TED has a number of insightful and interesting lectures, one of the most witty, interesting and thought-provoking of which, is this lecture by Richard Dawkins. Richard Dawkins, the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, is one of the controversial atheists at the forefront of the atheist-evolutionist nexus that hopes to educate ordinary people about the pitfalls of organized religion and the issues prevalent in all organized religion movements worldwide.
As a Hindu who has a bent of agnosticism within, and as someone who has questioned ritualism and superstition growing up, I have strongly identified in the past with Dawkins’ world view although I do get distracted from this logical bent of mind by the socio-political issues of fundamentalism and militant extremism facing the world today. In other words, the very precepts that we believe provide morality to our way of life as Hindus (or people of other religions) often conflict directly with similar beliefs of other religious systems. This identity conundrum has verily led to the identity crisis that exists today in any citizen of a nation that is multicultural but not necessarily truly secular. I have often believed that it is only an atheist polity that can be secular and accepting of multiple religious identities.
Dawkins’ world view is rather different, in that the individual should be the agent of reason, rather than the government or society at large. One can, at times refute his arguments on the grounds that religion, philosophy and reason have a morality to account for, and that while the former two have provided a moral bent to the whole question of what is acceptable human social behaviour, it is not concievable to imagine that science or reason as we know it has provided a method of ascribing morality to the human condition in a manner that supposes that a reason derived from first principles, rather than a first cause, is responsible for the development of tendencies of morality in humans. He has often rubbished the causes that religions put forward for the creation of the universe (or rather the world, or a limited portion of it, as most religious texts/thoughts describe the beginning).
It is with the adoption of a number of ideas from the theory of evolution, and not by an original, rationally verifyable account, that Intelligent Design has hijacked the idea that the complexity of the universe around us is due to the presence of a greater intelligence. It is understandable why the Intelligent Design theorists were popular in the US during the time of the Republicans, some of who have a semi-religious bent in their attitude towards politics.
I found the Doha Debates, hosted by Tim Sebastian (noted former host of BBC’s Hard Talk) to be one of the few good programmes that take a good hard look at political Islam in the Middle East, perhaps as well as the US documentaries on radical Christianity have analyzed that phenomenon. The roles adopted by the participants were predictable, while some of the questions that came from the audience were rather elementary, given the seriousness of the problem in the region. The politicization of religion is not a phenomenon unique to the Middle East, where rabid ideologies like Wahhabism and other radical forms of Islam have run amok and made life miserable for millions at the hands of the Mullahs, while the royal families and the promoters of such radical strains of religion themselves live in careless disregard for the very rules they popularize. In a more educated society such as the US, confabulating the discoveries of science to create a theory that appeals to the atavistic tendencies amongst the conservatives, naturally makes for a very useful propaganda tool. If religion by itself can be made more popular by making the concept of a God more appealing to populace largely educated in an atmosphere of free thinking and surrounded by influences of technology and perhaps science, it may become possible to spread rabid ideologies in even the United States, starting from regions such as the Bible belt, spreading eventually to the other conservative communities, to a point where the abhorrence of minorities, rational thinking and perhaps even free speech, may be made possible. This becomes a poll plank for the TV evangelists, whose endorsement of born-again Christian politicians or power hungry war veteran patriots seems to play an important role in their getting elected.
Even when you consider Dawkins’ allusion to diluted theism, Deism, which advocates a world view filled with wonder at nature, the efforts of most religious and political leaders to defeat the religion-politics nexus prevalent around the world is absent or feeble, and understandably so, because of the power equations therein. Atheism is probably the only movement that has gained acceptance in the United States for the last decade or so. A recent study indicates that more people are irreligious and less people identify themselves as being Christian. And this is despite claims by many right-wing Muslims in demonstrations and on newsgroups that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the West. Perhaps Atheism is popular for a good reason. Perhaps people really are sick and tired of differences of faith and the problems they breed, however, only time will tell whether these problems of today are short lived.
2 Comments
March 13, 2009 at 10:29 am
‘As a Hindu who has a bent of agnosticism within,….’ i’m a hindu too but only with a tinge of agnosticism. After much speculation and reflection i’m of the view that people, the reasonable ones, can at best, or at worst depends on what end of the spectrum you are on, can be agnostic and not athiest.
I’ve personally nothing against the western philosphers but my only grudge is that barring Spinoza none of them ever tried to put into practice the philosphies they so eloquently espoused. Wittgenstein admitted this and Russell openly declared that his philosophy is different from his political stance. What’s wrong with such a situation, wherein the preaching is not put into practice? Firstly i find quite paradoxical that something that’s got to with finding out about ‘life’ has got nothing to do with living it but merely about speculation about it within the confines of four walls. Thats like telling i’m a mech engg just because i cleared the requisite no.of theory papers within the specified duration of the course. Even scientific theories are accepted only after experimental confirmation, otherwise they just remain as hypotheses. Secondly by doing so they implicitly confine themselves to a certain epistemelogical boundary and trenchently argue against exisistence of anything beyond that boundary, without really bothering to ascertain if that is the case………
March 13, 2009 at 11:08 am
Madhu, thanks for your comment. I am not sure what the second sentence means (seems to be incomplete) but I gather you mean that one has different attitudes to religion based on whether you are agnostic or atheist. It is true that Spinoza was one of the few who practised the ideas that he preached, and in a sense, this comes down to how pragmatic one’s philosophy is. Some truths that are self-evident do not require explicit validation by practice. Having said that, the benefits of speculating or theorizing from observation cannot be discounted. Philosophy has been one such branch of intellectualism that has branched out into a continuation of the traditional areas and is sustained in its spirit of inquiry by science. Having said that, it is also true that many people who are scientists or engineers these days have a feeble grasp on the basics – which is perhaps why it is possible to have scientists who are devoutly religious. This is a disturbing trend for science, and in much the same way pioneers of thought such as Aristotle or Aryabhata were replaced by mediocre practitioners of the intellectual arts, we may one day see the degeneration of scientists into a group of religious followers of a science whose time has passed. I dread such a thing, and posit that it may happen when we see an inculcation of science into each aspect of life in an almost “socialist” process, which may lend itself to mediocrity. Perhaps this is a lot like how the education system in the United States has gained the dubious distinction of being one of those where there are elaborate teaching rules for those teaching youngsters. Elaborate to the point that they sacrifice the creativity of the teacher and substitute it with a mediocre education.
It is true that theoretical scientists and philosophers seek to argue within, at times, epistemological boundaries, and in any case, within the limits of the dialectic that prevails from some ordered set of rules for their reasoning (whether logical or arbitrary). It is also true that many such arguments are mere intellectual froth, and hold no substantial meaning within the precepts they define for the thought. I have to admit that many modern day intelligentsia have waged a silent war against such, and we have seen greater accountability for one’s pronouncements in the recent past. With this has come a curious polarization, perhaps. The very fact that we see debates of a more fundamental kind and not a nuanced kind in popular intellectual circles suggests that, perhaps, we have reached a stage where the wheat is being separated from the chaff. There still are many charlatans posing as intellectuals going around, but the number has dropped. In many ways, well meaning scientists have been affected by this too, because of premature pronouncements on their part.