11.17.08
Explaining the ‘explaining away religion’ syndrome
Evolutionary psychology: Explaining away religion for the 100th time…
UD cites a Pascal Boyer book and article (in Nature) on religion. I have to agree with UD on this point. There is something alarming about the obtuseness of contemporary science on the subject of religion.
The first time you read an attempt to ‘explain away’ religion you let it pass, thinking it an anomaly. But by the tenth such article (always trumpeting new research) it begins to be unsettling because you realize that a comittment to science is misplaced and potentially harmful, and is blinding one to what is going on in the way scientists are being educated. They simply can’t handle the subject of religion and this has nothing to do with belief vs skepticism. You can be skeptical of religion but stilll knowledgeable about the history of religion.
The ‘explain it away’ syndrome has morphed into one of the singular faults of the Darwin paradigm, consistently producing garbage results. And the momentum of this is becoming hard to stop, with ominous foreboding about the future of science. Science has forced the public to revolt. We see the first signs in conservatives, but that is misleading.
Worse, the New Atheism movement is getting hitched to these puerile (the only word for it, unless ‘adolescent’) science fantasies. A serious atheist has to bail out from the ‘ism’ with a change of terminology.
The question of religion in world history is a big study. Clearly the problem lies with those who get the Dawkins treatment in adolescence (more child abuse from ‘religious’ fanatics) and/or as converts to science, as specialists with technical talents, and go through an educational sequence that systematically omits a broadly balanced course of study. This syndrome is the more insidious as the shibboleth is instilled that since science explains everything no further study of fields outside of science is necessary. This is the source of the kind of junk science trying to explain away religion based on the universal metaphysical principle of natural selection.
Even a moderate study of philosophy, e.g. a figure such as Kant, could put some vitamins in this kwashiokor diet. But anyone who watches the science fanatics at work knows how philosophy got eliminated in the triumphs of science.
(I should note that all the founders of Quantum Mechanics were knowledgable about German classical philosophy)
Can any change come from within science? If not, we are in trouble.
Change will come from the outside, as the paradigm changer of last resort. At that point the public will understandably lose their current worship of the Golden Calf version of science mesmerization.