more on Coyne
I commend to you all Jim Manzi’s excellent post on Jerry Coyne’s TNR article on science and religion. I know Jerry Coyne a bit: we have friends in common, and in fact had a pleasant dinner together some years ago at the wedding of those friends. And we have corresponded about some of these issues. Jerry is a gifted scientist and a fine writer, and I’ve learned a great deal over the years from reading his stuff (his stuff for laypeople, anyway). But I’ve also complained to him that he makes real conversation among the contending parties more difficult when he refuses to acknowledge significant differences between, say, young-earth creationists on the one hand and, on the other, people like Michael Behe who accept almost all of what Jerry himself believes about biology. Instead he likes to lump everyone under the catchall term “creationist.” Of course, I have pointed out, the overwhelming majority of all believers are creationists in the very broad sense that they believe in a Creator, but that’s just what makes the term so useless.
Coyne’s response to me has been that the Behes of the world have not themselves done enough to differentiate themselves from the young-earthers, so they deserve what they get; but in this essay he goes further in explaining why he finds any belief in pretty much any conceivable god incompatible with science. So, while he does pause here to acknowledge differences between some of the people on the other side of the religious fence from him, in the end he seems more determined that ever to insist that our only choice is to be either a atheist sheep or a creationist goat. And this determination, in turn, requires him to oversimplify a range of issues, and to caricature the people he is determined to see as his opponents. Let me mention just a few telling passages here.
1) Jim mentions above the anthropic principle, which “creationists” see as evidence of design. Coyne’s counter: “Scientists have other explanations, ones based on reason rather than on faith. Perhaps some day, when we have a ‘theory of everything’ that unifies all the forces of physics, we will see that this theory requires our universe to have the physical constants that we observe.” Likewise, to Karl Giberson’s claim that a connection to God can be found in our aesthetic responses to the natural world, Coyne replies that this view “ignores scientific explanations, such as E.O. Wilson's ‘biophilia’ theory, which suggests that we evolved to find places like lakes and prairies attractive simply because they provided our ancestors with food and safety.” But notice that there is no “theory of everything,” and also that Wilson’s “theory” is nothing of the kind but rather, and necessarily, highly speculative. When theist scientists speculate about something, Coyne characterizes it as a lamentable exercise in blind faith; when atheist scientists do precisely the same thing, Coyne calls it an “explanation.”
2) When Giberson admits that he has personal reasons to believe in God, that he is predisposed in that direction, Coyne could see that as an opportunity to acknowledge that everyone — yes, even the atheist! — has such individual predilections and should take them into account. But nah. “This touching confession reveals the sad irrationality of the whole enterprise — the demoralizing conflict between a personal need to believe and a desperation to show that this primal need is perfectly compatible with science.” And he then goes on to quote Richard Feynman’s great line, “Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool,” commenting, “With religion, there is just no way to know if you are fooling yourself.” Perhaps — but if so, that would apply to atheists as well as theists. So shouldn't Jerry apply Feynman’s warning to himself — isn't that what Feyman wanted us all to do? — and show some awareness of his own predispositions?
3) Similarly, in the same section, Coyne quotes Giberson: “As a believer in God, I am convinced in advance that the world is not an accident and that, in some mysterious way, our existence is an ‘expected’ result. No data would dispel it.” Coyne does not appear to understand the nature of Giberson’s claim. He writes, “No real scientist would say that his theories are immune to disproof.” But isn't it obvious that the claim that Giberson is making isn't a “theory,” isn't a testable hypothesis? Coyne may think that nothing that is not testable can be true — though I surely hope not — but Giberson obviously holds to the much more defensible notion that some things are true even though they cannot be falsified. (Jim addresses this in his post.) So when Coyne claims that Giberson “asserts that he cannot be wrong,” he’s just completely missing the point. Giberson is asserting nothing of the kind.
I think these errors stem from Jerry’s attempt to think in binary terms and to drive a wedge between, again, the sheep and the goats. So while he has to acknowledge, at some points, that Ken Miller and Karl Giberson are in many respects worlds away from young-earth creationists, by the end of his essay his own binary logic forces him to say that there ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between ‘em: Miller and Giberson only “see themselves as opponents of creationism.” They can't be real opponents — even though they don't just reject young-earth creationism but excoriate Behe and other Intelligent Design people — because in Coyne’s world you just get the two choices.
One last comment — one point I’d like Jerry Coyne to meditate on. As we have seen, Jerry’s rhetorical approach is pretty much that of Richard Dawkins: it’s the take-no-prisoners, you’re-either-with-me-or-against-me strategy. Jerry consistently defends Dawkins in this essay, and has no patience with the claim (made by both Miller and Giberson) that the aggression of the “new atheist” books “have inflamed religious moderates who might otherwise be sympathetic to evolution, driving them into the creationist corner.” To this claim Jerry replies that it is “Richard Dawkins who, more than anyone else, has convinced people of the reality and the power of evolution. It is the height of wishful thinking to claim that if he and his intellectual confreres simply stopped attacking religion, creationism would disappear.”
Of course, neither Giberson nor Miller nor anyone else has said that the new atheists have it in their power to make creationism disappear — this is yet another straw man — but leaving that aside, I would have Jerry note that Dawkins’s ability to convince people of “the reality and the power of evolution” was greatest when he wrote books that, with great clarity and verve, simply explained evolutionary theory and the core ideas behind it. When Dawkins took seriously the description of his own chair at Oxford — in “the public understanding of science” — he won a lot of people over. It wasn’t until he confused the public understanding of science with the public repudiation of religion that he began to alienate far more people than he convinced.
Alan:
Thanks for the plug, and these are all great points with which I agree. One quick build from your point (2): The Feynman quote is great (aren’t they all?). But Coynes’s follow-up line is a double-edged sword. You could take it to mean that religion is basically a waste of time, but you could as easily take it to mean that in religion you are forced to deal with topics in which you can’t be sure if you’re fooling yourself – which I think is basically correct, using a scientific version of “sure”.
— Jim Manzi · Feb 2, 03:29 AM · #
you could as easily take it to mean that in religion you are forced to deal with topics in which you can’t be sure if you’re fooling yourself. . .
Yes, that’s the point I was trying (awkwardly) to make!
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 2, 03:46 AM · #
When theist scientists speculate about something, Coyne characterizes it as a lamentable exercise in blind faith; when atheist scientists do precisely the same thing, Coyne calls it an “explanation.”
The theists and atheists are not in the same position here, because no atheists that I know of have argued that multiverse theories or aesthetic responses to nature are anything like affirmative evidence for the absence of God. The point is simply that there are plausible nontheistic explanations for the universe’s hospitability to intelligent life, and for our aesthetic sensibilities, so those phenomena don’t weigh heavily on the pro-theist side of the spectrum.
— Christopher M · Feb 2, 05:08 AM · #
i wouldn’t put behe is the same class as giberson and miller. behe is a hack. i don’t know giberson’s work well (thumbed through his book), but miller is no hack. behe does accept common descent with modification, but it’s fair to call someone as squirrely as him who goes and testifies for young earth creationists at dover a creationist-in-all-but-name.
— razib · Feb 2, 07:31 AM · #
Hi, I hope that you don’t mind, but…
Christopher M. said:
<i>The point is simply that there are plausible nontheistic explanations for the universe’s hospitability to intelligent life…</i>
No, this is an extremely weak argument, because these “plausibe nontheistic explanations” are highly speculative and controversial without said final theory to back them up, so you are pitting the directly observed “appearance of design” against something that might not be plausible science if the theory of everything turns out to be different from these reaching extensions of incomplete theories.
The “appearance of design” is something that some agnostic and atheist physicists have conceded is so strong that it will make us <i>hardpressed to answer the IDists if the “landscape” fails”</i>.
*Susskind, on ID, anthropic selection, and his multiverse.
What multiverse?… I’d ask?… were I a creationist, which, I am not.
Do you seriously expect them to believe that these highly speculative alternatives are more plausible than exactly what it looks like?
You lose, in other words because you cannot discount that this could be a natural ID, regardless of what creationists might believe that it means, and IDists do not typically discount the idea that the ID might be natural, so you have to give them that <b>evidenced scientific plausibility</b> if you are going to call yourself an honest scientist.
So guess what?… scientists had better do what Coyne said, and fast, or they are going to have a real fight on your hands if IDists ever get their act together in court, because “<b>some day</b>, when we have a ‘theory of everything’ that unifies all the forces of physics, we will see that this theory requires our universe to have the physical constants that we observe”
But “some day” doesn’t cut it against direct observational evidence to the contrary, until “some day” actually gets here.
— island · Feb 2, 11:37 AM · #
Whoops… I should learn to read formatting instructions…
sorry
— island · Feb 2, 11:40 AM · #
While Coyne is sloppy about the differences between creationists and the Intelligent Design crowd, the ID folks bear some of the blame for this confusion. Early on, people like Dembski and Behe got co-opted by Philip Johnson’s movement, which is far more interested in fighting battles in the culture wars than in making any contributions to science. ID as a movement looks a lot like the creationist movements of a few decades ago, even if there are significant differences in the particulars of what they believe. You don’t see advocates of String Theory battling in court over whether ST should be taught in public high schools.
And island, I believe in God, but it’s not clear to me that the idea of a transcendent creator is a “plausible” explaination of the anthropic nature of the universe but the idea that ours is one of many universes is “a highly speculative alternative.” The multiverse theory is speculative, but the idea of a being who is ontologically distinct from all possible universes is even more speculative.
Similarly, to say our aesthetic experiences are inexplicable by evolution is a pretty strong claim, and I think even a highly speculative explanation of how evolution could have led to such experiences is enough to highly discount it. Just like Behe’s claim that it’s impossible for a bacterial flagellum to have been produced by natural selection can be refuted simply by detailing a physically possible mechanism, even if there’s no evidence it actually happened that way.
And Alan, we don’t need to point to Dawkins to demonstrate that evolutionary theory is often wrenched out of it’s proper scientific context and use as a stick to beat religious people. H.L. Mencken did it first and did it better.
— Michael Straight · Feb 2, 10:15 PM · #
How do you figure? By what rationale may you assert that one hypothesis is more speculative than the other when there is direct scientific evidence for neither?
I think the more accurate response is that they are both as speculative. Belief in the divine, however, is widespread throughout history and cultures, while multiverse theory is a recent idea held by a minority of wonks and cranks. Which, I believe, is island’s point. Multiverse theory and the like fail because they give religious types no reason to abandon their long-held beliefs. If evidence for both theories, multiverse theory and whatever degree of creationism, is equally lacking, then you might as well pick the one which conforms to your prejudices.
— Blar · Feb 2, 10:35 PM · #
I would agree that “IDists bear some of the blame for confusion about the differences between creationists”… and an honest scientist who might think that the evidence indicates earth was intentionally seeded, for example.
But this interpretation of the evidence has nothing to do with aesthetics.
“Early on, people like Dembski and Behe got co-opted by Philip Johnson’s movement, which is far more interested in fighting battles in the culture wars than in making any contributions to science.”
This is exactly correct, but it is also a historically proven fact that the OVER-reaction to the incessant pressure from fundamentalists causes scientists to automatically dismiss any and all significance of evidence for anthropic preference, rather than to look for more plausible, non-deistic solutions to the anthropic problem, that resolve the problem from first principles that are “bio-oriented”.
This historically recorded fact is also known as the anthropic principle:
http://knol.google.com/k/richard-ryals/the-anthropic-principle/1cb34nnchgkl5/2
I personally see this auto-reaction as being much more detrimental to science than anything that fanatics have ever done.
Again, this has absolutely nothing to do with aesthetics.
“You don’t see advocates of String Theory battling in court over whether ST should be taught in public high schools.”
No, but you do see advocates of String Theory, (as well as the rest of science), willfully ignore the most apparently indicated bio-centric cosmological principle that the “appearance of design” presents, and that is only for the unscientific reasons given in the previously linked article.
“And island, I believe in God, but it’s not clear to me that the idea of a transcendent creator is a “plausible” explaination of the anthropic nature of the universe but the idea that ours is one of many universes is “a highly speculative alternative.” The multiverse theory is speculative, but the idea of a being who is ontologically distinct from all possible universes is even more speculative.”
But what I actually said was more like this; ‘An incomplete and controversial scientific plausibility is more speculative to someone who already believes in god or an ID, than evidence that presents a distinct “undeniable – appearance of design”,(Susskind)’, or as agnostic, Paul Davies says, “it looks like a fix!”.
A judge might be convinced that a superior alien intelligence that has harnessed the forces is more plausible than Lenny’s incomplete and unfalsifiable pet theory, but the most that you’ll get in this direction would be a difference of opinion among agnostic an atheist physicists, (not to mention Miller et.al.,), so equal time is the minimum that is called for by evidence that has nothing to do with how pretty you might think that something is.
To me, an agnostic, it looks like there is a very obvious cosmological principle that scientists refuse to recognize and properly investigate, and that is only because they see god in any such interpretation of the evidence, so they only know enough about the subject to reject it.
Again, this has absoutely nothing to do with aesthetics (or god), the physics is highly pointed in nature:
http://evolutionarydesign.blogspot.com/2007/02/goldilocks-enigma-again.html
The problem goes deeper than the politics of most will allow them to admit.
— island · Feb 3, 12:06 AM · #
Good stuff. Alan, you write:
There is a difference. Wilson’s concepts are entirely reducible to backlog theory. This is not true for theistic concepts like “God” and “Divine.” Here’s Quine in “Pursuit of Truth”, on the latter kind of word:
But here’s the upshot, which Coyne et. al. forget or haven’t learned: we will never have, can never have, “sufficient evidence” to clinch the system. “What the empirical under-determination of global science shows is that there are various defensible ways of conceiving the world.” (pg. 102).
Science is the only language that confronts the problem of heteroglossia. It does this by admitting only those propositions which are reducible to intersubjective observation sentences — its limit and usefulness rolled into one.
Will you forgive me one last quote?
— JA · Feb 3, 12:19 AM · #
Recently a retired Lutheran pastor said to me: “I don’t know any intelligent people who believe in Creationism.” I suppose I will appear backwards and unintelligent, and while I personally withhold belief—as both outside my capacity to know and as irrelevant to my faith—as to the process by which the Creator created, I fail to see the problem with young-earthers.
God is perfectly capable of creating an ancient world in an instant. Just as he could make children of Abraham from stones (Luke 3:8), if He chose, and if He did they would not be like aliens in a Edgar suit (Men in Black reference); they would be the real thing. Likewise, if He chose He could create in an instant and ancient world with extinct species who had never even lived.
Ok, now that you’re convinced I’m an ignorant fundie, I believe that much belief in certain Christian circles is driven more by a desire to appear sophisticated, urbane and savvy than being derived by any real engagement with either science or Scripture.
Again, while I genuinely withhold conviction as to the process of creation, I will not denigrate any who believe in a young earth. Why, I believe in something far, far more absurd than that: I believe that the One who created all that was made (John 1:3) actually became flesh and blood (John 1:14), died, and, get this, rose from the dead.
I am a huge fan of Mr. Jacobs and have been reading his stuff in Books and Culture, First Things and on-line, not to mention his books, for years, and while his thinking, and those like him, resonates with me and is very close to my own style of engaging with religion and culture, I’ll be burned at a stake and mauled by lions and while a griffon-vulture eats my liver before I consider my brothers and sisters in Christ who believe in a young earth as people I need to distance myself from so I gain the approval of the intelligentsia, the mirror image of a pastor sucking down a beer to appear one of the guys.
— Bo Grimes · Feb 3, 05:15 AM · #
The term “anthropic principle” has been overused and used in too many ways to do anyone much good at this point. But let’s strip it down to this: surely, if intelligent perception is something that can happen only under certain physical conditions — namely, those necessary for the organization of matter and energy into the complex processes that underlie cognition and experience — then intelligent, perceptive beings are always going to find themselves in such conditions; and that is not a fact that needs God to explain it. Right?
— Christopher M · Feb 3, 07:07 AM · #
Forgive me the brief intrusion, but I see comments like this all the time, and they are more common when not in a good environment such as this one:
Island:
“I personally see this auto-reaction as being much more detrimental to science than anything that fanatics have ever done.”
Michael Straight:
“And Alan, we don’t need to point to Dawkins to demonstrate that evolutionary theory is often wrenched out of it’s proper scientific context and use as a stick to beat religious people. H.L. Mencken did it first and did it better.”
In an age where pseudoscience is constantly being inserted into curricula and less than 100 years since it was punished in the Scopes trial, and in an era where there are still state Constitutions forbidding those who don’t acknowledge God, or any god, from holding office, I find it laughable that such sentiments are so prevalent. What have atheists or evolutionists really even tried to accomplish? A Quixotic law suit here, a pile of books criticizing religion there, a lot of arguing, etc. And yet no major effort by evolutionists or atheists has gotten even remotely close to imposing its will on the unwilling in the U.S. These sentiments above seem to me to be the worst form of concern trolling. More often than not, the real consequential results have been when a-theism or evolution has been successfully challenged by theists or creationists.
Of course, this is independent of the debate on its merits. But as a side issue, I find all of the complaining about “how inappropriate atheists or evolutionary biologists are in defending their ideas” and “how poorly they damage their own case, and if only they’d just shut up and go along with everything they’d be just fine or at least better off”. I seem to recall a passage about motes and beams somewhere.
Oh, wait, hold on just a second. I have to go answer the door and explain to the Mormon evangelists that it is a waste of time to threaten me with hell for not accepting salvation. This happens all the time, and I live in freaking Taiwan! (It will come as no surprise that the recently evangelized here are more hostile to the usual suspects of cosmology and biology post conversion.)
— LwPhD · Feb 3, 10:17 AM · #
I find Dr. Lw’s lamentations against the believers’ perception of persecution to be particularly risible and ironic, considering that his own persecution complex is so much more tortured and acute. I don’t support creationism in science curricula either, but an alternative explanation alongside evolution is hardly persecution. Nor are evangelists footsoldiers of the Christianist dystopia, but are at worst somewhat pesky (and I have never been threatened with damnation). The belief requirement for office holders I grant is regrettable, but it all seems a rather flimsy basis for a narrative of atheistic persecution.
I can think of no popular figure that has denigrated nonbelief in the way Lw imagines to be prevalent—the likes of Falwell and Robertson, while popular in their niche, are hardly pop culture icons. Meanwhile there are countless figures whose hostilities against religion become mainstays in our culture: Dawkins, Mencken, Christopher Hitchens, P.Z. Myers, Stephen J. Gould, Bill Maher, James Cameron, Penn Jillette. All of whom feed into a general culture that at best misunderstands conventional religion and at worst makes it a marker for crudity, ignorance, and intolerance.
— Blar · Feb 3, 04:01 PM · #
Coyne may think that nothing that is not testable can be true — though I surely hope not — but Giberson obviously holds to the much more defensible notion that some things are true even though they cannot be falsified.
Another example is the axiom of reflexivity.
The question is one of trust. I trust the axiom of reflexivity because everything depends on it, I know where it came from, and I can experience in my own mind what Godel referred to as “the force of its truth.”
Why trust religion at all, knowing as we do its origins in the mind of a highly fallible primate? Even if I replace the latter with “prophet”, and posit God as Revelator, I’m still left with the dreary fact that I haven’t been given a highly articulate, highly complex prophesy to experience.
Which leaves me with this conclusion: when provenance is the focus, trust in any religion is problematic.
— JA · Feb 3, 11:53 PM · #
Why trust religion at all, knowing as we do its origins in the mind of a highly fallible primate?
Doesn’t science have its origins in that same fallible mind?
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 4, 12:48 AM · #
Doesn’t science have its origins in that same fallible mind?
Of course, as a human insight that elevates method over result. Science is a conscious choice to be checked by, and rely on, intersubjective data only.
My point: method matters most, and religion has no method. As you say, this says nothing about “truth.” However, it has a lot to do with the issue of trust.
— JA · Feb 4, 01:54 AM · #
Of course, as a human insight that elevates method over result. Science is a conscious choice to be checked by, and rely on, intersubjective data only.
Only in some realms of experience, of course. There is no method by which you can determine, for instance, whether the one you love truly loves you in return. And yet scientists perform that act of trust quite often, by getting married. Sometimes that trust proves to be warranted and sometimes it doesn’t, but few people refuse to get married on the grounds that the hypotheses necessarily involved are untestable.
And, to return to your earlier point, if we have reason to doubt religion because it is the product of a fallible primate mind, then we are obliged to doubt science in precisely the same way. On the other hand, the logical consistency I am recommending would itself be suspect for the same reasons, and that suspicion would be suspect, ad infinitum. So if you think that science is reliably truth-conducive — as I certainly do — you should probably not go on too much about the dubious products of fallible primate minds. That produces an infinite loop.
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 4, 02:22 AM · #
I’m coming to see that atheism is radical.
— slessor · Feb 4, 02:36 AM · #
Alan, at the risk of making this discussion an infinite loop, let me respond to a couple of your points.
Actually, it seems there is (or will be).
Of course. Propositions in science are hypothesis, which we test and compare and scrutinize in public by appealing to objective (intersubjective) data. That’s the whole point.
So if you think that science is reliably truth-conducive — as I certainly do — you should probably not go on too much about the dubious products of fallible primate minds. That produces an infinite loop.
I never said any different. First, a new observation can only prove a theory wrong, not right. Second, we have limited and idiosyncratic ways of receiving information from the external world. Third, any reduction of reality to language — verbal or mental — experiences something functionally equivalent to lossy compression. We also can never be sure that the theory we use is the “best” one (in terms of performance, isomorphism, whatever). Any serious epistemology takes this into account.
Also, I’m not a Cartesian who believes de omnibus dubitandum is possible or wise. I understand there are certain things we have to presume just to get off the ground, and that once in the air we “pull the ladder up behind us.” I’ve said all this before, I think.
The question is, at what altitude are you comfortable starting the inquiry? I’ll give you that the rules of math, logic and language, and concepts like information, must first be given. At the bottom, we are forced to be pragmatic — at the bottom.
These are leaps of faith, unfortunate and necessary. Because they’re so unfortunate, I try to limit their size and number.
— JA · Feb 4, 03:38 AM · #
Hypothesis, hypotheses, whatever. Anyway, thanks for the discussion.
— JA · Feb 4, 03:42 AM · #
I apologize for the treble posts, but this late in the thread I hope you don’t mind. I just have one question.
With respect, why do you think revelation is a reliable source of information about the world and our place in it? I’d love to hear your thoughts, if you have time.
— JA · Feb 4, 03:55 AM · #
Propositions in science are hypothesis, which we test and compare and scrutinize in public by appealing to objective (intersubjective) data. That’s the whole point.
That’s a point, but not the one I was making. My point was that, if notions that arise “in the mind of a highly fallible primate” are ipso facto dubious, then the very notions you’re appealing to here of objectivity and intersubjectivity are necessarily equally dubious. But you don’t think those concepts are dubious. Therefore your invocation of “provenance” is a red herring. It doesn’t help us to account for the fact that among the many ideas we have, all of which arose in the same primate brain, some are a hell of a lot better than others.
My own beliefs about the proper role and the limits of revelation could be characterized as 89% Pascal’s Pensées and 11% Richard Swinburne’s Revelation (but the Swinburne makes a lot more sense if you read his trilogy on theism first).
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 4, 04:50 AM · #
Alan, I must be explaining myself badly, because we seem to be talking past each other.
Science embraces the idea that everything is equally dubious at the moment it is postulated; instead, it concerns itself with the method of discarding the false and honing the reliability of what remains.
Can we agree that scientific and religious claims are, initially, equally dubious? I’ll settle for that.
Also, Pensees is an incredible work, but I haven’t read Swinburne. I’ll have to fix that.
— JA · Feb 4, 05:23 AM · #
JA — two responses to your comments. First, not only does the purely scientific viewpoint require us to believe that an ape brain of limited power can deduce basic truths about the universe, it has to confront the impressive body of evidence that the scientific method, as we currently understand it, demands a linear mode of thought at odds with the method of problem solving our brains actually evolved for. Malcolm Gladwell gives a hint of this in Snap, but I believe Rupert Ross gives a much better insight into the way non-technological hunter-gatherers thought (and think) in his book Dancing with a Ghost.
While anyone who rejects a Creator based on the insights derived from science has to adapt to the reality that the mode of thought which gives rise to science comes, by that logic, from a limited ape brain, functioning in a manner basically at odds with its own evolutionary design, religion does not suffer from any such a problem. Because, if you believe the tenets of Christianity, faith constitutes our response to an invitation to enter into a relationship with a divine Creator and through that relationship, with all of creation. And the invitation to that relationship, that interaction of Grace (the divine gift) and Faith comes not from a crudely evolved computer made of meat, but from a Creator who designed us specifically to respond to exactly that invitation.
— John Spragge · Feb 4, 10:59 AM · #
John Spragge: demands a linear mode of thought at odds with the method of problem solving our brains actually evolved for.
You’re talking about System One, which is fast, cheap and automatic. System Two is slow, expensive, linear and regulative of System One. When we test for intelligence, we mostly test System Two (rightly or wrongly).
And I don’t reject a Creator based on the insights of science; I’m agnostic on the creator question. I just find the claims other humans make about their particular brand of Creator to be highly unreliable.
the purely scientific viewpoint require us to believe that an ape brain of limited power can deduce basic truths about the universe
We’re not anywhere close to the basic truths. Also, are you saying that Quantum Electrodynamics did not come from an ape brain? Are we now receiving our physics from God as well?
— JA · Feb 4, 03:22 PM · #
@Blair
First of all, I’m not accusing anyone of having a “complex” regarding persecution or anything else. That bit of ad hominem verbiage (which implicitly evokes abnormal mental states or behavior) is all your doing.
Second, your comments indicate a lack of acknowledgment of both the magnitude and of how pushy/ubiquitous Christians who evangelize are. Do a search on “taiwan missions” in Google. On the first page, you’ll find a link to this missionary site. (it was the second link for me) After clicking into the English section, you can click on the link called Mission of an Isolated Beautiful Island.
What ensues is the story of a missionary trip Taiwan in 2006, and a fairly typical one if my experience with youth missions as a child are any guide. By the standards of missions, this one looks pretty tame. Here are two excerpts:
«The targets of our missions are primarily less fortunate and rural elementary and middle school students, and we use English education as the means for spreading the gospel.»
«Most Taiwanese people worship a folk religion consisting of belief in ghosts, spirits, and ritualistic superstition. On the first and fifteenth day of each month, they participate in idol worship rituals, the most extreme of which is the “Demon Festival” occurring annually on July 15th of the Chinese calendar. They believe that on this day, ghosts and spirits are released from the underworld, and that people need to provide meat and fruit to appease these “lonely ghosts and spirits.” [trimmed extended discussion of Taiwanese beliefs for brevity.] At the missions site in the town of Da-Jia, we visited the controversial Jen-Lang Temple. In addition to all the statues of gods and spirits in the temple, in the basement was a pure gold Mazu statue that weighed a full ton. Do you remember the golden calf from the book of Exodus? Our revered God despises the worship of idols! Not only do the Taiwanese worship in temples, they also worship at home and in the office, where they are led by company managers, especially in the banking industry. On a hot and oppressive July day, you will find them in front of their homes or offices burning spirit money amidst high-flying flames. How dangerous and scary it is to see that both the air and people’s hearts are being polluted by superstition and idolatry, and suffocated by this evil.»
Now, you tell me, can you honestly say there wouldn’t be an enormous outcry if some atheist organization traveled the U.S. and proclaimed the practices of Church attendance to be despicable idolatry and called the beliefs of Christianity evil and polluting superstitions? And they openly admit that they prey on the poor with powerful inducements like English training, which is a very useful skill for higher paying white collar jobs in Taiwan. And of course, their pupils are to believe all of this on faith. And this isn’t just limited to Asia. While in college I first willingly participated in similar activity. After de-converting, I have since been approached on a regular basis by perfect strangers who volunteer similar sentiments out of the blue. Consider this sentiment:
«Sixty-one percent of those questioned said they would be less likely to support a presidential candidate who did not believe in God. Forty-five percent said the same for a Muslim contender.»
So, atheists are 33% more distrusted than Muslims. Add that to that these facts: in the 1950s the government suddenly decided that the pledge, military oaths, and our money should all now endorse God; many state constitutions STILL require belief in a deity as a test for office (unconstitutional since 1961 fortunately); many otherwise fine universities require you to sign a contract confirming your faith while no accredited university in the U.S. to my knowledge requires the same of evolution or big bang cosmology or anything else for that matter. Imagining the converse of any of these situations is simply beyond plausibility. No, there is no persecution complex here. There is however a very clear double-standard that isn’t friendly to the godless.
Finally, as a scientist, I welcome any alternative to evolution you have to offer. Do you have anything to offer? Links? Important to demonstrate would be how using the alternative would in any way, shape or form predict or explain natural phenomena that would be of use to somebody. Can the theory be used to make more accurate predictions about flu virus protein coat “changes” (since we can’t call it evolution anymore)? Will it help with gene discovery in new genomes? Will it help describe the prevalence of sickle cell anemia? Does it describe a body of theory that will be useful in understanding the progression of cancer from healthy cells to diseased ones? Will it help create new treatments for cancer?
Even cooler, would there be practical issues that evolution currently can’t even address that would be easily encapsulated in this alternative? If so, give me the links! Come on. You’re on the spot. I’ve got a few ideas of my own. They don’t destroy evolution, but they do require modification of our understanding of evolution. But, since you are saying alternatives should be allowed, I’ll give you the pleasure of going first.
— LwPhD · Feb 4, 03:29 PM · #
Yes, JA, I think we are talking past each other. I have been trying to insist that “if we have reason to doubt religion because it is the product of a fallible primate mind, then we are obliged to doubt science in precisely the same way.” But you are not confronting the possibility that science itself can be doubted, only that particular claims can be doubted. I am trying to show that the line of argument you started with doesn’t help you, because it causes us to doubt not just whether a particular claim is true, but whether method itself is reliable. You keep asserting that science provides methods that lead us closer to the truth, but your “provenance” argument creates too much epistemological skepticism for you to be so confident in scientific methods or any methods. So my suggestion is that we drop the “provenance” notion, since it applies equally to all our ideas, and therefore could not possibly help us to discriminate between the true ones and the false ones.
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 4, 04:02 PM · #
So my suggestion is that we drop the “provenance” notion, since it applies equally to all our ideas, and therefore could not possibly help us to discriminate between the true ones and the false ones.
That it applies equally is my point. Reliability, then, becomes a post hoc methodological issue, a “selection” issue. That’s why “provenance” is helpful as a starting point.
When provenance is clarified as equally dubious, equally uncertain, for both religious and scientific insight, the emphasis shifts to ways we can discriminate between hypotheses — i.e., it shifts to method. When that shift happens, religion has nothing to recommend it, whereas science does (its use of observation sentences as a final checkpoint).
This is why Nietzsche wrote “The distinguishing feature of our nineteenth century is not the triumph of science, but the triumph of the scientific method over science . . . The most valuable knowledge is always discovered last: but the most valuable knowledge consists of methods.”
To search an unknown space, you need a recursive method, an algorithm.
Another way of looking at it (borrowing a bit from Manzi): let’s say I give two men, Science and Religion, a set of numbers, 1 to 1000, and tell them to choose the correct number (there is only one). Religion guesses 3, Science guesses 10. Which is right?
A focus on provenance clears the air by showing that neither men have legitimate reasons to believe in their numbers. Religion chose 3 because of the holy trinity. Science chose 10 because his employer uses base-10. While these reasons might feel compelling to each man respectively, it’s clear, it’s obvious, that each man’s reasons are irrelevant to the task at hand. Without more information, we can say that both guesses are equally unreliable. Both men are in the same boat.
The question then shifts to, Where and how can they get more information? Clearly, one way the men can get more information is to ask me whether their numbers are right or not. Science does this, Religion does not.
Asking is a method.
— JA · Feb 4, 05:00 PM · #
Apparently, JA, you are simply unable to conceive that method itself could be questioned. Okay, I give up on that one. But now you are defining the religious person as someone who never asks questions. This marks a serious deterioration in your thinking about these issues. Of the making of straw men there is, apparently, no end. . . .
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 4, 05:19 PM · #
Alan, give me a break. Of course methods can be questioned. If the debate was between one method or another, that would be grand. Of course, that would move the issue another level up, so that we’d need to come up with a systematic method for discriminating between methods (and so on).
Please, Alan, since your thinking is pristine on this issue: what is the “method of asking” for religion? What questions are posed to the external world, what answers can we expect?
1 in 999 is closer to the truth than 1 in 1000. You see this, yes?
— JA · Feb 4, 05:29 PM · #
If you think the very idea of method itself can be questioned, good luck with that one.
— JA · Feb 4, 05:31 PM · #
Alan, you and JA are having a very interesting discussion. If I may inject a question. Could you elaborate on your last statement in the context of the following:
Many scientists are content to pursue the modest goal of using a method that incrementally improves our understanding of the observable world.
Now, we may have constrained ourselves by restricting our interests to the observable world. But given that constraint, do you still have these epistemological objections?
I’m not quite sure I follow your objection. This isn’t me being disingenuous. I really lost you. The scientific method seeks to constantly question itself and its findings within an apparently limited sphere of investigation. It is a recursive process. But it is adopted based on utility, so if something with more utility (ie better predictions of the natural world) arises, it will be incorporated.
Anyway, just curious.
— LwPhD · Feb 4, 06:04 PM · #
I’m not sure I’m following the discussion of “method” as JA means to define it, but it seems to me that religion very much has its own method(s). Of course, the particular religion shapes the method of inquiry, but might one include in “the Christian method” things like conservative textual criticism, a hermeneutic of self-abnegation, meditative contemplation, etc.
Will these methods explain differentiation among species? No. Will they arrive at truths about the purpose and end of human existence? I’m betting so. Is the whole problem that I’m being glib in that distinction?
— Matt Frost · Feb 4, 06:17 PM · #
Lw and JA: I have had nothing critical to say about scientific method. Nothing. Not one word. Nada. Niente. For myself, I believe that the development of scientific methods of inquiry is one of the greatest achievements of humanity, and is reliably productive of knowledge.
What I said was that JA — not me, JA — was, without realizing it, pursuing a line of argument that implicitly casts doubt upon humans’ ability to have secure knowledge, which as a supporter of scientific knowledge he doesn’t want to do. I have said this about ten times now without making any discernible impact on JA’s consciousness.
(It occurs to me that C. S. Lewis makes a related — not the same, but a related — argument in the third chapter of of book Miracles, “The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism.” Maybe he explains himself better than I do.)
And JA, if you think the very idea of method cannot be doubted, you need to get out more.
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 4, 08:14 PM · #
Feyerabend? Really? And you think he was challenging the very idea of method? Perhaps you should stay in more, and read.
Anyway, adieu, mon frere. Alas, it was not meant to be.
— JA · Feb 4, 08:45 PM · #
I am still amazed that someone like Professor Miller can be a strong advocate of evolution, writing a standard textbook in the subject, and yet be attacked by atheists like Dawkins because Miller believes evolution is compatible with his beliefs as a Catholic. Since Dawkins is definitely NOT within his area of expertise when he talks about the content of religious belief, while Miller is an expert on what he believes and on what his church teaches, Dawkins needs to have more modesty about his claims to be smarter than Miller. Dawkins indeed, seems to provide evidence that at least some atheists are of that view because they cannot conceive that anyone could be smarter than they are, which automatically excludes God from existing.
Certainly Dawkins’ behavior toward a fellow scientist, who has tried to join with him in the enterprise of defending evolution, does not commend atheism as an ethical guide.
The claim of Dawkins that evolution allows one to be “an intellectually satisfied atheist” ignores the fact that evolution, by definition, says nothing about the origin of life per se. Variation and natural selection can only happen once living organisms exist that have inheritable genes that can mutate. Life on earth requires a living cell, with both working mechanisms and DNA code that describes those mechanisms. The only thing in nature that can create a living cell is another living cell. There is not a single theory that has attained any kind of general scientific status of having been tested and proved that can explain how natural unguided processes can go from nonliving matter to living cells. The claim of atheists that this can happen or must have happened is based solely on their faith in materialism, not in any logical deduction from evidence. So at the root of the tree of evolution is a question that scientists have so far proven incapable of answering.
A side note to LwPhd in Taiwan: Mormon missionaries do NOT tell people they will go to hell if they don’t convert to their church. Mormon doctrine teaches that most people who live decent lives are bound for an eternal destiny that exceeds anyone’s expectations for heaven, that only people who choose felony level evil deeds will receive punishment, and that even then that punishment will end after a period of time and even they will live in a state far better than most of mankind in the present world. Mormon missionaries invite people to join in a more challenging way of life that, they believe, will yield better than average results and opportunities in the eternities.
Further, Mormon missionaries are not taught to denigrate the people of the nations they work in. First of all, a good share of the other missionaries they work with are natives of each country. Second, they go through intensive language and cultural training to learn to respect those cultures. Third, they are not in Taiwan or Japan (where I worked as a volunteer misisonary) for a month or two; they are there for two years, living among the natives, including the natives who are leaders of the local congregations of their church, and they form lifelong bonds of friendship with them. In the Mormon church, some of the young men and women from Taiwan even go to other countries to serve as missionaries, including the USA. And when they return home and go to college, they become scientists at the same rate as other people, including biologists.
— coltakashi · Feb 5, 12:54 AM · #
Just so everyone knows that JA was bluffing in that last comment, here are a few representative passages from Feyerabend:
“The idea that science can, and should, be run according to fixed and universal rules, is both unrealistic and pernicious.”“All methodologies have their limitations and the only ‘rule’ that survives is ‘anything goes’.”
“There is no special method that guarantees success or makes it probable.”
“A science that insists on possessing the only correct method and the only acceptable results is ideology and must be separated from the state, and especially from the process of education. One may teach it, but only to those who have decided to make this particular superstition their own. “
So yes, Feyerabend shows that it is possible to doubt method in itself. Feyerabend is also full of it, but that’s a story for another day.
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 5, 03:29 PM · #
Alan, I’m baffled by what you think “doubting method in itself” means. Clearly you aren’t using those words the way other people use them. And your reading of Feyerabend . . . well, I hope you’re not teaching it.
— JA · Feb 5, 04:52 PM · #
Come on, JA, stop the bluffing. Seriously. Bluffing is the next-to-last refuge of a scoundrel. If you can make an argument that someone who calls commitment to scientific method “unrealistic,” “pernicious,” and a “superstition” is not doubting method, let’s hear it. But this faux-superior tut-tutting isn’t fooling anybody. Put up or shut up, please.
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 5, 05:43 PM · #
And while we’re at it, JA, why are you even picking this fight? Of course it’s possible to doubt method itself. Every possible claim has its doubters, though as you rightly say, no one can doubt everything. What a silly thing to dispute. A more substantive question would be, since we apparently agree that scientific method is reliably productive of truth, is whether people can get reliable knowledge in non-methodological ways. That’s an interesting question (about which I’ve given my view above).
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 5, 06:08 PM · #
Interesting discussion. To me the crucial points is that reason has many different methods, and that these methods are dictated by the object of knowledge. For instance, JA should reflect on the fact that all his comments here fall well outside the scope of the scientific method as he himself defines it. Either there is a “philosophical method” or he should shut up. By the same token, there is certainly a “religious method” which reflects the nature of religious questions. Except, if you don’t ask the questions, you will never understand the method. A good book on the subject is “The religious sense” by L. Giussani.
— Carlo · Feb 7, 12:30 AM · #
“By the same token, there is certainly a “religious method” which reflects the nature of religious questions. “
Until you or anyone else can differentiate between various “religious methods” and “making shit up”, this is sadly untrue. This seems to be the key to the argument — I can spend a good five minutes on the word processor developing a theology via “religious methods” (a few marijuana cigs in this case) no less plausible of an explanation of religious questions than, say, Zoroastrianism.
— Soma · Feb 7, 04:21 AM · #
With that attitude, do you really want an answer?
Anyway, the marijuana cigs won’t lead you to result you yourself can take seriously. Ultimately for most of us religious methods boils down to the ways to assess the credibility of external witness, whose claims can then be verified existentially in our lives (in terms of esthetic, moral, rational fulfillment).
The first part BTW (ways to test witness credibility, also know as faith) is very common in many fields, including the hard sciences.
— Carlo · Feb 7, 09:24 AM · #
The claim that God is at once omnipotent and loving would seem to be disproved by, oh, I don’t know… The Holocaust? The Sept. 11 attacks? Plane crashes? The Israel/Palestine debacle? Hurricane Katrina? Famines?
No God which allows such pain, suffering and slaughter can possibly be described as “loving.”
Ah, you say, but God has A Plan. Wonderful. I’m sure the 2,000 people who died in a fiery pile of steel in Lower Manhattan think that plan is just awesome. So do the hijackers, for whom the Plan has apparently earmarked 40 virgins each.
Let’s assume for a moment that there is a God. I posit that Her failure to stop human suffering renders Her fundamentally unworthy of my worship.
— Travis Mason-Bushman · Feb 7, 09:43 AM · #
Hey ya’ll—I didn’t realize the bulk of this discussion had moved from Manzi’s post to this new one by Jacobs, so I’m gonna post what I just said over there with a special addendum that is specifically germane to the new contributions made by Carlo and others here:
Okay, this discussion has progressed to an interesting point of disagreement. It seems like Jim Manzi and Alan Jacobs—and maybe John Spragge—are very interested in preserving room for God in the universe by postulating that he may be present in some location or dimension that we cannot presently find or perceive as human beings. They both find Jerry Coyne’s article too triumphalist in its atheism, it seems, because of the logical impossibility of declaring the search for God fruitless when we know we cannot see or know all that is. So let’s go back to Jerry Coyne’s main reason for publicly airing his possibly overdetermined atheism in the New Republic article: it was a review of two books that attempt to trace a pathway from scientific fact back to God’s existence. What do you guys think of GIBERSON AND MILLER’S logic? And, as believers in God (or at least agnostics, I don’t want to pigeonhole you just yet) who do not see a conflict between religious faith in God and belief in scientific truth, what do you think of Giberson and Miller’s enterprise in those two books?
Now the addendum:
I think we shouldn’t resort to Feyerabend here. From what I can tell, if we jettisoned the scientific method, with its intersubjective statements, etc., we could still do science, but we’d be doing it willy-nilly, each in our own ivory tower, playing around with volatile substances, engineered technologies, and intriguing explanations for the behavior thereof, and then jealously guarding our results and self-concepts of our own scientific competence for our own reasons.
The discussion of different methods (scientific, philosophical, religious) for gathering knowledge is far better than the detour into Feyerabend. Alan, Carlo, don’t you guys think that there is much to be gained from the religious method of gathering knowledge? Let’s make a collective attempt to characterize what the religious method is, so that it can take an equally dignified place BESIDE the scientific method. It seems that you are saying that the religious method has proven quite useful for gathering knowledge about morality, ethics, and what it is to be human. Am I correct in inferring that you guys are holding out for the possibility that our scientific discoveries (whether or not informed by Scientific Method, if we must give Feyerabend credence) might eventually converge on some of the knowledge about what it is to be human, including specific facts like the origins of life and nature of the universe, that your traditions have already discovered using the religious method? So let’s describe the religious method further and then compare it to the scientific method: from what I can gather, the religious method starts with divine revelations that prophets communicate to humankind. Once we have the revelations, we start to study and analyze them…please fill in the rest?
— Johnny Sagan · Feb 7, 07:42 PM · #
As I surf the internet today, I’m listening to the Nova episode about the Dover School Board trial with one ear. At the end of Chapter 9, a quote leapt out at me: “If God is real, then Faith and Reason should be in harmony with one another.” I am an agnostic on the existence of God, but that is my hope exactly, should God turn out to be real. Until such time, I want creation science and the theory of intelligent design to be kept out of our public school curriculum under the Establishment Clause.
— Johnny Sagan · Feb 7, 07:57 PM · #
Johnny, I don’t think anyone has “resorted to Feyerabend,” have they?
I won’t speak for religions in general — in large part because I don’t think the word “religion” is a meaningful one — but I would say that Christianity has rarely developed “methods” of religious knowledge, and when it has that has usually been a bad sign. (“Follow these seven steps to perfect union with God!”) Christianity has ways of coming to know God, but they are rarely method-based.
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 8, 02:19 AM · #
Okay, Mr. Jacobs! After reading your hilarious post The Master Narrative of Secularization, and seeing that you revere the brilliant W.H. Auden, I get it now. You just want to preserve an American Scene where Christianity and science can casually coexist with great literature. You’re not afraid of religious fascism under such a dispensation. And you don’t suffer fools gladly. And I think you hold out hope that God will be revealed one day as we humans continue our work. Cool. “Reveal Yourself, reveal Yourself Almighty,” in the words of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Let me know what you think of Giberson.
— Johnny Sagan · Feb 8, 05:12 AM · #
That’s what met-hodos means in ancient Greek: “hodos” means precisely “way”. The fact the we identify the word method with ‘seven easy steps to losing weight’ is just a sign that we are all children of Descartes.
The bottom line is that we all use everyday “ways of knowing” that do not fall within the methods of the natural sciences but are still perfectly reasonable. Scientists do too: I could never perform the Stern-Gerlach experiment but I have determined that the sources I have studied about it are quite reliable, and I am certain that I can believe what they tell me. Indirect knowledge is the rule, not the exception. In religious matters the question is: by what criteria should I assess the credibility of a religious witness? I don’t think there is one simple answer, but I don’t think that dismissing the problem a priori makes sense either.
— Carlo · Feb 8, 01:10 PM · #
Thanks, Johnny. (I think. Sometimes it’s hard to read tone on the internet.)
In religious matters the question is: by what criteria should I assess the credibility of a religious witness?
Carlo, you are right! I rejoice to see someone putting the key question so clearly and precisely. In regards to “method,” I think we are the children of Descartes, whether we like it or not, so that any true method must possess procedural regularity (as dictionary definitions of the word reveal). In declining methodology, I merely want to say that insofar as we can validate the claims of Christianity we won’t do so in the ways that we validate scientific claims. How we do validate such claims will vary widely according to the case, but I think there will be room for strategies as varied as legal (or legal-like) reasoning and appeals to what Jonathan Edwards called “religious affections.”
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 8, 02:04 PM · #
The bottom line is that we all use everyday “ways of knowing” that do not fall within the methods of the natural sciences but are still perfectly reasonable. Scientists do too: I could never perform the Stern-Gerlach experiment but I have determined that the sources I have studied about it are quite reliable, and I am certain that I can believe what they tell me. Indirect knowledge is the rule, not the exception. In religious matters the question is: by what criteria should I assess the credibility of a religious witness? I don’t think there is one simple answer, but I don’t think that dismissing the problem a priori makes sense either.
Exactly.
— Tickletext · Feb 8, 04:21 PM · #
Alan, it is hard to read tone on the internet! But my final comment on this thread was indeed intended to be friendly and complementary of you as a cultural critic and teacher. Over on the other thread, the one under Manzi’s byline, I wrote a final comment in which I was trying to be a little more sarcastic and butch about what I still consider to be the T.O.O., the Tendentiousness and Obstreperousness, of conservative cultural critics trying to eviscerate an article like Coyne’s on these kinds of academic-philosophical lines. Better to stand up for the details of what YOU believe in about the matters in question: “One cannot be coherently religious and scientific at the same time” and “The reconciliation [of God and evolution] never works”, I think.
— Johnny Sagan · Feb 8, 05:05 PM · #
OR Obstreperousness—pride of coinage.
— Johnny Sagan · Feb 8, 06:14 PM · #
Nothing to add, really – just that this post and comments make for excellent reading. Thanks to all sides.
— FP · Feb 8, 11:10 PM · #
By what rationale may you assert that one hypothesis [God] is more speculative than the other [multiverse] when there is direct scientific evidence for neither?
The multiverse hypothesis merely suggests that there may be more than one of what we observe everyday. The God hypothesis suggests that there is some being completely, categorically, ontologically different from what we observe everyday. If you’re just talking about explanations for why we live in a universe whose fundamental constants are within the narrow ranges necessary for life like us (without dragging in other reasons to believe in God), then the idea of “this is one of many universes” seems much simpler to me than “there exists a transcendent creator”.
The anthropic principle is an observation about probability (What are the odds that all these constants would have the values they do? And you can’t really talk about probability unless you know the numerator. Having a coin come up heads 10 times in a row is remarkable, unless you flip a coin a thousand times, in which case it’s almost inevitable.
The first thing you should ask when someone tells you that something was unlikely is “How many opportunities have there been for this to happen?” So you can’t call the idea of a multiverse some wild speculation when the idea of asking “How many universes are there?” is presupposed by the observation that the values of the universe’s physical constants seem “unlikely.”
— Michael Straight · Feb 9, 11:01 PM · #
Would you like to elaborate on how exactly you validate the claims of Christianity?
— Peter Beattie · Feb 10, 03:34 AM · #
I think you may well be wrong on two counts here. First, I don’t believe that you are familiar with Wilson’s theory to a degree where you could genuinely judge it as “highly speculative”. At least you give no reason to infer such familiarity. Second, it is certainly not necessarily highly speculative. As for example Nesse and Williams show in their Why We Get Sick (“The Adaptationist Program”), adaptationist thinking along the lines of E.O. Wilson need not, indeed must not, be in the form of just-so stories, but has to produce testable predictions. And they give plenty of real-life examples how that can be achieved.
If you want to take issue with Wilson’s theory on those grounds, I should like to see your specific reasons for doing so.
Of course they’re not doing the same thing, and to suggest so in relation to the ludicrous notion of citing the anthropic principle as evidence of all things for some kind of creation is disingenuous, I think. As Coyne wrote, and with ample reason, scientists must base their explanations “on reason rather than on faith”. Even if Wilson’s biophilia idea were just a speculation, it is based on reason (the scientifically accepted concept of natural selection). Believing that the anthropic principle can be used as evidence for creation is certainly informed by faith in the very concept that was to be shown to be true, which in turn is informed only by a lamentable ignorance of both logic and statistics.
— Peter Beattie · Feb 10, 04:11 AM · #
Giberson talks about data that might or might not have an influence on his accepting a particular viewpoint. That viewpoint makes explicit reference to material processes and to how these processes actually work. If that isn’t a scientifically testable claim (which you might as well call a theory), then I don’t know what is.
What possible definition of the word “true” are you talking about? And your hoping that there is another kind of truth than the intersubjectively verifiable kind is neither here nor there. If you think a certain definition of “truth” that doesn’t do violence to the term is worthy of general consideration, then I think you should put it forth and let it be considered.
He is asserting something even worse: that he doesn’t want to be wrong and will close his eyes to any facts (the “data” he himself talks about) that might go against his personal prejudices. That is, at least to anyone with a passing acquaintance with Popper’s and Lakatos’s ideas, the textbook definition of intellectual dishonesty.
— Peter Beattie · Feb 10, 04:31 AM · #
Oh, and one more thing on your rehashing of the tired and cliched talking-point about “aggressiveness”:
Could you point to anything in e.g. The God Delusion that is actually aggressive? And if you please, how much space does that occupy as opposed to the non-aggressive stuff?
Must have been a hell of a moderate who is inflamed by reasoned opposition to his point of view. Pure lunacy…
— Peter Beattie · Feb 10, 04:41 AM · #
Alan,
Before the Feyerabend thing sprang up, you said:
Yes, JA, I think we are talking past each other. I have been trying to insist that “if we have reason to doubt religion because it is the product of a fallible primate mind, then we are obliged to doubt science in precisely the same way.”
But I think this is missing the point. We doubt religion because it is nothing more than the product of a fallible primate mind. We accept science because it is the product of a fallible primate mind, which produces results and predictions about the world, which can then be verified. So your statement may be logically coherent, but the premise is wrong.
Anyway. Rather than having you explain to me why you are not an atheist, I’d be more interested in having you explain why you are not a Hindu.
— William · Feb 10, 07:32 AM · #
I should have said:
We doubt religion because it is nothing more than the product of a fallible primate mind, and because there are multiple equally plausible contenders for religious truth, no clear way to choose between them, and a straightforward alternative.
Just to give a bit more context for the Hindu line.
— William · Feb 10, 07:35 AM · #
Peter, I think you make some very good points. In some cases I have expressed myself unclearly, and in some cases I think your reading of Giberson especially is probably better than mine. In still other cases I think your comments are off the mark, but I hesitate to respond because of your level of hostility. Your rhetorical attitude is a good example of what I mean by the aggression of the new atheist books. When you say that people who hold other views than yours are “intellectually dishonest” and that those views are “pure lunacy,” you’re setting yourself up as the unassailable arbiter of honesty and sanity, and implicitly demanding that your interlocutors prove their honesty and sanity before you will take their arguments seriously. (Hitchens does this on every page, Sam Harris on every other page, and Dawkins mainly in interviews.) (NB: That’s exaggeration for effect.)
You are demanding that people who hold views other than your own climb a higher hill than you are willing to climb. Suppose that I told you that your comments indicated to me that you are suffering demonic possession. Would you attempt to convince me that you are in fact not inhabited by Satan’s minions, or would you think that way too much trouble and walk away?
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 10, 02:43 PM · #
That’s very gracious of you. So you actually agree that Giberson was employing circular reasoning and that Coyne’s critique was in fact not so wide of the mark? ;>
Do you really think that sharply critizizing somebody’s ideas can be fairly described as hostility? I don’t think so: If you were to call an argument of mine idiotic, I should simply ask you for clarification. Because maybe it is — because some arguments actually are idiotic. And in any case, that should be able to be settled by discussion.
I certainly don’t think, for example, that certain arguments entertained by Miller, Giberson, and others should be banned — that, for me, would constitute hostility. And that’s a kind of hostility that quite a few self-professed religious people actually show against atheists. This is a free country, and free expression is its most fundamental right. But that includes the freedom to lampoon silly ideas.
You’ll have to take up your quibble with “intellectual dishonesty” with Popper and Lakatos, I’m afraid. And it was specifically directed at Giberson’s attempt to weasel out of the falsifiability requirement for a definitely testable claim. So I don’t really see how that can be classified as “aggression”.
And your saying that I attacked people simply because they “hold other views than [mine]” is an obvious and completely gratuitous misrepresentation of what I said. That, I think, might be classified as hostility.
As to the “prove their honesty” point: Giberson explicitly disavowed any honest and open discussion and put forward an a priory invalid argument. I wasn’t demanding that he prove his honesty, I was pointing out that he had already abrogated it. Don’t you see that those are two different things?
— Peter Beattie · Feb 10, 03:20 PM · #
Hi Peter! I’m just curious—you’re not Peter Beattie the ex-Premier of Queensland, are you? I thought I’d ask because, after all, one of my favorite pornographers, Tony Comstock, showed up on the comments to Alan’s more recent post about The Limits of Blogs—have you read that?: http://theamericanscene.com/2009/02/09/what-blogs-can-and-can-t-do. I think OUR views are simpatico, Peter, but Alan’s not going to give us the satisfaction of airing his views on the possible coexistence of the Christian God and the Laws of Nature. Not on a blog.
— Johnny Sagan · Feb 10, 03:25 PM · #
Hi Johnny: Nope, not him. I just nicked his name. (Huh, that’s why it’s called that… ;>) But I lived in Queensland for a while, so I thought it might be an apt choice. :)
— Peter Beattie · Feb 10, 03:31 PM · #
And you know what’s funny? Within hours of posting on The American Scene, I get an e-mail to the address I used to register here from the “American Family Association”. Yes, that’s right, that lovely propaganda outfit that beats the drum for “curing gays”, Ben Stein’s delusional movie “Expelled”, and their so-called “pro-life” agenda. Euch.
— Peter Beattie · Feb 10, 03:46 PM · #
You’ll have to take up your quibble with “intellectual dishonesty” with Popper and Lakatos, I’m afraid.
Come on, Peter. Don’t be like Chet, don’t be so determined to win every point that you’ll deny the obvious. You wrote, “That is, at least to anyone with a passing acquaintance with Popper’s and Lakatos’s ideas, the textbook definition of intellectual dishonesty.” You’re citing their authority to buttress a claim you are making. And that’s also a claim about a person, not about an idea. Ideas can’t be dishonest or lunatic, only people.
There’s just no point in debating people who think that a situation like this is about winning, rather than understanding. You seem to be that kind of guy, as far as I can tell. The cost-benefit ratios here are all wrong for me, as I was recently reminded by trying to deal with Chet. I could put in a lot of time with no possibility of getting anywhere. If you want to have a real conversation with me, you’ll just have to go about it in a different way. But if you merely want to “lampoon silly ideas,” well, that’s the sort of thing you can do by yourself. You won’t need me.
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 10, 06:15 PM · #
Alan, I actually have tried to understand your position, and in order to clarify it I asked six specific questions of you:
1. What possible definition of the word “true” are you talking about?
2. Could you point to anything in e.g. The God Delusion that is actually aggressive?
3. And if you please, how much space does that occupy as opposed to the non-aggressive stuff?
4. So you actually agree that Giberson was employing circular reasoning and that Coyne’s critique was in fact not so wide of the mark?
5. Do you really think that sharply critizizing somebody’s ideas can be fairly described as hostility?
6. I wasn’t demanding that he prove his honesty, I was pointing out that he had already abrogated it. Don’t you see that those are two different things?
They are pertinent to specific claims that you made, and I’m sincerely interested in your replies. Yet you have answered not a single one. In contrast, I have lampooned just two silly ideas, none of them actually yours. So how you think you can claim that I “merely want to ‘lampoon silly ideas’” escapes me.
As to your complaint about “winning every point”: I think Popper’s and Lakatos’s notion of “intellectual dishonesty” is a valid one and that anybody entering a public discussion should be held to that standard, viz. to be able to specify conditions under which they would reconsider their opinion. By referring to Popper and Lakatos, I was merely and explicitly pointing to their definition of the word “dishonesty” (not their authority, as you insisted), which they obviously applied to an argumentative strategy, not a person. Similarly, there obviously are loony ideas, not just people. And the “inflamed” remark actually was loony, since it not only wasn’t based on reason but actually stood reason and the very definitions of the words used on their heads.
I believe you can see that I am trying to argue a case here, because I happen to find the discussion Jerry Coyne started to be rather important. If your objections to Coyne’s points are valid, then I should like to know. And that is what I’m trying to find out.
— Peter Beattie · Feb 11, 05:12 PM · #
I still don’t trust you, Peter. I think the accumulated evidence of the blogosphere clearly shows that responding to pseudonymous blog commenters who throw around words like “loony” is not a sound practice. But, trusting soul that I am, I’ll give you one answer and one question.
In response to your number 1: It is true that the universe is approximately 14 billion years old. It is true that biological change occurs largely, if not exclusively, through natural selection. It is true that approximately six million Jews died in the Holocaust. It is true that Charles Manson and his Family killed Sharon Tate. It is true that my wife loves me. I believe all these things to be true, and to be true in the same way — as far as I know there’s only one way for something to be true — but they are not equally verifiable and they are not all verifiable in the same way. Some of these claims can be properly and clearly falsified, some cannot; all of them are capable of some degree of testing, but not all the same degree, and the means of testing will be different in each case. That’s my point about truth.
My question: Why is it “loony” to claim that moderate people can think one extreme group more friendly to them than a group on the opposite extreme? People who hold moderate views on all sorts of issues will sometimes feel driven into one camp by the hostility they (rightly or wrongly) perceive from the other camp. Isn’t that obviously true, rather than loony? And that is all Giberson was saying. He was just telling atheists who, like him, support the Darwinian model that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and asking them to tone it down a little to avoid alienating “religious moderates” unnecessarily. What’s loony about that?
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 11, 06:40 PM · #
I hope the irony here isn’t lost on you. You complained about others making allegedly personal comments. But it is actually you who makes them. This is a judgement you direct at me personally. As far as I am aware, that is an explicitly un-Christian thing to do.
Anyway, the issue of trust simply doesn’t enter into it. It’s a red herring. I offered rational arguments based on specific and undisputedly fair quotes, by Giberson and you, among others. In each case I made sure to explicitly target their arguments on a factual level. And when I match a particularly sweeping or prima facie illogical statement with a strongly-worded counter-argument, you hide behind “hurt sensitivities” (which I don’t think you would do if the issue were economics) or dodge the question altogether. You are, in short, not in the best position to talk about trust.
I wonder: why would you introduce this underhand way of trying to question my trustworthiness when you could just as well simply answer the questions? Say what you will about “winning every point”, but at least I have squarely met your objections. If you don’t feel like doing that, that surely is a conversation-stopper.
So what you’re saying is that just mentioning that word makes you untrustworthy. Which would mean that there is nothing that could fairly be described as “loony”. Is that actually your position?
Again, I would be rather grateful if you could just stick to what I actually said. In this case, I explicitly referred to “moderates” who allegedly were “inflamed” by the aggression of the “new atheist” books”. Given that we’re still waiting for an actual example of that “aggression”, I think it fair to say that no moderate would be inflamed, as I said, “by reasoned opposition to his point of view”. If he were so easily inflamed, that would flatly contradict his alleged status as a moderate. And it is this glaringly obvious contradiction in terms that I called lunacy. (Which, by the way, is explicitly defined as “stupid behaviour”. Hence, not a personal insult.)
— Peter Beattie · Feb 12, 12:37 AM · #
You understand that I have no obligation to answer your questions, don’t you, Peter?
But I answered one, just to see if my suspicions about your attitude were misplaced. (And no, there’s no Christian commandment to trust everyone you encounter in cyberspace or elsewhere. Look it up in the Bible if you don’t believe me.) You completely ignored my answer, and mounted a bizarre counterattack, launched from a purely imaginary world in which I invoke “hurt sensitivities.” Why in the world would I take the time and trouble to answer another of your questions? Conversing with you is neither interesting nor pleasant nor edifying, nor is it commanded of me as a Christian, so I can’t see a reason why I should continue doing it.
— Alan Jacobs · Feb 12, 01:27 AM · #
Bizarre, indeed.
You understand that I have no obligation to answer your answers, don’t you, Alan?
Again, that’s of course just another dodge. If you don’t want to take part in a conversation about a piece you wrote, just say so and don’t try to hide behind completely irrelevant points.
And how bizarre is that, to complain about me ignoring one of your answers and at the same time refusing to answer questions yourself. (Oh, and of course chiding me for actually trying to address, or in your words “win”, every point.) I suppose even you can see that there’s a hint of a contradiction there.
As to your point about truth, which I left out unintentionally:
Given that you believe there’s only one kind of truth, your claim that they are “not equally verifiable” is at least entirely unobvious. Of course somebody could verify, by recourse to all sorts of evidence in body language, actual language, lifestyle decisions, physiological responses etc., that your wife loves you. Because all the kinds of truth you spoke of were about things in the real world, hence amenable to being tested by scientific methods. And I’m rather disappointed that you didn’t include anything even remotely resembling one of the central tenets of any major religion. That would have actually completed your argument.
And since you, again, didn’t think it necessary to quote my actual words to support your claims, let me just give you one more of your own quotes:
That refers to this sentence of mine:
How is that even an attack? And you said above that you “hesitate to respond because of your level of hostility”. Which means you are offended, or taken aback, or perhaps hurt by what you perceive as hostility. This has often been subsumed under the phrase “hurt sensibilities” or something like it. If you don’t feel that applies to you, fair dinkum, mate. No need to act as if a nerve had been touched. (Again, hurt sensibilities.) But you did invoke a direct analogue — your perception of hostility and your dislike of that — and you did and still do hide behind it. (Yes, I’d really still like to know which part of The God Delusion you think is aggressive.)
And lest you accuse me of ignoring something you said again: Even though your last sentence was gratuitously rude, I still think your posts are interesting.
— Peter Beattie · Feb 12, 02:37 AM · #
That’s the kind of interference that you get when you simultaneouly type and listen to a Steve Irwin interview. That should of course have read “fair enough, mate”. :)
— Peter Beattie · Feb 12, 02:53 AM · #
This conversation sure got worse before it got meta.
— Matt Frost · Feb 12, 04:58 AM · #