Cats, dogs and Creationism CounterPunch By Jean Bricmont for With all due respect to cats and dogs, do not expect that they will ever understand the laws governing planetary motion. Does this prove God's existence? Of course not! What a stupid question! However, if one replaces cats and dogs for human beings and the problem of planetary motion the question of the origin of life or the universe, or why a number of physical constants take on certain values \u200b\u200baccurate, then the answer "yes" summarize the contents of the so-called Intelligent Design movement.
Why devote an entire book to this argument, as do John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York in his recent "Critique of Intelligent Design" (Monthly Review 2008)? Well, one reason is that the reasoning is, unfortunately, extremely popular, especially in the U.S. In addition, the book is not only that, but looks so bright the eternal struggle between materialism and spiritualism or idealism, examining the works of Epicurus, Lucretius, Hume, Feuerbach, Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Gould and Lewontin adversaries. Materialism can be defined as the attempt to explain the world in terms of itself, an idea that goes back to the Greeks. By the way, to avoid tautologies need to know what is meant by "self." For religious people, God is part of the world and therefore explain the world in terms of God is part of the explanation of the world in terms of itself.
This is where science comes into play modern British empiricism (which can be characterized as the working philosophy of most scientists). Science explains the visible world, say the structure of matter, using the invisible, the properties of atoms. So why will not apply for Intelligent Design science to explain the origin of the Universe or unexplained properties? The difference is that not only use the word "atom" in our explanations, but its many properties quantitative and verifiable. Moreover, DI Design movement is just a word - no one has ever proposed that has a given property, or how, if such properties are proposed, one could verify them. The design premise is simply any properties were required to make the world as it is and not otherwise. But then why was not the DI smart enough to create a world without birth defects, tsunamis or U.S. imperialism? The only thing ID proponents were able to establish is that there are certain things we do not know - And with that, of course, all scientists agree.
Thanks to the specificity and testability of their explanations, modern science has introduced a new factor in the discussion of spiritualism / materialism that was absent from the classical materialist philosophers. The latter were men of sense but for the lack of experiments, their physics was capricious and open to the objection that there was nothing more likely that the religious stories. Since then, modern science has conclusively turned the tide in favor of materialism.
Specifically, this postulate Design has nothing to do with the God of traditional religions. The theologians are constantly trying to introduce such "arguments" as the DI in favor of a deity, as if to support their favorite systems of belief. But these belief systems are all based on some kind of revelations and writings "sacred." Even if the arguments were valid ID, do not tell us anything about revelations in particular. The God of ID is a God of philosophers, as one whose existence St. Thomas Aquinas and Descartes thought they had tried. But the God of traditional religions altogether. Is one who defines good and evil, answers our prayers, and we are punished in life after death. These belief systems are even more radically undermined by modern science that ID. Indeed, whenever we consider the facts in a non-dogmatic, the sacred books are to be essentially wrong. Not only about evolution but about almost everything. There is no independent evidence of the history we have the Gospels, the Bible is mythological, and even the Jewish people, says Shlomo Sand, "an invention."
these circumstances, there are two paths open to the believer. The Sarah Palin, literally clinging to the belief system, despite all evidence to the contrary. Christian school that is in direct conflict with science. Or you can choose the path metaphorical followed by the most liberal Christians and Europeans (including sometimes even the Pope) - which states that whenever the Scripture are in conflict with science, must be "interpreted" in a non-literal. That leads to a total loss of religious belief, because if you can not take seriously the parts of Scripture that can be proven with facts, why pay any attention to the parties that can not be proven (particularly with regard Heaven and Hell and God Himself)? The whole liberal Christianity is the result of a double standard: always follow the Scriptures which are "metaphysical" or ethics and can not be verified independently, and descartadlas when possible. Since God is not good enough to tell us what you really mean in his "revelations", which parts should be taken seriously and which not only we have the total arbitrariness.
Those who are called agnostics are often confused with these two notions of God. What makes the god agnostic philosopher, say, the gods of Homer. Regarding the latter, are atheists, just as all those who are religious are atheists with respect to all other gods except their own.
's also a shame that some secular leftists, as Stephen Jay Gould, liberal Christianity to support his idea of \u200b\u200b"teaching non-matching "[NOMA, for its acronym in English]: facing facts science, religion, values. But if you actually remove all statements of facts of religion, including those having to do with the existence of God or Heaven and Hell, why would one care about what religion says about the values? (Hence the NOMA argument adds to the confusion of the secular side, but is seldom accepted by the religious side.)
must complete to John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York for writing such a book while having a leftist perspective, because the left, especially in the U.S., but now also in Europe, has often shunned toda crítica de la religión, sea porque sería demasiado impopular o por los aspectos supuestamente progresistas de la religión. Es fácil quejarse de que la crítica de la religión sea hecha actualmente por liberales relativamente apolíticos como Dawkins o Dennett o por neoconservadores como Hitchens, pero si la izquierda abandona una tal crítica, ¿a qué quejarse si otros la hacen?
La izquierda no debiera apuntar a algún tipo de ateísmo oficial, por cierto, pero debiera exigir que la religión sea algo privado, en particular que sea mantenida por entero fuera de la vida pública, sobre todo del discurso político. Por cierto, incluso si se asume que algún dios exista, no tenemos manera de saber lo que piensa que uno debiera hacer respecto al calentamiento global o la crisis financiera.
Esta forma de laicismo está lejos de ser lograda en EE.UU. Existió en Francia antes de Sarkozy, el más “estadounidense” de los presidentes franceses, que habla de Dios siempre que puede. Si el más laico de los países occidentales, Francia, llega a ser víctima de la “americanización”, es decir de la “religionización” del discurso político, el laicismo moderno está muerto.
Respecto a los aspectos progresistas de la religión, es verdad que hay sacerdotes agradables, creyentes inofensivos y unos pocos teólogos de la liberación. But what about the overall picture? Is not outnumber the people more or less progressive the Sarah Palins of this world (including, of course, their versions Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, or Jewish)? For them it is very difficult to keep religion out of politics because religion is so important to them. After all, if one believes that God defines what is good and what is evil and punish you after death for what you've done, Why on Earth do you'll be excluded from the affairs of the city? It is true that liberal Christians are more likely to accept a genuine secularism, that is, keeping religion out of politics, but we must not forget that Christianity did not exist in, say, the nineteenth century. It is entirely the result of how segments of the Church reacted to the progress of science and materialism in the nineteenth and twentieth century. So, it is difficult to see how, without any scientific criticism of religion, we would come to have even the mitigated form of secularism that exists in U.S.
Sometimes people defend religion on the basis that helps us to act in a moral or even progressive. Progressive Christians will tell you that Jesus helps them make a "preferential option for the poor." But the logic of this argument is very strange. Suppose someone calls for land reform to help the poor. If you are a Christian, you have to show that God exists, that Jesus is His Son, that the Gospels accurately reflect his words and, finally, that a proper interpretation of those words are to support land reform. Nothing in the Gospels tells you how to distribute the land, whether or not to compensate the owners, that surface should be affected, etc. All these aspects must be solved without the help of God. And, after all, not even neoliberal economists say they are against the poor - in fact, often argue that their policy will help the poor more than any other. Therefore, all problems weight must be solved without the aid of religion and the latter only provides "motivation." But I think the detour through God and Jesus is so long and unprovable that if there are claiming that their motives were not in any case, would not acquire by taking this detour.
It is often said that the attacks against Sarah Palin have an unpleasant character class. True, but the more serious issue is: Why should they be so religious "masses? In Europe, they are not (apart from recent immigrants). And the reason is probably that in Europe, especially France, but unlike the U.S., there have been within the Republican movement, socialist and communist, a centuries-old battle against religion and against its intrusion into politics. The problem of the American left is that if nobody does anything to combat religious ideas, then, within a century, left all conceivable have to put up tens of millions of Christian "fundamentalists" who will vote "with their faith" against all rational or progressive politics and even against their own economic interests. It is true that it is a struggle unpopular - but it was in France in the eighteenth century. It is also true that the effects will be felt only in the long term - but if no one starts a time to do something, nothing will change. The catastrophic impact of fundamentalist Christians (without them, the world probably would not have had to suffer or Reagan or Bush) is largely a result of past indifference of American liberals toward religion.
The profound reason why progressives should oppose religion is that it is irrational and arbitrary. A better world is necessarily a more rational world, a world where people seek solutions to human problems based on the facts of the world and with the help of reason. Critique of Intelligent Design "offers an enjoyable and enlightening introduction to the philosophical foundations a similar attitude.
Jean Bricmont teaches physics in Belgium and a member of the Brussels Tribunal. His new book, Humanitarian Imperialism, is published by Monthly Review Press.
