Thor's Day: Mustn't go there

A close and beloved female relative of my age wrote me recently that

Religion is one subject I don't think you and I should discuss. I love you and we are just too far apart in our thinking to go there.
My beliefs in God, Jesus, heaven, etc. are such a part of me, and my hope of seeing my parents and your parents again is the most important hope I have, and I cannot even imagine living without that hope.

    I had, innocently I thought, asked my niece whether she agrees with Athens, Georgia Representative Paul Broun that "evolution, embryology, and the Big Bang theory are 'lies straight from the pit of hell' meant to convince people that they do not need a savior," but she wouldn't say whether she agreed or not. (Broun is the member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology whose view of science was featured in this column last week.)
    It may have been relatively easy for me to separate myself from approximately the same beliefs as my niece's, but it would appear from her own estimate virtually impossible for her to do so. In my case, I suppose that the beliefs were ones I held; in her case, the beliefs seem to be doing the holding.
    I suppose that if my niece had felt that she and I could "go there," her response to my question would have been that, yes, she did agree with Broun, so the specific place she didn't seem to want to go with me was into a discussion about how she can believe things that science disproves or at least casts grave doubt on.

The very same conflict came up explicitly the week before. On the website of the book discussion club I participate in, the question was raised whether we might like to discuss a science book next time.
    Another member, a young mother of two who displays a picture of Jesus on her family's living room wall, promptly commented:

I personally would not enjoy a scientific book that is anti-religious, but other than that, I'm fine with it.

    Other than that? I asked:

What do you mean by "anti-religious"? In a broad sense that could include almost any science book, if the book included evidence for things that the Bible, for example, doesn't agree with. Is that what you mean?

    Some people read the Bible as saying that the Earth is less than 7,000 years old. Would a book on geology that provides evidence that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old be "anti-religious"? Or one on cosmology that provides evidence that the "Big Bang" occurred about 14 billion years ago? Would that be "anti-religious"? Or a book on evolution that presented evidence that "creationism" is simply false? Or a book on neurology that presented evidence that free will is an illusion?
    So far, no response. Was my question too direct? Or is this another case of belief's being in charge and holding onto her with such ferocity that discussion wouldn't matter, nothing but rancor could come of it? Perhaps this young mother also harbors hopes of afterlife reunions—hopes that are so crucial to her sense of balance and wholeness that it would be catastrophic for her to be divested of them?

Many years ago now, when I still believed, or at any rate was still wrestling with the possibility that I might believe, I suggested to the young Episcopal vicar whose church my wife and I and our two then-young children regularly attended, that theology was a subdivision of psychology. Man's need to "do theology," I told him—to believe in God, to hope for afterlife, for the righting of injustice through a Final Judgment, etc.—could be explained by psychology. Religion was just one of those psychological phases that mankind went through, and through which individual humans still go today.
    He didn't blink an eye or hesitate. He said, "Or psychology a subdivision of theology?" Like me, he had majored in philosophy.
    I remember this now because I think that the argument over which one is fundamental—psychology or theology—is precisely the argument between science and religion still. And the two are simply not compatible.
    Oh, I know, there's the view originated by paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould that religion and science are "non-overlapping magisteria," each with its legitimate domain of study and authority. But it seems to me that the main use that has been made of this view is to provide shelter for scientists who are also dogmatically religious. The non-overlapping magisteria idea gives them a seeming way to justify their continuing to believe things for which there is no scientific basis, or that science outright contradicts.
    It enables them to "go there" and discuss religion and science without having to choose between them.
    But for ordinary believers who lack Stephen Jay Gould's sophistication, the two really are incompatible. And if these believers' investment in faith is so deeply held—or if it holds them so tightly—that separating them from it would destroy their psychological equilibrium, then they really don't seem to have a choice. For personal psychological reasons, they must not go there.

While we might respect the urgent personal need of fragile individuals not to be forced to go there with us, we ought not hesitate to go to the public podium to criticize their religious dogma itself on scientific and logical grounds. Fact-based reason has a duty to oppose faith-based dogma and prevent it from harming other people and their young. There are so many ways in which "religion poisons everything" (as the late Christopher Hitchens put it in the subtitle of a book). For example:

• By "queers" being beaten, isolated, and living in torment because some people read the Bible as telling them that homosexuals deserve it.
• By intolerance being preached against people who believe differently—simply because they believe differently.
• By "blasphemy" serving as a rationale for murder.
• By women dying when their pregnancies go awry and can't be treated appropriately because of religious objections.
• By medical treatment being withheld to avoid pre-empting "divine will."
• By medical research being shackled by absurd, ideological restrictions.
• By children's psyches being damaged by threats of eternal damnation or having to live forever in the company of their grandparents.
• By children being discouraged from using their minds to explore the factual world and think objectively.
• By scientifically ignorant men like Paul Broun being promoted to positions of authority to make decisions affecting our nation's future.

    Dogmatic beliefs that abet such outrages will continue to poison things so long as rational people excuse them. Give them a pass we must not.