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Fundamentalist Antihumanist Personality Disorder

I might expound more fully on "Fundamentalist Antihumanist Personality Disorder" in the future. In the meantime, we have all encountered those who make their attitudes our problem.

I stumbled across an old post about The Need for Absurd Belief Among Fundamentalists on the Breaking Spells blog. It discusses, amongst other things, the fact that fundies are desperate to attack segments of scientific knowledge.

I read it with interest because I am fascinated — and dismayed — by what I regard as the Fundamentalist Cognitive Disorder*. This is often linked to the Fundamentalist Antihumanist Personality Disorder.**

The final line of the post reads:

""Eventually, perhaps, the spell of religion will be broken.""

I decided to convert my response into a post.

Let’s hope! Religion continues to support damaging and outright dangerous cognitive and behavioural disorders.

I completely agree that fundies are terrified of knowledge — whether it’s science or the expert conclusions of biblical scholars. I also agree that this rigid thinking is the result of childhood indoctrination. Why else would IDiots be fighting to insinuate creationism into science curricula?
I think that the motivation is not merely habit — it is highly emotional. It is also deliberately anti-factual, and, most important, illogical. They are trained into illogic and this fallacious thinking is reinforced by Bible quotes.

Successful religions have set up clever reward and punishment systems. Community is the most mundane motivation, but is probably essential for many. An eternal afterlife with a loving SkyDaddy who punishes one’s enemies is an obvious incentive. The flip side is the prison door. They fear what they are instructed to fear.

However, based on long observation of how some fundies think, I conclude that much of the emotional appeal lies in certainty and the assurance that religious-rule-following renders one RIGHT and morally SUPERIOR. (Excuse the caps. They seemed appropriate.)

It always reminds me of prefects in a school playground. Not a highschool playground. Not a primary school playground in North America. No, a school playground for children up to age 11. That’s the moral level at which these authoritarianism-oriented folk function.

Ugh!

* and ** : not official terminology

* and ** Disclaimer: not all fundies, religionists other than fundies, the occasional atheist.

The Yawning Chasm

The NYT, in Evolution Book Sees No Science-Religion Gap, had the following to say of the National Academy of Sciences' third book on evolution and the creationist mythologies:

"But this volume is unusual, people who worked on it say, because it is intended specifically for the lay public and because it devotes much of its space to explaining the differences between science and religion, and asserting that acceptance of evolution does not require abandoning belief in God."

Unfortunately, the yawning chasm between rationality and creationism necessitates such a footbridge.

What's left once a person reconciles evolution with religion?

Plenty.

Deism, or moderate theism, or Catholicism, or Judaism, or Buddhism, or whatever other religious tradition of choice is compatible with science. There's also nonliteral interpretation of the best bits of the Bible as moral allegory, religious ritual, religious community, music, art, literature, and, most wondrous of all, the fabulous world of opening one's eyes to . . . understanding and appreciating the world.

Imagination is much better stimulated by recognition that modern theories of biological evolution offer the best explanation for the observable fact of biological evolution. Yes, Virginia, there really is a chimp ancestor in your family tree! Grounds for rejoicing. Yes, you really can count bacteria not only as your distant ancestors but also as the power houses of your cells and the photosynthetic machines that capture Ra's munificence. More grounds for rejoicing.

In an ideally rational world, it would not be necessary to pander to religious sensibilities so that some might open their closed minds to the wonders of reality. In an ideally rational world, there would be no need for supernatural mythologies or fantasies of special creation. In an ideal world, the nation whose Founding Fathers considered it expedient to entrench separation of Church and State would have honored and protected that prescient ethos by providing an educational system commensurate with the nation's wealth. In an ideally rational world, the wall would have been built higher rather than ignoring the fundamentalist sappers who were tunneling under the wall.

Brochure from NAS (pdf)

atheism, biological evolution, creationism, deism, education, fundamentalism, intelligent design, religion, science, supernatural, theism,

Tour d'Ivoire

I've been listening to the interesting discussions at the Beyond Belief 1 conferences. Several speakers have, I think correctly, identified current anti-science attitudes as not merely stemming from religion per se, but also from poor education in science and in critical thinking. The recently released PISA test results certainly confirm this for 15 year olds in America.

One speaker seems to believe that people are merely confused about whether or not to believe scientific findings, and consequently that better conveying rational information about science will enable these people to assess scientific claims for themselves.

This led me to wonder what planet this fella lives on. Earth obviously, but that segment of Earth referred to as the ivory tower*:

"a sheltered, overly-academic existence or perspective, implying a disconnection or lack of awareness of reality or practical considerations."

How do otherwise intelligent people come to be so oblivious of the mental machinations of the average person? Academics are protected from the guy in the street, that's how.

I don't recall which scale was used for the report in which I read that the average IQ of university graduates is 110 (Wechsler, 74th percentile; Stanford-Binet, 73rd). Harvard medical students averaged 135 (W, 99th; S-B 98.5th). There's lots of controversy about IQ tests, yet they are good predictors of academic performance. The scales are standardized with a score of 100 for the 50th percentile. Most people clump around the hump at 100.

Extrapolating, I assume that most graduate students average somewhere between 110 and 135. This would mean that most professors probably come into close contact with students who are brighter than at least 70% of the population, and who are motivated to think and to learn. No wonder this professor had an inflated estimation of the level of science-interest of the population-at-large. He certainly must not have taught science to reluctant, hormone-obsessed teenagers.

The members of religious congregations are quite capable of learning "we do not believe in evolution because goddidit." Not a difficult concept to master, particularly since goddidit requires no comprehension of complicated mechanisms – virtually no comprehension of any kind, really.

In most Western countries, the average person may understand little about the mechanisms of evolution, but at least they were officially taught that there is abundant evidence that biological evolution occurred. However, in America, the teaching of creationism in high schools has only been illegal since 1987, so the bulk of the population has been taught only misinformation. No wonder science in America is in some trouble.

*Apparently the term "ivory tower" takes its current meaning from a poem by Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve.

biological evolution, critical thinking, education, religion, science, IQ

Hurrah for Europe!

The Founding Fathers may have been enlightened for their time, as witnessed by constitutional separation of church and state, but Europe has been ahead of America in enlightenment ever since:

The dangers of creationism in education

3. Creationism, born of the denial of the evolution of species through natural selection, was for a long time an almost exclusively American phenomenon. Today creationist ideas are tending to find their way into Europe and their spread is affecting quite a few Council of Europe member states.

4. The prime target of present-day creationists, most of whom are Christian or Muslim, is education. Creationists are bent on ensuring that their ideas are included in the school science syllabus. Creationism cannot, however, lay claim to being a scientific discipline.

5. Creationists question the scientific character of certain items of knowledge and argue that the theory of evolution is only one interpretation among others. They accuse scientists of not providing enough evidence to establish the theory of evolution as scientifically valid. On the contrary, they defend their own statements as scientific. None of this stands up to objective analysis.

Full list (1-20) can be found here: Europe Moves To Ban Creationsim in Schools .

From Council of Europe: Provisional edition, The dangers of creationism in education, Resolution 1580 (2007): Assembly debate on 4 October 2007 (35th Sitting) (see Doc. 11375, report of the Committee on Culture, Science and Education, rapporteur: Mrs Brasseur). Text adopted by the Assembly on 4 October 2007 (35th Sitting).

Hurrah for Sweden! Sweden to Suppress Religion in Schools - Proposal That Britain do the Same .

From the Sublime to the Ridiculous

More discussion surrounding the gross misrepresentations of atheist arguments and arguments for appeasement by atheistic scientists is to be found here in response to Mary Midgley argues that opponents of intelligent design are driving people to accept it. In response to Midgley's preposterous contention that, "scientific atheism and Darwinism which are pernicious moral doctrines", PZ Myers provides an amusing argument from ridicule.

Mary Midgley appears not to have read Dawkins' The Selfish Gene and yet has critiqued things that Dawkins never said in the first place.

On his own website, Dawkins clarifies:

1. I have never said that there are no positions available except for my own and creatonism.
2. I have frequently said that natural selection is NOT the only source of evolution. I have written enthusiastically about Kimura's neutral theory of evolution.
3. I have frequently emphasized that natural selection favours cooperation and 'using something that others are not'.
4. I have repeatedly repudiated the worship of Thatcherite competition.
5. I have never said that religion MAKES people do appalling things, only that it frequently IS used to justify doing appalling things, just as ideologies such as Marxism are.
6. Far from being angry with anyone who says there are mysteries, I frequently and passionately invoke mystery as an inspiration for science, and I frequently state that science cannot answer some questions.

More : M. Midgley, ‘Gene-juggling’, Philosophy 54 (October 1979). : In Defence of Selfish Genes by Richard Dawkins : Read the goddamn book!!! : Dawkins needs to read some theology (as though that would convince Dawkins!) :

Peaceful Coexistence?

There is a placatory movement afoot concerning the uneasy relationship between theism and science. In Thanks for the Facts. Now sell them:

"Can't science and religion just get along? A "science and religion coexistence" message conveyed by church leaders or by scientists who have reconciled the two in their own lives might convince even many devout Christians that evolution is no real threat to faith."

Unfortunately for any possibility of honest coexistence, the fact remains that science and religion are intrinsically antithetical. Science deals with evidence based knowledge and, whether or not some scientists are believers, science disproves the chief tenets of most religious beliefs (origins, miracles, and conjectured afterlife). There simply is no good reason, outside emotionally-motivated ignorance, to hypothesize the existence of a supernatural. Without the proferred promise and threat of the supernatural, what is the point of devotion to religious mythologies? Certainly not the rigid, moralistic intolerance passed of as absolute morality by the bigoted Religious so-called Right.

In a realistic, evidence-based world there is no room for deities because deities really do not exist. Never mind placatory statements that we cannot disprove the existence of something that does not exist, the facts clearly support the contention that the supernatural is purely an invention born of ignorance and superstition. There is abundant positive evidence of the invented aspect of religious beliefs in the nearly universal phenomenon of invented religions. Theists inadvertantly and implicitly admit to the disproof of the supernatural by science when they attack science or attempt to commandeer science to their religious purposes.

The New Atheists recognize that without interference religionists will continue to refuse to acknowledge the supremacy of science as an explanatory tool and will continue to distort the truth. No amount of positive scientific statements and geared-to-the-layperson explanations will shift science-ignorant theists without an attack on the root causes of theistic anti-science distortions. Scientific knowledge, particularly in this age of rapid advances in detailed understanding, will always be beyond the ken of the public no matter how well explained. However, this does not mean that the public is justified in dismissing science as hopelessly biased or confused (as religionists would have the science-ignorant believe). This deliberate diminution of science's validity has spread beyond cosmology and evolution and has distorted awareness of public health issues and misdirected political policies.

In Why Pairing Science and Atheism is High-Brow, Jake Young argues that pairing science and atheism might alienate some theists from accepting science. Young quotes John Dewey who said in The American Intellectual Frontier in 1922 that making liberalism high-brow would have the negative consequence of making liberalism a minority movement by definition.

I view this 85 year old essay as an out of date acquiescence to religionist insistence that only religion can provide moral guidance. The lamentable fact is that fundamentalist, conservative, absolutist morality is not only regressive but, in its intolerance and ignorance of social mechanisms, is also largely without any moral merit. Now, as in 1925, America lags far behind other Western nations in its lack of enlightenment.

Young says, "as Nisbet and Schermer have argued, alienating the majority with criticism is likely to extend the time that is necessary for acceptance." I disagree with this because the sit back mutely and be polite to the religionists, bigots, and dim-everything-to-low-brow-level masses has definitely not worked. It is time to shake up the unexamined belief systems of the cossetted religionists and force the closed-minded to question whether or not their narrowness is as acceptable as they have been promised in this modern world. These are not individuals who easily think for themselves and they have been fed an unopposed diet of untruths.

Good critiques of Jake Young's appeasement post: Jason Rosenhouse: Young on Dewey on Being High-Brow : Larry Moran: Jake Young Wants Atheist Scientists to Keep a Low Profile : PZ Myers: Taking exception to Jake

Kevin Padian

On FORA.tv, a conversation with Kevin Padian, one of the witnesses for science at the Dover trial. Kevin Padian is a University of California Berkeley professor and curator of the Museum of Paleontology. This is not a particularly exciting conversation because both the interviewer and Padian have a very calm style, but it is an interesting conversation nontheless.

Operation Spread Eagle

The Rational Response Squad is responding rationally to the Creation Science Evangelism ministry's moves to have a critical video removed from YouTube: