WE鈥橰E on the Pacific coast, miles from southern California鈥檚 still-raging wildfires, but talk of conflagration fills the air. Some of the best minds in science are gathered here at the seaside resort of La Jolla, together with some of the world鈥檚 most insistent non-believers, to take a fresh look at the existence or otherwise of God. And one thing is clear: the edifice of 鈥渘ew atheism鈥� is burning.
The first firebrand is lobbed into the audience by Edward Slingerland, an expert on ancient Chinese thought and human cognition at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. 鈥淩eligion is not going away,鈥� he announced. Even those of us who fancy ourselves rationalists and scientists, he said, rely on moral values 鈥� a set of distinctly unscientific beliefs.
Where, for instance, does our conviction that human rights are universal come from? 鈥淗umans鈥� rights to me are as mysterious as the holy trinity,鈥� he told the audience at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. 鈥淵ou can鈥檛 do a CT scan to show where humans鈥� rights are, you can鈥檛 cut someone open and show us their human rights,鈥� he pointed out. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not an empirical thing, it鈥檚 just something we strongly believe. It鈥檚 a purely metaphysical entity.鈥�
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This is a far cry from the first 鈥淏eyond Belief鈥� symposium a year ago, at which many militant non-believers, including evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins and author Sam Harris, came together to hammer home the virtues of atheism (New 杏吧原创, 18 November 2006, p 8). That gathering made much of the idea that humans can be moral without believing in God, and that science should do away with religion altogether.
The mood at this follow-up conference was different. Last year鈥檚 event was something of an 鈥渁theist love fest鈥� said some, who urged a more wide-ranging discourse this time round. While all present agreed that rational, evidence-based thinking should always be the basis of how we live our lives, it was also conceded that people are irrational by nature, and that faith, religion, culture and emotion must also be recognised as part of the human condition. Even the title of this year鈥檚 meeting, 鈥淏eyond Belief II: Enlightenment 2.0鈥�, suggested the need for revision, reform and a little more tolerance.
Such was the message from evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson of Binghamton University, New York. He suggested that humans鈥� religious beliefs may have evolved over time, thanks to the advantages they conferred as a sort of social glue holding together groups that developed them.
Wilson was not saying religion is good or bad, simply that it has evolved to be hard-wired into our brains, and therefore cannot be ignored. 鈥淎daptation is the gold standard against which reality must be judged,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he unpredictability and unknown nature of our environment may mean that factual knowledge isn鈥檛 as useful as the behaviours we have evolved to deal with this world.鈥�
Stuart Kauffman of the University of Calgary in Canada, an expert in complex systems and the origin of life, took that argument and ran with it. No matter how far science advances, there will be aspects of nature that remain unknowable, he said. As an example, he cited Darwinian pre-adaptations 鈥� in which organisms evolve traits that end up having beneficial side effects 鈥� which are so random as to be completely unforeseeable.
Fact-based knowledge can never provide all the answers, he concluded. 鈥淚f we don鈥檛 know what鈥檚 going happen, we have to live our lives anyway鈥� We live our lives largely not knowing. That means reason is an insufficient guide.鈥�
Though Kauffman declared himself an atheist, he argued from this that it may be apt to invoke the concept of God as a proxy for such gaps in our knowledge. 鈥淚鈥檇 say that it鈥檚 wise to use the word 鈥楪od'鈥�, he continued. 鈥淚 know it鈥檚 very freighted, but it also carries with it awe and reverence. I want to use the God word on purpose, to reinvent creativity in the natural universe. The natural universe, nothing supernatural.鈥�
鈥淚 want to use the God word on purpose, to reinvent creativity in the natural universe 鈥� nothing supernatural鈥�
Chemist Peter Atkins of the University of Oxford, one of the more hard-line atheists in the room, did not let this go unchallenged. He chided fellow participants for not being sufficiently proud about what science can accomplish. Given time and persistence, science will conquer all of nature鈥檚 mysteries, he said. He even proposed that atheist scientists signal their intent to do just that by adopting a flag with a Mandelbrot set as its emblem.
So can scientific and religious world views ever be reconciled? Harris, author of The End of Faith, declared that they could not, and provided an uncompromising exposition on the evils of religion.
Away from the meeting, philosopher Daniel Dennett of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, told New 杏吧原创 that as irrational as human minds may be, calm, firm introduction of reason into the world鈥檚 classrooms could over time purge them of religion.
For all its fiery rhetoric, this year鈥檚 Beyond Belief conference razed neither the new atheist movement nor, of course, religion itself. But it certainly lit the touch paper.
An Alternative reading of literature
Religion is not the only aspect of the human condition that could do with a little more rationality, said some delegates at Beyond Belief II. Jonathan Gotschall, who teaches English literature at Washington & Jefferson College in Pennsylvania, proposed marrying literary studies with a scientific style of inquiry.
Gottschall has already made waves among his colleagues by conducting an experiment on how people respond to literature. From interviews with readers about their responses to books, he has shown that in general people have similar reactions to a given text. This runs counter to the conventional idea that the meaning readers take from literature is dependent more on their cultural background than what the author intended. It also appears not to make sense, as literature is grounded in subjective rather than objective experience.
Gotschall, however, argues that the same can be said for literary criticism: the field is awash with irrational thought, he says, largely because most literature scholars believe that the humanities and science are distinct. As a result, literary theorists rely on opinion and conjecture, rather than trying to find solid, empirical evidence for their claims, he says. By adding an element of scientific thought to literary criticism, Gottschall says, we could unearth hidden truths about human nature and behaviour.
