Expert: Jeffrey Eldred - 9/8/2010

Question
Will the development of science eventually leave no room for faith and the belief in the unproven?
Do religious differences have the power to destroy civilisation?
Can a person develop a healthy balance of faith and logical thinking?

Answer
My answer to all of these questions is "yes and no" - I hope that talking about what I think can be said on the subject will be sufficient.


"Will the development of science eventually leave no room for faith and the belief in the unproven?"

Science won’t do it, but I think faith will mostly go away anyway. My reasoning is that we already have more than sufficient science to find God implausible. Sceptics[1] from the ancient Greeks (say Epicurus or Socrates[2]) to the Enlightenment (say Hume[3]) have known there was no good reason to believe in a God before the science of evolution, cosmology, and germ theory. For some of the details on that reasoning, see these AllExperts posts of mine in which I attack the God-of-the-Gaps style teleological[4][5] and cosmological[6][7] arguments. The available evidence doesn’t add up to a God and God, especially with an elaborate theological system attached, has never been the most parsimonious explanation. Of course, as the science has come in more and more details of the naturalistic and indifferent features of the universe have become apparent[8][9][10] and the God-of-the-Gaps arguments become worse. Because now the number of things that God could be responsible for, while being consistent with modern science, is getting smaller and smaller while the fact that it is an argument from ignorance[11] is becoming starker and starker.

But yet here we are with still 84% of the world identifying with one religious tradition or another[12]. The reason why religions that make claims about the supernatural still exist is not because of a gap in scientific knowledge, but a gap in public education and rationalism. It is already becoming harder and harder to become an expert in every field, and the knowledge of individuals can’t keep pace with the knowledge of human civilization. The fundamental limitation on questions of scientific fact that will likely remain is whether or not humans trust a scientific authority over a religious authority on the subject. Already we see that the arguments which contend that God can be seen in the natural world are not only poorly reasoned, but actually counter-factual.

Nevertheless I do think religion will diminish away into a much smaller force. I think the quest for “education” on atheism is going to be successful as a result of the freedom to criticize religion, the ease of transferring information, and the increase of economic stability[13][14]. There are reasons to think that religious tendencies are innate and it will never go away completely but I think religion will one day be like superstition, homophobia, or racism (in that they are natural attitudes that we can learn to overcome rationally). Time will tell whether the rules of religious demography (transitory) or educational demography (permanent) dominate the future of atheism.


"Do religious differences have the power to destroy civilisation?"

I think they have the power to destroy civilization, but I don't think that they will. Sam Harris argues in End of Faith[15] that the inevitable consequence of rising technological power is that the destructive consequences of irrational decisions (especially faith) will force us into a choice between faith and civilization. For instance, the simple observation that the death and pain from conventional warfare are not sufficient to deter Islamic extremists who believe martyrdom reaps great reward, becomes even more threatening when applied to weapons of mass destruction and Islamic theocracies. Religious tension is one of many source of military conflict, which can't help the welfare of the planet, but I think that the real danger would be when we don't have a guarantee that the usual rules of engagement apply.

It is hard to predict the future, but I think within the next couple of generations we will know whether or not humans will become extinct or continue indefinitely. If I had to pick which of those I think will happen eventually, I would predict that humans will continue indefinitely. The reasoning is that we live in an age of nuclear and biological weaponry, but nuclear missile defense and preparations against biological attack are next in development. If we can manage to avoid resetting civilization by weapons of mass destruction, than the next couple of generations are also likely to be the time frame for developing self-sufficient (or nearly so) space stations. If we can make a self-sufficient space station in Earth's orbit or on the moon (or a not-space station in a remote part of the Earth), than we can avoid extinction on a planetary scale. If we can make a self-sufficient space station on another planet, than we can avoid extinction on an orbital scale. On another solar system, on a solar scale. On another galaxy, on a galactic scale. Although this is extrapolating a lot, the point is that the time it takes to get from each one of these stages of exploration to the next is likely to be smaller than the time we have guaranteed in our survival by reaching it. This argument is similar to what people talk about when people refer to a technological Singularity[16] (in which people argue that radical changes will come from the accelerating rate at which technology is being discovered and implemented), but I don't actually think that we need technology to progress any faster than the current rate to see real consequences for human survival develop in our lifetime or the next. It might be fair to say that the most likely candidate for human extermination is a human doing something stupid and aggressive because they think they have to, but we knew that already.


"Can a person develop a healthy balance of faith and logical thinking?"
I always think someone is better off with a lack of faith than with an ideology dependent on faith, but I wouldn't necessarily conclude that someone who takes things on faith is dangerously unhealthy.

The hardest part of this question is coming up with a consistent definition of faith. When atheists criticize faith, they usually use the definition something like what you implied in your first question "belief in the unproven", but I want to qualify that a little. When people argue by faith they aren't making statements about plausibility, but rather they are saying what they would like to be true[17] or what true only in a pragmatic sense[18]. I want to make clear here that reject the notion that matters of fact can be reduced to matters of preference but that is exactly what proponents of faith (as I have defined it) attempt to do. So a more complete definition of faith is something like "belief without reason or contrary to reason", where "reason" encompasses any piece of evidence or idea that adds information about how likely something is to be true (that is to say, something that modifies it's prior probability[19]).

The ideal test case for faith, then, is a scenario in which someone has to chose between a belief that is acceptably pleasant but unlikely or a belief that is unacceptably horrible but reasonable. One example is the prospect of an afterlife: There is absolutely no reason why we would suppose life continues after death and what we know from neuroscience (losses of perception, losses of memory, losses of consciousness, losses of mental acuity, etc.) that conscious experience is completely dependent on a fragile biological state. One can believe there is a pleasant afterlife or one could accept the harsher but more intellectually honest explanation that people simply die. In cases like this I always try to pick the hard truth for myself and if I had to pick for someone else I would show them respect by giving them the hard truth.

It's not that I like unpleasant things, but if it is true regardless of whether or not you recognize it than you haven't lost anything by realizing it. If there is something you can do (like helping a loved one in a real way in place of time ordinarily spent on praying for that loved one), than you have to confront the truth to make the reality better. If there is nothing that you can do than I still say that you are better off knowing the truth. Your brain just doesn't seem to be able to make you depressed over something that you can't control. You accept the situation and by accepting it you conquer it. I call this alternative approach "absurdist", after a related philosophy pioneered by Albert Camus[20][21]. So with the "absurdist" perspective, we have a hard truth and by confronting it you feel better. In faith you still have the hard truth, but you try to feel better by avoiding that truth. I would not even be surprised if the two psychological strategies stemmed from similar neural states. But faith not only seems to be a strategy that is fbund to fail (you can be in denial forever), but also a sacrifice (in truth) for which there is no gain (over "absurdism"). So this "absurdist" alternative is what I mean to say when I say "I think someone is better off with a lack of faith."

There are a number of variations on this theme that attempt to justify for belief in God or participation in religion by arguing it to be a useful lie. It may very well be useful for manipulating other people, but for manipulating oneself it is unnecessary. If it is coherent to say something like "I know there is no hell, but believing in it makes me a better person" than certainly it is coherent to say "Hell doesn't need to be real for me to make a commitment to be a better person". So if atheism is true, which I believe it is, than I think it logically follows that it can't truly harm anyone to understand that it is true.

But one doesn't have to be right about everything to be a mentally healthy person or a person worthy or respect. Here is a related AllExperts post of mine[22] in which I give a nuanced take on the psychology of religion and how I feel about religious people in general.


Links:
[1] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060097728/qid=1067272408/sr=8-1/r...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Socrates
[3] http://www.anselm.edu/homepage/dbanach/dnr.htm
[4] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2010/8/Paradox-Design-Argument.htm
[5] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2010/8/Paradox-Design-Argument.htm
[6] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2010/8/Kalam-argument-1.htm
[7] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2009/9/x-17.htm
[8] http://www.amazon.com/God-Failed-Hypothesis-Science-Shows/dp/1591026520/ref=sr_1...
[9] http://www.amazon.com/Incredible-Shrinking-Son-Man-Tradition/dp/1591021219/ref=s...
[10] http://www.amazon.com/Grand-Design-Stephen-Hawking/dp/0553805371/ref=sr_1_1?s=bo...
[11] http://www.skepdic.com/ignorance.html
[12] http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
[13] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/dec/08/religion-society-greg...
[14] http://www.epjournal.net/filestore/EP07398441_c.pdf
[15] http://www.amazon.com/End-Faith-Religion-Terror-Future/dp/0393327655/ref=sr_1_1?...
[16] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
[17] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optimism_bias
[18] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pragmatism
[19] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_probability
[20] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism
[21] http://dbanach.com/sisyphus.htm
[22] http://en.allexperts.com/q/Atheism-2724/2009/12/Response-Testimony.htm