Choice in Dying

Jerry Coyne has a new post up about a new pro-evolution film that was announced today in the Huffington Post in an article entitled, of all things, “No Dinosaurs in Heaven.” Since there isn’t one — heaven, that is — and since heaven is reserved for ensouled beings, and animals don’t even get a bit part, the title is at best misleading; at worst it already sells half the store to religion just in the title. But then, at the end of the HuffPo article on the pro-evolution film, there’s a short video, entitled “Religion vs. Science”, and it really is just that. Religion is presented as a kind of “deeper” science — in fact, this is really said outright: “Religious experience provides more depth and complexity than scientific knowledge.” I’m going discuss a few selected ”highlights” from the video, though you might like to watch the whole thing, just to get the shape of the whole. The video itself focuses attention on the physicist turned priest John Polkinghorne, of whom Thomas D’Evelyn of the Christian Science Monitor had this to say:

Polkinghorne is a model public intellectual; he refuses to distort one body of knowledge to advance his own position on another.

But this is just wrong. In the video, entitled “Science vs. religion,” Polkinghorne deliberately distorts religion by putting it in the same context as science — just what D’Evelyn says he does not do. Indeed, he lends assistance to an attempt to say that life lived without religion is the opposite of the truth, by speaking of individualism and the separation of spirituality from religion as corrupt and dangerous, a process in which God is instrumentalised, or, in a word, idolised, where God is turned into wish-fulfilment and fantasy, when religion itself is, as Freud said, a matter of wish-fulfilment and illusion, and speaking of God’s nature as Polkinghorne does is simply fantastical wordspinning of the most prevaricating sort.

To see how Polkinghorne turns the world topsy-turvy, first watch this short clip:

Religion vs. individualism

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I find this extremely disturbing, and I hope you do too. I find it disturbing that a man with Polkinghorne’s qualifications is involved in this kind of deliberate manipulation of the truth. There is something very unsettling about it. Consider, for example, the deliberately ideological picture of the bedraggled woman juxtaposed with the ethereal, soaring space of a Gothic cathedral. It isolates the individual and contrasts her with a powerful institution — cathedrals are about overawing power as much or more than they are about beauty — and Polkinghorne even speaks of the “cult of the individual” in connexion with the lonely, crushed woman with her haggard expression and unkempt hair. Of course, making the viewer feel uneasy and alone is part of the effect that this juxtaposition is intended to produce. It bargains on the crushed individual being overawed by the sheer objectivity of the social power of religion represented by the cathedral, so that by contrast the religious option will seem as liberating as the soaring arches of the cathedral. However, when the “wizard” behind the curtain is as plodding as this, it might be simple carelessness, but I think it smacks of desperation.

Polkinghorne, of course, plays a crucial part in the charade, quite consciously lending his name and reputation to the lie that is being told with images and gestures – pretending that we have not seen behind the curtain – not that he shrinks from telling a few himself in plain language. He has been introduced as a physicist turned priest. The video uses his qualifications as a physicist to give added weight and authority to what he says about religion. The voice of the narrator has the same quality. He sounds educated, cool, and factual, explaining what the world is like, and speaking of God in the very same self-assured way, as though God could be spoken of in plain factual terms, as though it is well known how religion and spirituality function almost as some kind of higher science. Plain statement about the “facts” of religion are interspersed with Polkinghorne’s beaming, almost avuncular presence – looking, as  Simon Blackburn has said,

… like an Anglican clergyman from central casting, white-haired, wholesome, and radiant: a one-man Ode to Joy.

He’s reassuring, confident, and uses his scientific persona to lend weight to what he says about God, religion and spirituality. It’s a pose, and a deeply misleading one.

The intention and the actual effect is to put us off our guard, so that it will seem that it makes perfect sense to talk about God (we’ll give it courtesy caps) and the encounter with God as though this were an unproblematic reality. God may take you where you don’t want to go. Notice how its put. “The tendency towards individualism turns God into a tool for us to manipulate.” We’ve just heard that if we do this, and do not encounter God with awe, worship and obedience, we are not meeting God as God truly is. This disarming of our critical minds then leads us to take the next step. The impression is given that this is a personal encounter, and just as we know that we should not use other people as instruments for our own satisfaction, so it is assumed that this language is perfectly applicable here as well. Individualism thus comes to seem wrong, even dangerous. We are, it is suggested, manipulating our encounter with the ultimate, towards which our response should be submission and obedience, not individualism. That is what is right at the heart of religion: the power to disarm us, to get us at our weakest, to discredit the natural tendency to look for evidence and confirmation.

Consider the next clip. Notice how it begins with a child praying, and then goes on to compare and contrast religion with science. Religion doesn’t provide predictable outcomes, we are told. But no questions are asked, no doubts are raised. The fact that there are no predictable outcomes in religion, no definite answers to prayer, but instead a range of possibilities or options (as though it were all laid on just for us), should have raised questions, suggested doubts, and yet this is precisely what is discouraged.

Science of Prayer

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And then Polkinghorne the authority figure comes in to assure people that the range of possibilities or options has no tendency to raise doubt or question. Not at all. “It’s valid, it’s true, it’s supported,” says Polkinghorne, who should know better. It’s not valid, true and supported. There is simply no evidence for making this claim. Questions can and should be raised, but Polkinghorne assures us that even though the outcomes can be very various and unpredictable, whatever the outcome, it will be for the best. Praying for healing may lead you to accept the ultimate destiny of death with trust. And this is plainly dishonest. A priest saying this to a grieving person would soon get short shrift, and rightly too. Praying — as Polkinghorne must know — has no effect whatever on disease outcomes, and if it’s just a kind of psychological self-help program he should say so, instead of resorting to the mumbo-jumbo of religion.

The last clip takes the inversion of religion and reality even further, turning common sense into wish-fulfilment, even though, as even Polkinghorne must know, if anything can be called wish-fulfilment, religion is a prime candidate, since there isn’t a shred of evidence to show that religion is true.

Spirituality and wish-fulfilment

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But Polkinghorne carries this accusation of individualistic wish fulfilment one stage further, and pretends — and it is hard to believe that he does not recognise it as sheer pretence — that spirituality without religion can be fantasy. Of course, in one sense, this is true. Religion itself is fantasy. There is no reason to think it is anything else. However, majority religions are founded in tradition. They have institutional presence, and therefore they seem to have shape and substance, even truth. Since religious beliefs are widely shared and socially respected they may seem true. This makes fringe beliefs or new religions seem unsubstantial and fantastical. But tradition itself cannot provide support for religious claims. They are just as fantastical as the newest cult. The Bible or the Qu’ran, or any other sacred text, regardless of the respect in which they are held, simply cannot sustain claims made upon them. By placing them in the context of science — which is precisely what he is doing by referring to religious tradition — Polkinghorne is deliberately misleading his audience. In any other language this is called lying, and to my mind, it just shows how desperate religious believers are, that they can shamelessly tout their beliefs in this hucksterish way, like a carnie in the midway of a country fair.