A wonderful debate: Stephen Fry/Christopher Hitchens vs Archbishop John Onaiyekan/Ann Widdecombe MP

An amazing debate. And mostly just because Stephen Fry is so wonderfully eloquent and humane, and because Chistopher Hitchens, is so eloquent, serious and angry. It is the oratory equivalent of a one-two punch.










There is little by way of editorial comment that I could add to this.

Dan Dennett, provocative as usual.

Pascal's Wager: An argument that should never have been convincing.

As an atheist (a six on the Dawkins scale) I get to hear about Pascal's wager more often than anyone really needs to hear about it. If you find yourself in the unbelieving crowd, no doubt you hear it too often as well. This post isn't for you (well it is for you too, but I am really interested in exposing the flaws of Pascal here). This post is for those, often well meaning folks, who continue to tirelessly wheel out Pascal's rotting corpse in an effort to affect a religious conversion. I don't honestly think they've given Pascal's Wager the review it deserves. This may not be so. However, the abruptness with which the wager falls apart makes me think those who fancy it haven't thought too deeply about it. Either that or they think I'm none to bright. No doubt a few have thought the latter.

Before pressing on, let me spell out Pascal's Wager. Blaise Pascal, was a brilliant mathematician, philosopher and theologian of the 17th century. He was an innovator in mathematics and physics. He was also, perhaps not surprisingly, sick much of his life. And I don't mean mildly sick either. Much of Pascal's life seemed to involve some kind of pain. Whether this unduly influeced his theology, is not, for our purposes, germane to the argument contained in his infamous wager. It was a decidedly Christian wager, by the way, but probably has applicablity for all the Abrahamic traditions. Pascal thought all people should wager thusly: While no evidence for God exists, and proving his existance through reason was impossible (a part modern users of this argument like to leave out) one should wager as if God did exist because the costs for being wrong so outweighed the costs of being correct. That is to say, winning the wager (by believing in God) gets you heaven and whatever other poorly described rewards heave has to offer while you also avoid the eternal torments of hell (failing to believe in God if said being exists). There are no real rewards for winning the bet the other way. If the unbeliever is correct both believer and non-believer get the same reward. Nothing.

Wikipedia has a nice framing, "even though the existence of God cannot be determined through reason, a person should wager as though God exists, because so living has everything to gain, and nothing to lose." So if you believe, and are correct you win the lottery, and if you are wrong you have, so Pascal claims, lost nothing.

For some reason this seems like a very brilliant gambit for many believers, but they really ought to note its many pitfalls. Lets look at what I think are three of the most obvious.

1. Pascal's Wager assumes we can choose which beliefs we adopt
I can only speak for myself here, but it seems like there are very few of our beliefs we can control. If we believe something, it is likely because we think the reasons for holding that a position is consistent with reality are strong. Not because it makes us feel good. No doubt some beliefs are better at making people feel happy than others, but that says nothing about how true they may be. For instance children believe in Santa Clause for very rational reasons. Authorities, whom they trust tell them Santa is real. For a child of a suitably young age, this kind of trust makes complete sense and constitutes reasonable evidence. But no matter where you find yourself in the belief or unbelief question you look for evidence of the veracity of position. It isn't apparent that one can choose to believe anything. They have to be compelled by evidence to adopt a position. That doesn't mean of course they will arrive at the correct position, just that some body of evidence (experience, research, etc) will have been enough to convince them that an idea (God, Aliens, Bigfoot) is consistent with reality. Whether people notice it or not they speak in terms of evidence no matter how much they use the word faith. At most all an unbeliever could do was act as if they believed if evidence didn't compel belief. Lets leave that aside for the moment.

2. Pascals Wager assumes that adopting religious belief carries no costs.
In every framing of this argument that I've heard, and indeed the way it was phrased by Pascal himself, it is assumed that faith is a cheap investment for the believer, as cheap as unbelief (hence the extreme difference in payoffs at the end of earthly life). One wonders how that part of the argument can be made with a straight face. Religious belief has obvious costs (these can vary of course, but they exist in every sect of the Abrahamic traditions). Religious faith makes its cost felt in obvious places like one's bank account (tithing, other religious donations), but also in terms of family relationships, and mental health, and simple time. The costs of religion can be felt in all these areas. Why Pascal didn't count these things as costs I don't know. Perhaps he was simply trying to bolster his case that the investment of both unbeliever and believer was equal in an effort to underscore the difference in payoffs. But think about all the time believers spend doing things for their faiths, the money spent, the relationships avoided, or broken off, and it becomes apparent that belief has costs, and sometimes they are quite serious. From here we see that these costs amount to serious, indeed utterly substantial investment. This seems like a profoundly obvious thing to have missed. Set against eternity in heaven I suppose a life time of this isn't much of an investment, but if it is the only life you get it, the wastefulness of it becomes apparent. Think about someone you know (it might be you reading this) who spends time, and considerable amounts of money on their faith, maybe they have also shunned a child for some religious infraction, or have all their life avoided same sex encounters that they deeply desire. What if that believer is wrong? Such a scenario certainly ruins Pascal's hypothesis that cost was a non-issue for the believer, but even mild costs would work to ruin the notion.

3.Pascal's Wager assumes that God will accept a lie.
I cannot make myself believe something that I think is patently false. All I can do is act like I believe something that I already believe is patently false. Sure I can fake it. And this is essentially what Pascal asks people to do with his wager. Dishonestly act as if you believe to gain a set of rewards for little cost in a future life. Firstly does this sound like the kind of action that the god of Abraham would tolerate? Secondly, is such subterfuge commensurate with moral action? It seems to me the answer to both questions is no. Pascal, and those who continue to use this argument act as if the answer is yes.

BLOG BIT: Dennis Miller and his guests are stupid.

I listen to conservative radio sometimes. Sometimes I didn't get my coffee, and need a jolt of self-righteous falsehoods being triumphantly spewed from some guy whose reasoning ablitity has been mangled by cheese bits, oxycotin and anger induced mini-strokes. That is almost like coffee, though, much more bitter. There is no amount of sugar and creamer (even irish cream creamer) that offsets the kind of vitriol generated by radio Hannity, Beck, Savage or Limbaugh. Radio brings out the worst in these characters. Though I am unsure exactly why that is. Maybe it is the tendency of the listener of these shows to be dyed-in-the-wool acolytes? Call screeners creating a fairy land of agreement, and insuring that only the most brain-dead rerpresentative of a contrary point of view ever makes it on the air (Rush, I am looking directly at you)? Maybe all the skewed positive feedback simply makes the delusion of being correct more potent? Whatever the case, radio encourages these guys to say the dumbest things, and its not that they need much encouragement.

Dennis Miller though I always thought might be a little different. Don't think I didn't notice that slide into right-wing Randian thought Dennis. I certainly did. I was sad to see it happen but I hoped that you might, in all your pop referencing glory make a reasonable, and maybe even funny case for your ideas. Dennis, I am sorry to say, disappoints. And he does this spectacularly. On top of this, his radio show seems to have the least actual content, and consists mainly of he and his co-host exchanging pseudo-witty pop-culture references and laughing (kind an unfunny Bob and Tom if you can imagine it). Oh, and then there is Miller hawking the wares of various sponsors which also eats up oodles of his air time (his shtick for some outfit called Taxmasters is the most annoying).

None of these right-wing talking point parrots sounds more ignorant than when the topic involves an element of science. And in that area climate change seems to flummox the lot of them even more profoundly than "teaching the controversy."

Today the show took a nasty turn into ignorance early, and there it remained. Of course there was the review of some terrible healthcare plan that would indeed be something about which to be alarmed if Obama was proposing anything like it. However since Obama isn't proposing the plan that have Dennis and his cohost so scared, I'm not going to bother looking at that strange analysis. Instead I will look at Miller's grasp and that of his callers on climate change. An analogy may help prepare you. Let climate represent a massive cliff face, say one of the giant cliffs found in the Valles Marineris on Mars. Let climate change science represent a hand hold at the top of the cliff saving one from a seven kilometer fall. In this scenario Dennis Miller and his audience are doing a pirouette to the tune of gravity punctuated by a very sudden stop. Terrible analogy? Probably, but my point is illustrated don't you think?

Dennis read a report that stated Chicago may have its earliest recorded snowfall sometime next week. Feeling triumphant, he laughed and said something like, "So what about global warming now? Clearly it just isn't happening." Now I don't mind an error. Everyone makes them. But to make a statement like this is reveal a level of catastrophic ignorance, and to do it proudly, that is stunning in its scope. Clearly his grasp of statistics is somewhat limited. He also seems to be missing the meaning of the global. I know, I know me and specifics. Global mean temperatures are rising, and this is completely not in dispute. A hot spell or cold spell in a specific location taken by itself is not sufficient to confirm or nullify the the climate change hypothesis. It is the broad trend that is in question. Not local variation. It is also pretty funny that Miller trusts the climate modeling that predicts snow in Chicago sometime next week.

The second major blunder came when one of his callers piped up about ozone depletion. Specifically, the caller said, "You know what I wonder, is why we never hear about the ozone layer anymore? We were all going to die, there was all the worry about UV. Now we never hear about it."
Miller responded, "Yeah its all a joke. A money making scam. Just follow the money. Look, Al Gore is worth a hundred million now. I mean good for him, I just wish he would admit it and then I could pat him on the back and say 'Way to go ya' hack!'"

If you live an area where the hole in the ozone affects you it probably seems more real I guess. Try the southern hemisphere Dennis, but take your sunscreen.

One of the reasons we do not hear as much about ozone depletion in the press is because the problem was so obviously tractable. The science was just that obvious. That didn't stop conservatives in the Reagan administration from resisting regulating the use of CFCs (chloroflourocarbons-the major culpits in the ozone depletion). Magaret Thatcher, who was no friend to regulation, but who did possess an education steeped in chemistry, did see it as an unavoidable necessity in this instance. CFCs were the problem and their broad applicablity made them quite abundant. In the lower atmosphere they were chemically inert, but stratospherically CFCs are broken down by UV light, which frees the chlorine. Chlorine is then able to amble about the stratosphere and mangle ozone molecules by the hundreds and thousands (this is a complex story but the synopsis will do for our purposes). However, CFC use has been dramatically reduced world wide and so the damage to the ozone layer has been drastically reduced. While this is all very positive problems will remain for some time. However protocols adopted by at least a 190 nations will likely allow the ozone layer to return to natural levels around 2050 according to NASA.

In the mean time, processes release excesses of chlorine into the stratosphere, especially in the Antarctic, but elsewhere too, that (combined with human released chlorine) result in depletions world wide. These depletions can result in significant and risky exposures to UV. UV warnings are not infrequent in Australia and other Southern Hemisphere hotspots (the Antarctic hole is often large enough to encompase portions of Australia). However general ozone reduction can be a threat the world over.

The reason, Dennis, that the ozone hole is not the huge problem it could've been, is because the world took note, followed the evidence and took action. Sadly adopting ridgid ideological blinders has hindered your ability to look objectively at evidence. What is even more disappointing is that you and others like you have been given such a potent microphone as a radio show.

Paul Kurtz: Stick. In. The. Mud.

Of all the personalities at CFI, I've always been the least impressed with Paul Kurtz. At the CFI World Conference in Bethesda, he did little to change my opinion of him. His latest contribution to rationalism (which can be found, undissected, by clicking on the title of this blog) has actually earned him negative points.

The celebrating of "Blasphemy Day" by the Center for Inquiry by sponsoring a contest encouraging new forms of blasphemy, I believe is most unwise. It betrays the civic virtues of democracy. I support the premise that religion should be open to the critical examination of its claims, like all other institutions in society. I do have serious reservations about the forms that these criticisms take. For example, cartoons have been recently circulated ridiculing key figures in Christianity, such as a cartoon depicting a feminine Jesus painting his "nails" with red nail polish, or the drawing of the Pope with a long nose like Pinocchio.

This could be translated, faithfully as, You know I'm all for free speech when I am arguing against religious claims, or challenging religious authority, but when the speech violates my rather prudish sensiblities I'm going to have, ahem, serious reservations.

Clearly a humourless guy, Kurtz has no need of things like satire and ridicule to punch through the thin facade of power and authority the holds many hostage in religious communities, or even those living outside religious observance. Sometimes the comics, satire and ridicule that so offends Kurtz's refined sensiblities, are exactly the prescription for cutting through the anesthetic of religious influence. Holy crap that cartoon, just said what I have been thinking for years! Out loud! Think of the importance of such experiences in some people's lives. Do you not see the power of a single satirical image? Are you so dense that you fail to see the usefulness of such images?

When we defended the right of a Danish newspaper to publish cartoons deploring the violence of Muslim suicide bombers, we were supporting freedom of the press. The right to publish dissenting critiques of religion should be accepted as basic to freedom of expression.

It was also assumed by many, the contributors to CFI, and its readers, that you were also defending the freedom of expression of the artists themselves. The cartoons, while certainly conveying the messages, were doing nothing terribly different than the pope-pinnochio-nose image you deplore. You cannot have one freedom without the other. Either you really are for freedom of the press and freedom of expression or you are simply for that which you agree with, and is framed in the way least likely to cause offense taking by some person, somewhere.

But for CFI itself to sponsor the lampooning of Christianity by encouraging anti-Catholic, anti-Protestant, or any other anti-religious cartoons goes beyond the bounds of civilized discourse in pluralistic society. It is not dissimilar to the anti-semitic cartoons of the Nazi era.

Here you make your most ridiculous blunder. It is completely dissimilar my orthodox PC friend. You will note that in both of the cartoons you mention (recent submissions I presume) it is not Catholics, or Christians generally who are being lampooned, or charcteritured, but leaders or icons of a particular faith tradition. These are attacks on ideologies and leaders in said traditions. Anti-semitism is racism, not criticism. Anti-semitism is less about Jewish ideology and much more about hating a racial identity.

Yet there are some fundamentalist atheists who have resorted to such vulgar antics to gain press attention. In doing so they have dishonored the basic ethical principles of what the Center for Inquiry has resolutely stood for until now: the toleration of opposing viewpoints.

Now you are just being silly Paul. Fundamentalist atheists? Fuck you. How is that for tolerating an opposing viewpoint? Vulgarity? Grow the fuck up. No one has dishonored, and certainly never violated (until now no less) your basic tolerance principle. The CFI, indeed all skeptical endeavors, in both small and large ways are always engaged in acts of intolerance of ideas. It is why we criticise a thing.

Now skeptics and freethinkers tend to be happy letting people believe what they want, which is certainly tolerance in the most important sense of the concept. However, it doesn't follow though that we should suddenly not be heavy handed with ideas, or utilize scorn, ridicule, satire or some other form of harsh critique. And we certainly shouldn't not do it because you are going whine about it when we do. You may want to go scowl somewhere else Paul. Sometimes bold statements are vastly more useful than the long, academic critique.

It is one thing to examine the claims of religion in a responsible way by calling attention to Biblical, Koranic or scientific criticisms, it is quite another to violate the key humanistic principle of tolerance.

Again critique is a form of intolerance. Mild to be sure, but come on. Just say what you mean here Paul. You don't want people offending the liberal believers who contribute to and support CFI. That is what all this whinging is really about isn't it?

One may disagree with contending religious beliefs, but to denigrate them by rude caricatures borders on hate speech. What would humanists and skeptics say if religious believers insulted them in the same way? We would protest the lack of respect for alternative views in a democratic society. I apologize to my fellow citizens who have suffered these barbs of indignity.

Paul anyone nattering about hate speech simply does not really support free speech and expression, nor a free press, nor liberty in general. When I see some insulting image of atheists or free thinkers (and there are certainly no shortage of these), of some bit of parody or satire I simply try to address the arguments contained therein. I do not complain overmuch about the intolerance of the other side, I begin constucting arguments against their position to lay it bare. "These barbs of indignity" that so vex you, don't matter. What matters is that I can argue against them, and am permitted the freedoms necessary to do so.

ZOMGitsChriss is my new hero: She kicks Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron in the nuts.

Solid as they say.

BLOG BIT: Obama's Olympic Gamble: This might be a good thing

While not going out for brunch the yesterday, I heard a bit of isolationist moaning on the Mike Gallager Show decrying Obama's presidential efforts to get the 2016 Olympic Games (summer) held in Chicago. A caller worried about all the potential terrorists that might be tempted to attack during the games, Galleger slammed the Olympics as too New World Order while complaining about poor treatment he felt American competitors (or was it just Americans) recieved at the Olympics. While this was going on I simply worried that the average US IQ had precipitously declined in the span of seconds or minutes. (I would later listen to NPR, and have those worries somewhat allayed, and then I was shaken again listening to New England football coverage.)

However I think this is a great overture to the international community given the isolationist policies, and generally icey international tone of the previous 8 years. No doubt the symbolism is not lost on Obama, or his advisors in the slightest. Having the Olympics here, even just campaigning for the Olympics to be held here on US soil is a bold statement to the international community, saying that we are indeed ready to be included in the international dialogue, while at the same time saying that we want to be a focal point in world affairs again.

Obama is clearly an international man (doing a little bit for his hometown too it has to be said), who wants the US to think in broader terms. What remains to be seen is whether or not the vitriolic, less than honest right wing nutter movements will hamstring this process enough to limit broader US involvement in the wider world. But that is an aside. What is very clear is that Obama is sending a clear signal to the rest of the world, in numerous ways, that the US seeks its leadership role in the world once again.
It is about damn time.

BLOG BIT: Defending Simon Singh or...:Screw the BCA

Click on the title of this blog bit for link to Olivia Judson's nice defense of Simon Singh (you should also get to visiting his site and signing his petition). Singh co-authored a book that seriously reviewed the claims of the Chiropractic practicianers, as well as other alt medicine therapies, and wrote a piece in the Guardian about chiropractic. This led to a stupid, stupid libel suit by the British Chiropractic Association (BCA). The BCA could not rebut Singh's scientific arguments (the Guardian did invite the BCA to defend, and produce science that supported their claims), so they resorted to this, potentially financially crippling, law suit. Thanks crappy English Libel laws that stifle scientific debate, and investigative journalism!

Karen Armstrong, and Theology?

I occassionally read an essay by Karen Armstrong, just to see if she has stopped writing badly, or at least stopped to think a bit before she starts pushing her boulder up hill. I am consistently dissappointed in her efforts to defend something she calls faith, but that nearly all the world's faithful would fail to recognize. Her latest contribution to the dialogue is equally innane, and wooly headed. But I thought I might take a moment to dissect it.

"Richard Dawkins has been right all along, of course—at least in one important respect. Evolution has indeed dealt a blow to the idea of a benign creator, literally conceived. It tells us that there is no Intelligence controlling the cosmos, and that life itself is the result of a blind process of natural selection, in which innumerable species failed to survive. The fossil record reveals a natural history of pain, death and racial extinction, so if there was a divine plan, it was cruel, callously prodigal and wasteful. Human beings were not the pinnacle of a purposeful creation; like everything else, they evolved by trial and error and God had no direct hand in their making. No wonder so many fundamentalist Christians find their faith shaken to the core."

This to me seems a stunning consession on her part. If this is so, and I'm certainly in agreement with her that it is, hasn't she just removed not only the dominant interpretation of God, one who omniscient and omnibenevolent, but also the dominant practice of religious faith, especially among the Abrahamic traditions? Most religious believers do hold that purpose is built into the design of the Cosmos. Even the most progressive among the Abrahamic traditions who can accept the fact of evolution, one can hardly miss the way many smuggle purpose back into the discussion, with some form of directed evolution. The following paraphrase could essentially come from Francis Collins, Kenneth Miller, or the Pope: "Oh yes, the evidence clearly shows evolution to be a completely natural process. I feel that god certainly intervened with humans, ensouled us and and enmoralled us."
Yes I know enmoralled isn't a word. The first paragraph of this essay, it seems to me, completely removes the need to take God, or religion seriously at all, and what is funny is that Karen Armstrong perforates her arguments with such statements all the time.

"But Darwin may have done religion—and God—a favor by revealing a flaw in modern Western faith. Despite our scientific and technological brilliance, our understanding of God is often remarkably undeveloped—even primitive."

I actually laughed out loud at this line. I suppose Ms. Armstrong is incapable of noticing that it is hard to understand the capacities of an unproved entity, one that provides no positive evidence for its existance. God, bigfoot and the Lochness monster share this attribute. But perhaps parody is a better way to illustrate the problem: Despite our scientific understanding and technological brilliance our understanding of Zeus is remarkably undeveloped-even primitive.

In the past, many of the most influential Jewish, Christian and Muslim thinkers understood that what we call "God" is merely a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable transcendence, whose existence cannot be proved but is only intuited by means of spiritual exercises and a compassionate lifestyle that enable us to cultivate new capacities of mind and heart."

Apart from exageratting the number of non-literalists in the Abrahamic traditions, I think she is on liberal theologian autopilot here. She isn't really interested in arguing her case and simply content to intellectually felate the readers who already agree with her. She assumes that the interpretation she favors is the one all should understand, without justifying why we should be in agreement with her. Why should more literal readings, shades of which have by far been dominant to "God is mearly a symbol that points beyond itself to an indescribable trancendence" crowd, be rejected? Here Armstrong has no credible answers.

"But by the end of the 17th century, instead of looking through the symbol to "the God beyond God," Christians were transforming it into hard fact. Sir Isaac Newton had claimed that his cosmic system proved beyond doubt the existence of an intelligent, omniscient and omnipotent creator, who was obviously "very well skilled in Mechanicks and Geometry." Enthralled by the prospect of such cast-iron certainty, churchmen started to develop a scientifically-based theology that eventually made Newton's Mechanick and, later, William Paley's Intelligent Designer essential to Western Christianity."

Can Armstrong really be saying that prior to the 17th century Christians were looking at the symbol, to the "God beyond god?" It is safe to say that the inquisitors would disagree. Christians had and always have, by and large, been in the business of transforming God into hard fact. Does that mean that there have not been enlightened people and sects who realize that literalism doesn't work because the facts don't allow it? Of course it doesn't. But they lose out to the literalists for a simple reason I think. The stories don't really allow for comfortable non-literal interpretation, especially taken as a whole (as in the bible for instance). We can take some of the stories individually and say, if we work at it, well this could be interpreted as an allegory, or metaphor. But its when you view the stories in context of the larger narrative that such non-literal interpretations break down. In any event, this statement is stunning in its odd disconnect from the religious history that preceded the 17th century.

"But the Great Mechanick was little more than an idol, the kind of human projection that theology, at its best, was supposed to avoid. God had been essential to Newtonian physics but it was not long before other scientists were able to dispense with the God-hypothesis and, finally, Darwin showed that there could be no proof for God's existence. This would not have been a disaster had not Christians become so dependent upon their scientific religion that they had lost the older habits of thought and were left without other resource."

Here Karen get its all, unmistakeably wrong. Did Darwin show there could be no proof for God's existence? No, not at all. There are numerous ways God could proven it is just that there is a dearth, to say the least, of such evidence on offer. What Darwin did was render the design inference null. An intervening God has become completely unnecessary as an explaination for life because of evolutionary theory. The evidence does not support the God inference, that is something religious believers impose on the facts. But rendering proof of God impossible? God could show up on the White House lawn, convene a pressconference and say, "For you guys, I'm going to turn Venus, and Mars into new Earth like planets complete with shopping malls, and roller coasters, and national parks, and adjust for various gravitational influences so as not to upset the orbit of or life on this Earth." And while it wouldn't establish that it was definately the Abrahamic God, it would be consistent with the kinds of powers often attributed to him. Such a thing would certainly be hard to explain scientifically. In any event, all Darwin, and later researchers have done is establish that God is certainly an unnecessary part of the explanation.

"Symbolism was essential to premodern religion, because it was only possible to speak about the ultimate reality—God, Tao, Brahman or Nirvana—analogically, since it lay beyond the reach of words. Jews and Christians both developed audaciously innovative and figurative methods of reading the Bible, and every statement of the Quran is called an ayah ("parable"). St Augustine (354-430), a major authority for both Catholics and Protestants, insisted that if a biblical text contradicted reputable science, it must be interpreted allegorically. This remained standard practice in the West until the 17th century, when in an effort to emulate the exact scientific method, Christians began to read scripture with a literalness that is without parallel in religious history."

Again with this pre-17th century nonsense. Simply because a minority of religious thinkers in any time period adopt audacious, innovative and figurative contortions to preserve their religious conclusions doesn't mean such contortions are terribly intutitive to most religious minds, or even implied by the texts, often odious, that inspire them. Nor does it mean that such contortions were implied by the authors of said texts or that such an approach to religious scholarship is the correct approach. Does the historic persecution of Jews, homosexuals, heretics or the preoccupation with witches and the occult of the times pre-17th century smack of literal, or figurative mindedness dominating the intellecual landscape of that era?

"Most cultures believed that there were two recognized ways of arriving at truth. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were essential and neither was superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complementary, each with its own sphere of competence. Logos ("reason") was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled us to function effectively in the world and had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external reality. But it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life's struggle. For that people turned to mythos, stories that made no pretensions to historical accuracy but should rather be seen as an early form of psychology; if translated into ritual or ethical action, a good myth showed you how to cope with mortality, discover an inner source of strength, and endure pain and sorrow with serenity."

Bald and somewhat bold assertion here, and it results from her tendency toward confirmaiton bias. She sees a scholar or two that agree with her sybolism only approach and then inflating the frequency of such scholars in history.

In the ancient world, a cosmology was not regarded as factual but was primarily therapeutic; it was recited when people needed an infusion of that mysterious power that had—somehow—brought something out of primal nothingness: at a sickbed, a coronation or during a political crisis. Some cosmologies taught people how to unlock their own creativity, others made them aware of the struggle required to maintain social and political order. The Genesis creation hymn, written during the Israelites' exile in Babylonia in the 6th century BC, was a gentle polemic against Babylonian religion. Its vision of an ordered universe where everything had its place was probably consoling to a displaced people, though—as we can see in the Bible—some of the exiles preferred a more aggressive cosmology."

So it was all just therapuetic? No one believed a word of it? This is a fascinating story Karen, but it fails to explain the rather real history of sectarian conflict in any substative way. She should have prefaced this paragraph with the phrase, "I think, maybe, based on my gut instinct." It would have been a more honest bit of scholarship on her part.

"There can never be a definitive version of a myth, because it refers to the more imponderable aspects of life. To remain effective, it must respond to contemporary circumstance. In the 16th century, when Jews were being expelled from one region of Europe after another, the mystic Isaac Luria constructed an entirely new creation myth that bore no resemblance to the Genesis story. But instead of being reviled for contradicting the Bible, it inspired a mass-movement among Jews, because it was such a telling description of the arbitrary world they now lived in; backed up with special rituals, it also helped them face up to their pain and discover a source of strength."

Perhaps, but we only really have her word to go on here that this was religion as therapy. It may be the case, or it could be the case that the mass movement was another example of rather literal-minded religion. Simply because Isaac Luria created another creation story isn't proof that he, or the followers of the movement didn't treat it as literal truth. Numerous religious figures from then to now create rather literal minded movements. Scientology is a prime example of this.

"Religion was not supposed to provide explanations that lay within the competence of reason but to help us live creatively with realities for which there are no easy solutions and find an interior haven of peace; today, however, many have opted for unsustainable certainty instead. But can we respond religiously to evolutionary theory? Can we use it to recover a more authentic notion of God?"

Says Karen Armstrong. I think her interpretation is actually the one that is unsustainable, and why it is always a minority view among religious people. In any event, both approaches opt for certainty in advance of evidence. In either approach does anyone see trepidation, an "I could be wrong about this" in the expressed sentiments. Armstrong is certainly not in doubt about God. In this she and the fundamentalist are the same. She just dresses her God in smoke and provides mirrors.

"Darwin made it clear once again that—as Maimonides, Avicenna, Aquinas and Eckhart had already pointed out—we cannot regard God simply as a divine personality, who single-handedly created the world. This could direct our attention away from the idols of certainty and back to the "God beyond God." The best theology is a spiritual exercise, akin to poetry. Religion is not an exact science but a kind of art form that, like music or painting, introduces us to a mode of knowledge that is different from the purely rational and which cannot easily be put into words. At its best, it holds us in an attitude of wonder, which is, perhaps, not unlike the awe that Mr. Dawkins experiences—and has helped me to appreciate —when he contemplates the marvels of natural selection."

What Darwin made clear was that nature is sufficient to explain the origin of biodiversity, adaptation and behavior. Extra, supernatural variables were unnecessary after Darwin. I will have to disagree with her assessment that her religious ideas, or any ideas infuse the bearers of said ideas with anything like wonder, or awe at the mysterious. Whether Karen can find the words for it or not, her certainity about "God beyond God" is in no way diminished by her inability to articulate the concept clearly.

"But what of the pain and waste that Darwin unveiled? All the major traditions insist that the faithful meditate on the ubiquitous suffering that is an inescapable part of life; because, if we do not acknowledge this uncomfortable fact, the compassion that lies at the heart of faith is impossible. The almost unbearable spectacle of the myriad species passing painfully into oblivion is not unlike some classic Buddhist meditations on the First Noble Truth ("Existence is suffering"), the indispensable prerequisite for the transcendent enlightenment that some call Nirvana—and others call God."

Do all the major traditions really insist on meditating on pain and misery? Do they do this in the warm fuzzy way Armstrong implies? What conclusions are reached from these meditations? The compassion that lies at the heart of faith? She says these things as if they have a single particular meaning. What uninsightful, and painfully trite, nonsense.