refuse to even acknowledge the content of theist philosophies are engaged in a project of convincing only themselves. If you are convinced that you are substantially more rational than the “compartmentalised minds” or fudged thinking of Aquinas, Newman or MacIntyre (say) then you are not just convincing yourself, you are kidding yourself. Nobody asserts that God’s existence is a scientific hypothesis, or that it is with no rational grounds, unless they have already assumed a particular worldview that is largely incompatible with belief in the necessity of God.

The trouble I have with today’s sectarian atheists is that they argue against nineteenth or twentieth century forms of Protestantism and largely ignore the far older, far more coherent, philosophical traditions of Catholics or Muslims. I can’t make you consider these philosophies properly if you don’t want to, but don’t seek to pretend you have a ready counter-argument, or a greater grasp of rationality, than those whose ideas you are not even familiar with.

Tell me what you're thinking...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!