Atheist Scientists Have Taken Over the Pulpit
This scientist's criticism of all non-scientific knowledge exposes the dogma of the New Atheists' creed, says Andrew Brown.
by Andrew Brown
This is one of those books whose subtitle gives it away entirely. Robert Park is a physicist and sceptic, who believes in an age of science - so naturally Superstition: Belief in an Age of Science (Princeton University Press, £14.95) is one long howl of complaint that he actually lives in an age of unscience. This makes his book much more illuminating than it might have been; much more illuminating, in fact, than he intended it to be.
It is hardly news to the intelligent reader that homeopathy is nonsense, creationism is a lie, intercessory prayer has no measurable effect, Uri Geller is a fraud and so on. What's easy to overlook is the existence of another sect of determined believers, whose creed is the last sentence of Park's book: "Science is the only way of knowing - everything else is just superstition."
So much for philosophy, history, literature, art, and common sense.
Park is not original here. In fact the value of his book consists in his unoriginality and his willingness to say straight out the kinds of thing which lurk unsaid within more self-conscious writers like Richard Dawkins. The more that the New Atheism emerges as a social movement in the USA, the more it acquires the habits of mind that make monotheistic religion obnoxious.
Just like other monotheisms, scientism proclaims the brotherhood of humanity in theory, while in practice excluding unbelievers from full humanity. On one level, the division of sheep from goats on the basis of what you believe, or profess to believe, rather than employing the old, exclusionary rules of tribal membership, was a great step forward for humanity.
Yet somehow, the post-tribal ways of thinking about humanity still identify as truly human only those people who are just like us. In the context of American scientism, this means American scientists. Park quotes the distinguished physicist Steven Weinberg, who said that "the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless" and notes that while non-scientists have criticised this line, scientists find it "wonderfully liberating".
Well, of course they would. What some scientists interpret the pointlessness of the universe as meaning is not that the universe is in fact without purpose but that there is nothing in it more important than their own interests and purposes: "we are free", Park gloats, "to establish our own goals and to venture across any intellectual boundaries without looking for no-trespassing signs.
The best-paid writers in secular British newspapers are usually their astrologers
"Humans are free to decide what kind of world we want to live in, and science has given us the tools to set about the business of building that world," Park continues. That humans might disagree about the kind of world they want to live in; and that science might supply no means of resolving these disagreements, is a fact unworthy of his consideration.
"We are living," he writes, "in an era of transition from the traditional worldview of the great religions to a modern worldview based on naturalism" - by which he means a disbelief in supernatural explanations.
It would be lovely if this were true. But to the extent that the "great religions" are in decline, they are not being replaced by naturalism, but by new-fangled, new ageish superstition. Any serious discussion of the role of faith and superstition in the world should start from the observation that the highest-paid writers in secular British newspapers are usually their astrologers. But that would require a willingness to consider the distressing truth that irrational belief is as potent as ever.
Because Park refuses to distinguish between reasonable religious belief and chaotic superstition - neither of them a science, after all - he is unable to consider the evidence dispassionately and retreats into scientific dogma. This is what he would call progress.