Calgary Skeptic’s Society Blog

This is my first post on the blog, and I hope to make a weekly appearance here, assuming my schedule can be massaged appropriately.  I hope to contribute mostly opinion-pieces; to delve into some fundamental issues within (and without) skepticism in a reasoned, philosophical way.  I’ll leave specific critiques, reviews, and anecdotes/recommendations to those who do it much better than I ever could–the other contributors, who have provided some excellent material so far.  And so, without further preamble, on to the real issue.

Religion is something that gets a lot of time in skeptical circles.  Skeptics spend a lot of time critiquing, criticizing, and sometimes even simply bashing religion in general, or specific religions and their practices.  The bookstores are full of recent atheist/freethinker writings on religion; most of us I’m sure are familiar with the work of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, and the rest.  We have a recent film by Bill Maher, reviewed on this very blog.  While skeptics don’t confine themselves to matters of religion, instead dealing with supernaturalism or a lack of critical thinking in all domains in which they arise, of late I believe there is a tendency to focus on religion in particular, especially in light of world events and the cultural buzz created by the “New Atheism” (as if it was ever old).

It would not surprise me if another source of this focus is that many skeptics became what they are in reaction to being brought up in a religious household, or in breaking away from a religious tradition in which they were formerly devout believers.  We often go with what we know, and in many cases, skeptics know religion well; indeed often very well.  And this is certainly an asset in any critique.

But I think this focus on religion leads us astray in many ways, for it amounts to focusing on removing the branches of a diseased tree rather than uprooting it entirely.  Religion, while important to critique in many respects, is only a branch on the tree in question; other branches are psuedoscience, the paranormal, psychic phenomenon, bigotry, racism, and closed-mindedness.

The tree in question is one plagued by a lack of critical thinking.  And this is the real root of the problem; this is what skepticism ought to be directed against-a lack of critical thinking in all areas of life, not simply the lack of critical thinking that can lead to a certain kind of adherence to religion.

At this point I should inform my readers that I’m not entirely convinced that all religion, in all its forms, is something we’d be better off without, or something that it is too irrational, or illogical, or otherwise to hold to.  The details of this view are academic and would take far too much space to spell out in detail.  However, there are easy-to-identify instances of religion that are not worth having around, that result from a lack of critical thinking and acceptance of dogma, and often result in violence, close-mindedness, or hubris.  And this is enough to justify a certain critique of religion and its dogma.

Now that this caveat is out of the way, I can return to my main point.  It is all to easy for us to get bogged down in criticizing and critiquing of religion; all too easy to blame it for so much of what, as skeptics, we seek to remedy in the world.  But this is a view that does not dig deep enough, does not see what lies beneath the surface.  The real problem is a lack of critical thinking and a lack of informed reflection in our society more generally.  This is a situation that must change, and it is to this end that we should be most dedicated; not simply in pointing out its lack, but in actively trying to change things for the better.  This means promulgating both the resources for and the value in thinking critically, as well as lobbying for educational reform.

We serve our interests best when our efforts are directed at the source of the problem, not its symptoms.  And while an examination of the symptoms will be instructive - for those willing to listen - in the way the disease arises, our critiques will cut no ice if our interlocutors do not understand the value of critical reasoning and informed thinking.

Our priority ought to be making people see this value.  Our efforts are futile otherwise.