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Faith, Atheists, and Mr. Spock

Submitted by Ken Watts on Mon, 10/08/2007 - 19:28
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Sunday, in the Opinion pages of the Los Angeles Times, Lee Siegel inveighed against the new atheists in an article titled, "Militant atheists are wrong".

I have some sympathy for his position, based on the word "militant" rather than "atheist", but also some criticism. He attacks on two fronts, the first being the rhetorical dangers of outspoken atheism, which seem to me to be problematic, though understandable. The argument on that front is that telling the truth too forcefully may cause people to be offended, and lose converts.

I don't believe one should avoid speaking the truth clearly because of possible reactions in general, and I'm not really interested in winning converts, but I do think there's no point in being rude. On the other hand, what many believers have to say about atheists is very rude, and so I guess it could cut both ways.

His second front is more interesting to me, because it involves a fundamental confusion, which has been fostered by organized religion for some time. Here's what he has to say:

You don't have to be a religious person to cherish the idea of faith in the absurd. When artists have an unverifiable, unprovable inspiration, and then seek to convey it in words or images, they take a leap of faith every bit as vertiginous as that of the religious person.

The leap of faith is really a very ordinary operation. We take it every time we fall in love, expect kindness from someone, impulsively sacrifice some little piece of our self-interest. After all, you cannot prove the existence of truth, beauty, goodness and decency; you cannot prove the dignity of being human, or your obligation to treat people as ends and not just as means. You take a gamble on the existence of these inestimable things. For that reason, when you lay scientific, logical and empirical siege to the leap of faith at the core of the religious impulse, you are not just attacking faith in God. You are attacking the act of faith itself, faith in anything that can't be proved. But it just so happens that the qualities that make life rich, joyful and humane cannot be proved.

[read the article]

His argument embodies an expansion of what I have called in the past "The Spock Fallacy" (after Mr., not Dr.). It's the idea that reason and emotion are somehow incompatible opposites, and it is false. The energy behind reason is passion, and the expression of passion requires reason. The two are bound, inextricably, together.

Siegel's argument extends this fallacy to other realms, but it's still the same idea. Faith, inspiration, love, kindness, sacrifice, truth, beauty, goodness, decency, dignity, caring, and religion are, according to him, all somehow incompatible opposites to science, logic, and empiricism.

This is nonsense. On the one hand, it's a conflation of the worst kind. There is no necessary connection between beauty and religion, or between dignity and faith (in the sense Siegel means it). There is not necessary connection between an artist's inspiration and love, or even sacrifice. Nor can most of the items in the first list exist without logic, science, and empiricism.

The difference between true artistic inspiration and the babble of the insane is that one is rooted in logic and empiricism (even if it's an informal empiricism) and will be realized through methods rooted in science: the proper mixing of paints, the proper application of paints, an understanding of human perception, etc.

The idea that all that is wonderful and value-laden in this world stands in opposition to that which is rational is itself neither wonderful, valuable, or rational. There is a world of difference between our expectation of kindness from another human being—which is, by the way, rooted in reason and experience—and the willingness to ignore scientific evidence because your pastor says the bible doesn't teach evolution. Those two kinds of "faith" are not at all the same thing, though the same word is used. Faith of the first sort does not mean, to quote Dorothy Sayers, "resolutely believing that which you know to be false."

Nor is it true that plainly stating the complete lack of evidence for the common conception of God is a denial of the kind of faith that an artist, a lover, or for that matter, a scientist exhibits. Those kinds of faith are also rooted in experience.

As is, I should add, the faith of at least some believers.

Because, although I find Siegel's argument from rhetoric unconvincing, and his use of the Spock Fallacy simplistic, I will side with him this far. Serious believers—by which I mean people who spend time and energy investigating their faith and testing it in their lives—are not generally stupid or naive. They, too, appeal to logic, empiricism, and scientific method.

You will  find more of these types on the liberal end of the religious spectrum than the conservative end, though many start at the conservative end. You will find very few who, for instance, reject evolution out of hand, or are knee-jerk homophobes. But they are quite numerous, and although I think they are mistaken,  they are neither foolish or ignorant.

Those believers would resent the idea that we should pull our punches when we debate with them about God, and most of them would reject the conflations, false divisions, and simplistic concept of faith that Siegel defends.