Worldview Blog

Some Thoughts on Religion and Politics
23 March 2008

It's Easter Sunday, and the topic of religion is back on the blogs. I just finished watching a Bloggingheads discussion between the charming Amy Sullivan and ... er ... some middle-aged, white, conservative guy, on whether some evangelicals might be returning to the Democrats. Then there is an article by Chris Hedges on the 'dangerous atheism' of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. This inspires me to write a wide-ranging article on some of my views regarding religion and politics. Hopefully, it won't be too superficial.

Can Intelligent People Believe in God?

First, let us address the atheistic rationalists like biologist Richard Dawkins or philosopher Daniel Dennett, who have made quite an impression lately on the thinking public. Basically, they argue that no modern, intelligent, honest person can believe in anything corresponding to 'God', period. They claim that the idea of God arose back in the days of 'magical thinking', when humans had no other way to explain the wonders of nature. Modern science has done away with all that, and no explanation other than one based on strict scientific empiricism is allowed to explain any natural phenomenon. The idea of God clearly falls outside of the realm of the scientific method and must be discarded, or so they claim.

I find such a view to be surprisingly simplistic, coming from two gentlemen who presume that they must be so much smarter than those who believe in God. Science is nothing but the methodical description of observed regularities. It is powerful and useful, but it cannot answer the fundamental questions, such as why something exists rather than nothing, or why the laws of nature are as they are. Rational atheists claim that these are 'invalid' questions, but it seems equally clear to me that they are not. The very existence of anything whatsoever has a 'miraculous' quality that demands an Ultimate Cause — or better yet an Ultimate Source — that resembles the traditional notion of divinity, in some sense. It is difficult to say much about this Source, but one of its essential characteristics must be consciousness, since I cannot imagine that it might be blind. Blindness would produce chaos, or worse. Notice that this Source must be present at all times, not just at the beginning, since it is as much a miracle for nature to continue to exist as to appear in the first place. The Source should be thought of as an eternal and omnipresent sustainer, rather than a creator.

No doubt, the God of popular religion is full of mythical and human qualities that cannot pertain to the Ultimate Source of existence, which must surely be deeply mysterious and abstract. Nevertheless, the need for such an Ultimate Source that transcends nature itself seems plain to my intuition. Intuition is supposed to be forbidden nowadays in rational discourse, but I think not, if used properly. My intuition tells me so! At the very least, the question of the Ultimate Source of existence is a good one, and it cannot simply be dismissed with arrogant hand-waving. Intelligent people can be theistic too, or at least inclined in that direction. Rational atheists should be open-minded enough to accept this possibility, but they often display a rather intolerant dogmatism in such matters. The most scrupulously honest answer, from the point of view of pure empiricism, is probably 'I don't know'. But atheists tend to be militantly sure of themselves, not unlike the organized religions they so despise.

It is often claimed that the existence of evil disproves the possibility of a God that is both benevolent and omnipotent. Actually, I am inclined to agree, so that God cannot be considered omnipotent in any simplistic sense, if he is benevolent. The idea of divine omnipotence probably arose in primitive tribal religions, where God was viewed as a kind of super-king, and the aim was to frighten people and make them obedient. So let us take omnipotence with a grain of salt. So much for the dreaded Problem of Evil! That was easy, wasn't it?

If God need not be omnipotent, then why assume that he is even benevolent? To answer this, I will first posit that the Source should be unlimited in itself, since it transcends nature. What would limit it? Indeed, the sheer power inherent in being the Source suggests some kind of intrinsic infinitude, if not omnipotence regarding nature. Its own consciousness, if not its power, should be unlimited in some sense, or so it seems to me. For instance, I would expect it be able to foresee the past and future in every minute detail, even if it cannot control every detail. Thus, if the intrinsic consciousness of the Source is unlimited, then I would expect it to be pure bliss and love, as ignorance and hate seem associated with minds that are limited, bound and defective. I realize that this kind of reasoning is hardly a mathematical proof, but it still seems more plausible to me than the alternative. If God's consciousness were intrinsically limited, then what would determine this arbitrary limit? One might well ask what determines a limit on God's extrinsic power over nature, and to this we turn next, where an answer is offered.

So why is the Source not omnipotent? Why are nature and humans 'defective', full of pain and evil, respectively? To answer this, in my opinion, one must step back and look at the big picture. It seems quite plausible to me to suppose that life is a learning experience. We all leave the world a bit wiser than when we entered, if only because our suffering has prompted us to reflect. For instance, those who have experienced war are usually much less enthusiastic about it than foolish civilians influenced by their military-loving peers. Likewise, a failed personal relationship can teach us about the importance of love over desire. Indeed, one can view the entire history of the universe as a slow but steady progression from chaos to intelligence and from brute matter to luminous spirit, with many ups and downs along the way. The Big Bang was followed by a maelstrom of hot, swirling gas, which then congealed into stars and galaxies, which then produced planets, which then gave birth to life, first primitive, and then increasingly sophisticated, ultimately leading to humans, whose gift of intelligence allows them to think philosophically and to strive for ever higher levels of consciousness. The quest for political justice, as well as the beauties of culture, are lower forms of this progression, and so-called 'enlightenment' or 'salvation' is the higher form. In this sense, evolution is compatible with a spiritual view of reality, and the old hackneyed opposition between science and religion can be discarded. Of course, there are many setbacks in the short run, so that one must think on a cosmic timescale. Given such an optimistic view of an overall progression from darkness to light, first in nature and then in individual human beings, one might conclude that the Source wants to reproduce itself, in some sense, but cannot do it all at once. It must start from nothing, and then there must be a continuous evolution from darkness to light, just as one must cross the street to get to the other side. This sounds almost like a mathematical (e.g. topological) restriction, and thus the Source may be forgiven for its lack of 'omnipotence', since even God cannot square a circle.

I am aware that evolutionists will protest vehemently against any notion of 'design' in evolution. It all proceeds by trial and error, they say, with random mutations, some of which are beneficial to adaptation and others are not. As I discuss later in the update on Intelligent Design, this is the proper view for science to take, and it is in accordance with the facts. However, if one believes in the Source and its ability to anticipate the future, then one can also say that evolution was 'intended' in some sense. This is not the same as an Intelligent Designer who interferes directly in the physical and chemical processes of evolution. As I explain later, these must be taken to proceed according to the laws of physics. But the laws of physics are known to the Source and must be part of its 'plan'.

It may seem rather ad hoc to suppose that the Source is 'intrinsically' unlimited but 'extrinsically' limited in shaping the nature it sustains. Not really. In itself, in its own nature, it encounters no resistance, and is thus unlimited. However, in nature, and particularly in human beings, it is creating and sustaining entities that are at least superficially 'other' than itself. I say 'superficially', since I don't believe that any 'created' thing can be truly other, as its very existence requires the divine sustenance at all times. However, from a practical point of view, one can argue that nature is at least an illusion or a show of otherness, and hence it is not so surprising that the Source may encounter some restrictions. One restriction is the continuous path from darkness to light, just mentioned, and the laws of physics constitute another restriction, to be addressed next. Of course, the two must be closely related.

Note that the progress of individual human beings to the light must proceed over many lifetimes, since one lifetime is evidently not enough. In each lifetime, a new body is 'put on' like a new pair of clothes, so that we may interact with an environment full of other 'people' and thus continue our spiritual education.

The laws of physics furnish another clue to why the Source is restricted in its power over nature, and hence in its 'omnipotence'. The most basic and remarkable fact about these laws is that they are the same everywhere. This suggests that God cannot create (or sustain) a universe, unless it is constrained to follow the same laws everywhere. Perhaps this is because God is the same everywhere, at every point in space and time where he sustains reality. This too is a restriction on his 'omnipotence', though it doesn't seem particularly shocking or unnatural. The laws of physics are ultimately responsible for the evolution of the universe and of life, including our animal nature, which we have only partly overcome. Perhaps there are other universes, with 'better' laws, allowing for life without carnivores, without unhappiness, and perhaps even without death. And perhaps we cannot attain life in such a universe until we have progressed spiritually in lower ones such as this. Perhaps our spirits must first become sufficiently 'in tune' with the higher universes before we can enter them. Granted that speculation can run wild, but I have a feeling that something like this might be true. Again, the basic idea of progression from darkness to light, from ignorance to enlightenment, seems to me to be the only way to make sense out of life, and I believe that life must have a meaning if a conscious Source exists.

I realize that this kind of metaphysics is considered outdated in contemporary academia, but I also consider academic fashion to be a mere transient blip on the radar screen of life. The fact that so many contemporary intellectuals can be so dogmatic about atheism proves that they have no monopoly on wisdom and insight. At any rate, I have described by own views, which seem rational and in agreement with the facts, and quite a bit more inspiring than existential angst, rational atheism, postmodern nihilism or other intellectual maladies of the past century or so. The simple fact is that everybody craves immortality and happiness. If we can entertain a vision of the world that at least makes plausible the existence of a conscious Source and of a purpose to life, culminating in enlightenment and salvation for all, then our spirits can reverberate full of energy and good cheer. A materialistic view of the universe can lead only to nihilism and despair. Some may argue that I am only deluding myself, but I would respond that it is inconceivable to me to suppose that the universe came from nothing. There must be something like God behind it all, and from that flows a purpose to life and a goal of divine consciousness to strive for.

Good and Bad Religion

Now let us descend from the sublime heights of metaphysics to the mixed bag of organized religion. Secularists and atheists love to dwell on the crimes of the Church, and these crimes have been very real. Jews, Christians and Muslims have all oppressed and slaughtered those they deemed 'infidels'. This stain is simply a fact of life, though it seems more typical of Western and Middle Eastern religions than of Far Eastern religions. The solution, of course, is to distinguish between good and bad religion. One major problem is that the monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam tend to be bibliolatrous, which means that they worship the letter of their scriptures as sacred in every respect. This is a huge mistake, as some of those scriptures are horrific indeed. Again, the solution is to realize that these scriptures are not pure wisdom and revelation but rather represent man's striving towards God. Thus they are contaminated with all man's imperfection, while also containing genuine nuggets of wisdom and insight.

A similar problem is the fanatical insistence on this or that prophet as the ultimate representative of God. The various religious teachers of history were simply men with a higher degree of insight, at least relative to their people and times. Their teachings can only be a reflection of the truth, not the ultimate truth, which is no doubt beyond human expression, though surely justice, decency and human rights are part of this truth. Thus, we can dispense with all the barbaric and outdated passages in the scriptures. Only bigots and idiots claim otherwise. Notice that a devotional religion like Christianity is not invalidated as 'false'. Many representations of the divine in human form are possible, including Jesus, Krishna, Buddha and many others. These can serve as objects of devotion, accessible to ordinary people, which lead the consciousness to a higher level closer to that of God. The purity of devotion is far more important that the 'historical truth' of the representation itself. Indeed, the insistence on historical truth can be considered a kind of gross materialism that defiles the spiritual purpose of the representation. Yet this elementary misconception has led to so much conflict! It is essential that scriptures be properly interpreted by the wisest of priests, so that the horrors of bibliolatry can be avoided. The Jewish rabbinical tradition seems to have done a rather good job of this. The Catholic Church, by contrast, seems moribund. And all eyes, of course, are currently on the Islamic world.

Indeed, the example of Islam is particularly instructive. After 9/11, I became interested in this faith, as did so many others, and for a while I was under the spell of the Western conservatives who love to sound the alarm about 'Islamofascism'. They seemed to have a logically watertight case: The prophet Mohammed was a holy warrior, who fought mercilessly for his one true religion. Every Muslim must follow his example, so that every true Muslim must be a ruthless holy warrior and the enemy of everyone else. Then I caught my breath and started to think a little. It is the European colonialists and the United States who have been invading the Middle East for centuries now, not the other way around. No wonder they are furious! As for their internal affairs, that is for them to straighten out. It is simply parochial ignorance and bigotry to suppose that all Muslims are militant. Education is far more important than dogma in such matters. We Europeans were also fanatical crazies not so long ago, and have only made tentative progress as we have become educated. Sadly, these hard-won gains seem in danger of disappearing in the ignorant political swamp that is American politics. As people become civilized, they find ways to accommodate their scriptures to more modern thinking. Scriptures are only a chain on the minds of the ignorant.

Religion and Politics in America

Let us now finish up with the situation in America, the theme of Amy Sullivan's diavlog. I'll eschew genteel civility and simply state that, in my opinion, the pious Republicans indulge in a most perverse form of Christianity. The Iraq war was an unjustified, pre-emptive violation of the Geneva Conventions based on trumped-up intelligence. The fact that the Republicans show so little shame and remain in lockstep with President Bush reveals that they worship not the God of Love but the God of War. What hypocrites! Not to mention their un-Christian lack of compassion towards the poor. (Please don't insist that private charity is sufficient. It isn't.) Why, those bums won't even allow Universal Health Care, which every other industrialized nation takes for granted!

It is unfortunate that Progressives have largely rejected religion as a superstition, as Jesus would surely have been a Progressive. Unfortunately, the higher educational levels characteristic of the Left tend to lead to the agnosticism and atheism displayed by Dawkins and Dennett, unless dry rationalism is watered with spiritual insight. This requires deep and thoughtful reflection, which is not provided by formal education. All humans are capable of spiritual intuition, since we are by nature spirit and not computers, but we must be receptive in our hearts and must temper our addiction to the brain and to the senses, which are merely tools of the body and not ultimate sources of wisdom. (An example of intuition is to realize that nothing comes from nothing, as discussed above, which provides a basis for belief in God.)

Regarding specific issues such as abortion, I believe that it should be legal, at least during the first trimester. It seems like the grossest superstition to suppose that an ovary becomes a 'life' the instant after being impregnated by a sperm. There is no way that a mere cell or small cluster of cells can be a 'human life'. Human life is defined by consciousness, which requires a developed nervous system. It is not clear when this arises during pregnancy, but surely not at inception. On the other hand, it is obviously a great injustice to bring an unwanted life into this world. So it seems like a no-brainer to me that abortion should be safe and legal, at least during the first trimester. One can argue on constitutional grounds against Roe vs. Wade, but the basic right to abortion should be preserved. Perhaps the Left should be less stubborn about late-term abortions, which sound pretty horrendous. However, even here, Republican propaganda has been sowing confusion. Late-term abortions were always intended to save the life of the mother. Don't Republicans know that honesty is a Christian virtue?

It also seems barbaric to me that euthanasia is not available to those who are in sufficient possession of their faculties to make a responsible decision. This parallels the puritanical conservative resistance to drugs to relieve the suffering of terminal patients, whether we are talking about medical marijuana or opiates. There is something about conservative religion that loves to promote suffering, whether with holy wars or by forcing people to suffer unnecessarily in the name of ethics. The secularists would not get any disagreement from me that right-wing religion has tended to be barbaric and oppressive throughout the ages. Where I disagree is with their tendency to view this perverse form of religion as defining all of mankind's spiritual explorations. This too is sheer bigotry and ignorance.

One area where I tend to sympathize with religious conservatives is regarding the vulgarity of popular culture. In no way am I in favor of the church or state interfering in private life, but at the same time I expect people to use their freedom in a responsible, considerate and mature manner. Too often, when religious and social strictures are lifted, people degenerate into hedonism and orgiastic behavior. Even this would not be so bad, if it weren't also often accompanied by an insolent and obnoxious attitude. Not to mention simple bad taste. People need to be kind, gentle, courteous and compassionate, and if a dash of social conservatism promotes this attitude, then that might not be such a bad thing. (Pssst. Obama has it!) However, the constitution and courts must remain as enlightened, secularist and humanistic as our founding fathers intended, if not more so.

Well, that's enough for now. More later, perhaps.

Bloggingheads TV: Amy Sullivan and Peter Wehner

Electric Politics: Amy Sullivan interview (audio)

Chris Hedges: Dangerous atheism of Hitchens and Harris

John Gray: The atheist delusion

Michael Scheuer: On Who Speaks for Islam?

Intelligent Design

UPDATE (25 Mar 08): Let us briefly dispose of the silly topic called Intelligent Design. Some pious scientists claim that mere chemistry cannot explain all the marvelous details of life. Divine intervention must be invoked to explain this or that 'miraculous' feature, which, it is claimed, is simply too complex to have developed by the incremental trial and error of evolution. In a word, I agree with the rational secularists, and with competent scientists in general, that such hypotheses have no place in science or in science class, though they are entirely legitimate in philosophy.

As one who has invoked God to explain the 'miraculous' fact that anything exists at all, I may seem to be inconsistent and even insincere in my views. This is not so. I simply realize that science is a well-honed methodology for understanding natural phenomena. As I said before, it is the methodical description of observed regularities. It avoids fundamental philosophical questions about God and simply observes the workings of nature in the most acute way possible, often with the help of mathematics. It has proved remarkably successful, and we should not tamper with this powerful methodology. At the same time, we should not presumptuously suppose that it answers all questions.

At the most basic level, science is based on the observation of phenomena. When a scientist formulates a so-called 'hypothesis', he is really postulating some new or more general set of phenomena, which permit an elegant and unified completion of our picture of the process under study. He is filling in the gaps in our observation, as it were, and it goes without saying that these gaps must then be verified with experiment, i.e. with further observation. The problem with invoking God is that this idea does not correspond to any observed natural phenomenon, and hence is useless and sterile to the scientific method. After all, even the most devout scientist must admit that he cannot know God's intentions, so why bother appealing to an 'explanation' that has no predictive value?

You may wonder how this squares with my previous view of nature as tending to evolve from darkness to light, and this is a fair question. Was this not a hypothesis concerning God's intentions? The answer is that such a sweeping view is indeed outside the purview of the scientific method, unless one can define 'darkness' and 'light' in terms of observed phenomena, as well as provide an observable mechanism whereby darkness proceeds to light. For instance, it may one day be possible to develop a mathematical proof that evolution will naturally result in rational animals on some fraction of planets. We might then consider rationality to be an instance of 'light'. Even so, one should leave God out of it, when discussing the science. Those animals that become 'rational' do so in order to adapt to the environment. The whole process of adaptation is observable, at least in principle.

Nonetheless, as a philosopher, I can frame this picture in terms of a 'purpose' to the universe, involving the conscious Source already assumed for other reasons. Such an interpretation is in addition to the theory of evolution and must not contradict it. This interpretation is made plausible by the fact that one would expect a conscious Source to have a 'purpose', in the following sense. In sustaining the observed universe and its laws, he can anticipate all that results, and thus he 'knows' what will happen. Hence, he must have acquiesced to the panorama of nature, and in that sense he must have a 'purpose'. One could even claim that this purpose is inferred from observable events, which sounds rather close to science. But we should not call it science, since God and his purpose are not directly observable, even in principle, and hence the methodology is violated.

In brief, science must proceed by explaining observed phenomena in terms of observed causes. Now this does not quite imply that 'miracles' are impossible. It is clear that nature behaves with a high degree of regularity, following strict laws almost all the time, if not all the time. These laws ultimately reduce to the laws of physics, as stated. However, unlike many scientists, I am not 'fanatical' about these laws. I take Hume's view that scientific causation corresponds to observed regularities. However, nobody has observed every phenomenon, and exceptions to the rule are at least logically possible. They may be so rare that they have never occurred in the laboratory, or have been dismissed as 'noise' when they did occur. But they are not altogether impossible, according to an honest empirical methodology. The laws of nature are statements of probability, not of necessity.

That said, it is proper for science to assume that nature always follows well-defined, permanent, and omnipresent laws, or it cannot proceed. The remarkable success of science and technology indicates that this 'working assumption' is quite powerful. So even if the evolutionist should come across some development that seems impossible to explain in terms of physics or chemistry, he should still hold out for some explanation in terms of the laws of physics and chemistry. Any other explanation would be purely ad hoc and would have no predictive value, which would render it useless to the ultimate goal of science, which is to discover regularities in nature. If a miracle does occur, then this must forever be a question mark to the scientist. After all, a seeming miracle could just as well be explained by alien intervention from a far away planet, as by invoking God. And those aliens presumably obey the laws of physics like everything else.

At the same time, I am more than a scientist. I am a human being. When not in the lab, or writing a scientific paper, I have every right to ponder about the possibility and nature of God and about the meaning of life, as I did above. But I must not allow such thoughts to distort my purely scientific research, which is based on a precise and well-defined methodology, as just discussed. Likewise, when one visits a doctor or lawyer, one doesn't want to hear about his or her love life.

Finally, let me say that I share the annoyance of many scientists regarding the motives of those who advocate Intelligent Design. If they were merely misguided philosophers posing as scientists, then that might be forgivable. However, they are usually more than that. They are Christian zealots posing as philosophers, which annoys me as a philosopher. They claim to be non-sectarian intellectuals advocating a bold new hypothesis to enrich scientific research, but in reality they are the same old unsophisticated Christian robots who are hooked on proselytizing Jesus to the world in any underhanded way that they can. They really need to grow up and develop some respect for mankind's wonderfully variegated approaches to the divine.

The Mystery of Consciousness

UPDATE (28 Mar 08): So far, I have proposed two 'reasons' or 'inspired ideas' for believing in something corresponding to God: the miracle that anything exists, and the ultimate tendency of nature and life to evolve to more intelligent and sophisticated states, i.e. from darkness to light. There is a third reason, which really clinches it for me. I guess 'three is the charm', as they say.

This is the mystery of consciousness, which simply eludes any possible materialistic explanation. In this sense, it is also inaccessible to science, at least at the most basic level of simply being aware. No doubt, various brain-states are correlated with various kinds of awareness, or various objects of awareness, and it is legitimate for scientists to study these correlations. But the ultimate mystery of awareness per se is forever inaccessible to the scientific method, since it simply cannot be explained in materialistic terms, involving matter, energy, electromagnetism, or even quantum mechanics.

For science assumes an objective world 'outside' of consciousness. That is, it divides the world into 'observer' and 'observed'. The observer is conscious, and the observed is unconscious matter and energy. By this very definition, consciousness is logically inexplicable in terms of matter and energy. It is really as simple as that, though neuroscientists continue to be stubborn about consciousness somehow 'emerging' from complex electro-chemical processes. If the electrons in a rock are not conscious, then the same must be true for electrons in a brain. If the chemicals in a test tube are not conscious, then the same must be true for the chemicals in a brain. There is nothing about 'complexity' that can alter the insentient nature of the fundamental building blocks.

A few scientists and philosophers realize this and posit that all matter and energy has some dim consciousness, which becomes more vivid and intelligent in complex information-processing structures such as the brain. Does this mean that computers are conscious? Then why not simpler information-processing devices, such as thermostats? Indeed, the line between an 'information-processing device' and any 'machine' whatsoever is rather ambiguous, as illustrated by the case of the humble thermostat. So might a car have some kind of consciousness? It consists of parts that operate together in a coherent way, not unlike a brain. But then, what really separates a 'machine' from any organized system in nature, such as the weather, or earth itself?

Furthermore, there is a very subtle and deep problem involved in identity. Our own conscious experience clearly indicates a single unified 'I' that experiences whatever I experience. This unity can simply not be explained in terms of interacting parts transmitting signals to each other. Indeed, the scientific method is contrary to this unity, in that it 'dissolves' any observed phenomenon into atomistic parts, culminating in the elementary particles of nature. Take the case of a simple picture. How can an assembly of 'pixels' acquire the unity we clearly experience in viewing the picture? This picture does not dissolve into pixels to the observing 'I', but one is hard-pressed to explain this unity in terms of any conceivable kind of computer. (Note that computers only mimic thought, since they are programmed to.)

Thus the mystery of consciousness defies the scientific method in several ways. The very existence of consciousness cannot be explained in terms of mere descriptions of insentient matter and energy in motion, no matter how sophisticated the description. And any attempt to ascribe sentience to the matter and energy encounters insurmountable problems in terms of the mysterious unity of consciousness, which is an irrefutable phenomenological reality.

Now some years ago, I wrote about my 'idealistic' philosophical views, in which the usual distinction between subject and object is argued to be false. This simply reinforces the idea that consciousness cannot be explained in terms of insentient matter and energy, since the latter are taken to be mere illusions without true existence. I still hold this unconventional view, but even if such as view is rejected, as most people today would, the arguments I gave above remain valid. Thus, for the purpose of this essay, we assume the usual scientific dualism between subject and object.

So there is a profound mystery to consciousness, which transcends the power of science to explain. Does this necessarily imply anything about the existence of God? Well, if the existence of insentient matter is a 'miracle' in some sense, then at least as much must be true of consciousness. Moreover, consciousness has qualities one naturally associates with the divine. I cannot imagine any kind of God having any kind of material qualities, but at the same time I cannot imagine him not being conscious, though in an unlimited way that far transcends my own finite consciousness. Thus, a profound connection with the divine is established, simply by pondering the nature of consciousness. That is, my essence as a conscious being suggests that I am a finite replica of God. Since my own consciousness is indubitable, the divine is rendered ever more plausible, or even necessary, which in turn convinces me of my own divine destiny, as I journey from darkness to light during the course of many so-called lifetimes.

And if all this is too much for you, then at a more pedestrian level, the irreconcilable difference between matter and consciousness — for those who reject idealism — provides a powerful reason to suppose that some kind of conscious life is possible after the death of the body. This would certainly be impossible if consciousness and brain were identical. Since they cannot be, you have no good reason to suppose that you 'disappear forever' when you die. That is what we really care about, even more than we care about the existence of God. At least, this is true until we begin to understand God well enough to realize that he is the source of all ecstasy, as of everything else. Who doesn't like ecstasy? I cannot speak from personal experience, but I can at least understand and embrace this goal of ecstasy in my intellect.

So let us thumb our noses at the pious and puritanical conservatives, who love to put nonviolent drug offenders in jail, and declare that God is the ultimate intoxicant, and a perfectly legal and healthy one at that. But no doubt an effort must be made to seek him (or it). This involves going 'deep within' to the Source of consciousness, of which our everyday mind is but a superficial manifestation. I doubt that creed and dogma have anything to do with the spiritual transformation that leads to higher states of consciousness. Meditation is by all accounts the path, and this involves transcending the clutter of the mind, rather than being enmeshed it. Thus, honest and sincere agnosticism is not a bad place to begin, provided it is accompanied by a dash of humility, which the Dawkins and Dennetts seem to lack. With the right attitude, we will eventually find the way.

Websites

The Secular Web

American Atheists

Freedom From Religion

Wikipedia: Atheism

PBS: Evolution

Templeton Foundation: A discussion of God and science

Kirainet: Top 50 most non-religious nations

ASA: Christian Scientists

Why God Won't Heal Amputees

Articles

Bertrand Russell: Why I Am Not a Christian

Paul Kurtz: Why I Am a Skeptic about Religious Claims

Freeman Dyson: Religion from the Outside (on Daniel Dennett)

Ben Rutter: The New Agnosticism?

Dinesh D'Souza: Atheism is behind the mass murders of history

Lakshmi Chaudhry: An atheist bullies the faithful

Tobias Jones: Secular fundamentalists are the new totalitarians

HEATHER MAC DONALD,
AN ATHEIST CONSERVATIVE
Gene Expression blog, 02 Jan 07

I also wondered at the narcissism of believers who credit their good fortune to God. A cancer survivor who claims that God cured him implies that his worthiness is so obvious that God had to act. It never occurs to him to ask what this explanation for his deliverance says about the cancer victim in the hospital bed next to his, who, despite the fervent prayers of her family, died anyway.

As I was pondering whether any of these practices could be reconciled with rationality, the religious gloating of the conservative intelligentsia only grew louder. The onset of the Iraq war expanded the domain of religious triumphalism to transatlantic relations: what makes America superior to Europe, we were told by conservative opinionizers, is its religious faith and its willingness to invade Iraq. George Bush made the connection between religious beliefs and the Iraq war explicit, with his childlike claim that freedom was God's gift to humanity and that he was delivering that gift himself by invading Iraq.

I need not rehearse here how Bush's invocation of the divine gift of freedom overlooks the Bible, the persistence throughout history of hierarchical societies that have little use for personal autonomy, and the unique, centuries-long struggle in the West to create the institutions of limited government that underwrite our Western idea of freedom. Suffice it to say, the predictable outcome of the Iraq invasion did not convince me that religious belief was a particularly trustworthy ground for political action.

Mary Eberstadt: How the West Really Lost God

Steven Warshawsky: Atheists, Conservatives, and Christianity

Jack Miles: Review of Dennett's Breaking the Spell

Michael Gerson: What Atheists Can't Answer

Christopher Hitchens: An Atheist Responds

Christopher Hitchens: Religion Poisons Everything

Ronald Aronson: The New Atheists

Daniel Lazare: Among the Disbelievers

Dan Gardner: Those fanatical atheists

Erasmus Root: The Hollow Men: Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris

Mark Oppenheimer: The Turning of an Atheist (Anthony Flew)

Jim Holt: Can you prove God doesn't exist?

Jim Holt: Beyond Belief (on Richard Dawkins)

Roger Scruton: The Return of Religion

BBC: The Atheism Tapes

Nobel Physicist Steven Weinberg on Atheism

Biologist Richard Dawkins on Atheism

Philosopher Colin McGinn on Atheism

Theologian Denys Turner on Atheism

More Videos

Harun Yahya (a Turkish Muslim) on the Collapse of Atheism

Note: This video presents some intriguing ideas that are more or less consistent with the facts, but also makes many false statements, especially regarding evolution. There is no scientific consensus in favor of intelligent design! However, the fine-tuning of physical constants does seem a bit more perplexing. Other metaphysically-inclined physicists have written on this.

The Jesus Unknown To Atheism and Humanism

Beyond Belief 2006 - Session 1 (w/ Steven Weinberg)

Ursula Goodenough on Biology and Religion

Irreducible Complexity and the Anthropic Principle

Why Religion is Delusional

Mr. Deity and Evil

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