Dworkin, Ronald - Religion Without God

03/29/2013

The New York Review, April 4, 2013

This is an excerpt of the first chapter of author's posthumously published book. Author starts by arguing that the divide between the non-religious and the religious is too crude. Plenty of people who don't believe in a personal god have beliefs that there is a "force" that is "bigger than themselves". This can be available to the atheist as well as the theist. Author argues that there can be such a thing as a religious atheist, and uses Einstein as an example: "It was Einstein's faith that some transcendental and objective value permeates the universe, value that is neither a natural phenomenon nor a subjective reaction to natural phenomena." But then if there is a religious atheist, there needs to be a good definition of "religion", which is difficult, according to author, since use of the word is partially meant to define it-- an "interpretative concept". Instead, author opts to look for a "revealing" ideal use of the word. What is the point of such an exercise? For author, it could perhaps help separate questions of science from questions of value; shrinking the impetus for cultural and value wars.

Author attempts to give some structure to a "religious attitude" by claiming it involves making both the "biological and biographical" sources of intrinsic value: that to be religious entails believing there are intrinsic values relating to both human life and the world we inhabit. Of course the problem now is to find out what those values are, and how they are known (hint: traditionally, a god told them to us).

First off, there is a dichotomy between the religious and the naturalist-- for author-- someone who believes that all there is can be revealed by the natural sciences. Another thing the religious attitude is not: it isn't "grounded realism", which takes values to be real but only due to some natural capacity to reason about them. For author, the religious means that value is both "self contained and self-certifying". During this discussion, author defines the term "faith" as well, as, in the first order, that "we accept a felt, inescapable conviction rather than the benediction of some independent means of verification as the final arbiter of what we are entitled to responsibly believe". Author means to include mathematics, logic, and science into what is fundamentally taken on faith. Faith when it comes to value contains another layer, since emotion is part of convictions about value. The point here for author is that the realm of value is about objectively true things (for the religious person) and it is self-justifying. It is not, as some theists believe, that god underwrites values. Author embarks on a description of the 3 abrahamic religions as two-parted: one is a science part and the other is a value part. The science part gives answers to tough questions, and god is included in the story. But, author claims, the science part cannot ground the value part, since they are conceptually distinct. "The universe cannot be intrinsically beautiful just because it was created to be beautiful". Ultimately, author says that values justify themselves within a larger scheme of value, and that a god is conceptually distinct from this.