More (an introduction)

In Michael Ruse's most excellent introduction to Bertrand Russell's Religion and Science (Oxford University Press, 1961), he outlines four main philosophical viewpoints.  One is an "opposition" or "warfare" between religion and science.  Another is a separation between the two, insisting that "how" and "why" are different fundamental types of questions.  A third viewpoint is that of a dialogue between the two.  Finally, the last he outlines is an integration between religion and science.

Now we are in the 21st century.

In some areas of the world, religious fundamentalism is on the rise.  In other areas, people are increasingly identifying more as spiritual than religious.  Mainstream atheists such as Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have adopted a hard-line anti-religious stance.

In the meantime, technology is advancing, advancing, advancing.  We are consuming far more than we produce, overpopulating, and living longer lives than before.  Our impact on the environment is severe.  And yet, somehow, even though our natural disasters can count lives in the hundreds of thousands, we are troubled with war, famine, and pestilence--all of which feel as if they can be avoided if humans somehow learned how to cooperate rather than compete.

Long ago, a friend of mine once said of me that I have a "sick and twisted sense of morality."  And yet, he meant it as a compliment in one of the nicest ways.  By pointing out that my ethics were consistent, not harmful to anyone, and unique, he held up a mirror that I long needed to look at.

As an atheist, I've been treated by hard-line believers as somehow morally deficient.  As a result, I've gone from alienation and depression to combative bitterness to acceptance and pity.

I have been asked recently if I was an idealist.  My response was that I have a hard time being an -ist of any type.  Because I am human, my opinions have changed over time, sometimes in contradictory ways.  But because I am a thinker, I have allowed myself to change, because the human body of knowledge has also changed.

I think that one of the things that troubles me most is that moral and ethical progress hasn't caught up to where it needs to be.  Secular humanists haven't seemed to "get it" that 1) human beings are superstitious by nature, 2) demeaning superstition is an anti-humanist attitude, and 3) religion gives people a conduit to community that atheists lack (and by "community," I mean that in a very physical sense, not in the virtual, online sense).