Other than inventors of God...

My previous to last post the other day painted Dennett as an ipso facto inventor of God in the sense of Voltaire's famous line ("if God didn't exist..."), placing him as part of a huge group of naturalists that I would call 'realists'.  But where can you find an alternative?  I'll try to get to that here but, as usual, here's some preliminary guff:

A little like a previous post I wrote about Dawkins and atheists and the bit about 'eating Islam', the very educated perspective is not necessarily the most active one.  The great strength of naturalism in its scientific work is that it can be powerfully presumed true - time and time again science works, technology develops, the world and people's lives are transformed.  A weakness accompanies this strength, however, which belongs not to science or to even naturalism proper but just to the conservative nature of the acceptance in society and the conservative personalities of the people involved.

I'm sure it's not controversial to point out that, whilst a scientist can produce a gadget, or at least some apparatus, that demonstrates the reality of the natural function or whatever it is that they have found or worked on, it is the corresponding usefulness of scientific research that matters socially.  Therefore, it is not strictly the science itself, but the science as it matters for humans (science works in outer space too!) that provides the vulnerability of a thoroughgoing naturalism.  There is also the strict objective standards and tests for scientific theses held by the scientific community that condition scientists not to accept simple intuition even when it can be presumed to be true.  Even at the top level of physics, it was not until this year that the Higgs-Boson was found, despite its being implicated within existing theoretical models since the 1960s (and even when it was discovered, the line from the team was the modest 'watch this space').

The reason I'm going into this is because it's important to realise that the productivity of science depends upon following conservative procedure (and it really does), whilst it also has to have some connection with everyday common-sensical life to be socially effective - for example, 'chemistry' as a general scientific interest is not as prevalent as pharmaceutical research.  So if the naturalism that gets entailed by scientific success has a social reality, it's of a nagging but certain variety:  People really have little interest in the truth of science, which is itself socially awkward although it doesn't go away, but they also have plenty to gain in the growth of technology and medicine, which is socially empowering and liberating and therefore of certain power.

Education in the sense of becoming aware of these relationships does not predispose you to exciting radical thinking, even if naturalism is ultimately an exciting truth (and it is: popular science books extolling how wonderful and beautiful the universe is are not just cash-ins, they actually tell the truth, however partially).  The truth of naturalism is more than a nagging concern once it is sought in its own right in every human sphere - which atheists well know.  But following a methodological naturalism is historically loaded with the same mixture of rational modesty and unforgiving conclusions that shaped scientific enquiry since the Enlightenment.  Another huge feature of that period is the promise of the nation-state as a rational government (Hobbes), and both the epistemological and political models of that era have been overturned in the 20th century (or earlier).  I tend to say that the Holocaust was the perfection of the Enlightenment, inasmuch as it was a rational marshalling of industrial forces to solve a social problem.  You might have heard that already.

In any case, and since I'm writing about naturalism (so I'll try to stay a little bit on subject), it's not as straightforward as to say 'traditional methodological naturalism = Holocaust' because that's stupid, just as those that say 'Hitler was an atheist' in some sort of triumphant put down to the possibility of atheism.  What you should understand is that naturalism has to be a conservative gesture politically, even if it can run rampant behind closed doors in the realm of theory.  A naturalistic social or political program recalls eugenics if not all the horrors of dehumanisation of recent history, threatening a future depicted by books such as Farenheit 451, 1984, etc.  And so the truth of naturalism simply gets left hanging, as if waiting for a day when it cannot be easily converted into fascism.  Education means Realpolitik with regards to any rational conclusions that can be drawn from naturalism.

The simplest socially exciting conclusion of course is that there is no God - there has never been a God and human beings will never discover one.  If naturalism is to be a way of life, then there can be no possibility of God.  This is very different from the realist naturalists who simply inform why people believe in God, in the trust that 'on one sunny day' the seed of doubt will take root and believers will encounter the divided universe whole and as it is.  That latter view is the modest Englightened view of appeals to sovereign reason alone, which incidentally never existed otherwise than as a political motto.  Some scientists are religious, and though they never write 'God did it' on their research papers, there really is no contradiction between personal belief and your day job, when the political nature of science licenses both.

20th century thinkers will be able to tell you how education is part of the social machinery that produces such effects.  Rather than informing children and adult students that science needs to be carried further, extended and quickened for the betterment of humanity generally, they learn about compartmentalisation, the limitations of science, humility and respect for culture, and so on.

So what is the result of naturalism more generally spoken?  Not a lot.  I'm not even sure there's a naturalistic way of speaking that isn't conditioned to apathy.  Why does it have to be considered a radical politic?  Just because it is radically true.  For naturalism itself has really nothing to do with human interests, and yet human lives and interests can still have something to do with the truth.


*Apparently most of today's Biological research, carried out by companies with various interests, isn't even reproducable!  What!  (read this in New Scientist a couple of months ago..)



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Religious Education

So there's RE in schools and I teach it, however there's a lot wrong with it. In fact I regard it as the most damaging of all school subjects and that's the reason I decided to teach it.

As adults we are constantly betraying children, that much should be evident, and if you don't believe that simple premise you're crooked.

I reckon that RE is a way in which adults can betray children most directly, and forbid them from appropriating many of the most vital aspects of adult life. Not only this, but because almost all aspects of adult life are up for grabs today (we're not very well), it makes even more sense for the indefensible to be defended, and guarded from sensitive, imaginative minds. Consequently, the most valuable part of RE isn't in fact any material element, nor even any systematic approach to the subject, but simply the attitude of childhood, perhaps even an enquiring childishness, which must, until the last, be barred from any possible classroom experience. What is that experience?

Any RE teacher can agree that just flinging facts at children who diligently write these down and memorize them does not constitute good teaching, just as any other teacher can say exactly the same for his or her own subject. On the contrary, best teaching practice happens in schools, educational professionals and government agree, when children are free to formulate lines of questioning and develop their own views and intellectual skills. The teacher as an instructor is a minimized image, while the image of the teacher as a guide and conversationalist has become the most powerful image in contemporary education. That doesn't mean it always happens – it usually doesn't – but by the best standards of the day that's how it should be.

The RE teacher thus musters the forces of the classroom, deflecting and redirecting opinions whilst encouraging further study and flattering students as much as possible (even as they are being put back in their place). The reason this is so is what RE tries to accomplish – imparting 'traditional values', or at least those values that are reflected in the majority of people in a nation - or those with the most clout. The classroom 'conversation' is always one-sided because children are naturally underdeveloped in terms of interpolating their ideas to the dominant values, and consequently in bending or disregarding them with the most 'reasonable' objections. The teacher always fills this role as an expert in this regard, even if their putative role is one of guidance and implicit teaching (and they can usually pull it off even if, among adults, they are unusually thick).

RE teaches children to not be embarrassed by their childish nature, because they can simply disregard their current thoughts in favour of better ones. The fact that this is a cop out, since children will always be less refined in the ways of adults than adults themselves, doesn't present itself to teachers of RE: in fact, they only see their 'skill'. RE is usually a more or less subtle form of bullying. If it is performed energetically with smiles, then the most exquisite bullying is enacted. Children are encouraged to be that kind of victim which takes their beatings with gratitude and enthusiasm. This is called a 'child-centred' approach.

A consideration in favour of the teachers is that, typically, children's ideas are simply the weaker ideas of adults (or weaker adults' ideas) and not really new at all, so there is reason to think that all education simply refines thought to the point that it can be 'up to date', rather than being able to apprehend and encourage anything 'new', as that newness simply isn't present enough to be able to work with it – such a thing has to wait for university age, at the very least. The problem with this is that the reason unfashionable, old, or clumsy ideas get discarded isn't because they don't contain any grain of truth but because, ultimately, our culture (just as any culture) does not permit free expression of ideas that could potentially cause social embarrassment. It's not the case that an old or a weak idea, in a new setting, cannot lead to a new adventure in thought, because what's 'new' is emergent in thought rather than posited right away. But that is nonsense – they even talk in child-like voices and look how short they are!

There is also a problem of resources – for the sake of argument imagine that 99% of all schoolwork will resemble either the sensibilities of a vicar's wife or the conspiracy paranoia of an inmate, both dull and entirely predictable, and the remaining 1% is potentially new, or interesting. This 1% doesn't deserve the attention of resources (class time) that could be given to encourage the industry of those vast majority of others who otherwise have nothing else to contribute. There used to be something called 'Gifted and Talented', until government noticed that it was a waste of money, useful only in placating parents who were worried at the state of their child's education. There's genuinely no reason to be worried. Is the issue really how well developed children's actual ideas get? Well, as long as produced ideas/work can be classified as 'engaged' or as exemplifying industriousness, they can be systematically disregarded. There is no reason for a Gifted and Talented category because 'bright' children can instead enjoy endless self-management alongside intellectual litter-picking.

And so the most successful RE is of the 'engaging' type, but that is not to suggest that it has anything essentially different in it than 'non-engaging' teaching. They are both means to purely social ends, and the trained chimp of the modern classroom is no closer to the actual life of their minds than the trained chimp of yesteryear.

Yet aside from the bullies and the chimps that become valourised in school reports and government inspections, children are indeed children. They think and play and learn to exist as adults. Those that cannot typically will kill themselves, go to prison or end up in other undesirable circumstances. They might even become an MP. What is truly amazing about today's RE is how few children actually kill themselves once they find out that a meaningful life is unobtainable for them (for what other conclusion can they really draw if they were honest?). Non, Monsieur, in learning to manage their boredom and inadequacy for so many long school years children learn to lie just as well as the adults they look up to, adults that expect only this of them in the long run.

Though it is school in general that destroys the minds of the young, RE has a special place in denying any freedom children may feel that they have in the realm of faith and belief, philosophy, ethics and morality. RE acts against the growing sense children have of developing some power in all the difficult and abstract areas of life that adults often base their lives around. You might say that children have no real power in these areas and require 'schooling' in them, otherwise they could lead a difficult, intellectually stunted life. There's a lot to this in contemporary RE, which often seems to say 'don't go to prison' and nothing else (usually along the lines of 'don't disrespect the religious, they will put you in prison'). But adult culture surely shows you that adults don't have any power over their abstract life either, and for all the talk about the 'instructor' teacher being an outdated and arrogant perspective on teaching, how much more arrogant and condescending is it to presume to a be a 'guide'? The teacher is no longer the employer of the factory in its dehumanising heyday, instead the teacher is now the jumped up estate agent marketing it as a luxury timeshare.

What could come out of RE and which would be empowering young people rather than robbing them of their emotional connection to their thoughts? Whatever it is it has to admit that adults do not have appropriate answers or an appropriate culture for a meaningful future, it has to say that the adult world is a massive comprehensive failure, or rather, that all its successes lie in hatred, hurt and humiliation, and anything else that begins with h.

To transform RE it has to be engineered to be entirely critically orientated, and be the opposite of a process that merely sorts through thoughts with the stamps of the dominant social values. It has to say that it is against the status quo and it has to empower students whilst endowing them with as little preconceptions as possible. It could begin with a series of apologies, that the teacher is incredibly sorry that students will be entering the 'real world' soon and that this 'real world' is a false image based in the punitive self-loathing of a world that has destroyed itself before it even began; that the idea of nations being united is premised only on the self-interest of a few nations; that the reason there is so much 'good being done' around the world is premised entirely on the mercilessly doom-bringing day to day lives of their parents, teachers, community leaders, politicians, youth movements, and all their various workplaces, needs, social lives and consumptions. Feed a child or as many as you can! their villages were ensured to starve long before you could have done anything about it, and when you are dead, you can't help either – be a transfusion for a dying body while you can, while you're alive (well at least basically alive). Sorry that the economy is based on values based on interests, it isn't a science at all, and that now all life on the planet is threatened by the love of arbitrary and cruel power over others. Sucks to be you, I'll be dead first!

The teacher could apologise that most people believe in a God or Gods and that there are in fact no Gods at all, that for all the educational promise, clear thinking and abundant humanism one might assume lies at the heart of the human future, the world is, contrarily, controlled on the level of ideas by superstitions and fears that will sooner leave man to die clutching his temples in a cold dark place than to allow him to be liberated from those voodoo spells that bind and torture him. Yes! We bind and torture our minds as well as our bodies. Welcome to your teens: your life has been pretty shit so far, sorry that you were having fun being a child and didn't really notice so much. If you are born on planet Earth you will likely spend a considerable percentage of your life praying to a God or wondering about God's plan (you will most likely be a Catholic or a Muslim in fact!), particularly what he may have in store for you, and why everything is so scary and futile, which thought, of course, you will simply learn to keep to yourself.

Sorry that you're an individual without power, left to flit around 'making decisions' like a moth around a naked flame. That one isn't true either, but sod it if there's anything you can really do about it past the age of 6. You're finished, dead, you were killed long before you were born.

Sorry that you most definitely belong to a community that doesn't exist, that you belong to a country that should never have existed, that your attempts to anonymize your identity and dissolve it on the internet is met with enough controls at the point of use to render your efforts pointless. You are no longer a statistic like your parents and grandparents, your statistic owns you, and so you remain basically worthless without a relationship to it, and effectively worthless once you attempt to shore that relationship up. There is no love for you and you cannot love anything that you are. Are you proud of your country? No, but you can at least say it. You can't eat the spam but you can at least vomit like you did – there is your privilege!

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