Deuteronomy Blues*

The events in Paris last Friday have prompted me to write some thoughts on the so-called New Atheists . I should state at the outset that i find their views for the most part, compatible with my own, and will not waste space here discussing that part. I will rather concentrate on a couple of the points where i differ in my worldview.

"Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness."

Richard Dawkins

"Natural selection will not remove ignorance from future generations."

Richard Dawkins

"While liberals are leery of religious fundamentalism in general, they consistently imagine that all religions at their core teach the same thing and teach it equally well. This is one of the many delusions borne of political correctness."

Sam Harris

"Moderates want their faith respected. They don't want faith itself criticized, and yet faith itself is what is bringing us all this - this lunacy.

Sam Harris

I guess what I object to in the New Atheism, or at least in its prime spokespeople, is their fervor

 Given the scientific background present to its most published proponents, this surprises me. I would wager that many who agree with them, would also think it archaic to hold the position that being gay is learned, not genetic. So their apparent lack concern about the biological origin of what they decry, and how difficult it would be to eradicate "religion", troubles me. That, with their apparent inability to see anything good in the liberal/moderate people of faith, is a little to absolutist for me.

As i have written about before, religion and spirituality is are in the essential sense, biologically based, and the actual expression by a phenotype is the result of learning. It is also well supported that the belief in an unseen powerful being is a cultural/human universal, which denotes an instinct.

Given that the tendency towards religion/spirituality is in the wetware, and the early environment plays the biggest role in the type of later belief (not unlike the often related in behaving badly, socially obligate boundary condition of pseudospeciation) any change ultimately has to be based upon:

• Changes made in the social environment of newbies
• Geared to alter, over a very long period of time, sexual selection patterns

We also know the the following conditions tend over time, to liberalize people's religious views, and in many cases, surpress them:

• Abundant food
• Comfortable shelter
• Personal safety
• Absence of violence in daily life
• Perception that one's children are safe, fed, happy 

And then availability of education, especially that which includes science and critical thinking.

I define behavior, as a relationship between a phenotype and its environment, that is in a constant state of change. I would posit the natural selection can , in a given world line end religion / spirituality. But it would require very different social conditions and a long expanse of time to do so. Given the economic and status socially obligate boundary conditions, that aint't happening any time soon on ths planet.

So New Atheists, why beat up on the liberal/moderate faithful so much? 

I agree that they are philosophical enablers of the white supremacy wackos, abortion clinic bombers, jihadists, West Bank Settlers, etc. I agree that the liberal folks of faith are the result of the principles of the Enlightenment and the advance of science being internalized, and the resulting selective reading / or ignoring of their own scriptures.

I have read the scriptures of all the Abrahamic faiths. Islam is not unique in the dangerous scripture content department. I also agree that the current right-wing Islamists are a cultural clusterfuck. But I thank the gods ( :) ) that for example, that most Christians and their Mormon spin-offs are not the "holy warrior" Christians of the middle ages through the Thirty Years War, or the ones that invaded the Western Hemisphere.  Daesh had nothing on them.

Can you imagine some flavor of each of Abrahamic religions spawning  an Daesh equivalent? There is stuff in the scriptures of choice of the people of faith around me that could support it, but for what the New Atheists call hypocrisy, and I prefer to think of my neighbor's abandonment of worshiping the hairy thunderer for the cosmic muffin, and have a least a little of a sense of humor.

Can you imagine the Thirty Years War with modern chemical weapons available?  I am glad my Christian neighbors are for the most part, housebroken. As Jesus said, "With God all things are possible." History is in part a story of how belief makes possible horrendous atrocities.  It is clear that with belief in God, the worst behavior is possible, and is periodically probable.

"... first cast out the beam out of thine own eye;and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."                            Matthew 7:5

The really dangerous part of revealed or fath based religions is actually not unique to religion. That part is teleological thinking. Each of the Abrahamic faiths claim in their scripture at least, to have an exclusive lock on the true purpose or goal of the whole enchilada. That makes for a troubled voyage in calm weather. 

But, the teleologic fallacy has appeared outside of religion and has spawned some pretty impressive body counts. How about Maxist- Leninism under Stalin?1

Teleology kills.

If you base your view of reality on one ultimate purpose, and another group bases theirs on a different one, (even if they differ only slightly in their respective contingent altruism tags), in a perceived condition of resource/energy scarcity, you can get pseudospeciation to birth behaviors which can require a stock pile of body bags and disinfectant. 

So stop calling out and dissing the moderate/liberal faithful. Do you actually want the laity to really look at all their scriptures? If they start doing that after years of belief, human nature being what it is; get ready to be burned alive. 

Right now, all the religions, well with the possible exception of one 2, are teleological.

Sit on your tongue and encourage their good works. With luck, those works will , with the passage of time and a continued scientific enterprise help build a future worth having sola, a very distant future without fide.

*"And the Lord our God delivered him before us; and we smote him, and his sons, and all his people. And we took all his cities at that time, and utterly destroyed the men, and the women, and the little ones, of every city, we left none to remain: Only the cattle we took for a prey unto ourselves, and the spoil of the cities which we took. "                                           

King James Bible Deuteronomy 2: 33-35

1 Nazism was a teleological philosophy but its historically famous leaders also has a spiritual streak, (the belief in a literal battle between the Volksgeists in a Wagnerian like realm of struggle). But both the Nazis and Stalinism rejected evolution by natural selection, since it is not telological, and their belief systems were (master race/eventual creation of communism, respectfully). They both favored Lamarckism .

2   

Some see Buddhism in its core, as telling people to be autotelic, and many
would label its core as non-teleological. But it too has spawned occasional teleogenic monsters .