It seems like everyone is under attack for their beliefs these days. Whether it’s pressure from your parents, fostering a political agenda or simply fuming in your bedroom over a conversation you’ve just had or something you’ve seen on TV, the tension between different groups of people and their ideas is impossible to escape.
This tension is particularly prominent between two groups: the fundamentally religious and the bombastic atheist. The mutual intolerance often held by both extreme atheists and extreme fundamentalists is not only limiting to compromise and progress, but to their own potential happiness and the existential maturity each group claims to have.
David Tinsley, a German professor who also instructs the popular freshman seminar “The Problem of Evil” here at Puget Sound, offers much insight on the mechanisms behind this intolerance.
“There are two dilemmas that all human beings are confronted with,” Tinsley said.
These form the basis of our own personal dogma. One is the practical dilemma: how to survive and get by. Research on evolution mostly revolves around this dilemma and the genetic manifestations that help to solve it. The other is the existential dilemma, where organisms like humans, capable of abstract reasoning, then wonder: why should I survive? What’s the point?
The existential field has been religion’s turf for millennia, but evolution has recently stepped in with overwhelming evidence, and the ensuing competition has been nasty and unproductive.
Tinsley feels that the real rhetoric war started because of the church’s periodic direct involvement in the political process. “Self-appointed ‘spokespeople’ of atheism have said, ‘Let’s fight back!’” he said. “And so this is what you have going on.”
This is clear in ongoing media debates between activists of atheism such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, and activists of fundamentalism such as William Lane Craig—debates that go nowhere but serve to fuel the fire between the two groups.
Many GOP politicians also consistently attempt to further their own interests on the basis of religion, regardless of the consequences (i.e. the recent attack on Planned Parenthood). And science has all but divorced itself from religion whatsoever, and seems determined to remain closed off to any question with religious undertones or implications.
“There’s been a polarization…and the fringes of both sides have always been completely unwilling to let the other side speak,” Tinsley said. “You’re not interested in dialogue, you’re interested in scoring points.”
Alan Wallace, a prominent scholar, speaker and Buddhist, recently gave a talk here at Puget Sound about his book Contemplative Science. In it, he unites the purposes of both religion and science by calling for a unification of the study of neuroscience and the mental well-being that can be found in personal philosophy, also noting that the polarization of the two extremes had hindered progress.
He says that scientific research has just recently focused on mental well-being, in which spirituality is widely acknowledged to have a positive effect, and that funding for such research has been limited because “the nature of well-being and its behavioral effects are not well-understood.” Yet the practices of science are generally founded on discovering what is not yet known.
Given this, Wallace speculates that this type of research has rarely been attempted because of the tension between modern science and modernized religion. “Such unease has a strong historical basis, so it should be taken seriously,” Wallace writes. “But there are also historical roots to the principles of contemplation and of science that suggest a possible reconciliation between the two approaches.”
A mutual understanding of why views differ could lead to greater compromise and general empathy between the two extremes, which would undoubtedly have great effects on our society.
In the film Promises, a documentary about bringing internally tormented Israeli and Palestinian children together via an American mentor to work through their dogmatic perceptions about each other, embittered children brainwashed by their communities experienced less bias towards their professed “enemies” when they got to know them as people before knowing their ethnicity.
The children, surprised, found that they could suddenly relate to each others’ deep-seated issues, and that the dogma that had been fed to them was not necessarily the truth. They were able to overcome these issues and happily coexist, something they never thought possible.
If the world’s extremist “spokespeople” did this and projected that onto the world instead of talking trash, it would undoubtedly foster greater peace for society at large.
In his seminar on evil, Tinsley’s students critically study the answers both religion and science have given through a wide range of literary texts.
This is exactly the type of critical examination that intolerant atheists and fundamentalists should engage in if they want to have any semblance of rationality to the other side and have a rewarding exchange of ideas.
“We have dogma on both sides, and what does dogma do? Dogma stops inquiry,” Tinsley said.
And it is inquiry, examination, observation and introspection (thinking) that has led to all the great religions and is fuel for scientific discovery.
Tolerance is necessary—being dogmatic completely misses the point of any existential journey. If the great religions and science are to be used as examples of sources of dogma, then it misses the original point of their very premises. This is why dogmatism in itself lowers credibility.
Extremists should be careful not to weed out everything that is “wrong” based on dogma, and accept or consider what seems “right” even if it sours or taints their current belief system. Anything remotely intriguing in between should be pursued from multiple angles—one can’t become enlightened, or claim to be so, if they don’t attempt to learn anything.
Asking “why” is the core tenet, the source, for science and religion alike. If the two ask each other and listen to the response, they may find themselves as taken aback as two polarized Middle Eastern children who just realized they were friends.