Religion and Rationality
Martin Newland tells us plaintively that ‘these days people find it hard to accept that religion and rationality can co-exist.’ Well, maybe; some people; other people clearly find it very easy. And as for ‘these days’, I would say the social pressure is running more in the other direction ‘these days’ than it did, say, twenty years ago. But maybe by ‘these days’ Newland means ‘these past three hundred years’.
At any rate, he shows us how well religion and rationality can co-exist.
I am a Roman Catholic. As such, I believe that God took the decision to be born into a poor family in Roman-occupied Palestine. I believe that His short life on earth was spent setting down the rules by which He expected us to live, and I believe that as a sign of His love for us He humbled himself on a cross, died and rose again. I believe that He left behind a church which is infused with His Spirit but also subject to sin. I further believe, if pressed, that the fullest incarnation of God’s plan for his church resides in the Roman Catholic Church, with the successor of St Peter at its head and the Apostolic Succession as its historical guarantor.
Okay [Interlude. My eyes happened to move up from the screen to the window while I thought for a second, and they caught the most lurid rainbow – I had to get up and go stare at it for awhile. You should see it. It happens to end right in the bit of Puget Sound I can see from that window – grey water, grey clouds, and this luridly glowing arc of colour transecting them, hovering above the water. It’s moved closer now and is over the marina and ends on the shipping pier. Now it’s fading. Going…going…whew, that was pretty.] Okay do I think it’s rational to believe those things? No. I can see wanting to believe them, and so deciding to believe them; I can agree that I have plenty of irrational beliefs myself; but I can’t say that I think those beliefs are rational; so in that sense he’s right: I don’t think religion and rationality can co-exist. I think rational people can have irrational beliefs, but I don’t think the irrational beliefs become rational merely because rational people have them; I think they remain irrational. So if Newland’s point is that we should think those beliefs are religious and also rational, it’s a fair cop: I don’t.
He says other things along the way, some of them rather unpleasant.
Reactions in everyday secular society to manifestations of religiosity, such as the veil, range from a patronising accept-ance to the downright insulting…Yasmin Alibhai-Brown claims that the veil is not mandated by the Qur’an. But what is mandated is that women cover themselves. What is also mandated is that men dress plainly. And the original texts have been followed, as in all the mainstream faiths, by teachings and interpretation which are also considered by the faithful to be linked to the will of God.
What does that mean, ‘linked to the will of God’? Linked how? In what sense? In what way? By whom? But more to the point – does he not realize what a repulsive phrase that is, ‘what is mandated is that women cover themselves’? Especially when followed by the asymmetrical mandate that men dress plainly? Does he not know how that sounds? Does he not get that it sounds like sheer revulsion and hatred? That it sounds like a visceral reaction to women as both seductive and disgusting? That it frames us as purulent heaving steaming piles of sex organs? He probably doesn’t, but he damn well ought to. He ought to imagine for one second walking down the street in ordinary clothes and having someone shout at him in a voice of rage ‘Cover yourself!’
But I feel a kinship with those Muslim women because the world is full of Jack Straws, who imply by their actions that religiosity entails something vaguely misguided or sinister, something that is ill at ease with public life. By involving the nation in an intensely critical, secularised debate on their personal religious observances, Straw has insulted these women in the same way that I feel insulted and hurt by Madonna aping Christ crucified, by part of the Act of Settlement, by the burning of papal effigies in southern England and by the use of a compulsory BBC licence fee to broadcast the offensive Jerry Springer: The Opera.
But the ‘personal religious observances’ in question are also public, and what we do in public has the potential to be the subject of debate. That’s how it is. (That’s why I never go out. Everybody’s a critic.) At least until theocracy becomes universal (at which time it might not be Newland’s religion that is the favoured one, and he will get all nostalgic for secularism).
Can I just say here how much I loved
“Martin Newland Reports he is Catholic and Sane
Then provides details.”?
And I picked up my copy of “The God Delusion” today.
I felt compelled to write to Guardian letters page about this one. See if it gets published:
“Martin Newland may well be both religious and rational. But the part of him which is religious is not rational, and the part of him which is rational is not religious.”
Trouble is, it rings a bell with me – but I can’t think where I stole it from…
I have “The God Delusion” in my book pile. “Why Truth Matters” is on top of it though. Well, underneath, but higher up the queue.
NewScientist’s review of TGD seemed typical: get in someone who is more afraid of Aetheism than of making a bad argument then let them wax gibbous about Pol Pot. The personality cult argument seems to be a common one in favour of religion in reviews of TGD. I think the Romans and the Egyptians liked as well, so I’m not sure it’s exactly a step forward.
When I was in Blackwell’s Bookshop the other day they had TGD in, and next to it was “Dawkin’s God”. I flopped DG open at a random page. The author admitted that neither science nor religion was ultimately provable (without admitting that religion isn’t disprovable either, ultimately or not) and then went on to criticize Dawkins for “dichotomous” thinking by not accepting the singular proposition of God’s existence. If this is theology’s damning (sic) response to Dawkins I don’t think he has all that much to worry about.
Interesting it came under the “comment is free” heading in the Groaniad. I sincerely hope it was in this case, and that no money changed hands…since that would be an honest reflection of the article’s worth.
Ho hum.
Note the weird underlying logic: yes, I do believe & do crazy stuff, but I *also* believe & do things that sane people do, therefore, I am sane.
According to this kind of reasoning, one has to disbelieve absolutely everything a sane person believes, or else he, too, is sane.
“Yes, I do believe that unicorns live in my closet, and I did kill all those people because a fairy told me to – but then, I also brush my teeth every morning! Therefore, I ‘m sane!”
DavidMWW,
It rings a bell with me too. It reminds me of that prognosis on Dubya: there is nothing right in your left part of the brain, and there is nothing left in your right part.
Weird underlying logic, yeah. Also weird underlying desire to have it all, to reconcile incompatibles, to yoke contradictions – to believe strange things and to be considered rational by the world at large. I might as well proclaim my atheism and then wonder aloud in the Guardian why people don’t think I’m deeply religious. I might as well expatiate upon my vegetarianism and then write articles complaining that people think I don’t eat pork chops.
Hey, speaking of Mediawatchwatch, where’d it go? Just temporarily down? I can’t get it, anyway; not nohow.
DavidMWW: “…it rings a bell…”
It’s attributed to Samuel Johnson:
“Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.”
OB: “But the ‘personal religious observances’ in question are also public, and what we do in public has the potential to be the subject of debate. That’s how it is.”
Exactly!
And once ‘personal religious observances’ are brought into a public space, there is the potential for conflict.
Covering your face interferes with the public functions of recognition and communication.
I’ve posted THIS to the Grauniad’s comments boxes
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Religious and rational says Martin Newland.
And then promptly lists a collection of completely irrational things he believes in, and does.
I believe this is called “schizophrenia”, isn’t it?
A catholic MUST believe that the “virgin” Mary was bodily taken up into heaven. ( Weere is heaven?)
A catholic MUST believe that the unmarried mother Mary was a “virgin” when giving birth to a male child( Where did Yexhua ben Joseph’s XY chromosome-pair comee from then?
And why is parthenogenisis suddenly possible in mammals?
Need I go on?
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Plus, of course, the deliberate confusion of secular/atheist state, and as others have commented on the public displays of religiosity bit.
Precisely – even if you are still stupid enough to believe in all this crap, religion is (or should be) a PRIVATE matter.
The last time we had it as a public matter, people were burnt at the stake.
Perhaps this would not be a good idea to repeat?
“What is also mandated is that men dress plainly.” Has Martin Newland actually looked at the clothing sported by his priests, bishops, cardinals and (especially) Il Papa himself recently?
I think I’m going to drop the Guardian and buy the Catholic Herald instead. Less religion in the Herald.
Thanks, Keith, for reminding me of that brilliant Sam Johnson quote. That was definitely the bell rung.
Ophelia, MWW’s server was down temporarily yesterday, but it’s working again now. Sorry about that.
Looks as if a few of us have had the same idea. I felt compelled to write in the ‘Comment is Free’ comments that the man is guilty of child abuse.
‘I go to mass on Sundays, and I see it as one of my most important duties to bring my children up in the faith,’ this nut writes. He then goes on, ‘Every night when I turn in I wander around my children’s beds crossing their foreheads, invoking the Holy Family to protect them while they sleep.’ (Yuk, yuk, yuk, yuk, yuk! Ugh! Yeuch! Heave!)
Well, what he does while they’re asleep they clearly can’t know about, but what if one of them were to wake up to find all this effing mojo going on in his/her room? Go mad, probably. ‘Mummy, what’s Daddy doing? Mummy, make him stop. He’s mad.’
Aaagh!
“I further believe, if pressed, that the fullest incarnation of God’s plan for his church resides in the Roman Catholic Church”
What he doesn’t say is that ‘if pressed’ he must also believe that all other counter-claims of religious supremacy, such as Mohammed and the Koran are wrong or plainly dishonest. If you are an orthodox Roman catholic you must believe that Mohammad was either insane or a liar. I mean, if we are being rational about it.
Frank Key:
” “What is also mandated is that men dress plainly.” Has Martin Newland actually looked at the clothing sported by his priests, bishops, cardinals and (especially) Il Papa himself recently?”
He’s talking about the Koran, I would guess.
In any event, I do believe that a rational person can be religious – and that religion is not by necessity irrational. I have serious difficulties why it would. Rationality to me seems to imply the primacy of individual thought and judgement over that of authority – but individual, autonomous judgement can quite well be religious. It does not fit well with an empiricist worldview. It does not fit well with a worldview in which only the natural sciences can lead to reliable knowledge of the world. But it is not irrational. It can be, sure, but it isn’t necessarily.
I agree with the second part of OB’s comments. Mind you, I believe in the freedom of an individual to wear a veil or a turban or a yarmulke if he or she wants to. But I also believe in the freedom of someone who wants not to not be bothered or pressured or terrorized into doing so.
By the way, OB, I never knew you were a vegetarian.
Aren’t we then getting into definitions of (ir)rationality? Dawkins has been heard marvelling at some scientists’ capacity for compartmentalising and admitting straight out that he cannot comprehend how they do it. What does compartmentalising actually mean in these instances? Doesn’t it mean that two (or more) ideas that must conflict with each other are prevented from doing so by keeping them from encountering each other? Fine, so you put them in different rooms in your mind and then they won’t fight. But you’re the one who put them there and you know why they can’t co-exist in the same space, but you choose not to think about that particular fact. On the one hand, this makes me think of separating wild animals in cages to prevent one from killing the other. The analogy may be appropriate with ideas: you can’t keep certain religious ideas alive if you let scientific truth get at them. On the other hand, what is different is that in the case of wild animals, it isn’t that one is more true than the other and therefore likely to win. Actually, though, with ideas, too, it isn’t being true that guarantees victory; untrue ideas can have a strength that vanquishes the opposition. Sorry if that came out too much stream-of-consciousness, but that’s what it was, anyway.
I didn’t quite say that religion is by necessity irrational, though I did say I don’t think religion and rationality can co-exist. Rational people can be religious, but as Stewart notes, it takes compartmentalization. It requires some kind of fencing off of the irrational beliefs (leaving aside social or communitarian or customary religion, which can be independent of any substantive beliefs at all, so easily compatible with rationality).
So, Merlijn, do you think it’s rational to believe the things Newland lists? That “God took the decision to be born into a poor family in Roman-occupied Palestine,” that “His short life on earth was spent setting down the rules by which He expected us to live” etc etc? If so, can you explain why?
Hmmm… There seem to be two things at issue here. Whether certain beliefs (like the ones Newman lists) are themselves rational or irrational, or whether believing them is rational or irrational as an activity.
I’d say, and I’m shooting from the hip here, the rationality of a belief such as the Divinity of Christ would depend partially on why the belief it is held. Independently of its truth-content. If one reflectively comes to the conclusion, for instance on the basis of the notion that Christ’s message was timeless to such an extent, or on the basis of the acceptance of the Resurrection, that Christ was indeed Divine – then yes, I would say the belief is rational. If one bases the same beliefs on pure faith – they in themselves are probably irrational, but holding them, again, could be quite rational. It’s rational to take one’s experiences for what they are: we cannot really get by without doing so. The same would conceivably go for religious experiences if one has those (mind you, I haven’t). And rational or rationally held beliefs can of course be mistaken.
As for actions, I think “rational” almost is synonymous with “understandable”. I.e. adhering to common, humanly shared norms of logic, means-goal relationship, etc. Put simply, going to the bar because one is thirsty is rational – shooting oneself because one is thirsty isn’t. But believing what one thinks is true is rational (and the converse, disbelieving in what one thinks is true, is virtually inconceivable).
Hmmm. Maybe. I suppose for people who have simply never or almost never been exposed to skepticism or counter-arguments, it is rational (at least in a sense) to believe what one thinks is true. I’ll buy that.
That clearly won’t work for Newland though.
“disbelieving in what one thinks is true, is virtually inconceivable”
Is it? Surely not! If it were no one would ever learn anything, no one would ever change her mind. Surely it happens all the time – we believe X is true, then we get new information or a new way of looking at X, and we think ‘oh, maybe X is wrong, maybe I need to adjust that, or throw it out completely and start over.’ We do it all, all the time. I’ve adjusted my ideas of several things already today. Surely that’s a constant, incremental process (except perhaps in the case of Bush, who apparently makes it a principle to avoid that process).
“disbelieving in what one thinks is true, is virtually inconceivable”
Start with Santa Claus and work your way up.
‘I am a Roman Catholic. As such, I believe …’
But tomorrow I may be called upon to believe something different. And will do so.
In October 1950 an intelligent though pious catholic may have believed that the idea of Mary being taken bodily into heaven was a quaint myth. On November 1st it became a truth.
Or have I misunderstood?
Ever read David Lodge’s The British Museum is Falling Down? That’s an interesting and puzzling (to me at least) example of this phenomenon. The central character is sane, rational, sensible, intelligent; an impecunious graduate student working on his PhD, and married with children – and a Catholic. The children are all unplanned, meaning unwanted – that is the parents wouldn’t have had any of them at that time if they could have willed it otherwise – but they’re Catholics. So they don’t use birth control. So they keep having children they’d rather not have, and can’t afford. And they’re miserable, frantic, overworked, worried, constantly fearful, sexually frustrated.
It makes for a very peculiar read, at least for me. They’re not silly people, and yet they let this absurd and cruel bit of Vatican authority control their lives and that of their children. One wants to kick them.
Don & OB: That would be disbelieving or coming to disbelieve in what one thought is true at an earlier point in time. Not disbelieving in what one thinks is true at the same time. The latter being (almost?) a contradiction in terms. Which is why it is difficult to distinguish between the rationality of beliefs and the rationality of believing something.
I happened to have a copy of The British Museum is Falling Down as I read that comment, OB. I’ve decided to re-read it, as it’s not very long and Lodge is fantastic. In the first few pages the couple’s entirely predictable lack of success with the rhythm method is described (brilliantly), and we are treated to a scene with Barbara huddled beneath the bedclothes with a thermometer in both her mouth and her anus while Adam readies himself for another day of studying at the BM. It’s a gruesome juxtaposition — Adam devotes his life to work with his mind, and Barbara is reduced to an overly-medicalised (this must have been a daily routine for her), probably considered inherently defective, body. Absurd and cruel is the right way to describe it.
‘happened to have a copy in front of me’, I meant. Sorry.
How interesting, Rowan.
Lodge’s woman characters were pretty underdeveloped in his early books. Then they changed. He said once that women became a lot more interesting after feminism came back (he probably actually said ‘after Women’s Liberation’).
Their juxtaposition is so gruesome and so frustrating and so futile I find the book hard to read. It makes me twitch.
Melijn,
That’s a fair distinction. However, the latter construction may not be as uncommon as all that. In the case of the Assumption, for example, one may have believed for a lifetime that it was a superstitious tradition of the credulous peasantry, physically impossible and without a scrap of biblical support and then, from a single pronouncement, be required to turn on a sixpence and believe it infallibly true. How do people do that?
I’m earnestly trying to avoid thrusting passages from ‘The God Delusion’ under people’s noses, but the depressing tale of Kurt Wise may be relevant here.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Wise
Mindblowing! How can someone have a higher degree in geology and be a creationist?? I’d love to see his exam papers.
Mind you I note he was under the advisement of Gould, who was a staunch proponent of the split personality approach to science and religion. Even giants can have feet of clay…