Robert McHenry: Dinesh D’Souza's illogical statements about religion and science

The newspaper USA Today is generally acknowledged to be the newspaper of choice for two kinds of people: those away from home and those who don’t care to know too much. I see it when I fall into the former category, as I did this past week. The hotel supplied the paper for free, along with the “free” breakfast – juice, coffee, and pastry in your choice of soggy or dry.

Thus I read an op-ed piece by Dinesh D’Souza titled “A Christian foundation.” D’Souza is a well known conservative writer and policy wonk, a graduate of Dartmouth and an alumnus of sundry think-tank positions. A bright guy, in short. So why, I ask myself, did he write such a misleading essay for the USA Today audience? Because he thought he could get away with it? In essence his argument takes the form post hoc ergo propter hoc, “after that, therefore because of that.” Just two problems: It’s a logical fallacy, and anyhow the post hoc part is factually wrong.

His thesis is this: Religion, and Christianity in particular, is under attack by atheists and other secularists who want to eliminate it entirely from the public sphere (meaning politics and policy) and who either deny or ignore the fact that it is the essential footing for those pillars of our society, science and democracy. Out of a great many words that could be adduced in contradiction, here’s just one: Greece.

But first, to be fair and balanced, here’s D’Souza’s concluding paragraph:

If we cherish the distinctive ideals of Western civilization, and believe as I do that they have enormously benefited our civilization and our world, then whatever our religious convictions, we will not rashly try to hack at the religious roots from which they spring. On the contrary, we will not hesitate to acknowledge, not only privately but also publicly, the central role that Christianity has played and still plays in the things that matter most to us.

That will get an argument from a fervent atheist but not from me, for I rate it about 75% true. But before this relatively modest finish, D’Souza claims far too much and does violence to the intellectual history of the human race.

For example, he says that science is based on “the assumption that the universe is rational and follows laws that are discoverable through human reason” and then goes on to assert that this idea originates in Christianity. This would come as a great surprise to Thales of Miletus and his successors in the Ionian and other schools of Greek philosophy who lived centuries before the Christian Era. It would also seem a poor joke to some much later scientists who found themselves bullied and condemned by the Church when their scientific findings contradicted dogma.

D’Souza seems not to understand the nature of the uniformity assumption, either. It is, after all, an assumption, not a declaration. It is a necessary simplifying assumption; how would you go about seeking the laws of nature if you assumed otherwise, that they are different in different times and places? As an assumption it is subject to challenge and has been challenged, as by the suggestion that various “natural” constants, such as the speed of light, have altered over the age of the universe. He writes, “There’s no logical necessity for a universe that obeys rules,” showing that he does not understand the nature of physical “laws,” which are not obeyed but which rather merely describe in symbolic fashion what is observed of behavior. (It might also be wondered at that he so confidently pronounces on what is “logically necessary” for a universe, as though he were accustomed to making them himself.)

On the idea of democracy as a consequence of Christianity, D’Souza is even less reliable. Once again the history of Greece, among other cultures that might be mentioned, is simply obliterated. The very word “democracy” is Greek, as any Dartmouth grad ought to know, and while they did not all or always practice it, or practice it in a way that would be approved today, they did practice it.

But there’s more. “Consider,” he invites us, “Thomas Jefferson’s famous assertion in the Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal.’” Very well, let’s consider it. D’Souza takes note that despite Jefferson’s labeling the assertion as “self-evident,” “One only has to look to history and to other cultures to see that it is not evident at all.” That’s so; one does, and it isn’t. Indeed, Jefferson, a non-Christian, made that revolutionary claim of his more than 1,700 years into the Christian Era. How, then, is it a consequence of Christianity?

Why the overreach?

By the oddest coincidence, D’Souza has just published a book along these lines, What’s So Great About Christianity, defending traditional religion against some recently published books by crusading atheists and the threat of something he refers to as “a sophisticated network of atheist organizations and media.” Does anyone have any idea what he is talking about? Here’s an experiment you can do at home: Open up your local television guide and see how many religious programs you can find listed, not just on Sunday but every day of the week. Now do the same for atheist programs. Not much comparison, is there? So if they’re not on TV, just how sophisticated is this atheist network anyway? Sophisticated enough to be broadcasting directly into the fillings in our teeth, maybe? D’Souza doesn’t say.