Tim Crane critiques the BHA doctrine of Humanism/ New Atheism - we should tolerate religion

H/T Matthew Coussell.

HASSNERS.org highlights

HASSNERS.org comments

The Humanism Crane talks about the current BHA Humanist doctrine or worldview - the specific approach to religion and morals.  He claims BHA Core Beliefs are the same as the '17 million /36% of UK population are 'humanists'' Mori poll conducted after Linda Smith died viz:

1) Science provides fundamental explanations for things in the world

2) Human nature by itself gives us an understanding of what is right and wrong

3) What is right and wrong depends on the effects on people and the consequences for society and the world
In other words the source of all values lies in humanity  and what is right and wrong action should be judged in terms of their consequences. (Mori question 4)

I wonder why was Question 3 not included in the definition of BHA Worldview or Doctrine 'This life is the only life we have and death is the end of our personal existence' 41% of the UK population chose this as the best match, against 45% who said 'when we die we go on and still exist in another way'. My guess is that Whilst those agreeing with Q1,2 and 4 is 36% my guess (I don't have the full survey in front of me) but those agreeing with Q1-4 is << 36% (possibly 14.7% but probably more than this, approaching 20-30%?)

"there are many aspects of the humanist approach which are inadequate" (1m43s)
Crane distinguishes between BHA 'pressure group' activity and the BHA Doctrine / Worldview.

He does not understand how the 17M figure was arrived at, choosing not to believe it (NB. MORI poll was representative of UK population). 4m00s
"to what extent should we tolerate religious beliefs if we atheists? (4.26s)
"I'm an atheist but I don't asubcribe to humanist view of the world"
BHA Worldview
1) stress importance of cosmology - religion is fundamentally a cosmological view
2) religion is the source of many of the problems of the world eg dawkins, dennett, sam harriss
3) religious is false (ie not true) AND irrational (reasoning badly)
Debate is intractible; both talk to the converted on each side; cf very bad marriage of 2000 years ago. 9m48s

What is core of views? New atheists/humanists have not got to heart of religion. Central doctrine of christianity is existence of god and resurrection of christ = cosmology - this is NOT central to christianity 14m18s.
Dawkins demolishes Cosmological arguements. Religion does not provide the same sort of explanation  that science does (this TC says is true) but Christianity is not interested in this. Doctrine of trinity - literally identical - not logical - but Christians say this is a mystery and struggle to understand it. 17m40s.

Theoretical Attitude to Religion
Cosmology is not so important - not protoscientific explanations
Identification with group is important for religions - which guy said something, not what he said
Practise - what they do (fast, pray) only 1 is doctrinal (allah is god). Rather than fully formed conception of the world.
Practical Attitude to Religion:
John Gray - must accept that religion will not go away. 24m12s
We should tolerate religion. Not all equally good view. We can only tolerate things we disapprove of. eg neighbour has a noisy dog, I don't like it but I tolerate it. 26m38s. If its not against the law I tolerate things but I don't approve of them. What is point of Toleration of religion? Our aim is not truth or to change attitudes, are aim is to tolerate religion so that we can live in peace within the rule of law (see John Gray Black Mass).

Tim Crane seems to be the great appeaser philosopher. Simply tolerate religion, provide religion keeps within the law. Don't try to change religionists attitudes, don't even worry that what they
 say is not true. The primary aim is to tolerate the religious so that we can all live peacefully in the world. Back in 2011 I blogged a debate between Crane and AC Grayling. Listen to their debate here. ACG effectively demolishes TC the arguments he uses here, but TC has not learnt and he repeats his mistaken arguments here.

We should instead be challenging religious faith, whenever possible. But, bottom line I, like TC want to live peacefully with everyone.

AC Grayling and Tim Crane - 'Atheists on Religion' Synopsis

source: audio: http://huffduffer.com/briansuda/27323 or mp3 download: http://richmedia.lse.ac.uk/publicLecturesAndEvents/20100512_1830_atheistsOnReligion.mp3

Updated 18 April 2013

• 'Tim Crane is a convinced Atheist' http://www.humanism.org.uk/meet-up/events/view/93?&of...
  

  
  
• Atheists on Religion: AC Grayling and Tim Crane at the LSE 1 hour audio on the discussion: http://huffduffer.com/briansuda/27323
  

  
  
• 7': ACG 
  - The term Atheism is no more valid than saying you are an Agoblinist or Afairyist,  ACG is a Naturalist or freethinker as well as being an atheist. What kind of universe is  this?
  
  8': secularism - place of religion in the public square. Religious voice has been overamplified eg BBC, faith schools, 26 Bishops in House of Lords. 10% of people go x3 a month to a church or mosque.
  
  12': Bishops are the little men behind the Wizard of Oz. Religious views should be proportioned down - reduce amplification; they have right to exist but no more than that.
  
  13' Humanistic ethics and morals.
  
  TC from 15':
  Once you've decided that you are an atheist its boring, atheism has no ethical content,
  
  17' don't rejoice in atheism, just accept. More interesting is what to think about religion and what to do about it,
  
  18': disagrees with 4 horsemen  - see religion as false & irrational

  19' New Atheists want to eliminate influences of religion; cosmological matter - how the world is. Arguements against god. Are Religionists irrational? 
  
  22' People are unmoved, talk past each other. 
  
  23' Religion main content is feeling of 'theres more to it than this - ineffable mystery and structure of the world'. 
  
  24' the Trinity is mysterious. 3 things can't be one. Religious are not bothered by this.
  
  25' Identification. Most people are not interested in hypothesis. Bishops are irrelevant to secularisation.
• 
  
• AC from 27'30: 
• Church created primary schools in 1800s to combat fairies - to combat superstition! 
• 
  
• Atheists arguements do change Christians. Religions are on backfoot - secularisation is everywhere. Non-religious have doubled in 15 years in USA. Religions feel threatened. eg muslims girls who see western girls in bikinis! Death throes of religion cf 16/17th century - reformation - wars of religion - 33': 30 years war - church lost power, 1 in 3 Germans died. 
• 
  
• Religions have hijacked a great part of being a human being - eg emotional responses eg beauty, secular spirit of world. In China understood without religion. 
• 
  
• 35': The Fred move - god of the gaps
• 
  
• 36': science lives ok with uncertainty. Religion wants neat story (30 mins for religion, 3 years for physics). Fairys and tooth fairy. Religionists are NOT harmless - because of the Fred did it move.  

  
  
• Tim Crane: 
  38' 45: Spiritual feelings - this world is fundamentally mysterious say the religions.
  
  AC: 
  41' 30: religions were proto-science, religions developed as understanding - agencies moved to mountain tops, then the sun/sky, then heavens. Trajectory of deities further and further away.
  
  44': numinous, wrong type of mushrooms! Recent in history of man. Roman empire religio 'to bind'; early Christians were called atheists! Trajectory of deities are getting further away from earth!

  
  
• Tim Crane 
  47': why are Catholic funerals so sad if they are going to heaven! Cosmological side is not too important for religious.
  
  AC 
  49':
  dishonest to say that you will meet loved ones again. Give fellow humans comfort instead. CCTV replace all seeing god!
  
  TC 
  52' Happiness is more important than truth for some people.
  
  ACG 
  53' the Noble Lie cf would you tell everyone about a meteor. Zeus = Christian story. Don't let churches off the hook. Resist that way of thinking.

  
  
• 58' questioner - tooth fairy and Father Xmas don't persist because they don't save you from dying! Religions force comes from denial of death. 59' Q: what happens when religious attitude eg sexuality leads to unhappiness TC 60': death is a mystery - why should ones life end? In some cases it is better for someone to believe in something false and be happy. AC 61' anxiety about death can be because havn't achieved enough. 63' you can't be afraid of nothing - which is what death is!

  
  
• ACG 
  64': cruelty of religions frightening old people who think they could go to hell.
  AC 66': 1.3 Billion Chinese prove that the innate concept of god is wrong!! AC 70': 99% of religious take on the religion of their culture / parents.
  AC 78': if churches closed their doors tomorrow we wouldn't be losing anything! 'To set Promethius free'
  AC book http://tinyurl.com/7dop9g2 proof of non-existence of god.
  80' Totalitarianism - dictators Stalin, Hitler - shocking to think about defending an ideology - 1000s

  
  
• 1000s die - Enlightenment - diversity of opinons.
  
  TC 
  82':
  would not lament loss of religion - but speculation would disappear (CGS: what about science!!).
  
  TC 
  87': creationism is a problem in USA not in UK (what the..!)
  
  AC 
  89': what is a non-fundamental atheist!

Atheists on Religion: Profs. AC Grayling and Tim Crane at the LSE, 2010

source: http://huffduffer.com/briansuda/27323


From Huffduffer 'For the last 150 years or so European philosophers and sociologists have tended to regard religion as just one more pre-scientific myth and superstition that has had its day, and likely to wither on the vine of History. This view, the secularization thesis, seems today to be in poor shape. Not only does there appear to be no sign of withering, still less a clear path of scientific and rational progress, but religion seems to be reviving. Classic atheist criticisms of religion tend today to sound increasingly strident and dogmatic. In this dialogue two of Britain’s leading philosophers who are also convinced atheists will explore the continued attractions of religious belief and its place in a European world whose secular character is itself today in question.'

From http://www.lse.ac.uk/resources/podcasts/publicLecturesAndEvents.htm
download: http://richmedia.lse.ac.uk/publicLecturesAndEvents/20100512_1830_atheistsOnReligion.mp3

Here Tim Crane talk on this subject - 11th December 2011 in London

Against the gods, religious and otherwise

By Mark Vernon

3 Dec 2007

The occasion was the third annual Jeremy Bentham lecture, named after the eighteenth century philosopher who is a hero of secular rationalists. It was given by Tim Crane, a self-confessed atheist and professor of philosophy at University College London – the place where Bentham’s preserved remains, or ‘Auto-Icon’, can be seen to this day in a wooden cabinet at the end of the South Cloisters.

The invitation to give the lecture, delivered in November 2007, was made by the British Humanist Association (BHA). The event was open to anyone but was intended as a humanist meeting of minds. ‘Like with like together strike’, as the saying goes. So, as a religiously-inclined agnostic, I felt a bit like an Anglican attending Catholic Mass who hopes they won’t be caught out receiving communion.

Sure enough, Crane took it as read that being a humanist entails being an atheist. He also seemed to have a pretty silly idea about religion – making references to creation in 4004 BCE as if that was standard thought, for example. Though perhaps he was just playing to his supposedly atheistic audience. But then something surprising happened. He turned on them too.

He launched into a scathing critique of many humanists’ fundamental beliefs, denouncing them as delusions.

His starting point was Richard Dawkins’ comment that humanism is ‘the moral outlook associated with atheism.’ What, Crane asked, does this moral outlook consist of? He turned to the website of the BHA, his host, for enlightenment – and came away disappointed. On the site, several statements are listed as core humanist beliefs.

These include the centrality of scientific evidence as the basis for knowledge, and the determination of right and wrong as a matter for human beings and human beings alone. But Crane, for one, cannot assert any of these creedal confessions without qualification, clarification, and possibly not at all. Is he, then, not really a humanist?

Crane widened the divide between himself and his erstwhile fellows.

He declared that he does not want atheistic holidays commemorating scientific big-hitters like Charles Darwin. Why do individuals like Richard Dawkins want to ape the religion they so loathe by starting new ‘saints days’, Crane asked bemused?

Turning to another secularist bête noire,

he similarly doesn’t understand the obsession with campaigning for humanist contributions to ‘Thought for the Day’ on the radio. He believes they would be no better than the candyfloss confections that are served up now, just with different sugar-sweet pieties.

And then there is the ‘Brights’ movement, the campaign by some atheists to ditch the inherent negativity in their position – not believing in this, objecting to that – with the power of positive feeling: rather than calling themselves Atheists, they want to call themselves Brights. Once more, the trappings of religion seem to be inherent in the concept, to say nothing of the cheap artwork of their logo which has all the saltiness of stick-figures in the Good News Bible, Crane declared. He agrees with Christopher Hitchens on Brights: ‘cringe-making and conceited.’

All in all, Crane believes humanism cannot add up to being a moral outlook. There is just not enough meat in it.

Turning to the New Humanist magazine as another possible source of enlightenment, he was again dismayed.

It appears to consist mostly in slagging off religion. There is nothing wrong with that but it does not make for a worldview or a flourishing way of life.

Ouch!

So what is humanism? Crane offered a minimal definition: it is a kind of rallying point or pressure group – more like Amnesty International than an alternative to religion.

He argued that it is actions in the world that matter not beliefs. Atheists would do better to address that, rather than obsessively attacking people’s beliefs. After all, religion will not go away, he continued. So humanists should avoid writing creeds, and cultivating blanket attitudes against all religion.

A better goal would be to seek a framework that makes for harmony between people of different views – one driven by a quest for peace rather than truth, by being based upon tolerance.

Now, at one level it was cathartic to witness disagreements amongst atheists that are quite as uncomfortable and divisive as those that are never far from the surface between Christians. But the lecture suggested something else about the human condition to me too.

The present age is a context with which all people are trying to grapple. They may be of religious faith or atheistic conviction: but no-one has a complete answer to the forces that shape and shake the modern world. Hence all the disagreements.

To put it another way, the persistent pluralism of our times, even within apparently homogeneous groups, is evidence enough that no one worldview is universally satisfactory. Moreover, many of the faults that one side finds in the other – such as that atheism is empty, or that theism is primitive – actually conceal the same flaws in the side being defended too.

Yet Crane’s lecture also suggested a way forward that can be adopted by anyone. If we are to make progress, and defuse the apparently escalating clash of convictions, self-honesty, self-examination and self-critique are crucial virtues. Strident creeds and dogmatic certainties – again whether secular or religious – may keep the subterranean anxieties of those who confess them at bay.

Alternatively, it is easy to define yourself by whom you are against. But the result is an intolerant rationalism, on the one hand, and on the other hand, an oppressive religiosity. It is a tolerant pluralism that counts. What cultivates that, at least in part, is the questioning of all assertions, the unsettling of all shibboleths. Even when among friends.

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(c) Mark Vernon is the author of two new books: ‘After Atheism’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 - a new paperback edition of Science, Religion and the Meaning of Life) and ‘What Not To Say’ (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2007). See www.markvernon.com for more information and for Mark's blog.

Tim Crane on Mind and Body

reposted from: http://philosophybites.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=261525#

Tim Crane on Mind and Body

What is the mind and how does it relate to our bodies? How can something physical think? These are fundamental questions in the philosophy of mind. Tim Crane addresses these difficult issues in this interview for Philosophy Bites.

Direct download: CraneMixSess.MP3