Failure of nerve - the difficulty in debating religion

In his book "Profiles of the Future" Arthur C. Clarke wrote that predicting the future is a dangerous business, especially when your predictions are limited to science and technology. The pitfalls of prediction can be grouped into two distinct classes according to Clarke, failure of imagination and failure of nerve.

Failure of imagination is the more intangible of the two since it deals with the ability, or lack thereof, of prognosticators to predict the emergence of technology for which there is no current scientific basis. Clarke highlights the discovery of X-rays by Roentgen in 1895 as a prime example of this, but for me the best example of failure of imagination lies outside the realm of science and in the world of science fiction. One of my favourite sci-fi authors is Robert Heinlein, who most people will probably only be familiar with through Starship Troopers. 

Heinlein had a wonderful imagination but he was, unfortunately, not born with the gift of foresight. His novel, Stranger in a Strange Land, depicts the return to Earth of a man whose parents had been the first astronauts to visit Mars. A human raised by Martians, he returns home and finds that he doesn't fit into either society. Set in a futuristic earth, the novel is incredibly detailed but the most advanced piece of communications technology is a telex machine. The novel, having been written before the invention of the silicon chip, could not possibly have predicted the widespread proliferation of the home computer or the development of the internet.

Failure of nerve, on the other hand is far more common and represents the failure of people to anticipate the emergence of a new technology even when all the relevant facts are available. One of the better examples of this is the opinion of Professor A.W. Bickerton who in 1926 wrote:

The foolish idea of shooting at the moon is an example of the absurd length to which vicious specialisation will carry scientists working in thought-tight compartments. Let us critically examine the proposal. For a projectile entirely to escape the gravitation of earth, it needs a velocity of 7 miles a second. The thermal energy of a gramme at this speed is 15180 calories ... The energy of our most violent explosive - nitroglycerine - is less than 1500 calories per gramme. Consequently, even had the explosive nothing to carry, it has only one-tenth of the energy necessary to escape the earth ... Hence the proposition appears to be basically impossible ...

There are quite a few errors in the professor's assertion, chief among which is the failure to realise that if nitroglycerine only contains 1/10 the energy needed for escape velocity then that simply means that you need ten times the weight of payload in fuel to achieve escape. It does highlight, however, the means by which a person's resistance to an idea can blind them to the basic facts about it.

The same problems are encountered when people's religious ideology dominates their opinions. Several high profiles scientists and players in the evolution-creation controversy have commented on the difficulties they encounter in debating creationists. Eugenie Scott, director of the National Centre for Science Education, coined the term "Gish gallop" as an example of how Duane Gish, former VP of the Institute for Creation research, quickly presents arguments and then changes topic thus denying his opponent a chance to respond. Other high profile creationist debaters such as Ken Ham and Kent Hovind employ similar tactics to beat down their opponent or to have the semblance of having triumphed in the debate.

The real problem with debating creationists and god botherers is not their debating tactics, though, it is the way in which they see the world in the first place. To have a proper debate it is necessary to see your opponents side of the argument. You may not agree with the position but for the purposes of the debate and in order to better argue your own position, you should at least be able to understand what they're talking about. This characteristic is absent in committed religious people, I have found.

Although I am deferring to Scott Adams yet again, I think that in this case another of his 32 illogical ways to argue can best simplify the problem:

6. GENERALIZING FROM SELF

Example: I'm a liar. Therefore, I don't believe what you're saying.

 Fundamentalists assume that the way in which they see the world is the way others see the world just in a different shade or flavour.

The biggest example of this is, of course, Darwin. Evolution has for the lack of a better word, evolved, since the days of Charles Darwin. The contributions of scientists such as Gregor Mendel, JBS Haldane and Oswald Avery as well as modern evolutionary scientists such as PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins and Matt Ridley have expanded Darwin's theory and enhanced our understanding of the process of evolution and the world we live in. To explain this progress a little better, here's David Attenborough sticking it to the creationists.

In contrast to the vast array of accumulated evidence on evolution, the creationists have ... the bible. The trouble is that because creationists have based their entire argument on one single book then they automatically assume that evolutionary scientists have done the same. They constantly attack Darwin and The Origin of Species as if it were the only source of evidence. A short list of books by creationists illustrates the point:

• Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, Philip E. Johnson
• Darwin's Black Box, Michael Behe
• Evolution: Good Science? Exposing the ideological nature of Darwin's Theory, Dominic Statham
• The Case Against Darwin: Why the evidence should be examined, James Perloff
• Darwin's Mistake: Antediluvian discoveries prove: dinosaurs and humans co-existed, Hans J. Zillmer and Tracey Evans

 A deeper and scarier delusion on the part of fundamentalists is that there is no such thing as atheism. These people are only able to see the world in different shades of belief. The idea that someone could say: No, I don't believe in any religion or deity is so alien that they reject the possibility outright. Instead they choose to label atheism as a religion as shown in this excerpt from Ken Ham's view on the Copenhagen Declaration:

Recently, atheists met at a conference in Copenhagen and released what they call their “Copenhagen Declaration on Religion in Public Life,” which really means they released their statement of faith and their declaration against Christianity. Their declaration is reprinted below and indented, which is interspersed with my translation (not indented) on what they actually mean. These atheists think they can indoctrinate the public by their statements, but many are awake (and hopefully this blog post will help even more people to awaken) to their agenda to indoctrinate the public in their anti-God religion.

The fact that the article is titled "Atheists Outline Their Global Religious Agenda" shouldn't really surprise anyone. Nor should the fact that this view is not the raving of some lone lunatic. Conservapedia, the conservative translation of Wikipedia agrees with Ken Ham. Indeed a quote from Conservapedia attributed to "The Christian Cyclopedia" states:

It is not possible for a man to be an atheist, in the commonly accepted sense, in his innermost conviction. No amount of reasoning will erase from the human heart the God-given conviction that there is a Supreme Being; those who theoretically deny God's existence replace Him with something else.

No, no, no. With all due respect to the Christians out there, are you cracked? Beg, borrow or steal a dictionary and look up atheism. In the words of Scott Adams (damn twice in post):

 Atheism is a religion in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby.

 As long this ideological roadblock exists in the minds of religious people, those of us interested in presenting rational arguments and a naturalistic explanation for life are going to have a tough time. To finish, a quote from one of my favourite shows, The Unit, which gets right to the heart of our problem:

A coward thinks that all other men are cowards and a thief believes all others are thieves.