Postscript

Having just uploaded my paper I was immediately drawn to an interesting feature article by A.C.Grayling, professor of philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London in the Times Higher Education Supplement, October 7th 2005.

Extracts from the article:

'Amen to the pursuit of truth and reason'

"There are four standard ways to explain religious belief. One is that it reveals the origin of the universe, why it works the way it does (including, especially, the mysterious things that happen in it) and why it is full of evil and suffering. A second is that religion gives comfort and succour, provides a means (by prayer and sacrfice) to influence one's lot in this life and offers hope of a posthumous existence after this life has ended. A third is that religion ensures social order by promoting morality and social cohesion. And a fourth is that it rests on the innate gullibility of mankind, to say nothing of ignorance and stupidity.

Religious people of course say that none of these explanations is correct, claiming instead that religion exists because there is a deity or deities. Yet others offer theories drawn from sociobiology and from developmental and cognitive psychology. One such strand says that it is a human evolutionary adaptation to be hyper-credulous in childhood, this being the means by which children rapidly accept so many of humanity's fundamental notions (those useful and important folk beliefs again). But because religious beliefs are inculcated along with them, and receive constant reinforcement from adults of the community, they acquire factual status.

It has also been hypothesised that consciousness of something like a "superego" has evolved to ensure behaviour that supports hierarchy, deference to those higher in the pecking order and loyalty to the tribe or clan. This structuring of relationships is recognised in all social mammals, and in humans extends to the idea of rulers in the sky."

and, further on:

" The four standard answers listed earlier are consistent with the cognitive science account, but go further by addressing these latter questions. They prompt an important reminder: that religion is a cultural matter as well as an artefact of the way our brains work; and culture is not merely an epiphenomenal outcome of neuronal activity, but in significant respects is the result of feedback from the social environment it has itself created. To say this is to recognise that culture has an existence independent of individuals (though not of the collective they constitute). It also affects thern as much as they affect it. Most people are passive spectators of culture, but significant minorities among them crucially influence its development and content, chief among them religious leaders, demagogues, writers and thinkers. They influence the character of the belief systems constituting the culture by endowing them with highly articulated literatures and traditions, liturgies and myths.

In the broadest sense, aspects of philosophy and the arts therefore count as a form of "cultural criticism" when they question and challenge the beliefs making up those systems. In that guise they are forms of "good believing", especially when they apply the criteria of the ethics of rationality to whatever happens to be currently accepted - sacred cows, shibboleths, cant, rhetoric, spin, newspeak - and to vestment-and-incense-disguised nonsense that goes echoing in the beauty of plainsong down ancient naves.

One of the ways this challenge can work is by refusing to be silenced before the defensive outworks that belief systems typically erect around them. In the case of religion, there are two that are especially noteworthy. One is the idea of "sacredness" - a given "holy" book is "sacred" and to mistreat the stack of paper from which an individual copy of it is made is "sacrilege" and "profanation". Likewise, to ridicule a belief, or to deny a claim to special treatment or exemption on the grounds of membership to a given religion, is to cause "offence". This latter is a cheap and easy move; subscribers to various religions are quick to lay claim to it - Christians are offended by the musical 'Jerry Springer-The Opera'. Sikhs by Gurpreet Bhatti's play 'Beshti', Muslims by Salman Rushdie's 'The Satanic Verses'. This would be acceptable if those offended by religious beliefs and practices could, just on that ground, close down churches and mosques in return.

But there is the rub: no rational individual could fail to see the point of the liberal principle that people should be allowed to believe what they like, in private and provided it does no harm to others, because there is no good argument against that freedom (even if there is every good argument against the belief thus privately entertained - whether in fairies or gods) and many excellent arguments for it.

Responsible intellectual endeavour consists in finding and maintaining the balance between two essential virtues: open-mindness and critical scepticism. Scientists are the least dogmatic of inquirers, because the premise of their enterprise is that their current theories might have to be revised or rejected if contrary evidence turns up. They try to make the strongest possible case for their theories, but they subject it to the relentless scrutiny of their peers. In that open exchange of claim and critical assessment lies the progressive nature of what they do.

What a far cry from religion. As the paradigm of responsible belief-formation, science is open, tentative and always subject to test. Religion is dogmatic, final, closed, knows all the answers, damns as a heretic anyone who disagrees and too frequently kills them to boot.

There are aspects of serious science that are open to relatively few, because they require capacities that are not within everyone's reach or to everyone's taste, such as a competency in mathematics and the ability to see things in counterintuitive ways. But one does not have to be a scientist to be "a good believer"; that is open to all of us, if we would make the effort and adhere strictly to the requirement of intellectual honesty. Our world would quickly become a very different place if the majority of its inhabitants made a sincere effort to proportion belief to evidence, and to recognise that any belief they hold may be false."