Sacred ambiguity
Derek Dyson and I attended the University of Tulsa’s “Snuggs Lecture in Religion” last week to listen to Roger Scruton of the Institute for the Psychological Sciences speak on “God and the Scientists”. Unfortunately, what we heard should have been titled, “Stuff I Kind of Think We All Sort Of Agree On (with philosophy!)”.
The lecture hall was so full (and we, so late) that we had to sit uncomfortably on the floor at the front of the room. It seemed a fairly diverse group of college students and people who hadn’t attended college in many many years. We walked in late with few assumptions and eased onto the carpet during a PowerPoint slide titled, “Evangelical Atheists”. Intrigued, I was curious which way this was going.
Essentially, Professor Scruton’s argument boiled down to a few points:
- Everything we observe has a cause, but we can’t go back in time forever so… God.
- We can explain almost everything scientifically now, but it just seems like there is more to life than an explanation, so… the sacred.
- We need a story about sacred things and God, so… religion.
On God: He never mentioned a specific god of choice. He simply referred to a “necessary being”. He argued that the causal chain simply has to have a final link in the past somewhere. It is necessary. This seems to me a logical inference that doesn’t necessarily reflect on reality. We simply don’t know. If it turns out to be true, I fail to see how this necessary entity can’t just be a singularity or some other unintelligent mass.
On the sacred: This is where it gets even more wishy-washy. The professor claims that while it is true we have made significant progress explaining why we enjoy music, it just doesn’t seem that really explains why we like music. He gets the feeling that there’s just more to it. The scientific explanations regarding the primitive beginnings of art in a tribal society that adapt and grow through the centuries to Mozart, jazz, and Lil Wayne are simply not “holistic”. He submits that as humans we just intuitively feel this to be the case.
I argue the opposite: a dry, to-the-point explanation can be thoroughly correct and we can still derive subjective pleasure from the experience. For example, we have always enjoyed looking into the sky at night to view the deep black pierced by pinholes of light. It is only quite recently that we figured out we’re staring away from our relatively small rock and into the deep cosmos at other suns and planets. The simple explanation for what’s in the night sky does nothing to subtract from the cosmic rapture one can feel while looking up and out – in fact, I find it enhances and magnifies the experience.
Scruton also harped repeatedly on death and sex as grand proof of the “sacred”. People talk differently around death and sex. We still act as if the corpse belongs to the consciousness that once inhabited it. During the act of sex, we refer to our partner’s body as if it is separate from them. This is his proof. This is his proof?
Yes, we feel quite different and our language reflects it in extreme circumstances. On one hand, we have the incredible fear of death or the sadness of personal loss, and on the other we have the temporary insanity of sexual gratification. I wouldn’t use either of these experiences as proof of anything mystical, sacred, or supernatural. We can, at the risk of sounding unsacred, tell exactly what hormones are being released during sex, and surprise! they’re real chemicals – not fairy dust.
On religion: Scruton finishes by arguing that since we know we must have a necessary being, and that we can all feel, but not fully explain, experiences that are sacred, religion is the required narrative to put it all together. He teaches at Oxford.
Finally, and this is the best part, the last question during the Q&A was a softball about Dawkins’ language almost sounding “religious”. Of course Scruton agreed, but he topped it all by saying, “but in the case of Richard Dawkins, death is on our side” to which he got a rousing audience applause. I didn’t know if I was more disappointed in a professor or my fellow Tulsans.
I was hoping to hear something a little more eloquent than the usual “I can just feel it” argument, but I’m coming to understand that there isn’t much more to the proof. Why should we accept ambiguous, subjective feelings or language used around death as pointers toward the divine?
February 2nd, 2010 at 5:10 pm
By the way, the Institute for Psychological Sciences is “thoroughly Catholic” according to its website. This might explain some of his other wonky statements about Freudian psychology not being a real scientific theory because its adherents behaved in a religious way. I wasn’t aware that a theory’s fundamental power to explain data was based on any group of people.
February 2nd, 2010 at 6:16 pm
Thanks for a very thoughtful critique. This kind of lecture seems so very predictable and really the whole “Phd” point might be to try to find something interesting to say within the very predictable parameters of an established and generally understood worldview (Arthur Schlesinger, Jr). Richard Dawkins is so utterly disappointing because his heretical pose remains faithful to that same structure; i.e., provability and the relationship to that quality. My response is, what is the relevancy of that issue?
February 2nd, 2010 at 6:57 pm
I don’t fully understand the common beef with Dawkins. I recognize that he’s a bit of a curmudgeon at times and seems irritated and arrogant when talking to some people, but he seems to be realistic about his opinions.
I admit I speak from some ignorance, however, as I’ve only read his recent “The Greatest Show on Earth” and seen him in interviews. I should probably read “The God Delusion” to have a better understanding.
Perhaps the relevance of “provability”, if I understand the heart of the question, is that it is all we can legitimately base our fundamental concept of reality upon. Fantasies, metaphysical philosophy, and tenacious hypotheses may be interesting to bat around in discussion – and any or all may ultimately be true – but until we can adequately prove any of them, they all remain interesting conjecture.
Again, I may be way off base, because I’m not very well read in regards to Dawkins.
February 19th, 2010 at 1:06 am
Thanks for attending that lame lecture and bringing back the info, but I don’t understand why you sound so bummed out. Perhaps i’m being a jackass here (likely), but if I attended a Snuggs Lecture in Religion I would assume that some religious platitudes would be rolled out; was this really that big of a shock to you guys when you attended? Were you expecting something different and if so, what was it?
Also, why do you guys think that Richard Dawkins always come up as the only atheist of note in public discussion anymore? Mr. Yount I’m going to assume that you meant to say “heretical prose”, rather than “pose” (which probably looks really menacing and totally awesome), but I think you revealed the answer- the guy’s a firebrand; the equivalent of the ID camp’s mouthpieces, and it sucks that he is considered the de facto “voice” of the atheist movement, if it can be considered a movement by anyone.
Dawkins seems to feel justified in taunting Pilgrims because he is right, but its bad form nonetheless. I thought diversionary tactics were the tools of trade of the other side of this issue; Aristotle disagreed with Plato but he didn’t exactly say “suck it loser”, and that seems to be Dawkins’ method.
I’m certain enough in my own mind about my beliefs that I don’t need a spokesperson, and certainly not one who calls the opposition names, because that encourages more of this “we all hate Dawkins and what he stands for” rhetorical crap.
I want a lack of theism to become a key component in advancing the human species as a whole and making us all better off, so it doesn’t help to be associated with a jerk who looks down on and ridicules most of the populace, you know what I mean?