God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion (35 page)

By contrast, mystics attempt to use meditation either to eliminate the structures and concepts that our minds have created in order to see things as they “really are” (
mindfulness
) or to empty the mind altogether of conceptual, emotional, sensory, and any other internal distinguishable content (
depth-mystical experience
). To the extent that mysticism is strictly a mental experience absent of any formation of concepts about the nature of the physical world, then it does not conflict with science.

Jones points out that although many physicists have studied mysticism, especially those associated with the development of quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century, notably Schrödinger, they were not themselves mystics. Furthermore, because of the diametrically opposed approaches of science and mysticism, no contribution to the conceptual development of science has ever been made by mysticism.
⁸³

Then how can science and mysticism be incompatible? Once out of the meditative state, mystics feel the need to interpret their experiences, and they generally do so within the frameworks of their individual religious and cultural
traditions. That is, they differentiate just as scientists do. As a result, a wide range of disagreements occurs, even within the major religions, as well as disagreements with the scientific view of nature.

Jones tells us, “Mystics claim their experiences give a knowledge of fundamental reality.”
⁸⁴
They believe that the reality they experience is transcendent and the source of all existence. Supernatural beliefs that have no basis other than impressions gained during meditation are widespread. Even Buddha accepted rebirth and karma.

A general agreement among mystics does seem to exist that “reality consists of a hierarchy of emanations from a transcendental source in the opposite direction of materialism: spirit appears first, then consciousness, then life, and lastly matter.”
⁸⁵
If not in conflict with scientific facts, this differentiated set of concepts strikes me as inconsistent with the mystical claim of the “unity of all things” supposedly gained under meditation. In any case, the mystical hierarchy is incompatible with the hierarchy science infers from its data: matter → life → consciousness, with no spirit and perhaps even no separate entity we can associate with consciousness. Without any evidence or other rational basis, science cannot accept the notion of transcendence. Indeed, as we will see, all the evidence points to the mystical experience being all in the head (see
chapter 11
).

We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly.

—Aristotle

JUSTICE AND MORALITY

I
f we possess only a material mind, where do our moral ideas come from? How can particles moving around in the brain produce notions of right and wrong, good and evil? Theists say they can't.

An almost universal conviction among theists is that, without God, the world would be a place of utter depravity in which “anything goes.” Many refer to a quotation attributed to the great Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky (died 1881), purportedly from
The Brothers Karamazov
: “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.” This line expresses a popular sentiment.

According to Dinesh D'Souza, one of the major reasons so many people seek an afterlife is they want to believe that the universe is just.
¹
Life in this world is obviously unjust, with many rewards for the wicked and few for the virtuous. An afterlife based on justice makes it all come out even after your soul transfers from the material world to the spiritual world.

D'Souza argues that this is “why humans continue to espouse goodness and justice even when the world is evil and unjust. We seek to repudiate the laws of evolution and escape control of the laws of nature.” Why do we do this? Because we have made “the presupposition of an afterlife and the realization of the ideal of cosmic justice makes sense of our moral nature better than any competing hypothesis.”
²

According to D'Souza, a presupposition is a hypothesis that says, “This is the way things have to be to make sense of the world.” It is tested by asking, “How well does it explain the world?” His specific hypothesis is that “there has to be cosmic justice in the world in order to make sense of the observed facts about human morality.”
³

So he is cleverly turning the morality issue into a scientific argument, which is fine by me because that puts it on my home ground. Forget what theologians say. Forget what moral philosophers say. According to D'Souza, scientific observations of human behavior provide evidence for the existence of cosmic justice. And, since justice is obviously unavailable in this life, it follows that there must be an afterlife to provide it.

It seems to me that D'Souza has the argument turned around. If people believed that cosmic justice will be meted out in the afterlife, they wouldn't have any need to worry about justice in this life. On the other hand, people who don't believe in justice in the afterlife have a strong reason to see that justice is done in this life. Thus, belief in the afterlife has a negative impact on society. The hypothesis of no afterlife makes much more sense of observations than does D'Souza's hypothesis.

DID MORALITY EVOLVE?

Starting with Darwin
⁴
and his “bulldog” Thomas Huxley,
⁵
many authors have speculated about how morality may have evolved by evolutionary processes.
⁶
In 1976, Richard Dawkins (“Darwin's Rottweiler”) introduced the term s
elfish gene
to the lexicon of evolution.
⁷
Built on earlier work by George C. Williams,
⁸
the idea is that the basic unit of evolution is not the individual organism but the
gene
, the collection of molecules that carry on the individual's genetic information to the next generation. This is what really “wants” to survive, if we can use that metaphor.

The selfish gene explains why most parents would readily trade their own lives for their children's. And the selfish gene model of morality doesn't just predict that you will only act altruistically toward your family; it says you will tend to act altruistically toward those who most resemble you. It predicts
racism as well as charity. This is not morality. This is not spirituality. This is pure, reductionist, materialist, natural selection.

Evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers observes that humans and other animals behave generously toward others when they expect something in return. Natural selection provides survival instincts to those who engage in mutually beneficial exchanges.
⁹

Francis Collins is skeptical, however, asserting: “The hardwired behavior of the worker ant is fundamentally different from the inner voice that causes me to feel compelled to jump into the river to save a drowning stranger, even if I'm not a good swimmer and may myself die in the effort.”
¹⁰
He doesn't report an actual instance here, just a pious opinion of his own righteousness. In any case, Collins's point is that the stranger will not have Collins's genes, so there is no evolutionary advantage to saving him.

Similarly, D'Souza insists that evolution cannot explain “the good things we do that offer no return.” He provides as examples people giving up their seats on a bus to the elderly, donating to charities, or agitating for animal rights or against religious persecution in Tibet.

Group selection has long been postulated, controversially, as a way to reconcile evolution with moral behavior. Patriots frequently sacrifice their lives for their friends and countries. But D'Souza claims the argument has a fatal flaw. He asks, how would a tribe of individuals become self-sacrificing in the first place? Cheaters would be more likely to survive than their more altruistic fellow tribesmen.

D'Souza recognizes that there can be an ulterior, selfish motive to being recognized as a moral person. However, he says we still must confront the Machiavellian argument that “the man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among the many that are not virtuous.” He claims that true morality, true virtue, rises above all this, acting without regard to self-interest.
¹¹

Evolution, according to D'Souza, cannot explain how humans became moral primates. He tells us, “Humans recognize that there is no ultimate goodness and justice in this world, but they continue to hold up these ideals.” Why? Because they expect to be rewarded in the afterlife. Thus, according to D'Souza, the existence of the afterlife is “proved” by the observation of altruistic
behavior in humans despite the nonexistence of earthly reward.
¹²
It's not clear to me why people could not be just fooling themselves.

Note that D'Souza's hypothesis implies that the motivation for altruistic behavior is self-interest after all! Is it not the extremity of self-interest to want to live forever in the first place and to expect a special reward for your righteousness when you get to the afterlife?

What are the observations that D'Souza takes as evidence for cosmic justice? He admits that morality is almost universally violated. However, universal criteria and standards that everyone refers to nevertheless characterize human behavior. Why should these criteria exist at all? D'Souza claims that they defy the laws of evolution, so they can't be natural. He asserts, “Evolution implies that we are selfish creatures who seek to survive and reproduce in the world.”
¹³
This is contrary to moral behavior. Moral behavior frequently operates against self-interest.

D'Souza's hypothesis also predicts that only those who believe in an afterlife will exhibit altruistic behavior. That hypothesis can be easily tested. We just need to gather a sample of those who don't believe in an afterlife and see whether they are significantly less virtuous than those who believe.

WHAT DO THE DATA SAY?

There are at least a billion people in the world today who do not believe in God or immortality. Are they exceptionally immoral compared to believers? Do they not experience love? Are they all cannibals? Hardly. There is no evidence that nonbelievers are less moral than others. In fact, there are some indications that they are more moral, at least as measured by the types of societies they live in.

Skeptic
publisher and
Scientific American
columnist Michael Shermer addressed this question in his important book
The Science of Good and Evil
. He reports, “Not only is there no evidence that a lack of religiosity leads to less moral behavior, a number of studies actually support the opposite view.”
¹⁴

Here is a list of examples Shermer gives from the literature:

• A 1935 survey found that honesty
  decreased
  with religiosity.
  ¹⁵
  
• A 1950 survey of 2,000 YMCA associates discovered that atheists and agnostics are more willing to help the poor than those who rated themselves as being deeply religious.
  ¹⁶
  
• A 1969 survey reported no difference in the self-reported likelihood to commit crimes between children who attended church regularly and those who did not.
  ¹⁷
  
• A 1975 study showed that college-age students in religious schools were no less likely to cheat than their atheist and agnostic counterparts in nonreligious schools.
  ¹⁸
  
• A comprehensive survey of studies in the psychology of religion revealed that there is a consistent positive correlation between “religious affiliation, church attendance, doctrinal orthodoxy, rated importance of religion, and so on” with “ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, dogmatism, social distance, rigidity, intolerance of ambiguity, and specific forms of prejudice, especially against Jews and blacks.”
  ¹⁹
  

Bringing these reports up to date, in 2005, freelance researcher Gregory S. Paul published the results of surveys that correlate religiosity in various first-world nations with social health. He concluded that “in almost all regards the highly secular democracies consistently enjoy low rates of social dysfunction, while pro-religious and antievolution America performs poorly.”
²⁰
Similar results are reported by sociologists Pippa Norris and Ronald Ingelhart in their 2011 book S
acred and Secular
,
²¹
and by sociologist Phil Zuckerman in his 2009 book
Society without God.
²²
The facts are clear and simple: many people behave well, even better, without belief in God.

For facts about the negative social impact of religion see “The Social Implications of Armageddon” by Kimberly Blaker.
²³
We will uncover more evidence in
chapter 14
.

Those who claim God as the source of morality cite two sources: scriptures and inner feelings. The Bible and Qur'an contain many moral teachings that, without getting too pedantic about defining good and evil, most of us would regard as good. Both the Old and New Testaments and the Qur'an teach the Golden Rule. Leviticus 19:34 says, “But the stranger that dwelleth with you
shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Mathew 7:12 says, “Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.” (See also Luke 6:31 and Luke 10:25–28). Muhammad said, “That which you want for yourself, seek for mankind.”
²⁴

But the Golden Rule can hardly be attributed to the Abrahamic God. Confucius said, “Here certainly is the golden maxim: Do not do to others that which we do not want them to do to us.”
²⁵
Going back even earlier, Thales of Miletus said, “Refrain from doing what we blame in others for doing.”
²⁶
And how about this from an Egyptian papyrus from the Late Period (640–323 BCE): “That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another.”
²⁷

Okay, so the Abrahamic God could have planted these ideas in people's minds from the beginning. However, the truth is that we cannot point to the scriptures of Jews, Christians, and Muslims as the unique origin of the Golden Rule. More likely, thoughtful human beings reasoned it out in their own minds as a useful principle that humans could live by to make a better society for all.

The Old Testament is full of what any thinking person today would regard as evil acts committed by God or in the name of God: slavery, murder, genocide, floods, famines, plagues, earthquakes, and every conceivable cruelty and injustice.
²⁸

Furthermore, the New Testament is hardly the handbook for righteous behavior that Christians think it is. Jesus was not exactly a paragon of morality—at least not as most people today would interpret his behavior. According to the Gospels, Jesus told us to abandon our families and follow him, and he threatened us all with eternal damnation if we do not. From Matthew 10:34: “Think not that I come to send peace on earth: I come not to send peace, but the sword. For I am to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.” And in Matthew 12:30: “He who is not with me is against me.” Of course, apologists can cook up far-fetched explanations for these moral inconsistencies, but we should read them for what they say.