Alone and Unobserved

In the book review that got him embroiled in the current wave of compatibility/accommodationist debates, Jerry Coyne writes,

[S]upernatural phenomena are not completely beyond the realm of science. All scientists can think of certain observations that would convince them of the existence of God or supernatural forces. . . . [I]f a nine-hundred-foot-tall Jesus appeared to the residents of New York City, as he supposedly did to the evangelist Oral Roberts in Oklahoma, and this apparition were convincingly documented, most scientists would fall on their knees with hosannas.

When I read that, I raised my eyebrows and said to myself, “Huh. That wouldn’t be enough, in itself, to convince me that there is a god.”

Now, the appearance of a 900-foot-tall Jesus would be very hard to explain, there’s no getting around that. And it would depend on what you meant by “god.” But, for instance, I honestly can’t think of any evidence that would convince me of the existence of the Christian god (an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, unchanging being with no body that exists everywhere and nowhere), or of the Mormon god (an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, unchanging being with a shining, immortal physical body). These are just such far-fetched assumptions—”all-knowing,” “all-powerful,” “immortal”—that you’d need an infinite amount of evidence to support them. And, given the amount of suffering in the world, the evidence for the existence of a benevolent, all-powerful being is rather less than lacking.

Of course! I’ve heard the religious people say. If God appeared in all His glory and convinced everyone of His existence in an instant, it would take away everyone’s ability to have faith in Him!

Ah. So either we can imagine the existence of an invisible, implausible, omnipotent being who meddles in our lives continually but is so phenomenally successful at erasing all his tracks that we have no evidence for his existence at all,

OR

there is no such invisible omnipotent imaginary being. We are who we appear to be: flawed, intelligent animals, who must learn to live together in a flawed but amazing world with other flawed, amazing creatures, with no help or hindrance from “on high.”

I know which option I find more compelling, more defensible, more reasonable, and ultimately more satisfying. What about you?

If you follow the accommodationist debates at all, you know that one defense both religious and non-religious folk give for the compatibility of religion and science is that each is a different “way of knowing,” or a different way of “reaching truth.” So let’s talk about religion as a “way of knowing,” and about the “truths” that religion nets us.

Imagine you had never encountered a “religion” before, and someone told you that they were a member of an organization that had been founded by a benevolent, all-knowing, all-powerful being, and that this being had imparted teachings to its followers that explained certain things about the natural world and about the human condition. What would you expect to be true about this organization, and about those teachings?

1. You would expect the claims this organization makes about the natural world to be more correct and more descriptive of reality than the theories and claims of mere humans, since the former claims are based on the teachings of an benevolent, all-knowing being, and the latter are based on empirical evidence at best and on guessing, lies or storytelling at worst.
2. You would expect any claims this organization made about the future to come true more often than future claims made by a mere human.
3. You would expect members of this organization to have a better understanding of human relationships, human happiness and human ethics than could be arrived at by a mere human.

Let’s look at how religion stacks up.

First, are the claims religions make about the natural world even minimally true? Not usually. Religion gave us creationism, after all, as well as various bizarre and often harmful theories of disease. If a religion truly were inspired by some all-knowing deity, you would expect its adherents to have known about the true age of the earth before science discovered radiometric dating, and about the germ theory of disease centuries, if not millennia, before science even imagined it.

Second, how good is religion at predicting the future? Uh, not good. All of the “true” prophecies I’m aware of can either be attributed to chance, to revision of history after the fact, or to creative reading of the prophecy.

Third, science has shown that religious people are happier in a certain sense than non-religious people, so this is potentially a point in religion’s favor. However, I remain skeptical about this, because I don’t feel there have been enough studies to control for all the variables—for instance, whether this greater feeling of well-being is due to a placebo effect of sorts (religious people often feel they are expected to be happy, after all) or to the sense of community religion fosters rather than to some ineffable blessing from god that non-religious communities cannot duplicate.

But whether or not religious people are happier themselves, I feel that religion has a terrible track record on pretty much every other aspect of the human condition. Traditional religious marriages are sexist, oppressive, and heteronormative. Religion is currently the most vocal proponent of homophobia, sexism, racism and xenophobia in the world. You’d think that organizations inspired by a benevolent being would be ahead of the love-and-tolerance curve, not behind it.

I grew up in a religion that makes some very strong claims about its own nature and about reality. I was taught that God had pronounced himself on any number of subjects, through living, inspired prophets that were alive and led his church today. God was very interested in what my family looked like, what people I was sexually attracted to and had sex with, whether I got married, whether I had kids. Furthermore, he had opinions on all those subjects, and I was promised that if I followed his advice I would be happy.

Well, guess what. The Heavenly Father I was taught about is apparently a raging homophobe, and doesn’t even believe homosexuals exist. I am gay, so you can imagine how well his advice for worked out for me. He also apparently knows a great deal about health. For instance, drinking tea, ever, is damaging to one’s health. More detrimental, apparently, than drinking cola, because he’s never mentioned that. The religion I grew up in also believes in a literal interpretation of most of the Bible, including the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (a tale that plays an integral role in the secret ceremonies that take place in Mormon temples), Noah and the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and on and on and on.

All of these truth claims are false. All of the special truth claims I’ve investigated in other religions have either turned out to be false, unverifiable, or incoherent. A couple months ago, Jerry Coyne (author of Why Evolution Is True, and one of those “strident New Atheists” accommodationists are always going on about) announced a little contest on his blog, with a signed copy of his book as a prize. Here was the solitary rule:

Using the Oxford English Dictionary definition of truth given below, please name one truth about the world and/or universe that has been arrived at by faith alone, could not be arrived at by secular reason or science, and that is true in that it is in principle verifiable by all people.

OED: Truth: Conformity with fact; agreement with reality

No one won.

I encourage you to read Coyne’s full blog post for a few addenda, and then to read the comments for all the many suggestions people made of truths they thought were revealed uniquely by religion. And then, if you think you can top all of those suggestions, I encourage you to email your contribution to Jerry Coyne. You might not get an autographed copy of Why Evolution Is True out of it, but you might get a reply, explaining why your suggestion is insufficient, and that is EDUCATION. Which is yet another thing science is better at that religion.