God and the Folly of Faith: The Incompatibility of Science and Religion (38 page)

Thus Barbour recognizes that the only way to justify evil and suffering and maintain belief in God at the same time is to relax at least one of his traditional
trinity of attributes: omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence (not to be confused with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost). Of course, no one wants to believe in a nonomnibenevolent God, but either omnipotence or omniscience can go. If God isn't all-powerful, then he hasn't the power to alleviate all suffering. If he isn't all-knowing, then he may not know about every case of suffering. Notice, however, that science eliminated the suffering due to smallpox
without
being aware of every case and
without
being omnipotent. Certainly any benevolent god worth his salt could do a better job in easing suffering.

Barbour disagrees with any characterization, such as I have made, that faith is foolish since it is not based on evidence and has a history of failure in application. Barbour says, “
Faith
is personal trust, confidence, and loyalty. Like faith in a friend or faith in a doctor, it is not ‘blind faith,’ for it is closely tied to experience.”
²¹
But is that experience reliable? Where is there the kind of evidence for trust in God that we find in doctors and friends?

Barbour bases his faith in faith on a belief in divine revelation: “The God-given encounter was experienced, interpreted, and reported by fallible human beings…. Revelation is recognized by its ability to illuminate
present experience.
Revelation helps us to understand our lives as individuals and as a community today.”
²²
But, again, where is the evidence for revelation?

He suggests these parallels between science and religion: “the interaction of data and theory (or experience and interpretation); the historical character of the interpretive community; the use of models; and the influence of paradigms.”
²³

Barbour also disagrees with the notion, which I proposed in
God: The Failed Hypothesis
,
²⁴
that God is a hypothesis and that the assumed God can be scientifically tested by looking for evidence that should be there given that God has the attributes usually assigned to him by believers. Barbour counters, “To make God a hypothesis to be tested or a conclusion of an argument (as in the argument from design) is to lose the experiential basis of religion. In my [Barbour's] view, God is known through
interpreted experience
.”
²⁵

Barbour concludes:

Religion is indeed
a way of life
. Religious language serves diverse functions, many of which have no parallel in science. It encourages ethical attitudes and behaviors. It evokes feelings and emotions. Its typical forms are worship
and meditation. Above all, its goal is to effect a personal transformation and reorientation (salvation, fulfillment, liberation, and enlightenment).
²⁶

Now, let me perform a religion-to-science transformation of this statement:

Science is indeed
a way of life
. Scientific language serves diverse functions, many of which have no parallel in religion. It encourages ethical attitudes and behaviors. It evokes feelings and emotions. Its typical forms are observation and model building. Above all, its goal is to effect a personal transformation and reorientation (critical thinking, fulfillment, liberation, and enlightenment).

So the big question is, which activity works better?

SCIENCE WORKS BETTER

Barbour's basic claims are (1) that good experiential reasons exist to believe in a God as informed by, but not taken literally from, Christian scriptures and traditions; and (2) that the practice of religion is beneficial for both the individual and society. Let us look at those claims and see how they fail to agree with the observed facts.

Let me begin with the notion that God is not some great king of heaven looking down on us from outside of nature, but is “immanent,” that is, within space and time. If God were everywhere and everywhen, then surely the effects of his presence would have been detected by now, if not in everyday life then by scientific instruments. This is not the case. Let me list all the observations we have discussed in this book where we should see evidence for God but do not:

• The cosmos and creation
  
• The fine-tuning of natural laws and parameters
  
• The origin and evolution of life
  
• The structure of matter
  
• Answering prayers
  
• Revealing truths that can be tested
  
• Moral behavior in humans
  
• An immaterial component to mind
  
• Religious experiences
  
• Purpose in the universe
  
• Top-down causality
  

If God is a purely metaphysical being, meaning noninteracting with nature, then his existence can neither be verified nor disconfirmed. But, then, what does it matter if he has no effect on nature and humanity? He might as well not exist.

In any case, Barbour says theological interpretations are secondary and religion is rooted in human experience. He even dismisses the need for supernatural intervention. Rather, God is a “creative love revealed in Christ.” However, as we saw in
chapter 10
, Jesus was not always such a “great teacher of high ideals.” And we have also seen how the religion of Jesus has not had a beneficial effect on human society, as it has an almost unbroken record of every conceivable atrocity. Furthermore, as we will find in
chapter 14
, Christianity is a major contributor to the problems of modern society that threaten the very existence of the human race.

Barbour asks us to believe that faith in divine revelation has some informative quality, that it illuminates present experience. But, once again, where are the data? Where has divine revelation ever told us anything that wasn't already between our ears? We have “faith” in friends and doctors because it is earned. That is not faith but
trust
; the term
faith
should be reserved for unfounded beliefs. Such faith is foolish. It is a failure. It doesn't work. We have good reasons for trust in science because it works.

The parallel between science and religion—that both are based on data (experience) and theory (interpretation)—is strained. Science takes its data and formulates theories (that is, models) that can be tested against other data. When religion does that at all, it always fails the test.

Science and faith are fundamentally
incompatible
, and for precisely the same reason that irrationality and rationality are incompatible. They are different forms of inquiry, with only one, science, equipped to find real truth. And while they may have a dialogue, it's not a constructive one. Science helps religion only by disproving its claims, while religion has nothing to add to science.

—Jerry Coyne
¹

THE STATE OF RELIGION TODAY

L
et us take a moment to review the state of religion in America and the world today. Religious belief in the United States is an anomaly among developed nations. In a 2007 survey by the Pew Research Center, the United States scored 1.5 on a scale measuring religiosity compared to a range from 0.25 to 0.75 in Western Europe.
²
Researcher Gregory Paul has shown a significant correlation between religiosity and income disparity, both of which are exceptionally high in America and may account for the anomaly.
³
This conclusion has been confirmed in a more recent independent study.
⁴

The rich usually exploit the poor, and religion is very often a tool of that exploitation, offering promises of a better life in the hereafter. In India, for example, the poor do not revolt over their abominable living conditions because they have been told by those in higher castes that it is their karma to be where they are in society and that if they behave themselves, they will do better in the next life.

At the same time, despite the financial power wielded by the theocrats in the United States today, religion is experiencing a significant decline among the middle class in America and even more so in other developed nations. In
Fading Faith: The Rise of the Secular Age
, James A. Haught, editor of the
Charleston Daily Mail
, presents a range of statistical evidence that religion is waning in advanced nations.
⁵
Here are a few highlights (references to the original data have been added):

In France, fewer than 7 percent of adults attend worship.
⁶
Continent wide, only 15 percent of adults attend worship.
⁷

In Denmark and Sweden, fewer than 5 percent of adults are in church on a typical Sunday. Denmark's Christian-Democratic political party attracts only 2 percent of voters.
⁸

Although Ireland remains dominated by the Catholic Church, the Archdiocese of Dublin graduated only one priest in 2004.
⁹

In Britain, only 4 percent of children attend Sunday school compared to 50 percent in 1900.
¹⁰

The Anglican Church of Canada lost more than half its members between 1961 and 2001. The United Church of Canada's membership dropped 30 percent in the same period. The Presbyterian Church of Canada's membership has fallen 35 percent during those fifty years.
¹¹

In Japan, 77 percent of adults say they do not believe in a specific religion, although many practice a uniquely Japanese form of spirituality.
¹²

In exceptionally religious America, secularism is on the march, especially among the young. The 2008 American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) of more than fifty thousand Americans shows 15 percent of Americans identifying themselves as “nones”—as not belonging to any organized religion. This is to be compared with 8 percent in 1990.
¹³
Most significantly for the future, 28 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 are unaffiliated with any religion.
¹⁴

A more recent Gallup Poll illustrates why, when interpreting polls, one has to look carefully at the wording of the question.
¹⁵
To the question, “Do you believe in God?” 92 percent of Americans said “yes.” This was down from 98 percent in 1967, but it is still a high percentage. But then when respondents were asked to distinguish between God and a universal spirit, 80 percent
claimed God and 12 percent chose “universal spirit.” When asked about the depth of their belief, 73 percent said they were convinced God exists, while 19 percent said he probably does but they have doubts.

According to the ARIS study, since 1990, the number of Christians in the United States dropped 10 percent, mostly in the mainline churches, which fell 6 percent. Here are some other interesting conclusions from ARIS:

• Based on their stated beliefs rather than on their religious identification in 2008, 70 percent of Americans said they believed in a personal God, roughly 12 percent were atheist (no God) or agnostic (unknowable or unsure), and another 12 percent were deistic (believed in a higher power but not in a personal God). Note that these facts differ markedly from the common wisdom you often hear that 90 percent of Americans believe in God, which is generally taken to mean a personal God.
  
• America's religious geography has been transformed since 1990. Religion-switching, together with Hispanic immigration, has significantly changed the religious profile of some states and regions. Between 1990 and 2008, the proportion of Catholics to the general population in New England states fell from 50 percent to 36 percent, and in New York it fell from 44 percent to 37 percent, while in California it rose from 29 percent to 37 percent and in Texas from 23 percent to 32 percent.
  
• One sign of lack of attachment to religion by Americans is that 27 percent do not expect a religious funeral at their death.
  
• The challenge to Christianity in the United States does not come from other religions but rather from a rejection of all forms of organized religion.
  

The Catholic Church in America has remained steady in its membership at about 25 percent, but this is mainly the result of the influx of immigrants from Catholic countries. According to the 2008 Pew survey, while 31 percent of Americans were raised as Catholics, today only 24 percent identify themselves as such.
¹⁶

Mainline churches in America are suffering steep declines. What Haught calls the “seven sisters of American Protestantism”—Presbyterians, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Methodists, American (northern) Baptists, Disciples of Christ, and United Church of Christ—lost 10 million followers while the US population doubled.
¹⁷

In his 2011book titled
American Religion: Contemporary Trends
, Mark Chaves, Divinity School professor at Duke University, reports on the results of several surveys that show a sharp decline in interest in religion in the United States that he admits flies in the face of the perception that Americans have become more religious.
¹⁸
One particularly revealing statistic is that only about 25 percent of Americans attend religious services, while 35 to 40 percent say they do. Also, less that 25 percent of Americans express “great confidence” in religious leaders, and 44 percent strongly agree that religious leaders should avoid political involvement.

The manner in which these figures relate to the conflict between science and religion has to do with the central role religion has played in American politics, contributing to a cultural divide with extremist religion, big money, and right-wing ideology on one side and science, secularism, and the evidence-based community on the other. Due to the dominating influence of money in American politics, the political center has moved far to the right. Even the “liberal” Democratic Party has moved to the right of many European conservative parties. There is a Far Left, of course, but it has almost no influence on American society today.

As we have seen in earlier chapters, liberal theologians (that is, liberal in their theology but not necessarily in their politics), who are outside the evangelical community, are making an honest attempt to reconcile religion with science. They have failed so far, but their efforts should be acknowledged. Unfortunately, theologians have as little influence on American society as do atheists and the Far Left. So regardless of what science-friendly religious scholars come up with, most believers continue to hold to unsupportable ancient myths. Indeed, one of the interesting aspects of modern religion is the great disconnect between theology and what is preached from the pulpit, often by preachers who are fully aware of this disconnect but choose to hide it from their flocks.
¹⁹

The other groups of believers who present little direct threat to science are those associated with the mainline Protestant churches, the so-called moderate Christians. They generally support science, particularly the teaching of evolution, but we have seen that they still profess a God-guided form of evolution that is distinctly not Darwinian but rather is a variation on intelligent design. As we saw previously, however, membership in mainline Protestant churches is declining steadily. Like theologians and atheists, mainline Protestant believers have little influence in politics.

The religious groups wielding the most influence are Catholics, comprising 24 percent of the population, and evangelical Christians, with 26 percent. These figures are for the year 2008.
²⁰
The effectiveness of these two highly conservative religious groups is amplified by the enormous private and corporate wealth that supports their crusades and the way the government ignores their unconstitional interference in politics. Much of that wealth is directed toward electing pliable public officials who will look out for the best interests of the original donors, with the churches being used to get out the vote among their parishioners—often voting against their own best economic interests because they have been bamboozled into believing it is God's will.

IS RELIGION GOOD FOR YOU?

A widespread belief exists that, even if religion is not true, it is worth practicing because of its benefits. As we already saw in
chapter 9
, any health benefits of religious practice are problematical. The only definite positive correlation between religious practice and health is with church-going, and it is not proven that this is anything supernatural. It is far more likely to be simply the result of a healthier, less stressful lifestyle among churchgoers. Most nonbelievers I know also live healthy, stress-free lives, but they are never included in these studies.

The lifestyle interpretation agrees with the evidence, mentioned in
chapter 10
, that less religious nations are happier and healthier than religious ones. According to the study by sociologist Phil Zuckerman, the godless societies of Scandinavia rank near the top in every measure of societal and personal
health.
²¹
Amusingly, the nation ranked the “happiest” is Denmark, which, incidentally, also pays the highest taxes.

And what about the negative impact that religion has on health? Between 1975 and 1995, at least 172 children in the United Stated died, perhaps 140 of medically curable illnesses, because their parents refused them medical treatment for religious reasons.
²²
While those numbers are not large, every child is significant, and many more children are harmed by lack of immunizations and other refusals by religious parents to provide modern medical treatments and preventative measures. Parents are allowed to do this because of unconscionable religious exemptions in child-abuse prevention laws.
²³
It should be noted that antivaccination affects everyone, not just the unfortunate children of religious fanatics.

Believers often bring up the famous argument called
Pascal's wager
, formulated by the French philosopher, physicist, and mathematician Blaise Pascal (died 1662). A medieval Muslim thinker, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, may have proposed the wager earlier. Basically the argument is that you have everything to gain and nothing to lose by betting on the existence of God. On the other hand, you have nothing to gain and everything to lose in rejecting the argument.

Many people, including the great philosopher Bertrand Russell, have seen the flaw in this argument. Assuming that God is just, wouldn't he look with more favor on someone who honestly didn't believe for lack of evidence than someone who, without evidence, says he believes just so he can get his ass into heaven?

One of the great appeals of religion is the promise of eternal life. The most successful religions—Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism—thrive on that promise. But, as we have seen, it is a forlorn hope.

D'Souza has drawn up a list of benefits for belief in God and, in particular, an afterlife. I will list these systematically:
²⁴

Assets of belief in an afterlife

1. It provides us with hope at the point of death and a way to cope with our deaths.
   
2. It infuses life with a sense of meaning and purpose.
   
3. It gives us a reason to be moral and a way to transmit morality to our children.
   
4. Clinical evidence exists that religious people who affirm the afterlife are healthier than nonbelievers.