The British Humanist Association have commissioned a survey from MORI that gives a very different impression than the 2001 census that the likes of Stephen Green use to say that this is predominantly a "Christian Country".
Here are some of the most cheering results-
Scientific and other evidence provides the best way to understand the universe.* (62%)
Religious beliefs are needed for a complete understanding of the universe. (22%)
Neither of these (10%)
Don’t know (6%)
Human nature by itself gives us an understanding of what is right and wrong* (62%)
People need religious teachings in order to understand what is right and wrong (27%)
Neither of these (7%)
Don’t know (4%)
(I particularly like that one...)
This life is the only life we have and death is the end of our personal existence (41%)
When we die we go on and still exist in another way (45%)
Neither of these (5%)
Don’t know (8%)
Sue Blackmore writes about the results.
I was struck by this comment by "ajwimble" at the end of Sue's article, which strikes me as very probably true-
"I think the cause of the discrepancy is that christian means two different things. I do not believe in the christian god and do not attend church so on that measure I am not a Christian. However I was christened, brought up with a Christian background, celebrate christian holidays and attend christian services for weddings and funerals. On that basis I think many people would put themselves down as a christian on the census form, regardless of any lack of real religious belief."
After all, I will be putting my advent calendar up today...
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Comments
I think the survey results pass a simple gut check, although I would have liked to have seen a specific question on "is there a god of some sort" or "is spirituality important" to pick up exactly the sort of semi-organised, semi-religious feeling that a lot of people have and which the BHA has its own scunner against.
Another interesting question would have been "do you consider yourself a spiritual person?"
But the churches can pay for that survey.
Your comment works fine, welcome aboard.
I only discovered you were "bruschettaboy" recently. I should have guessed...
I like the survey, I especially like that people believe human nature tells us right from wrong, unlike some of the fundamentalists who are convinced that without God they'd be evil nasty gits with no morality.
Still, payday, and Richard links to the BHA. I'd been planning to join soon anyway...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om6HDUKB
Is it official humanist theology (yes yes) that the source of our knowledge of right and wrong is "human nature"? This might actually be quite a gnarly philosophical position, implying a whole lot of sociobiology. Particularly, if you are basing ethics on the sort of reciprocal altruism of the last bit of "the selfish gene", then it's surprisingly difficult to get to a set of ethical principles that don't have a place for racism. I'd guess that logic and our ability to think clearly is a much firmer basis for the kind of ethics that one might actually want.
PS: is there any way to turn off the email notification of replies to comments? It's actually quite nice at the moment, but if I did get futher into the livejournal thing it could easily get out of hand given that I am quite high-traffic.
Of course, you expected any less from a
I don't know, I don't go into details. It was Rousseau's basic tenet, I think, so that'll do for me for now. It's more the perpetual assertion by some Xians that without religion morality is impossible that gets to me, identification with that which we oppose, it's a good start, right?
Meh, I'm supposed to be working.
Yes, under Comment Settings. You might also want to add a bit to your profile, a link to Crooked Timber, CIF or similar, and possibly pointing people at your feeds:
More readers is always good, right?
I did you think you were a little harsh, Matt!
That this is due to me losing the cable to connect my camera to the computer is irrelevent.
On feeds? If you're using Firefox 2 as a browser, this is incredibly useful. Not set it up myself (yet), most of my feeds were manual, but still. I tried to make all the cif feeds I set up start cif_, but others have been doing them differently :-(
My reading of the Human nature by itself gives us an understanding of what is right and wrong statement in the poll is looser than yours - "human nature" includes rationality, so that statement could include Kantian ethics, utilitarianism, etc. It's not saying "violence is natural human behaviour therefore violence is right", it's saying "humans can have knowledge of right and wrong without any external influence".
I agree with your 'looser' interpretation of 'Human nature' to include rationality. In fact, I'd be happier to drop all reference to human nature and just keep the rationality.
Dawkins' actual politics are fairly predictable for a man of his background and class - he's a straight-down-the-line Guardian reader. But it seems pretty clear to me from his writings that his philosophical view would have to commit him to the belief that something of the sort could be deduced from fundamentals of kin selection and reciprocal altruism.
If you look at your last sentence, you can see how far you are from Dawkins and Pinker here (personally I agree with you entirely); Pinker wrote an entire book on how it was an illegitimate move to drop "human nature" and Dawkins certainly spoke up for it in a couple of debates.
I must admit to sharing Thomas Nagel's view of Dennett - that his work is enjoyable, packed with fascinating scientific information... but totally unconvincing when he comes to conclusions about consciousness or morality. I haven't read Pinker.
As a matter of fact I do believe that Darwinian theory (in various guises as sociobiology or the slightly more acceptable 'evolutionary psychology') can tell us, in the manner of Bacon's Idols, useful things about the errors we may be prone to in our reasoning, theoretical and practical. In doing so it may serve a useful purpose. I've always taken this to be the role assigned to 'human nature' by the non-crude Darwinians.
But it cannot explain away that reasoning itself, which would of course be as self-defeating as any attempt to naturalize reason must be, primarily because we need reason to evaluate the very theory which seeks to explain it away. Nothing new to you here. And as far as moral reasoning goes, Darwinian theory supplies, at best, additional premises for moral reasoning to work on.
I've read most of Dawkins' stuff so I'll try and find precisely where he's crude enough to assert such a thing. Can you point to anything in print?
IIRC, there is actually a bit in the Selfish Gene where he specifically says that he doesn't want to base morality on the sort of gene-level factors he's talking about in that book, but in some of his journalism he's often tried to talk as if his political views have the imprimateur of evolutionary theory. As far as I can see, he is aware of the fact that it is currently an unsolved problem to find any way of basing ethics on Darwinian theory that _doesn't_ end up as Social Darwinism. This is not such a huge disadvantage compared to the fact that it is currently an unsolved problem finding a basis for ethics at all, but I think that RD has actually been a lot more sensible and subtle than some of his allies in the Darwin wars.
WVO Quine used to think that the concepts of truth, rationality and meaning all had to have an evolutionary basis, because they were all linked to language which was a specific behaviour-pattern of a particular species of apes (I always like bringing this one up when people are having a go at Foucault and Derrida for believing more or less the same thing).
Admit it Richard, you only bought it for the chocolate.
No, as I was saying to
I enjoy the ritual of it, I think