Ephemera

Personally, I think PZ accomplishes a lot. He has made me aware of many situations I otherwise would not have known about in which religion has been used to oppress reason, justice and my right to the separation of church and state.
His commenters are intelligent, well-spoken arguers unlike most in the blogsphere.

Faith and belief in god is foolish, and PZ is not afraid to tell it to the world.

The thought of a god or a radish are similar in that they are both thoughts. The same with written descriptions of each. However, it is trivial to measure the properties of a radish quite apart from thoughts or writings. Radishes have real effects on the physical world (you can do things like photograph a radish), gods do not because gods are inventions of the human imagination.

Despite your gusto with asserting that faith and belief do not need evidence, people do think there is evidence for their gods using all kinds of hand waving exercises such as prayers, incantations, visions, and don't forget written documents. Dr. Myers' blog serves as a substantial counterweight to those claims of proof of gods. The fact that gods have no empirical support and are completely fictional is not obvious at all to theists.

On what foundation do you build spiritual understanding? Infallibility of God's Word? The same Bible upon which you base your spiritual understanding is demonstrably wrong when it comes to its claims about the physical world (i.e. global flood several thousand years ago and 7-day creation of the universe). That people base beliefs on a flawed basis would normally be of no concern to others.
However, when those beliefs affect other people via their embodiment in law, discriminatory practices, health matters, and education, they become of great concern and must be addressed. This is the motivation behind Myer's posts on religion. And the general definitions of faith and belief do not preclude evidence.

You might very well be thinking that comparing God to a radish is unfair and overly simplistic, but I disagree. At a basic level, there is nothing different between believing in the two. A radish lover and a radish hater might disagree with each other irreconcilably, but one is not more or less intelligent than the other.

It seems to me that your argument is that god belief is essential a matter of taste and we all know there is no point in arguing over matters of taste. In other words, god belief is an aesthetic matter. Is this correct?

Denise,

I fully agree with your and Myers' criticizing oppression, injustice, and limiting civil rights. Whenever science or religion condones such wrongdoing, it's a travesty.

But just because science was used as a tool for Nazi atrocities (and, in fact, them taking that even further by in many cases studying the outcomes of atrocious acts to further science), I don't think that belief in science and scientific methods is foolish. People use science, religion, as well as unbelief of all kinds to justify evil and wrongdoing.

Finally, Christianity (when not tainted by shameful prejudices, at least) is inherently against oppression and injustice, and fully strives for universal civil rights. Each and every story of Christ's actions (whether they're taken literally or not) attest to this. It's only when some bigoted Christians ignore this that evil transpires within the church.

And I argue that's foolish, and agree with you and Myers on that point. But completely disagree that such mistakes taint religion as a whole.

Aratina,

I completely agree with you in this sense: absolute certainty, including assertions that God must definitely exist (and can be proven), often end up being dangerous or at least silly assertions.

Acknowledging and exploring uncertainty, after all, is the very basis academic inquiry of all kinds, whether scientific or religious. Questioning, refining ideas, testing, and rehashing issues in constant debate is the point of human intellectual advancement. And these actions take place in all religions as well as all sciences.

But sadly, your assertion that God is definitely fictional --- with absolutely no evidence to support this --- is equally silly due to its implied certainty. That's the core problem with wholesale dismissal of faith and belief: the trite dismissal is itself so trivially constructed that it doesn't meet the same standards of intellectual integrity that are supposedly espoused by science or philosophy. It's as empty of an argument as insisting that God must be real.

I am Christian and believe in God, or at least the possibility of there being a God, and that's all the reason I need to be a Christian. But again, I'm forced to state the obvious: faith and belief do not need evidence, and on the contrary require absolutely no evidence. If I had provable evidence of God, it would not require faith to be a Christian, and thus religion and science would be the same.

Pete,

You bring up some excellent points. As I stated in another reply, I think it's both fair and entirely responsible to call out irresponsible decisions, behaviors, opinions, and outcomes that people justify with religious claims. My study of religions has taught me that they all generally espouse love, forgiveness, peace, and mutual understanding. But when other religious ideas are poorly understood or improperly interpreted, they are as dangerous as scientific studies that are poorly conducted or statistics that are wrongly correlated.

But again, both science and religion can be practiced in a positive and responsible manner (which, I might add, includes debate and acknowledgement of disagreement). Or, they can both be practiced irresponsibly, unethically, and even evilly. And, in both cases, the right or wrong uses do not inherently bless nor curse either practice.

Shaggy,

Your question about aesthetics demonstrates that my comparison of liking or disliking a radish to believing or not believing in God was not exactly a complete and literal comparison. No, I wouldn't say that faith is an aesthetic matter.

Rather, my point is that every person makes decisions about what they value, believe in, cherish, and (in the case of religion or philosophy) practice that have nothing to do with evidence, data, or proof. They are personal and preferential decisions, not scientific ones.

I do believe that spiritual faith decisions are largely preferential and personal, though they can also be rooted in tradition... but that's still personal, really. So for me, I'm a Christian in part because I was brought up that way, but also because I continue to prefer to practice (as well as struggle with) Christianity as one basis of my life. I could have ended up preferring another religion, or perhaps none. But in the end, I don't think that such decisions are ones based on evidence.

Though perhaps that does touch on one thing that I've missed before: I would have to admit that if someone needs evidence of God to believe in God, and does not see that evidence, they're justified in not having faith. In other words, they can't possibly have faith in this case: they need and insist on evidence. P.Z. Myers seems to insist on evidence, and thus cannot have faith in God without it. So be it.

But I still would argue that just because I don't need evidence to have faith in God, that doesn't make me unintelligent, weak-minded, or disingenuous. It just means that I am able to have faith in things that I do not fully understand nor can prove. Again, so be it. And I'm humble enough to admit that this doesn't necessarily make me a better person than Dr. Myers. And it also doesn't make me value science any less.

Everyone,

So in the end, perhaps there are at least 4 camps of people: 1) people who believe in science but not religion, 2) people who believe in religion but doubt science, 3) people who can jointly believe in religion *and* science, and 4) people who believe in neither.

Frankly, I've never met anyone in the 4th camp, so maybe that's just theoretical. Myers fits in the first camp, there are certainly plenty of people who fit in the second, and I (as well as plenty of others) fit in the third.

While I can respect that Myers is in camp 1 and can understand the validity of that stance, I do not respect that he denies the validity of camp 3. There are many thoughtful and rational people like me who consider themselves to be spiritual, and can believe in things they cannot prove (like God), and yet will always defer to the science of matters where evidence is abundant. This seems reasonable; I'm bewildered that others think it is not.

Similarly, I'm also amazed that people in the first camp seem to deny that science is fraught with many of the same problems that religion is: misinterpretations and falsifications, prejudicial conclusions and assertions, incorrect correlations -- the list goes on. And all of these basic arguments are used to try to chop down the tree of religion, yet they're tolerated in science. Why? I'm not sure, but it's obviously inconsistent.

In the end, I think my simply *being* is all the proof that is necessary that being religious and scientific can peacefully and even beneficially coexist. As a designer, I constantly perform work experimentally. That is, I learn from mistakes, I share practices that I disprove through my experience, and I also share and recommend practices and ideas that are successful for me. My religious beliefs do not interfere with my ability to be rational or evidence-based.

But I still have a Christian faith. And I'm sorry if you find that to be a paradox. But paradoxes are real, too. Things can be real even if they do not entirely make sense. It's one of the many beauties in life, and I celebrate being able to accommodate paradox, and sometimes even embrace it.

And in conclusion, I guess I would argue that believing in the possibility that God exists is not any different from any scientist who is daring enough to believe in the possibility that a new theory is true. Both require vision, open-mindedness, patience, and belief. For even in science, the pursuit of a theory is not validated with evidence until *after* the experiment has concluded. Until then, it is at least in part a faith-based exercise.

And that's the major flaw that I continue to insist is in Myers' reasoning: as a scientist, I continue to assert that he's still a lot like a theologian or any practitioner of religion. In pursuing new and unproven ideas, Myers relies on faith to drive his pursuit of meaning.

Kristofer,

Sorry about imputing intentions onto you on the Pharyngula thread. I was too quick to think you were not accepting comments here. So thanks for allowing dissent.

Now, about the possibility of a god: Let's bring in a few different pieces of the puzzle.

1) The concept of something being supernatural had a good chance of being possible a couple centuries ago, but with the advances in scientific knowledge we have made, especially in the area neuroscience, we can honestly discard the concept of the supernatural. Things are either part of reality (i.e. natural), or they are figments of our imagination.

2) Human imagination is symptomatic of reality simulators. If you accept evolution as a tenet of why we are the way we are, it is clear that our brains function primarily as a tool to keep us alive and reproducing. Our brains help us survive by simulating reality so that we on average have an independent yet highly standardized, reliable, and adequate idea of what is happening around us. As simulators, our brains do not actually follow physical laws in simulating reality, and our imaginations and mental quirks are free to manipulate the reality we are conscious of in almost limitless ways.

3) Combining 1 and 2, it could be understood that the supernatural is really a projection of what is possible in our mental simulations of reality onto reality itself.

4) Gods of any sort thus far described by humans would violate the laws of physics as we know them.

How hard is it to make the leap that gods, seeing as how they would violate physical laws and how they are considered supernatural, are figments of our imagination?

Another thing,

How can you call what PZ does "faith"? Atheists are not waiting for the second coming of Christ. There is no reason to allow Christians or any theist a pass. I have it in mind (I could be wrong) that you, as a Christian, would not entertain the concept of Vishnu with four arms and two legs or any of the other pagan gods any more than you would entertain the idea of the Loch Ness monster or bigfoot. Faith has nothing to do with not believing, lack of evidence does and knowledge of where those creatures came from does.

Kris,
There is no similar situation in science as there is in your interpretation of religion. When people misunderstand or misinterpret the science, there are clear mechanisms by which those mistakes can be corrected. Any interpretation and uncertainty must be consistent with the evidence and the evidence must be considered in totality. No such mechanism is present in religion, because there is not evidence from which to derive a "correct" interpretation.
Furthermore, the use of science is a separate issue from science itself. No science says that nuclear enrichment should be used to produce fuel for bombs. However, there are ample instances of religious text explicitly demanding violent acts in the name of whatever god is the supposed author.