Posted: Jul 19, 2010 4:50 am
I agree, but only in part. I agree that education is of tremendous importance to how an individual grows up to think. As I said before, it is a factor, but not the only one.
Firstly, if 'emotional reasons' swayed people from atheism to religion, simply because their atheism was based on 'emotional reasons' to begin with, that doesn't explain why they don't sway back to atheism very often. The idea that religion has many emotional reasons ("tons" of them), doesn't explain it on its own, unless you're willing to assume that all of religion's emotionally appealing aspects are equivalent and that it's locked in battle with atheism on a purely statistical level; more reasons, more converts. I think that's overly simplistic.
I do agree that people are most often religious for 'emotional reasons' and that in part this is attributable to educational failure. But I don't think you can educate people into becoming purely rational beings, starting from childhood or otherwise. Just as humans have evolved critical faculties, they have also - like it or not - evolved an emotional side which I don't think is easily suppressed merely by education. There are countless examples of children whose lives have been ruined by parents eager to push them to their limits in mathematics, chess or whatever other forms of logical thinking you can mention. Complete indulgence and perfect instruction in rational thought does not satisfy the irrational side of us that longs for meaning, for a sense of belonging and other emotional requirements. Consider, for example, that many people do completely self-destructive things after bad parenting ruins their childhood. Many turn to drugs, develop eating disorders or gambling addictions - all sorts of things. These do not result from educational failure, so much as emotional failure. It is clearly an error to allege that the reason someone has become a drug addict, or that they have developed some mental problem, is that they weren't taught well enough to rationally evaluate the dangers of drug use of or of compulsively throwing up after each meal. In such things education can only go so far.
In fact, the idea that humans are inherently irrational at least in part, and that this cannot be overcome is the subject of innumerable commentaries as a recognised fact. Take Spock in Star Trek (or later Data in Next Generation). The very purpose of those characters is to underline that their take on human nature is limited because they can only understand the world in rational terms; they are incapable of fathoming the irrational side of human existence, which is necessarily a part of humans. Spock and Data were not simply examples of what a human would be like if he/she was perfectly educated. The point is they were not human in full. The same theme recurs in innumerable other formats - just look at every film pitching humankind versus machines (Terminator, The Matrix, AI...).
What I think religion does is prey (no pun intended) upon humans' irrational sides, which, sadly, we are unable to purge from our systems. (Freud also recognised this.) Our capacities to operate successfully in life are greatly aided by rationality and logic, and in that context irrationality may be seen as a hindrance. But nonetheless, that irrationality needs sating. In the case of Francis Collins, he is clearly sufficiently well versed in rational thinking that he should have no problems dismissing religious propositions as the nonsense they are. Yet he does not. The same is true of the person I mentioned at the start of this thread, T., a chemical engineer. As I mentioned above, T. actively seeks nonsense (e.g. astrology) and charismatic father figures who can interpret the world for him. This is essentially because his irrational need to feel 'at home' or 'comfortable' with the reality of his existence and its nature is not satisfied by rational analysis, and also because science looks like a bewildering complex mixture of facts, figures, graphs and alienating expertise. It's not enough that T. was taught science, it's that he's alienated from it and its implications on a personal level; it doesn't give him the meaning his irrational side yearns for. This, I think, is fundamentally why he requires the comfort of superstition. Francis Collins may be the same. Part of the problem is that people are not often aware that this is how things are for them.
For example, take a look at T.'s obsession with finding people online who promise him that if he believes in what they say, he can claim to belong to a renegade vanguard group of moral truth-seekers able to recognise that everyone else is being deceived (e.g. by evolution, or by global warming 'propaganda'). T. has the ability to analyze the claims he's buying into and evaluate their worth, just as he is able to evaluate the pros/cons of buying a new or used car, or a toaster oven, or which of two job offers to accept, or how to plan his day to accomplish various tasks. When it comes to skepticism, he has that in abundance too, it's just misguided. He will happily assert that many mainstream views are insufficiently well evidenced, whilst believing nonsense himself. He doesn't lack the tools education would give him (or at least only a few); what he really lacks is emotional satisfaction in life, access to someone he can admire, a sense of belonging, affirmation of his worldview - all of which could have come from various places in his life.
I should reiterate that I support wholeheartedly the idea that science education is extremely important and is failing children. But I don't think even at its optimum it would prevent people from adopting stupid, irrational or religious beliefs for the reasons mentioned above.
I'll stop here. I think I've made my point and I shouldn't make the post any longer.
Firstly, if 'emotional reasons' swayed people from atheism to religion, simply because their atheism was based on 'emotional reasons' to begin with, that doesn't explain why they don't sway back to atheism very often. The idea that religion has many emotional reasons ("tons" of them), doesn't explain it on its own, unless you're willing to assume that all of religion's emotionally appealing aspects are equivalent and that it's locked in battle with atheism on a purely statistical level; more reasons, more converts. I think that's overly simplistic.
I do agree that people are most often religious for 'emotional reasons' and that in part this is attributable to educational failure. But I don't think you can educate people into becoming purely rational beings, starting from childhood or otherwise. Just as humans have evolved critical faculties, they have also - like it or not - evolved an emotional side which I don't think is easily suppressed merely by education. There are countless examples of children whose lives have been ruined by parents eager to push them to their limits in mathematics, chess or whatever other forms of logical thinking you can mention. Complete indulgence and perfect instruction in rational thought does not satisfy the irrational side of us that longs for meaning, for a sense of belonging and other emotional requirements. Consider, for example, that many people do completely self-destructive things after bad parenting ruins their childhood. Many turn to drugs, develop eating disorders or gambling addictions - all sorts of things. These do not result from educational failure, so much as emotional failure. It is clearly an error to allege that the reason someone has become a drug addict, or that they have developed some mental problem, is that they weren't taught well enough to rationally evaluate the dangers of drug use of or of compulsively throwing up after each meal. In such things education can only go so far.
In fact, the idea that humans are inherently irrational at least in part, and that this cannot be overcome is the subject of innumerable commentaries as a recognised fact. Take Spock in Star Trek (or later Data in Next Generation). The very purpose of those characters is to underline that their take on human nature is limited because they can only understand the world in rational terms; they are incapable of fathoming the irrational side of human existence, which is necessarily a part of humans. Spock and Data were not simply examples of what a human would be like if he/she was perfectly educated. The point is they were not human in full. The same theme recurs in innumerable other formats - just look at every film pitching humankind versus machines (Terminator, The Matrix, AI...).
What I think religion does is prey (no pun intended) upon humans' irrational sides, which, sadly, we are unable to purge from our systems. (Freud also recognised this.) Our capacities to operate successfully in life are greatly aided by rationality and logic, and in that context irrationality may be seen as a hindrance. But nonetheless, that irrationality needs sating. In the case of Francis Collins, he is clearly sufficiently well versed in rational thinking that he should have no problems dismissing religious propositions as the nonsense they are. Yet he does not. The same is true of the person I mentioned at the start of this thread, T., a chemical engineer. As I mentioned above, T. actively seeks nonsense (e.g. astrology) and charismatic father figures who can interpret the world for him. This is essentially because his irrational need to feel 'at home' or 'comfortable' with the reality of his existence and its nature is not satisfied by rational analysis, and also because science looks like a bewildering complex mixture of facts, figures, graphs and alienating expertise. It's not enough that T. was taught science, it's that he's alienated from it and its implications on a personal level; it doesn't give him the meaning his irrational side yearns for. This, I think, is fundamentally why he requires the comfort of superstition. Francis Collins may be the same. Part of the problem is that people are not often aware that this is how things are for them.
For example, take a look at T.'s obsession with finding people online who promise him that if he believes in what they say, he can claim to belong to a renegade vanguard group of moral truth-seekers able to recognise that everyone else is being deceived (e.g. by evolution, or by global warming 'propaganda'). T. has the ability to analyze the claims he's buying into and evaluate their worth, just as he is able to evaluate the pros/cons of buying a new or used car, or a toaster oven, or which of two job offers to accept, or how to plan his day to accomplish various tasks. When it comes to skepticism, he has that in abundance too, it's just misguided. He will happily assert that many mainstream views are insufficiently well evidenced, whilst believing nonsense himself. He doesn't lack the tools education would give him (or at least only a few); what he really lacks is emotional satisfaction in life, access to someone he can admire, a sense of belonging, affirmation of his worldview - all of which could have come from various places in his life.
I should reiterate that I support wholeheartedly the idea that science education is extremely important and is failing children. But I don't think even at its optimum it would prevent people from adopting stupid, irrational or religious beliefs for the reasons mentioned above.
I'll stop here. I think I've made my point and I shouldn't make the post any longer.