Religion, declared British writer/philosopher Roger Scruton in the Cole Assembly Room last Friday, "is a confused mass of irrational beliefs … incompatible with science."

This is not Scruton's view, but the view he attributes to "evangelical atheists," namely Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.

The lecture, entitled "Faith and the Challenges of Secularism," was the first of the annual Fall Colloquium series this weekend. Hosted by the Committee for the American Founding, Scruton's talk was jointly sponsored by the Newman Club, a Roman Catholic faith-based group on the Amherst campus.

"It is of course true that religion is largely an inherited condition … but it is not simply a matter of indoctrination," said Scruton. "There are experiences which are vital to our moral development, and which can only be obtained in this way-through a shared faith, a shared trust and a shared humility towards the world as a whole."

Scruton explored the universal concept of the "sacred" and identified what he perceives to be shortfalls in the common science-based atheist worldview. He summarized the atheist view in two simple doctrines: that everything happens in accordance with the laws of nature, and that those laws are contingent.

These doctrines fail, according to Scruton, to account for why the universe is governed by comprehensive laws in the first place.

"The question I am pursuing," he said, "is the root of theology: Why, to what end, and for what reason, do we live in a law-governed world?"

Scruton spoke at length about this question, dissecting the explanations of Stephen Hawking and Immanuel Kant, among others, to illustrate the lack of a coherent answer in the absence of a religious explanation.

Scruton addressed the alleged conflict between the scientific and the religious worldviews, drawing attention to the "radically different part played by scientific and religious beliefs in the life of the individual." He noted specifically that religions endure in part because they offer membership.

"You are born into a faith, or converted to it," Scruton said. "By signing up to the doctrine you are incorporated into the community. And this incorporation is regularly reaffirmed through sacred rites which signify, in some way, the collective relation of the community to its God."

Scruton went on to assert that many beliefs that purport to be scientific in fact demonstrate many of the same characteristics of religious dogma, such as the persecution of heretics.

"The doctrine was protected," Scruton said, speaking specifically of Marxism and Freudian theory, "being a criterion of obedience rather than a claim to scientific truth. To doubt was to disobey."

Central to religious belief, Scruton stressed, is the experience of the sacred, which "derives from and elaborates a day-to-day revelation: the sudden glimpse of the free and transcendental being, in the most ordinary things of this world." Sex and death, he said, are two primary experiences of the sacred, as well as two sources of habitual desecration.

According to Scruton, modern culture is flooded with "not only sexual pornography, but a pornography of violence." He warned that "societies in which the habit of desecration begins to dominate will not survive for long, and the reason why the societies studied by the great anthropologists place such importance on sacred matters is clear: Without this, they would not have survived."

Scruton is currently Research Professor for the Institute for the Psychological Sciences, where he teaches philosophy at the graduate schools in both Washington and Oxford. He has specialized in aesthetics with particular attention to music and architecture.

The Committee on the American Founding has been sponsoring a Fall and Spring Colloquium every year since 1999, featuring prominent academics, politicians, journalists and justices who, said the Committee's program director Shauneen Garrahan '07, are "generally more conservative in political philosophy than others that typically speak at the College."

James Montana '08, a liaison between the Student Steering Committee for the American Founding and the Newman Club, invited Scruton to speak.

"I hope, at least, that students were impressed with Scruton's intellectual sincerity and charity and, most importantly, I hope that students came away with the impression that thoughtful people can have positive thoughts about religion," said Montana. "Scruton is an accessible, lively writer. I recommend 'Animal Rights' and Wrongs,' 'Gentle Regrets' and 'Sexual Desire.'"

Garrahan said that the Committee and the Newman Club decided to collaborate in bringing Roger Scruton to Amherst because his background in scholarship, philosophy and Catholicism represents an interest in both groups.

On Friday night, Edward Tenner, author of the international best-seller "Why Things Bite Back: Technology and the Revenge of Unintended Consequences," delivered the Colloquium's second talk, "Schmentoring: Mentoring Gone Askew-with Results Even Better."

Scruton kicked off Saturday's set of speeches with a second talk, called "Culture Counts: Faith and Feeling in a World Besieged." Amy Wax, the Robert Mundheim Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, followed with "Race, Wrongs, and Remedies: Group Justice in the 21st Century."

The afternoon program concluded with lectures by federal judges Diarmuid O'Scannlain and John Mercer Walker, entitled "Racial Preferences and the Schools in Seattle" and "Can the Judges Themselves Violate the Constitution-and Other Matters: A Conversation," respectively.

"The hope is that students come away from the Colloquium with an enhanced intellectual/academic experience and a deeper understanding and appreciation for more conservative philosophies on social, political and legal issues," commented Garrahan. "It is important for students to know that although the speakers are generally more conservative than professors and other speakers at Amherst, the primary purpose is to discuss intellectual ideas, not partisan politics. So students from all political backgrounds are encouraged to attend the Committee's events."

The American Founding Committee's next event will feature Professor Charles Butterworth from the Center for the Study of Islam & Democracy, who will speak on "Islamic Political Theory and the Current Crisis" on Oct. 15.