The Irrelevance of the Extremists of Belief—II
Anil Mitra, Copyright © November 21, 2007
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This piece is one of a number of articles on belief:
Aspects of the psycho-sociology of belief
The Irrelevance of the Extremists of Belief I.html
The Irrelevance of the Extremists of Belief II.html
The Irrelevance of the Extremists of Belief III.html
There is a relatively systematic discussion of belief in Journey in Being-New World-2007
Introduction
See The Irrelevance of the Extremists of Belief I.html for a general introduction to this sequence of three pieces on extremism in belief
This piece is a short note suggesting a lack of integrity on both sides of the debate and urging readers to ignore the extremists. It is implied that a more robust and integrated view is worthy of attention
Discussion: the D’Souza blog ‘debate’ is a clash of extremists without meeting or convergence to a place of reason
I should not be making this post; neither should you Laila—someone who made a devastating and extremely funny critique of D’Souza’s thought and motives… Why? Because even if we devastate DD's points it doesn't matter too much. He probably doesn't care and he has an audience that doesn't care for reason. (DD is smart no doubt but his arguments lack ultimate cogency e.g. his misinterpretation of Hume's arguments and Kant's arguments that I pointed out in earlier posts.) Of course in a democracy and with free speech, DD has the right to speak his mind even if he is not true to principles. My argument against DD's having an audience is that the kind of subtle and not-so-subtle deviousness in which he engages drowns out and displaces truth which is not shrill and which does not use illicit 'reason' to appeal to the baser emotions. So, I think it is better to ignore DD / Coulter types who feed off attention than to debate them
I think that DD is intelligent; it is therefore hard for me to imagine that he truly believes what he says and argues but I might be wrong. Thomas Aquinas and St. Augustine were immensely intelligent Christian apologists (and possessed of much greater integrity, I think, than the modern apologists who, like the Bush camp, think that reality is irrelevant because 'We define reality.'
Funny thing though, I do sort of agree with DD when he says that Dawkins is a 'terrible advocate for science.' Dawkins is intelligent; his science writing on science (mostly at the popular level) is well written and thought out--Dawkins explains and justifies evolutionary biology well. It is when Dawkins writes as though science describes all of reality that his thought is limited. Richard Lewontin, one of the great evolutionary biologists of the 20th / 21st centuries wrote, in an article in the New York Review of Books -- The Wars Over Evolution, October 2005, that the fundamentalist backlash to evolutionary theory may be attributed to 'evolutionism' which is the belief, often argued by scientists, that evolutionary explanation extends far beyond its established boundaries. Dawkins is one of those who would so push evolutionary explanation. Modern science shows some of its own limits; for example, modern physical science shows that there are limits of time and space and variety of being beyond which we know nothing (by the methods of science.) Yet many scientists are supremely confident that 'if it isn't explained by modern science, it doesn't exist.' The view that there is nothing outside science has been labeled 'scientific positivism'
It seems to me, then, that the clash of the apologists for religion, e.g. DD, and the scientific positivists, e.g. Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking, is a clash of extremists who, as a result of the nature of their arguments and positions, draw far more attention than they deserve. I enjoy science and I believe that there is much of value in religion (I don't believe the archaic religious cosmologies though) but I don't find my self enlightened by the clash of DD and those he calls the atheists
By the way, is there a way to answer the question "What lies outside science?" For my answer, visit my website