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Religion, and any other unsubstantiated beliefs, should be put under the same scientific scrutiny as a scientific claim, or any claim at all for that matter. Reason and objective analysis tells us that religions greatly differ in their ability to make as many people as possible as happy as possible. Thus some religions must be characterized as better than or worse than others and some thus pose greater threats to our well-being than others, despite all being equally devoid of reason. To say that one religion by nature is better or worse than others is perhaps the greatest tabu. It is still a reasonable conclusion.
In “The Moral Landscape – How Science Can Determine Human Values”, Sam Harris argues that if our goal is to maximize the well being of humans, then religions fall severely short of science and reason. In particular, religions are horrible moral guidelines. This, of course, will strike many as odd, given that they believe religion to be the only place to look for moral guidance. Writes Sam Harris:
For nearly a century, the moral relativism of science has given faith-based religion – that great engine of ignorance and bigotry – a nearly uncontested claim to being the only universal framework for moral wisdom. As a result , the most powerful societies in on earth spend their time debating issues like gay marriage when they should be focused on problems like nuclear proliferation, genocide, energy security, climate change, poverty, and failing schools.
In his “The year of living biblically” experiment, A.J. Jacobs attempted to follow all the rules of the Old Testament (view his talk on TED Here). This proved an impossible mission, as it would have made him into a murdering lunatic. He did however give some of the rules a try, such as not shaving the corners of his beard, stoning an adulterer, not sitting in a place where a menstruating woman had sat and only wearing clothes made from the same fabric.
Religion does undoubtedly not originate from reason or science, but from the lack of it. There is thus no way religion and science can coexist in a person without being at conflict with each other. Says Sam Harris about the oft perceived unproblematic uniting of religion and science:
…this is based on a fallacy. The fact that some scientists do not detect any problem with religious faith merely proves that a juxtaposition of good ideas and bad ones is possible.
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| Francis Collins |
How then should we respond when a person like the director of the National Institutes of Health, physician-geneticist Francis Collins, described by the Endocrine Society as "one of the most accomplished scientists of our time", head of the Human Genome Project, goes religious, publishes a book about his strong faith in the Christian God and claims that science points to the existence of God and that God himself does not need an explanation since he is beyond the universe?
When Collins, in 2006, published “The language of God” the result was remarkable. Rather than being an intellectual suicide, he continued as before and received praise for his attempt to reconcile and unite science and religion (or rather Christianity). Collins probably has more responsibility for biomedical and health related research than any other person on earth. He is controlling an annual budget of more than $30 billion, and yet he believes God created the universe some 14 billion years ago, that breaking God’s moral law will lead to the estrangement from God and that Jesus is the solution, that God created evolution and that a virgin gave birth to the son of God and that Jesus was actually resurrected some 2000 years ago.
The insanity of all of this is overwhelming. You can see it live here, and you can see him make an ass of himself for Bill Maher here.
According to “The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM-IV), published by the American Psychiatric Association, delusion is a “false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary.”
According to this definition Collins is delusional. The fact that others around him also firmly sustain this belief does not make it less delusional, although most scientists are not religious.
The problem here is not so much that Collins is delusional but that the system allows him to be delusional in the position he holds. Would he still be in his job had he been a devout Muslim or Hindu? Of course not. Because the religion he happened to fall upon was a type of Christianity approved of by a majority, no one much cared that Collins would take the texts of the bible as certain proof just as he would laboratory observations.
Most any time someone is critical towards religion, opponents invariably bring up the “but-why-does-it-matter-that-some-people-are-religious "argument and the "they-are-not-hurting-anyone" argument.The quick answer is that, although they may not be directly hurting anyone with their belief, there is no reason to think that religious belief is benign. Religions are without reason, and Collins will and do argue falsely and irrationally when discussing religion while arguing rationally and logically when discussing many scientific matters. That affects people.
“So he found God and faith. Good for him?” Yes perhaps, but bad for us. Because it means that he is willing, in some respects and circumstances, to put aside reason and logic and believe in farfetched ideas despite all the evidence pointing to the contrary. Collins judgment cannot be trusted.
"A person's private beliefs should not keep him from a public position, but Collins is an advocate of profoundly anti-scientific beliefs, and it is reasonable for the scientific community to ask him how these beliefs will affect his administration."
Steven Pinker
Being open to the possibility of a intelligent higher power is in itself not that big of a threat to reason. On can for example be open to the possibility that such a power started what lead to the known universe. This cannot yet be disproved, but it still makes no sense. Why choose to believe this over non-theist explanations? But if a person believes that the universe was created by any of the already know gods, that belief comes with a package called religion. A package containing farfetched beliefs in magic rituals, nonsensical moral laws and a whole range of extra beliefs that flies in the face of logic. This is what Collins do when he assumes the universe is created by the christian god and he must also then accept and buy into (which he admittedly does) the other parts of the christianity package.
The fact that we do not know something is no reason to conjure up a god as an answer. In addition, the belief that a god created the universe may take away the curiosity and incentive to try and figure out, using science, what actually did start it all. In this way religion is corrosive to science.
Science is also corrosive to religion. There are far more atheists and agnostics amongst the highly educated and especially those educated in the natural sciences, then amongst the general public. Religion is corrosive to science and reason. Of course we cannot leave important decisions about future human flourishing and well being, like for example that of how to use embryonic stem cell research, in the hands of a devote Christian or Muslim. Religious people will often believe in a soul, no matter how unlikely the existence of such a thing might be, and they will also believe that embryonic stem cell research is wrong simply because writings from a primitive Bronze Age community are interpreted to mean that an almighty god says it is wrong. No logic or reason required. It is simply wrong. When Francis Collins was appointed head of NIH, the Times featured a story where many prominent scientists spoke up against it. Writes The New Yorker:
Steven Pinker, a cognitive psychologist at Harvard, questioned the appointment on the ground that Collins was “an advocate of profoundly anti-scientific beliefs.” P. Z. Myers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota at Morris, complained, “I don’t want American science to be represented by a clown.”Collins, who founded the BioLogos Foundation dedicated to "the integration of science and Christian faith," sees no conflict between science and religion and believes that God is outside of time and space, or put in more reasonable terms, nonexistent. In his work to unite religion (Christianity) with science he undermines and mocks the very key concepts of science he should be representing.
