The Dawn of Criticism

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The Dawn of Criticism
Date: 8/13/02 at 8:23 a.m.

212.125.82.188 writes:
 

This post is in response to questions raised by patty in a thread [on the board]. [below is patty's response]

> How do you envision a future without religion...Does it have faith in anything? Faith in the scientific method? Faith in mathematical probability? (You may - rightly -say that faith is a misnomer in these cases?)

Faith is belief without or in spite of the evidence. A view of knowledge as permanently conjectural, and methods of expanding, revising and improving it which consist in the systematic weeding out of errors and contradictions, and the rigorous testing of bold new theories against observable experience by means of meticulous tests, and the accommodation at every level of the possibility of permanent and radical change, entails an altogether different cast of mind.

My view is that since no conclusion proves the validity of its premis(es) (otherwise it would be circular); and since the attempt to do so involves us in an infinite regress; and since no number of singular observations, however large, can logically support an unrestrictedly general statement ("at a constant temperature the volume of a given quantity of gas is inversely proportional to the pressure of the gas"), our knowledge can never rest on secure foundations.

But still, there is no need to involve faith, or even certainty. In fact we could strike both words from the language entirely, with no appreciable effect on the scientific enterprise. We can never conclusively prove anything, but we can still demonstrate that one theory goes beyond another in explanatory power, and in predictive range; and we can still establish a preference among competing theories; and we can still delineate with great accuracy the penumbra at which one theory breaks down, or proves inadequate.

Far from plunging us into existential torment, these realities should liberate us, because the realisation that no truth is immutable frees us from habitual patterns and modes of thinking, and leaves us open to speculate; to search out what is wrong with what we think we know, and how we behave; to be critical of prevailing orthodoxies and traditions and institutions, and to thereby improve ourselves and our environments in unprecedented ways; to more effectively participate in the ongoing search for sense, meaning and understanding, as pre-critical man never could.

> Under what circumstances would people congregate?

At bars, clubs, golf courses, cinemas, stadiums, concerts, operas, the theatre, at work, at home, up mountains, on boats, in colleges and universities - the list is literally endless. There are all kinds of socially rewarding and personally challenging secular activities.

Whenever a funeral or a wedding or Church-organised event rolls around, and I'm forced to stand there and sing vacuous and dreary hymns in dusty churches for the sake of being polite, and listen to pious and platitudinous Sunday school aphorisms, it depresses me - sometimes quite deeply - that so many people find the experience meaningful and rewarding.

> the scholars clearly have their scholarly pursuits to occupy them and to provide associates. What about the dimwits? The people in between? Religion provides community.

But the simple fact is that man was social for a long time before he was human, so communities existed long before religion came on the scene, even before language and civilisation and culture came on the scene, and this view of religion being integral to the fabric of any stable society is apologetic nonsense.

True, ideas about the world, and standards of behaviour, and systems of social organisation - the whole cultural tradition - has in the past been encoded in religious myth and passed on as unsullied truth.

But this has only made our progress more bruised and costly, as problems with our ideas, and our behaviour, and our societies were identified more slowly, and corrected even more slowly; dogmatic man died with his false theories, and was himself replaced, whereas the purpose of the critical tradition (which begins with the pre-Socratics, and culminates in modern science and "open", democratic societies) is as Popper puts it, to "let our false theories die in our stead".

I would say that this evolutionary approach, when applied not just to human knowledge but to political and economic theory and practice, and to institutions of all kinds, even to our own private lives, can only result in more efficient growth, and more immediate, decisive and practical adaptations to changing social realities and uncertain conditions, and thus more prosperous organisations consisting of healthier, more uninhibited, and happier individuals.

Paul Hayward.

Posted By: patty (4.46.75.221)
Date: 8/13/02 at 3:13 p.m.

In Response To: The Dawn of Criticism (Hayward)

This is just a quick note to put some context to the questions I posed.

It was suggested that religion be discarded (or "addressed," "tackled head on," "put into the arena of critical thinking," something like this.)

This was (is) an interesting idea, but it was far from concrete. What did the idea mean? Religion is not a claim in the sense that dowsing is a claim. Religion is complex. (understatement). (1) There may be a biological basis for why people tend to believe in a supreme being. (see http://www.sciencenewsbooks.org/whygodwongoa.html) (2)Religion is part of the fabric of society. (3)Some aspects of religion have nothing to do with irrational beliefs. Etc.

In various psychologically-geared (?) environments such as grief support, and counseling, one maxim is "Do not remove a person's coping strategy without providing a new one to take it's place." This is good common sense. It strikes me that what is being proposed is to try to remove a staple of most people's lives without recognizing the integral part it plays in their lives, and without providing some sort of replacement to meet the needs that religion had formerly met. To say that we are social creatures and would find ways to cope is an irresponsible attitude. Finding ways to cope would probably happen - in the form of new religions as well as lots of negative psychological repercussions in the mean time.

My questions were, in part, geared to ask what sorts of structure would be provided to take the place that religion has in society. I thought (think) that these sorts of questions might help others to see the idea of 'tackling religion head on' as embryonic and naive. No doubt replacements could be found for the many areas of life that religion occupies, and it would be irresponsible for a skeptical group who is interested in removing religion to not spend some time in defining those.

patty

I found a free, refereed online journal that publishes articles on religion and society. People who are interested in pursuing the ideas presented in this and related threads may wish to visit (it seems to be heavily pro-religion but is interesting and seemingly well-written):

http://www.creighton.edu/JRS/

And some writings from Einstein from "Science, Philosophy, and Religion, a symposium" (Also contains links to other writings of Einstein's; and serves to show more that this a complex issue than to argue a side) Please visit the link before accusing me of misquoting Einstein.:

http://www.stcloudstate.edu/~lesikar/einstein/Einstein2b.html

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