Author: Ophelia Benson

To return to Unscientific America again, I hardly touched on chapter 8, where they express their dismay at those uppity “New Atheists”. I am not going to address his personal criticisms of me — there’s no point, you obviously know I think he’s completely wrong, and the uncharitable will simply claim my disagreement is the result of a personal animus — so instead I’m only going to address a couple of other general points that Mooney and Kirshenbaum get completely wrong. They plainly do not understand the atheist position, and make claims that demonstrate that either they didn’t read any of the “New Atheist’s” books, or perhaps the simple ideas in them are too far beyond their comprehension.

This is a basic one, from philosophy of science 101. There are several different ways to derive a naturalistic position. Mooney and Kirshenbaum sort of get it right, although I disagree with some of the details.

Modern science relies on the systematic collection of data through observation and experimentation, the development of theories to organize and explain this evidence, and the use of professional institutions and norms such as peer review to subject claims to scrutiny and ultimately (it is hoped) develop reliable knowledge. A core principle underlying this approach is something called “methodological naturalism,” which stipulates that scientific hypotheses are tested and explained solely by reference to natural causes and events. Crucially, methodological naturalism is not the same thing as philosophical naturalism—the idea that all of existence consists of natural causes and laws, period. Methodological naturalism in no way rules out the possibility of entities or causes outside of nature; it simply stipulates that they will not be considered within the framework of scientific inquiry.

Following this, he proceeds to damn the “New Atheists” for “collapsing the distinction” between methodological and philosophical naturalism, and argues that Dawkins is taking a philosophical position and misusing science to claim it “entirely precludes God’s existence.”

One big problem: we don’t. Oddly enough, this is one of the most common canards used by theistic critics, that we’re demanding a kind of philosophical absolutism, yet Mooney is an atheist. The “New Atheist” approach is firmly grounded in methodological naturalism; it’s an extremely pragmatic operational approach to epistemology that leads us to reject religious claims. None of us make an absolute declaration of the impossibility of the existence of a deity, either.

One strand of this view is simple empiricism. Science and reason give us antibiotics, microwave ovens, sanitation, lasers, and rocketships to the moon. What has religion done for us lately? We have become accustomed to objective measures of success, where we can explicitly see that a particular strategy for decision-making and the generation of knowledge has concrete results. I’m sorry, but faith seems to produce mainly wrong answers, and in comparison, it flops badly.

Now, now, I can hear the defenders of religion begin to grumble, there’s more to life than merely material products like microwave ovens — there’s contentment and contemplation and a sort of subjective psychology of ritual and community and all that sort of thing. Sure. Fine. Then stick to it, and stop pretending that religion ought to be a determinant of public policy, that it can inform us about the nature of our existence, or that it provides a good guide to public morality. Get it out of our schools and courthouses and workplaces and governments, take it to your homes and your churches, and use it appropriately as your personal consoling mind-game. And stop pretending that it is universal and necessary, because there are a thousand different religions that all claim the same properties with wildly different details, and there are millions of us with no religion at all who get along just fine without your hallowed quirks.

The other strand is reciprocity. We atheists and scientists have ideas that we are expected to explain and support with evidence, and we are accustomed to being jumped on with sadistic vigor if we fail to provide it. We merely apply the same methodological standards to religion. We do not insist a priori that gods cannot exist, we instead turn to all those people who insist that they do, and ask, “how do you know that?”

Would you believe that for all the fervor of their certainty, none of them have ever adequately answered the question?

There is no philosophical or metaphysical certainty on the part of us “New Atheists”, and we have no problem admitting it. Dawkins wrote it down forthrightly in his book when he scores himself as a 6 on a 7-point scale of atheism: “6. Very low probability, but short of zero. De facto atheist. ‘I cannot know for certain but I think God is very improbable, and I live my life on the assumption that he is not there.’” It’s genuinely remarkable how many people say they’ve read his book, and then walk away to claim that Dawkins says science “entirely precludes God’s existence.”

I agree entirely with Dawkins’ sentiment. I also turn it around to use an agnostic sentiment on religious interlocuters: “I don’t know for sure, and you don’t either, so why are you being so high-handedly specific in your claims that god was a Jewish carpenter, or his prophet was a polygamist with a flying horse, or that Ragnarok is imminent? Give me a method for evaluating your claims, tell me what rational reason you have to believe that, show me the evidence!” And then they don’t. I’m just supposed to have faith.

It doesn’t even have to be some weirdly specific, quirky bit of historical fiction — even the vague claims fail on epistemological grounds. How often have you been told that “God is love”? How do they know? What does it even mean? It’s just feel-good babble. If it makes you feel good to think it, go ahead…but please, let’s not have this standard of unsubstantiated wishful thinking be regarded as a useful contribution to philosophy, or science, or morality, or poetry, or social cohesiveness, or much of anything other than a trivial activity, like the twiddling of your thumbs that you do in idle moments.

Now notice: Mooney and Kirshenbaum are busily carping at these ghastly “New Atheists” for imagined transgressions against reason and the appropriate application of science, but what do they have to say about Christians who believe that crackers turn into Jesus in their mouths, or that a magical ensoulment occurs at fertilization to turn a zygote into a fully human being, or that children should be kept in ignorance about sex, or that woman’s role is as subservient breeder, or that using condoms to prevent disease is a violation of a divine dictate that the only purpose of sex is to have babies, or that people who love other people of the same sex deserve stoning, or at least to be unable to share insurance policies? Compared to the “New Atheist” insistence that remarkable claims about magic sky fairies ought to be regarded as patent nonsense, those can be rather destructive to society…and also negatively affect the acceptance of science. Rick Warren surely deserves as much condemnation as Richard Dawkins.

But no. The book is silent on the people who directly oppose science politically, culturally, in our classrooms, and on our radio and television. They aren’t the problem, I guess. If only we could clear away the distracting Atheist Noise Machine, train a generation of science journalists to stop bashing religion (as if they do now), and presto, the populace will obligingly stop shaking their angry fists at science and will lie back and accept that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, that the climate is changing and we need to take political action, and oh my yes, gay people can have their civil rights, too.

Oh, wait, I’m over-generalizing. They do say something about those people who believe in talking snakes, angels, and the power of mystic mumblings.

The American scientific community gains nothing from the condescending rhetoric of the New Atheists—and neither does the stature of science in our culture. We should instead adopt a stance of respect towards those who would hold their faith dear, and a sense of humility based on the knowledge that although science can explain a great deal about the way our world functions, the question of God’s existence lies outside its expertise.

Respect faith. Be humble. Pretend that all those beliefs are unquestionable.

Bull…oh, excuse me. Mooney gets rather pearl-clutchey when strong language is used. I shall restrain myself (and you commenters, too, please: I normally trust you all to cope with adult language without too much concern, but apparently a couple of authors with very delicate sensitivities will be reading this and counting your four-letter words).

Look, the only reason “the question of God’s existence” is in any way outside the domain of science is because it is such an amorphous subject that the believers will always rapidly move its definition beyond testability when pressed. However, they also claim that these deities had major material effects on the world — and most also claim ongoing, direct participation by their favorite god on their personal universe. Those are not beyond the realm of science! If absolute knowledge of this superbeing’s existence is out of our reach, we can at least easily push him/her/it/them back into a fairly tenuous connection with the world, to the point where they are irrelevant.

And if science can’t say a thing about the existence of gods, sweet jebus, Mooney, be consistent and admit that the jabbering, sanctimonious priests can’t either! Why we should respect their fairy-tales and complete lack of humility while you castigate godless science for relying on mere evidence is incomprehensible.

The essence of what Mooney and Kirshenbaum recommend in their book is that science must cut off its own balls, science must wear her corset cinched tight, science must not dissent from the masses, science must be obliging and polite, because that is the only way the public will accept it.

I rudely disagree.

There is nothing condescending about appreciating that almost every human being, even the most god-soaked, has a functional mind and that maybe they can actually learn about science and a scientific way of thinking that makes their myths untenable. There is nothing condescending about being uncompromising in our expectations and trusting that others can hear and think and express their own ideas. There is something deeply condescending about setting aside a big chunk of people’s experience and telling people that they should not question it.

Science is a sublimely human activity and a central part of the best of Western culture…and of every culture on earth that aspires to be something more than a collection of dirt-grubbing subsistence breeders, propagating for the sake of propagating. It’s what gives us the potential to reach beyond making do, that gives us the leisure and freedom to flower in the arts and explore the diversity of human experience. Even institutionalized religion itself is an incidental byproduct of the first clever dicks who thought to reroute the flow of a river to irrigate fields and led to centralization, urbanization, hierarchies of leadership, accounting, writing, and the whole avalanche of change that followed. It’s important. Mooney and Kirshenbaum know this; it’s what their whole book is about.

In order to be what it is, though, science must live. It’s a process carried out by human beings, and it can’t be gagged and enslaved and shackled to a narrow goal, one that doesn’t rock the boat. Imagine they’d written a book that tried to tell artists that they shouldn’t challenge the culture; we’d laugh ourselves sick and tell them that they were completely missing the point. Why do you think some of us are rolling our eyes at their absurd request that scientists should obliging accommodate themselves to a safe frame that every middle-class American would find cozy? They don’t get it.

Somehow, they think that Carl Sagan’s great magic trick was that he didn’t make Americans feel uncomfortable. I think they’re wrong. Sagan’s great talent was that he showed a passion for science. People made fun of his talk of “billyuns and billyuns”, but it was affectionate, because at the same time he was talking about these strange, abstract, cosmic phenomena, everyone could tell he was sincere — he loved this stuff.

Another example: Feynman. Watch the man, and what is the impression he makes? Absolute joy. He’s laughing at the universe. People love his lectures because he’s cocky and bold and doesn’t hesitate to show you where you’re wrong.

For a less openly abrasive case, how about E.O. Wilson? In his talks, he seems to be a soft-spoken gentleman who’s willing to concede quite a bit of respect to everyone — but read his work, and there’s a steely spine there, too, and if you get him talking about ants, you discover he’s cheerfully obsessive.

Mooney and Kirshenbaum’s prescription for improving the fate of science in this country is to train young scientists to be more media- and politics-savvy, to build a generation of cautious barometers of the public mood “capable of bridging the divides that have led to science’s declining influence.” And perhaps we could get more support for the arts if young artists were taught to favor bucolic photo-realism, if poetry was required to be in greeting card meter, and if all music was appropriate to elevators? We’d surely have a new renaissance if the NEA only funded art that a conservative senator would find inoffensive!

I recommend something different. Our next generation of great science communicators should be flesh-and-blood people with personalities, every one different and every one with different priorities, all singing out enthusiastically for everything from astronomy to zoology, and they should sometimes be angry and sometimes sorrowful and sometimes deliriously excited. They shouldn’t hesitate to say what they think, even if it might make Joe the Plumber surly. If you want to improve American science and the perception of science by the public, teach science first and foremost, because what you’ll find is that your discipline is then populated with people who are there because they love the ideas. And, by the way, let them know every step of the way that science is also a performing art, and that they have an obligation as a public intellectual to take their hard-earned learning and share it with the world.

Face the fact that some of us (but definitely not all of us) will be so smitten with this wonderful, powerful way of thinking that we’re going to follow our bliss and laugh at the hidebound ritualists who expect us to respect their superstitions, and at the prissy wanna-be moralists who demand bloodless conformity. You will not generate new Sagans by insisting on deference. You will not change a culture with a declining appreciation of science by demanding that scientists respect the beliefs of people who despise science the most. Mooney and Kirshenbaum single out the increasingly vibrant atheist sub-culture as something that needs to be muffled, and that’s symptomatic of the failure of their suggestions: what other ideas should be stifled lest they disturb American complacency? And shouldn’t shaking up that complacency be exactly what scientists do?

This article was first published at Pharyngula and is re-posted here by permission.

This letter was sent a week ago. The archbishop has had time to receive it and was informed that it will be published here.

Dear Archbishop Williams,

I have been trying for over two years to write this letter, and it never seems to come out right. Your recent
letter to the press, co-signed by Archbishop Nichols of Westminster and the Chief Rabbi of the United
Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth, Jonathan Sacks, spurred me on to bring this process to an
end. You will probably say, and with some justice, that you have more important things to consider, but
since what you said has led me to a settled distrust of all religion, I believe that you should at least give some
consideration to what I have to say.

Late in 2006, I read the speech that you made to the House of Lords regarding Lord Joffe’s assistance in
dying bill. The moment I read it, what I had taken to be faith simply died away, and not a shadow of it
remains; it is gone forever. Here are the words to which (among others) I took such grave exception: “All
religious believers hold that there is no stage of human life, and no level of human experience, that is
intrinsically incapable of being lived through in some kind of trust and hope.” With those words faith
simply came to an end, with a suddenness and completeness that was quite astonishing, and with it the
meaning and purpose of all the years I spent as a priest. I have not taken a step inside a church since that
day, and I have no intention of doing so in the future. Not places of holiness after all, but places where too
often evil dwells and calls itself good.

While this has been a matter deep personal concern for many years, I have a personal stake in this. I read
your speech sometime in October or November 2006, a few months after you delivered it. On 6th
September 1998 my wife Elizabeth, much younger than I, had her first symptom of what turned out to be a
very aggressive case of MS (multiple sclerosis). She was severely affected almost from the first day – walking
uneasily, climbing stairs with great difficulty, and in almost constant pain from the beginning – and by
2003 she could no longer walk at all. Early in 2006 she had liver dysfunction (due to medication she was
using to reduce spasticity and some of the pain which had remained at a high level since the start), and was
admitted to hospital. Upon her release a month later, she could no longer use her arms to support her body
weight, she had no function from her shoulders down, and no feeling, with continuing severe pain, and she
was no longer able to use the only drug which had provided some relief. She was finding it more difficult to
speak, since her throat was becoming numb. On 6th September 2006, eight years to the day since her first
symptom, Elizabeth tried to die by suicide. (Notice, I do not say ‘commit suicide’, but use instead the more
appropriate words ‘die by suicide’, since suicide is not a crime – despite the church’s considerable
ambiguity (expressed mainly by silence) regarding suicide – and it is often, for people in great distress, the
only way to resolve the intolerable burden of their suffering.)

Her attempt to die by suicide failed, and so she began making plans, shortly after her recovery from an
overdose of morphine and sleeping pills, to travel to Zürich, where she could receive assistance in dying. It
was shortly after this that I read the speech you had made to the House of Lords, and that is doubtless why
my response was so intense. (I am not, however, suggesting that my vehemence on that occasion was
unjustified.) By that time Elizabeth was already making her plans. She contacted Dignitas, in Zürich – the
only place in the whole world where she, as a nonresident, could legally receive assistance in dying. She
got the green light from Dignitas early in 2007, and a proposed date for an accompanied death, which
would only be activated on the advice of a physician in Switzerland, and only if she still wished to continue
with her plans. She made reservations for our flight to Switzerland, reservations for hotel accommodation,
arrangements for limousine service in Zürich, and funeral arrangements.

By that time Elizabeth had resolved to have a nonreligious memorial service, since she felt herself so badly
let down by you, and by the church that she had known and loved for so many years. For her, too, faith had
simply gone dead within her, and she did not want prayers, the eucharist, or any other religious ritual at her
burial. At her memorial God was to be mentioned only to try to understand or to criticize belief, not to
express or to practice it. She died in Zürich on Friday, 8th June 2007. Her ashes were buried in Canada
without religious ceremony, using a service we had composed together, on 23rd June 2007. I thank
goodness for Ludwig Minelli and Dignitas – and also for Arthur Bernhard and Gabrielle who were there to
help Elizabeth bring her dying to an end after suffering so much and for so long – for their compassion and
kindness to Elizabeth and to me. You and the church, god, gods or goddesses, I do not thank. (Interestingly,
Arthur Bernhard, as we waited for police and other authorities to go over the evidence of Elizabeth’s death
by suicide, remarked that most Swiss favour what Dignitas is doing, but that (in his words): “Christians are
always trying to change the law.”)

Had the laws been different, and had Christians (and other religious believers) in Canada, as in Britain, and
elsewhere, not opposed so strongly laws which continue to prohibit assistance in dying, I know that
Elizabeth would have lived longer, possibly much longer, she would not have had to premise her dying on
her ability to travel – since she would have known that, when the time came, and things had become too
much of a burden, she could lay her burden down – and I would not have been deprived of her love and
presence so soon. Nor would she have been exiled to die in a foreign land, nor have had to live with the
continuing anxiety of the possibility of being trapped helplessly in her body. These things I lay at your door.
I hold you, and others like you, responsible for Elizabeth’s early death, for the great anxiety which she
suffered for so many years, and for the fact that she had to travel so far and with so much pain and distress
in order to receive the help in dying that she sought. These are things that I am not disposed to forgive you
or the regressive faith that you profess. Nor, at the same time, do I forgive you or the church for the
completely inhuman refusal to see that suffering, at the end of life, which can be relieved only by assistance
in dying, is as legitimately relieved by such assistance, if the dying person so desires, as the provision of
medicines, surgery, and other modalities of treatment or cure are legitimately provided for the relief of
illness and suffering in the midst of life. There is no reasonable distinction to be made here, and it is mere
unthinking dogmatism that permits you, and others like you, to bring your influence to bear in order to
force people to die in whatever misery happens to be dictated by their diseases.

By your words and actions, and by the church’s words and actions, the god you believe in becomes even
more cruel than it already apparently is because of all the indiscriminate, and quite unequal, suffering that
exists. Instead of permitting relief for those who are dying in great pain and distress by the only means
available, or acceptable, to the dying person – assistance in dying, where that option is the dying person’s
reasoned choice – you increase unnecessary suffering by refusing, on unintelligible dogmatic grounds, to
allow that assistance. Not content with that, you actively campaign, in the name of your beliefs, to see that
that refusal is imposed by law upon those who do not share those beliefs with you. Your god, already cruel,
is made more cruel by your dogmatism, and people are unjustly denied their choice to see their lives come
to an end in a way that is not only consistent with their beliefs, though perhaps in conflict with yours, but,
more importantly, without the pain and suffering they wish to avoid. You choose not to treat them as
persons capable of making decisions, and impose on them suffering which they seek to escape by exercising
their legitimate freedom as persons. Whatever all religious people hold (and I do not think even that is
true), why do you think you have a right to impose those beliefs on others? And why do you, with those
beliefs, also seek to impose the pain and distress that those who suffer wish, by their own choice, to bring to
an end, when life has become, for them, intolerable, and without hope?

I know that you and others provide tangential reasons for refusing to permit the legalization of assistance in
dying, as though everyone would be at risk if a policy so humane and respecting of freedom should be
instituted. There is no reasonable basis for these beliefs, as you might know if you were to inform yourself
of some of the facts, and yet you are prepared to use these beliefs, without apology, to shore up religious
beliefs which are without reasonable foundation. You forget, along with your partners in religious crime,
Archbishop Nichols and Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, in your joint letter to the press, that those who are
dying in great pain and distress, or who are suffering from degenerative conditions which makes their lives
unbearable, are extremely vulnerable people. Responding to that vulnerability by limiting care at the end of
life to hospice or palliative care is not enough. You claim that the number of those in extreme distress is
very small. On what basis do you make that claim? And, in any event, is that small number not worthy of
your compassion and consideration? There is not a shred of evidence for your claim that vulnerable people,
of any description, would be put at risk by the legalization of assistance in dying for those who request it. In
your speech to the House of Lords you made specious reference to the ambiguity of the evidence from
Oregon in the United States. There is no basis for such a claim. Those who choose assistance in dying in
Oregon are generally better educated than the average and more accustomed to control over their lives, and
the same general picture tends to hold true of those who have chosen to go to Switzerland for assistance in
dying.

The continuing claim that you and other religious people make that laws enabling assistance in dying could
not be safely or fairly administered is unfounded. The claim that it would endanger the relationship of
medical professionals and patients is unfounded, and in many cases doctors’ inability legally to provide
relief at the end of life strains such relationships to breaking point, and is sometimes more than the
consciences of some doctors can endure. The Dutch concept of ‘overmacht’ comes into play here, and yet
you, who profess belief in a loving god, will not allow your conscience to be engaged in a matter of such
great moral importance.

Your continuing claim that assistance in dying would endanger palliative and hospice care is specious,
since, wherever assisted dying has been introduced, palliative care shows a tendency to improve. Contrary
to the belief of religious people that assisted dying stems from a ‘culture of death’, or disrespect for the value
of life, those who campaign for assisted dying have, not only a great respect for life, and a deep compassion
for the suffering of those who are dying, but also a deeply held belief that individuals should have control
over the time and manner of their dying, that dying should not be prescribed merely by the diseases that
people suffer and our limited ability, in some cases, to relieve their suffering and distress – a suffering and
distress that you are prepared to ignore under the specious pretext that permitting compassion would put
lives at risk.

Forcing people to live in conditions that they do not choose is, effectively, to enslave them, to force them to
live in conditions of life that they find intolerable. Every act then becomes coerced, and every breath a
denial of freedom. Religion, in your hands, is still seeking to use its authority to control the lives of others,
and such authority is as malignant in your hands as it was in the hands of some of your predecessors.
I am, therefore, bitterly angry with you. I see pictures of you in your fine vestments holding forth
confidently on this subject or that (not always with clarity or intelligibility, I might add), and what I see is a
moral disaster dressed up in fancy clothes. I believe that you and your church and those who represent you
here in this country are partly responsible for the distress, anxiety and uncertainty that my wife Elizabeth
suffered during the years of her illness, and almost entirely responsible, along with your fellow believers in
other churches and religions, for the anguish which accompanied my wife’s first attempt to die by suicide,
all alone, for fear of laws which you and they seek to uphold, and for the subsequent distress of a long
journey, and the need to die in another country, far from her family and friends. All this I lay at your door.
Your words to the House of Lords, and your recent letter to the press, are amongst the most thoughtlessly
callous words that I thought to hear uttered by a Christian, uttered in the name of a god, and completely
oblivious to the untold private miseries which so many people have had to suffer and will continue to suffer
as a consequence, and I hold you and those with whom you share faith responsible for much of the
suffering that my wife experienced both during her life and towards the end, as she sought to end her
suffering and the terrifying prospect of further suffering, in the only way left to her: by receiving assistance
to help her to die in peace and in dignity, as she chose. As I say, I am not disposed to forgive this
thoughtless, uncaring callousness. Indeed, perhaps only a god could atone for such moral evil as, to my
mind, you represent. Not, mind you, that I think there is such a god, or such atonement, but it would take a
lot to unburden yourself of such heavy moral responsibility for so much gratuitous and unnecessary
suffering for which you are, by your words, directly responsible.

Sincerely,

Eric S. MacDonald
(The Rev’d Canon, retired)