23AR28-31

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AR 28:31 - Life's origin, a "ridiculously improbable event"

In this issue:

ATHEISM - "People might also be surprised by how much credence you give to the possibility of extraterrestrial life."

RELIGION - "avoiding ... some of the problems associated with defining religion" by the U.S. Supreme Court

Apologia Report 28:31 (1,628)
August 25, 2023

ATHEISM

"Was New Atheism a mistake? Richard Dawkins on God, vaccines and his poetic spirit" by Freddie Sayer (Editor-in-Chief and CEO of UnHerd, Jun 7 '23) -- in this wide-ranging interview, Dawkins says of his "poetic spirit" that "Science is the poetry of reality." 

   Sayer: "We're talking at a time in which once-unassailable scientific ideas have become… complicated. Gender is an obvious one. Do you worry that the scientific institutions you cherish have become overly attuned to faddish politics, and that science risks compromising its reputation?"

   Dawkins replies: "Certainly, I have noticed that some of the leading scientific journals have capitulated to political pressure to become unscientific, and to betray what is an obvious scientific dichotomy between male and female. This seems to have been betrayed for political reasons by people in editorial positions in leading scientific journals who ought to know better.

   "FS: Another example might be Nature magazine, which has stated that part of its mission is to work to correct racial injustices....  <www.bit.ly/3srEomW>

   "RD: There's an analogue of original sin, that white people are expected to feel guilt for what their ancestors - or maybe just people of the same skin colour - did to other people of a different colour. It's as though we are supposed to inherit the guilt of people of the past, just because we have the same colour skin as they did. And that is, I think, racism. It is actual racism to confer guilt upon people because of the colour of their skin. ...

   "RD: If I were in favour of any sort of affirmative action, it might be in favour of those who have been disadvantaged in their own past, through poverty. ... - but simply because they're black? No, that's the wrong sort of affirmative action. That is racism. ...

   "RD: "I am in favour not of affirmative action but what I would call 'intelligent looking' for talent, which is what we try to do at Oxford. ...

   "FS: There's a book by Tom Holland called Dominion, which has been very influential in suggesting that a lot of what we consider to be secular Western ways of thinking on morality is still drenched in Christian thinking. <www.bit.ly/3Qw7MTl> So perhaps, although people aren't describing themselves as religious in the census, they've just moved those religious intuitions into other realms?

   "RD: Yes, I think that's very likely true. You can make a good religious case for the trans debate. I make an analogy with the Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, whereby the wine in the Aristotelian accidentals remains wine but, in its true substance, becomes blood. Similarly, the trans person: he has a penis, but that's a mere accidental, and in true substance he's a woman. I mean, that's a perfect analogy to transubstantiation. It even begins with the same prefix.

   "FS: So which is better, then? We've gone through this whole process, we've had a whole generation who've now been brought up reading your books, and Christopher Hitchens, who are now ardent and proud atheists, and then they end up believing things like you just described. And that has all sorts of societal repercussions. Should we now look back on the New Atheist movement with regret?

   "RD: No, I don't get that at all. It's just an interesting analogy to point out that there is a strong religious element to a current political fad. So what?

   "FS: The question is: empirically speaking, between conventional religion and what appears to be its successor ideology, which will be proven by history to be better for the flourishing of the species? Early signs are that this new kind of religion, which thinks it's secular, has some major problems.

   "RD: Well, if you care about the flourishing of the species, yes, but I care about truth.

   "FS: So you don't care about the flourishing of the species?

   "RD: Well I do care about it as a human being, but more deeply I care about truth.

   "FS: And if your sense of truth would lead to the annihilation of the species, would you be content with that?

   "RD: No I would not be content with that. But I'm pretty sure it wouldn't happen. I think that truth actually is a genuine value. I believe that a true scientific outlook on the world would actually be best for the flourishing of humankind. ... 

   "FS: We have to talk about the most recent scientific controversy of our age: Covid. It feels like we are now emerging from the Covid years, when our trust in science was enormously damaged. Millions of people now intuitively distrust what they are told by scientific authorities. Do you think Covid was a moment of scientific glory, or something more problematic?

   "RD: I think glory.... Whether humans mistrust or trust science, that's their business. ...

   "FS: During the pandemic, you condemned people who were sceptical about the pandemic response. ... Your vilification of people who were hesitant about taking the vaccine, in retrospect, seems too much, doesn't it? Do you take that back?

   "RD: ... Now, it's not entirely clear that that was right. And so, to that extent, I would take that back, yes.

   "FS: Do you also think that Covid showed how vulnerable scientists and institutions such as universities have become in this social media age - to peer pressure, to a fear of being cancelled and of being on the wrong side of mainstream thought?

   "RD: Yes. There are some heroic scientists who go off on their own and don't need grants and just get on with their research - people like James Lovelock, <jameslovelock.org> who I've criticised on other grounds....

   "FS: Another concept you've defended recently is AI, and whether we might be leaving human nature behind altogether, either through some kind of AI future, or via extraterrestrial life. With your materialist hat on, explain how you think AI could supplant organic life?

   "RD: Well, the brain is a material object - and what it does is, although we don't understand it fully yet, it must have a scientific explanation. And it must be the case that whatever the brain can do, in principle, could be done by an AI simulation. So, an artificial intelligence must be capable of doing what the human brain can do - and there's no obvious reason why it shouldn't be greatly superior to it. ...

   "FS: People might also be surprised by how much credence you give to the possibility of extraterrestrial life. How likely do you think it is that life exists on other planets?

   "RD: Very likely - especially when you think of the sheer number of opportunities in the universe for it to exist. It has arisen here and evolved to the point where it can understand its own existence. That was a ridiculously improbable event, but it happened." <www.bit.ly.3DLlUk3>

 ---

RELIGION

"Defining Religion in the Court" by Mark Movsesian (Co-Director, Center for Law and Religion, St. John's University) -- "Suffice it to say that the Free Exercise Clause itself speaks of 'religion,' not of 'deep personal commitments,' and the Supreme Court has made clear that it continues to see religion as a distinct category meriting special constitutional protection. Avoiding a definition of religion for First Amendment purposes is not sustainable, and recent changes in American religion make the issue only more salient.

   "Little evidence exists of what the Framers meant by the word 'religion' in the Free Exercise Clause. In 1791, when the Clause was adopted, 'religion' could refer to conventional faith communities, especially Protestant ones, but also to non-institutional beliefs such as Deism. Nonetheless, the drafting history suggests that the Framers intended the Clause to cover communal rather than purely idiosyncratic phenomena. ... The fact that the Framers chose a word with communal connotations over the more personal 'conscience' suggests they had collective phenomena in mind.

   "Down the centuries, the Court has failed to offer consistent guidance. The handful of decisions that address the definition of religion point in different directions." Discussion follows, including Latter-day Saint examples.

   "As this quick survey demonstrates, the Court's decisions on the definition of religion are muddled. ...

   "It's time for the Court to establish that religion, at its core, denotes communal beliefs and practices rather than idiosyncratic personal commitments. A communal definition makes sense for several reasons." These are enumerated and all focused on "community."

   "In short, the existence of a community is crucial to a plausible definition of religion. Nonetheless ... excluding non-­institutional, idiosyncratic beliefs would contradict a long American tradition of honoring individual religious conscience [and] limiting religion exclusively to communal beliefs and practices would create difficult line-drawing problems. ...

   "Thus, the proper constitutional definition of religion would be a flexible one with community at its core. ...

   "[T]his approach would offer the benefits of tying religion to common understandings and avoiding at least some of the problems associated with defining religion in idiosyncratic terms, while remaining true to our cultural and legal traditions and minimizing the difficulties that a more categorical approach would entail." First Things, June '23, <www.bit.ly/47pJArB> 

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