science and religion - forget Dawkins, Tremlett and shih

Question 1

intro - what is new atheism

Answer 1

• New Atheists = originally associated with ‘semi-academic and polemical writings’ by authors such as Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchins etc.
• ‘New Atheist discourse is marked by a binary logic that opposes religion to science, belief to doubt, and a pre-modern past to a modern present’ – resonates with the ‘survival’ of 19th century anthropology (81)
• Writers are critical of the new atheist position – they assume that religion is purely private and cognitive. they only consider belief
• Weberian iron cage

Question 2

intro - what do the ethnographers show

Answer 2

• Two ethnographic accounts are presented to show that religion is not just ‘personal conviction. Rather, it is a public practice in which belief and doubt are constituted socially and dialogically’ (81)
• The ethnographies show that ‘religion is not a matter of private or mental belief or doubt but rather a matter of public action and practice in which believing and doubting are constituted socially and dialogically’ (82)

Question 3

1 - new atheist revision of evolutionist approach to religion

Answer 3

• Freud/Tylor etc. began rhetoric of religion as strange and savage to emerge – science will undermine it
• New Atheists revise this evolutionist approach – more emphasis on progress – there is still an interest in religious belief as a ‘representation (or not) of a state of affairs in the world’ (82)
• As seen in Dawkin’s argument, for the New Atheist, religious beliefs are ‘theories or hypotheses about the world’ (83)

Question 4

1 - harris

Answer 4

• religious beliefs = consequential rather than representational
• shows NA attempt to subject religious claims to scientific testing

o But Harris fails to capture:
♣ ‘the New Atheist conviction that religion can be defined solely in terms of beliefs about special entities and miraculous events; second, the more general representation of religion as uncritical belief and scientifically informed atheism as critical doubt; and, third, the idea that doubt about religion can only come from outside religion because religious belief is the antithesis of the reflexive, critical, rational spirit that lies behind all genuinely scientific inquiry.’ (83)

Question 5

1 - NA recognition of religion as a belief

Answer 5

• New Atheist language still establishes that religion is a ‘belief’ that affects people’s perception of the world
  o Harris, 2015, p.12: ‘belief is a lever that, once pulled, movest almost everything else in a person’s life’
• Pelkmans criticises Descartes for using doubt to establish what ‘he already thought he knew’ (84)
  o He is not taking his studies seriously enough – cannot use doubt in this way
  o Doubt and belief = mutually exclusive for the New Atheist

Question 6

1 - modernity is complicated

Answer 6

• These points serve to demonstrate that modernity is complicated – it is not a simple case of rational scientific progress (85)
  o The view of progress that they put forward = scientific
  o For Said, progress = Western and imperial
  o ‘For Max Weber, the “narrative of modernity” envisioned “the increasing subordination of social life to the calculations of instrumental reason” (Tremlett 2011:291) and unsettlingly signalled the eclipse of meaning by disenchantment and of freedom by the “iron cage” of capitalism (Weber, 1905)’ (85)

Question 7

case study conclusion

Answer 7

• Both the Philippines and Taiwan give examples of modernity not being aligned with atheism (85)
  o Link to Asad’s view of foreign powers imposing secular “behaviours, knowledges, and sensibilities”

colonialism did not have effect on religion

Question 8

philippines - mount banahaw

Answer 8

‘spiritual’ place where healing is practiced since about 1840
o Used to venerate ‘national hero’ José Rizal by nationalist religious movements
o ‘Revolutionaries fighting both the Spanish and the Americans sheltered there, and in more recent years it has been associated with Communist/Maoist insurgents. More recently still, it has been linked to encounters with UFOs and to the so-called New Age religion.’ (86)
♣ used as a place of shelter in tough times
♣ politically charged location
o ‘From 1999 to 2000 and in 2003, I (Tremlett) conducted fieldwork in and around Mount Banahaw with a samahan (association) located on its western lower slopes that called itself the Association of International Healers.’ (86)

Question 9

phillipines - example of exercise led by ka erning

Answer 9

• One exercise sought to test the hypothesis that the Bible is a ‘living book’
o They had to shut eyes and put hand on random page of the Bible and try to see what happened.
o ‘At the end, I, like the other group members, had to report back on what I had ‘seen’. These reporting sessions generated important questions about subjective experience and its epistemological validity.’ (86)
♣ Scientific language and experiment
o Showed the range of subjective experiences.
o Point of exercise was to show that Bible is a ‘living book’ with agency, which generates ‘sometimes uncanny experiences’ but most importantly, aids ‘the group in its accumulation of power for the purpose of healing’ (86)
o They believed not in the specifics of the Bible but more its ‘spiritual potency – its kapangyarihan’ (87)

Question 10

philippines - son and trance

Answer 10

• Saturday night meetings would also involve Ka Erning’s youngest son entering tracnes, ‘during which he would become, for a short while, a channel for an entity such as the Santa Niño.’ (87)
o Debate as to whether or not the Santa Nino’s ‘trances’ were real
o This doubt was not seeking to expose illusion, but rather functioned as ‘part of a social process of coming together to debate and engage in spiritual practices for the purposes of healing.’ (87)

Question 11

phillipines - tallying healings

Answer 11

• Healers measured success by tally of those healed
o Yet, samahan accepts that death happens and sometimes it cannot be stopped even by treatment
o Healing is not understood as miraculous (people accepted the reality of death and took prescription drugs) but rather involved an expectation of spending time with the healer and his family – they shared meals and prayer for eachother.
o Spiritual rather than purely physical healing
o Tally = scientific method of collecting data

Question 12

philippines - efficacy (BISA)

Answer 12

• Efficacy is a key characteristic of this religion – doubt still existed but simply functioned as a catalyst/means for social interaction
o Questioning efficacy = pragmatic starting point
o Raised questions about the ‘epistemological validity of subjective experience’ (87)
o ‘Yet while doubt occasioned collective reflection on the limits of human reason and the implacability of the world to apparently good but nevertheless so often ill-fated human intervention, it remained, much like the spiritual practices and indeed its friend belief, ad hoc; that is, doubt was never tied down to any specific act or event.’ (87)

Question 13

conclusions re. philipines

Answer 13

o Kapangyarihan means power and potency and implies relationships between persons and persons, persons and places, persons and objects, and persons and entities (Cannell 1999: 229–230).’ (88)
• This represents an overlap between religious and secular domains – ‘it is a social practice that implies instead co-embeddedness within certain socially and culturally encoded norms and structures of conduct’ (88)
• Religion is not purely privatised; on the contrary, it is rooted in relationships and collective doubt

Question 14

Taiwan - religion

Answer 14

• ‘Religion in Taiwan is deeply embedded within society. It is not so much a matter of individuals or belief as it is of practice and ling, the power of efficacy possessed by spirits and gods/goddesses. These deities are typically anthropomorphic in form and identified as the spirits of former human beings who lived notable lives’ (88)
• Ling, although it implies this, is rarely discussed as ‘a particular idea of reality’ – it is ‘recognized through its social dimensions, because power is always about social relationships and it is through relationships that power articulates and circulates’ (88)

Question 15

Taiwan - focus of ethnography

Answer 15

• Ethnographic example is about: ‘the ling of the ‘anti-nuclear power goddess Mazu’ in Ren-he Temple and her relationship with the anti-nuclear power campaign’ (88)
• Nuclear plant, in close proximity to the Temple, has only been completed recently whilst the Temple has been around for ‘almost 200 years’ (88)
o Fishing people of Gongliao recently have ‘looked to Mazu’s ling to empower their campaign against the fourth nuclear power plant’ (89)

Question 16

Taiwan - political aspect to antinuclear movement

Answer 16

o Martial law ended in 1987
o Chinese Nationalist Party = pro nuclear power
o Democratic Progressive party = against it
o DPP gained office in 2000, promised to shut down plant = anti-nuclear campaign was accelerated
o CNP gained power in 2008, sped up construction of fourth plant. Completed in 2010

Question 17

Taiwan - what happened in 2010

Answer 17

• 2010 is when (author) discovered that Mazu was being used by the people to generate power for their campaign (89)
o felt betrayed by DPP
o difficult for campaign to reignite now construction was complete
o People confronted Mazu and asked her questions by dropping the moon blocks – they said a proposition and asked for it to be confirmed by the blocks landing on either the flat (deity strongly disagrees = disaffirmative poe or im-poe) or one flat and one rounded (affirmative poe or sui-poe). If both landed on round side, the answer was ambiguous. (90)

Question 18

taiwan - prediction

Answer 18

• Important prediction made in 1988 – said that the fourth plant would be built (made people sad and confused) but then that it would not generate electricity (made people happy and encouraged them to continue the campaign) (91)

Question 19

Taiwan - use of mazu to confirm outcome

Answer 19

• ‘It is interesting to note that the relationship of the campaigners to Mazu is not one of conforming to a religious authority, as is assumed in the New Atheist understanding of religion (Dawkins 2006: 27). Rather, the divination process of question and answer was a kind of playful back and forth between ‘no’ and ‘yes’, between disbelief/doubt and belief. Through this process, they were able to get the goddess to confirm an outcome that they wanted to believe in, while simultaneously believing that the fall of the poe was governed by the goddess’s will.’ (91)

Question 20

Taiwan - evidence of use of goddess

Answer 20

• Although the campaign was more about the political power of the CNP, goddess remained crucial.
o Every year since association, pilgrimages have taken place with donation boxes etc.
o Statues been built of her and carried around on demonstrations
o 1993 protest, statue of Mazu brought from Ren-he Temple to CNP government’s Parliament
o ‘The protestors broke through a police cordon, forced open the iron entrance gate, and made their way to the Parliament hall. Here, the statue was placed on a chair behind the speaker, so that the goddess could monitor the parliamentarians as they discussed increasing the budget for the fourth plant. The vote was disputed by the protestors and DPP parliamentarians and was nullified. However, the KMT later rescheduled the vote, and the funding for the fourth plant was subsequently passed on 10 July.4 Interviewees during my field research emphasized that the budget had passed because the goddess was not present. They further stated that it was the goddess’s ling that got them through the police cordon and the iron gate and that had initially nullified the vote.’ (91)

Question 21

Taiwan - social origin and response of technicians to mazu

Answer 21

• ‘In contrast to the model of belief adopted by New Atheist discourse, belief in Mazu’s prediction – or indeed disbelief or doubt about it – has emerged from social circumstances rather than from the mental acts of individual persons’ (92)
• technicians at plant aware of Mazu prediction and became scared that the nuclear plant would not actually work

Question 22

important quote re. relationship between science and religion in Taiwan

Answer 22

science nd religion coexist

‘Local gossip and rumor suggest that some technicians have lost confidence in the plant and that they have begun to doubt their ability to make it operational. Some of them have even apparently turned to Mazu’s ling and are taking note of her prediction about the fate of the nuclear plant. Although the technicians are scientists and non-local, they were born into and interact socially within the religious culture in which Mazu’s ling is recognized.’

Question 23

conclusions

Answer 23

• New Atheist discourse ‘needs to develop a far more nuanced and subtle account of religions beyond the current strategy of simply reducing religion to private mental events called beliefs’ (93)
• ‘the evidence we have offered suggests that belief and doubt belong as much to social worlds as to individual, mental acts’
• SUGGESTS THAT SCIENCE AND RELIGION NEED NOT BE OPPOSED!!!

Question 24

Analysis

Answer 24

• participated and observed
• conducts field research across 3 years
• conducts many interviews
• 3 committee members who had contacted the goddess had passed away so interviews the new head and so the next best option
  a short article but they make a strong case