I guess my main problem with Dawkins is precisely that he does treat religion as something that can be countered with a militant rationalism, thus maintaining this religion/science dichotomy that's existed for hundreds of years. It's fair enough to argue against religion on a rational basis, but I think this approach is very limited if that's all there is because:
a) The roots of science and religion are intertwined. The Victorian scholar James Frazer wrote a famous book called 'The Golden Bough' that demonstrated how societies progress from magic -> religion -> science, with all three implicit in each other. There is not as much of as a strict delineation between science and religion as Dawkins or other rationalists would believe. I think it's really interesting how, say, the creationists are deploying post-structuralist arguments to place creationism and evolution in relativistic, rather than absolute, balance. Evolution is indeed 'just a theory' - and now evolutionists have to argue for the credibility of their theory, as opposed to the incredible theory of creationism. It's an interesting shift in the terms of debate.
b) People all around the world are becoming more religious these days, not less, despite the triumphant march of science. I think Dawkins is misplaced in suggesting that mass irrationalism is the reason for this. He fails to address the fact that religion is more a social/cultural phenomena to do with people's identities than a matter of science/mysticism. When identities (especially national ones) are threatened because of globalisation and foreign interventionism, people reinforce some imagined identity often by turning to religion. Hence all this Christian/Muslim 'clash of civilisations' stuff. Such problems can be solved only with political and social solutions, not by arguing for the value of scientism as worthy in itself!
c) Something that just occurred to me. If science is all about discovering (rather than creating) 'truths' then religion actually has a better track record in terms of dealing with the qualitative stuff. Nearly every time a scientist has come up with a set of immutable laws (Galileo, Newton, Einstein) some other scientist pops up years later to undermine them. Whereas religion keeps it 'thou shalt not kill' type truths as truths over thousands of years. Now we all know that many adherents to religions actually do kill people, but this only reinforces my point that religion is a social/cultural phenomena rather than a matter of science vs. mysticism! In which case why is Dawkins criticising religion and not, say, nationalism, or, say, capitalism as mystifications that control a populace?
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momijizukamori
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Date: 2006-Dec-05, Tuesday 17:12 (UTC)a) The roots of science and religion are intertwined. The Victorian scholar James Frazer wrote a famous book called 'The Golden Bough' that demonstrated how societies progress from magic -> religion -> science, with all three implicit in each other. There is not as much of as a strict delineation between science and religion as Dawkins or other rationalists would believe. I think it's really interesting how, say, the creationists are deploying post-structuralist arguments to place creationism and evolution in relativistic, rather than absolute, balance. Evolution is indeed 'just a theory' - and now evolutionists have to argue for the credibility of their theory, as opposed to the incredible theory of creationism. It's an interesting shift in the terms of debate.
b) People all around the world are becoming more religious these days, not less, despite the triumphant march of science. I think Dawkins is misplaced in suggesting that mass irrationalism is the reason for this. He fails to address the fact that religion is more a social/cultural phenomena to do with people's identities than a matter of science/mysticism. When identities (especially national ones) are threatened because of globalisation and foreign interventionism, people reinforce some imagined identity often by turning to religion. Hence all this Christian/Muslim 'clash of civilisations' stuff. Such problems can be solved only with political and social solutions, not by arguing for the value of scientism as worthy in itself!
c) Something that just occurred to me. If science is all about discovering (rather than creating) 'truths' then religion actually has a better track record in terms of dealing with the qualitative stuff. Nearly every time a scientist has come up with a set of immutable laws (Galileo, Newton, Einstein) some other scientist pops up years later to undermine them. Whereas religion keeps it 'thou shalt not kill' type truths as truths over thousands of years. Now we all know that many adherents to religions actually do kill people, but this only reinforces my point that religion is a social/cultural phenomena rather than a matter of science vs. mysticism! In which case why is Dawkins criticising religion and not, say, nationalism, or, say, capitalism as mystifications that control a populace?