Wright on Resolving the Conflict Between Science and Religion

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/23/opinion/23wright.html?_r=1&th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

I bring good news! These two warring groups have more in common than they realize. And, no, it isn’t just that they’re both wrong. It’s that they’re wrong for the same reason. Oddly, an underestimation of natural selection’s creative power clouds the vision not just of the intensely religious but also of the militantly atheistic.

If both groups were to truly accept that power, the landscape might look different. Believers could scale back their conception of God’s role in creation, and atheists could accept that some notions of “higher purpose” are compatible with scientific materialism. And the two might learn to get along.

Is Robert Wright an idiot? Yes, I am afraid so. I must now tear a new asshole into him.

I once dated a woman who was a theistic evolutionist. She attended a mainline Methodist church and hoped to sway me to her beliefs which were a form of sophisticated theology, a smidge of science, and a whole bunch of leftard peace and love hippie shit. I told her she should become a Unitarian, so she wouldn't have to duke it out with the conservatives in her congregation.

Wright argues that peace can be made between the religious and the science minded folks by an appeal to the general moral sense of the universe that is akin to mathematics. The thinking is related to Pythagoras who made a cult of numbers, so Wright argues that we can make a cult of sensibility that will alleviate the divisiveness between smart people and shitheads. This is simply shitheaded thinking.

The universe is a wondrous place, but we don't need to make it more wondrous by deifying it. I can use trigonometry without worshipping it. I can enjoy the outdoors without exalting it. And I certainly don't need to invent a new god out of the golden rule.

Why do people persist in trying to invent some new religion? Why do fools insist on trying to reconcile faith and science? There is no reconciling religion to science because religion is bullshit. It isn't real. Science can never make peace with delusion. Science is the opposite of delusion.

I watch as atheists attempt to make peace with fringe cults like the Wiccans or even attend church with Unitarians with some Unitarians professing to be atheists. Spirituality is all the rage, and I wonder how it is that people who know that religion is false can still want to get their jollies from it. What purpose does any of it serve?

In my book, Peace Without God, I make the argument that religion persists not because of any claim to truth because it has none but because it fills emotional needs in the lives of people. This is still a work in progress, but my thesis is that people need to move away from this infantile reaction to reality and learn to live with reality without the crutch of religion. This is something I had to learn how to do. I see too many atheists trying to sneak religion in the backdoor because it continues to fill some need for them. This new god of theirs is akin to a mystical force in the universe that orders everything, viz. the logos of Greek philosophy particularly the Stoics.

Bad ideas never die.

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