I might expound more fully on "Fundamentalist Antihumanist Personality Disorder" in the future. In the meantime, we have all encountered those who make their attitudes our problem.
I stumbled across an old post about The Need for Absurd Belief Among Fundamentalists on the Breaking Spells blog. It discusses, amongst other things, the fact that fundies are desperate to attack segments of scientific knowledge.
I read it with interest because I am fascinated — and dismayed — by what I regard as the Fundamentalist Cognitive Disorder*. This is often linked to the Fundamentalist Antihumanist Personality Disorder.**
The final line of the post reads:
""Eventually, perhaps, the spell of religion will be broken.""
I decided to convert my response into a post.
Let’s hope! Religion continues to support damaging and outright dangerous cognitive and behavioural disorders.
I completely agree that fundies are terrified of knowledge — whether it’s science or the expert conclusions of unbiased biblical scholars. I also agree that this rigid thinking is the result of childhood indoctrination. Why else would IDiots be fighting to insinuate creationism into secondary science curricula?
I think that the motivation is not merely habit — it is highly emotional. It is also deliberately anti-factual, and, most important, illogical. They are trained into illogic and this fallacious thinking is reinforced by Bible quotes.
Successful religions have set up clever reward and punishment systems. Community is the most mundane motivation, but is probably essential for many. An eternal afterlife with a loving SkyDaddy who punishes one’s enemies is an obvious incentive. The flip side is the prison door. They fear what they are instructed to fear.
However, based on long observation of how some fundies think, I conclude that much of the emotional appeal lies in certainty and the assurance that religious-rule-following renders one RIGHT and morally SUPERIOR. (Excuse the caps. They seemed appropriate.)
It always reminds me of prefects in a school playground. Not a highschool playground. Not a primary school playground in North America. No, a school playground for children up to age 11. That’s the moral level at which these authoritarianism-oriented folk function.
Ugh!
* and ** : not official terminology
* and ** Disclaimer: not all fundies, religionists other than fundies, the occasional atheist.
"Can't science and religion just get along? A "science and religion coexistence" message conveyed by church leaders or by scientists who have reconciled the two in their own lives might convince even many devout Christians that evolution is no real threat to faith."
Unfortunately for any possibility of honest coexistence, the fact remains that science and religion are intrinsically antithetical. Science deals with evidence based knowledge and, whether or not some scientists are believers, science disproves the chief tenets of most religious beliefs (origins, miracles, and conjectured afterlife). There simply is no good reason, outside emotionally-motivated ignorance, to hypothesize the existence of a supernatural. Without the proferred promise and threat of the supernatural, what is the point of devotion to religious mythologies? Certainly not the rigid, moralistic intolerance passed of as absolute morality by the bigoted Religious so-called Right.
In a realistic, evidence-based world there is no room for deities because deities really do not exist. Never mind placatory statements that we cannot disprove the existence of something that does not exist, the facts clearly support the contention that the supernatural is purely an invention born of ignorance and superstition. There is abundant positive evidence of the invented aspect of religious beliefs in the nearly universal phenomenon of invented religions. Theists inadvertantly and implicitly admit to the disproof of the supernatural by science when they attack science or attempt to commandeer science to their religious purposes.
The New Atheists recognize that without interference religionists will continue to refuse to acknowledge the supremacy of science as an explanatory tool and will continue to distort the truth. No amount of positive scientific statements and geared-to-the-layperson explanations will shift science-ignorant theists without an attack on the root causes of theistic anti-science distortions. Scientific knowledge, particularly in this age of rapid advances in detailed understanding, will always be beyond the ken of the public no matter how well explained. However, this does not mean that the public is justified in dismissing science as hopelessly biased or confused (as religionists would have the science-ignorant believe). This deliberate diminution of science's validity has spread beyond cosmology and evolution and has distorted awareness of public health issues and misdirected political policies.
In Why Pairing Science and Atheism is High-Brow, Jake Young argues that pairing science and atheism might alienate some theists from accepting science. Young quotes John Dewey who said in The American Intellectual Frontier in 1922 that making liberalism high-brow would have the negative consequence of making liberalism a minority movement by definition.
I view this 85 year old essay as an out of date acquiescence to religionist insistence that only religion can provide moral guidance. The lamentable fact is that fundamentalist, conservative, absolutist morality is not only regressive but, in its intolerance and ignorance of social mechanisms, is also largely without any moral merit. Now, as in 1925, America lags far behind other Western nations in its lack of enlightenment.
Young says, "as Nisbet and Schermer have argued, alienating the majority with criticism is likely to extend the time that is necessary for acceptance." I disagree with this because the sit back mutely and be polite to the religionists, bigots, and dim-everything-to-low-brow-level masses has definitely not worked. It is time to shake up the unexamined belief systems of the cossetted religionists and force the closed-minded to question whether or not their narrowness is as acceptable as they have been promised in this modern world. These are not individuals who easily think for themselves and they have been fed an unopposed diet of untruths.
I have been taking a closer look at Richard Dawkins because of a discussion that I recently read between an theist and a theist who contends that Dawkins is a cult figure. Judging by the ad hominem attacks on Dawkins and illogical attacks on his message, his campaign for-science-against-religion is successful.
Dawkins on Hitchens : The Times Literary Supplement features (September 05, 2007) an interesting review by Richard Dawkins of Christopher Hitchens' "God is not great". . . more.
Theistic Fallacies : A variety of illogical attacks against atheism are misdirected toward Richard Dawkins and the New Atheist spokespeople. . . more.
Dawkins has become controversial because he has spoken up against nonsensical religiopolitical propagandism. Religionists and Creationists have become accustomed to having the stage to themselves (with the too quiet exception of most who are in possession of a good education in science). Dawkin contends that it is no longer sufficient merely to reiterate scientific truths about the universe and biological evolution, but also to throw a critical light onto religious mythology.
Dawkins' pithy comments are too accurate not to have elicited an emotional backlash from religionists. This timely 2002 lecture was Dawkins' invitation to the intelligentsia in TED's American audience to join the OUT Campaign. As Dawkins' points out, atheism is on the rise in the US and is positively correlated with IQ and educational level.
A variety of illogical attacks against atheism are misdirected toward Richard Dawkins and the New Atheist spokespeople.
Dawkins, for example, is a highly visible scientist speaking out in print and in lecture tours for atheism, against religious excesses, and for scientific knowledge. In ignoring the taboo against speaking against religionism by declaring for atheism, Dawkins has willingly upset a large number of theists. Dawkins does not claim that he is founding an alternate religion, does not claim that he is constructing a rigorous philosophical system, and is eminently qualified to speak about science.
I've read some totally irrelevant fallacious arguments directed against the New Atheists: ● vitriol ● unfamiliarity with theistic apologetics ● unfamiliarity with scriptural dogma ● lack of qualifications to express any philosophical viewpoint ● lack of peer-reviewed publication of atheistic philosophy ● atheists have no morality, no sense of purpose, no joy in life, etc
All these accusations are utterly irrelevant to the question of whether or not atheism is a more rational position than accepting theistic claims for the invented supernatural category. Rejection of claims for a position does not require that the rejecter prove his own, negative position. This is a fallacious shift of the burden of proof. Theists make claims, and the burden of proof lies with the theist.
Theists are, of course, totally missing the main point about atheism – atheistic rejection of theistic claims for the supernatural is based on a number of facts: ● history and current affairs provide ample example of the danger presented by religious fundamentalisn ● theists can produce absolutely no empirical support for their position ● all religions, which are human inventions, resulted from a nearly universal manifestation of human psychology combined with ignorance ● theistic apologetics is riddled with artificial arguments and fallacies of logic ● science provides empirically verified explanations for the phenomena that theists have passed off as miracles ● academic philosophers have published scholarly refutations of theistic apologetics ● rejection of the supernatural automatically negates all religious claims to providing explication of the supernatural
Here's a typical, illogical theistic comment:"Richard Dawkins is often accused of being a fundamentalist atheist. He dismisses theism almost without argument. The arguments he gives are often straw men or miss the point in some other way. He shows little familiarity with the best philosophical representatives of theism, and since his work on atheism is actually philosophy he's really dropped the ball in backing up his views. It ends up looking like mere dogmatism without much allowance for dialogue with the other side, i.e. fundamentalism."
"Richard Dawkins is often accused of being a fundamentalist atheist. He dismisses theism almost without argument." Wrong: Fundamentalism is more correctly applied to religious literalists and anti-modernists. Wrong: Dawkins has many valid observations and arguments about theism.
"The arguments he gives are often straw men or miss the point in some other way." Wrong: One does not make a straw man argument, one attacks a weakened, straw man misrepresentation of the opponent's positon (just as the t..t whom I have quoted is doing).
"He shows little familiarity with the best philosophical representatives of theism, and since his work on atheism is actually philosophy he's really dropped the ball in backing up his views." Wrong: There are no convincing philosophical arguments for theism in so far as the arguments would not convince a logical person who lacked an inculcated belief in the conclusions being argued for. Dawkins' stated purpose does not require that he "show familiarity with the best philosophical representatives of theism", merely that he be persuasive about science and about the impacts of religious fundamentalism. Dawkins' atheism is a rejection of an unsupported claim of the supernatural, so his atheism is not technically philosophy in the manner of a professional philosopher. As an expert on evolutionary biology, Dawkins has not dropped any ball in backing up his views.
"It ends up looking like mere dogmatism without much allowance for dialogue with the other side, i.e. fundamentalism." Now, there's a revealing definition of the tactics of fundamentalists! Wrong: The "other side" has had more than 2,000 years in which to produce dialogue concerning its J-C-I side.
It does not surprise me in the least that theistic arguments against atheism are so often misguided, emotional, and illogical because belief in the unbelievable is itself misguided, emotional, and illogical.
Elsewhere : Bay at Fundies (accusations of 'fundamentalist')
Salient: (military) the part of the line of battle that projects closest to the enemy. (vernacular) having a quality that thrusts itself into attention.
The enemy?
Bigotry, ignorance, illogic promulgated in dogmatic and fundamentalist theism.
Attention?
The purpose of any blog is antithetical to keeping one's objections to oneself.
atheism
cognition
education
John Dewey
philosophy
politics
religion
apologetics
Christianity
fallacies of logic
fundamentalism
logic
Richard Dawkins