Monday, October 16, 2006
Point of Personal Ingulgence This Post Is Temporary And Will Be Moved Later
Mr. Olvlz Regrets He’s Unable to Hunch Today.
Revised Authorized Version
So, what about Dawkins, Harris, etc. on religion ?
When people of science stray into the area of religion they shouldn’t expect to use their accustomed tools. Science deals in the physical world as it can be known to the scientist with results that can be verified by other scientists. Science is a human activity that is dependent on the means and limits of the people doing it and on conditions during the time they are doing it. It depends for its existence on what can be defined and known by people through observation, measurement and analysis.
Anything that might exist outside of physical reality, as a matter of definition*, cannot be observed, measured or analyzed. It might be possible to say that the subject matter of science, though not necessarily the scientist, has to be agnostic, excluding questions of religion just as it has to exclude subject matter and materials that it can’t use. Gods, saints, or any other possible supernatural entity cannot in any sense be the subject of science. Trying to use science to investigate these aspects of religion is like trying to do a cranial dissection with a piece of chiffon cake. Until someone comes up with a way to observe and measure things outside the physical universe the entirely non-material claims of faith based on personal experience are untouchable. Please note that this goes beyond the “you can’t disprove God exists” argument which Dawkins’s dismisses with “that’s not very impressive”. This isn’t an argument, it’s a simple statement of fact about the nature of science. Anything to do with the existence or nature of any supernatural entity is unarguable due to this barrier.
Not all questions of religion fall into this unknowable category. When religion makes assertions about the physical world then those are subject to scientific investigation. Science can show that the Genesis account of creation cannot be real because physical creation is subject to scientific analysis. Creationism is superstition because it makes false claims about things that have been successfully studied by science. ** Evolution, though certainly not complete or uncontested in its details, is as sound science as there can be. Anyone who refuses to acknowledge the scientific validity of the evidence for evolution is superstitious.
I don’t remember if I’ve run on about those ‘prayer studies’ here. But if there is an activity that can’t be defined or observed you can not know if it exists as any one thing or if that one thing will be present at any one time so you can’t study its possible effects. To study prayer you would have to accept the testimony of the people doing the praying that they were each doing the same thing, impossible for them to know, or that any one of them was doing the same thing more than once, something I doubt is any more reliable. None of those ‘studies’ lauded in turn by believers or atheists rises past the first hurdle of what is required of science, a phenomenon that can be studied.
The latest, fashionable scientist anti-religionists are dishonest about their anti-religious activities, many of the entertainers pretending to do science as they parrot them are at least as dishonest. They conflate different religions, ignore those that are inconvenient to their purpose, make wild assumptions based on little but prejudice, and often act like religious bigots. Maybe this would be easier to see if we had a term corresponding to “superstition” to deal with that kind of breech of honesty. Extrasentient deception? When confronted by their inaccurate or repeated false statements about history or theology or even stated individual belief, some of them fall on that familiar tactic of the failing side of a discussion, dismissive rudeness. Some insist that their rude dismissal is the real, correct response to react to religious belief. In fact these pop-atheist celebrities don’t just react, they go out of their way to insult people who believe in one or more gods. Not that believers are particularly impressed by that.
The “prove it or shut up” fad among some atheists sets a pretty high bar for conversation. Do they hold themselves up to the same standard? Do they never talk about things they haven’t got the data to back up readily at hand? If someone wanted to hold them to the standard they advocate what range of subject matter could they discuss? Is anyone who discusses any aspect of science, history, literature required to master the entire range of published material on the subject? Just saying “ well scientists say” doesn’t really get you very far. It would be a mighty silent world if we had to really live up to that level of evidence for any assertion.
Scientists aren’t infallible as individuals and even the community of science has held some pretty wrong ideas over the generations. And not even all respected scientists agree on a lot of stuff. Richard Lewontin is as much of a scientist as Richard Dawkins or Stephen Pinker, and considerably more of one that Sam Harris was the last time I looked, not all scientists agree. They are liable to the full range of prejudice, personal preference, reliance on tradition and social convention as anyone else. Some of these fad atheists seem to have more than their share of class and intellectual snobbery added in.
The attempts to explain away religion as the product of genetics and evolution are naive. There is no way of knowing what the implications of evolution and genetics are for religion, for or against. As has been stated by others, if there is a creator who wishes to be known to human beings then it would be expected that the creator, who would have made the physical world, after all, would create physical means of making that happen. It could be that a creator wanted there to be just a possibility of its happening, no one can say. As a part of the physical world those mechanisms might be subject to discovery but any possible design of it can’t be known. That is exactly the same thing that is so stupid about ‘intelligent design’ when fundamentalists pretend it’s science. It’s not science in exactly the same way that denial of an intelligent designer is not scientific. It is possible to hold the belief in a creator and to accept evolution by natural selection in some form. It is possible to believe that natural selection constitutes the mechanism designed by a creator. The evolution is almost entirely objective science, the belief in conscious design of it is outside of science and personal.
The atheist’s hunch might be right but there is no way to prove it. That must be frustrating to some people pushing a career in this burgeoning area of popular culture but that is no excuse for them to pretend that their methods can do what they cannot do. If they insist on making those kinds of assertions and calling it science, they are dishonest. Of course, since it is a matter of belief they are fully entitled to hold and assert their view point just as any religious person does. I would hope that so long as all sides are honest and polite that they can do so with some tolerance. I certainly don’t know the answer to these questions and since no one can find an one, I don’t really care. Their effects on my own belief are nil.*** Religion, likewise, should not pretend to be or to dismiss science. In other words, I agree with Stephen J. Gould.
* I’m not too hot on defining God. Any definition of God will inevitably be inadequate and incomplete and will almost inevitably turn into an idol of the mind, the most dangerous kind. I will, however, point out that just by being undefinable any possible effect, range of activity or motivation of a proposed deity is impossible to know or understand. Harris, Dawkins and others say that this mandates rude dismissal, I think it mandates that personal beliefs shouldn’t be forced on other people against their will. No one knows who might be right, if anyone can be.
**I would argue that creationism is also bad religion because it turns the Bible into an idol and it lies. Creationists lie about the Bible’s text, its history, its authorship, its many different meanings and the enormous diversity of views of all of those. The Bible is a collection of writings from many different authors from many different times. Many of the individual “books” are pastiche in themselves. Many of the words in the original tongues are subject to different interpretations. The Bible is not what fundamentalists pretend it is. I think we can demand that much of any religion, that it not lie.
*** Reading this over again, it occurred to me that I don’t recall any religious believers, not even the most reactionary fundamentalists, who have denied that there might be a biological mechanism producing faith. It would be interesting to hear religious arguments against a biological mechanism since a devout believer, especially one who believed in intelligent design, would seem to expect there to be one. If anyone can point me to some religious objection to biological mechanisms of this kind, please give a link.
I am sure that it isn’t the intention of Harris or Dawkins or the others but I am quite confident that if some neural mechanism of belief is discovered some gleeful fundamentalists will muckle on to it and hold it up as proof positive that there is a creator and the evidence of his handiwork is encoded into our very molecules. As I say, their attempts are naive
I don’t take any stand either way. My statement that there isn’t any way to know if this is the product of a creator or random natural selection is, I firmly believe, unassailable.
I am not interested in what people believe, I’m interested in how they act.
Mr. Olvlz Regrets He’s Unable to Hunch Today.
Revised Authorized Version
So, what about Dawkins, Harris, etc. on religion ?
When people of science stray into the area of religion they shouldn’t expect to use their accustomed tools. Science deals in the physical world as it can be known to the scientist with results that can be verified by other scientists. Science is a human activity that is dependent on the means and limits of the people doing it and on conditions during the time they are doing it. It depends for its existence on what can be defined and known by people through observation, measurement and analysis.
Anything that might exist outside of physical reality, as a matter of definition*, cannot be observed, measured or analyzed. It might be possible to say that the subject matter of science, though not necessarily the scientist, has to be agnostic, excluding questions of religion just as it has to exclude subject matter and materials that it can’t use. Gods, saints, or any other possible supernatural entity cannot in any sense be the subject of science. Trying to use science to investigate these aspects of religion is like trying to do a cranial dissection with a piece of chiffon cake. Until someone comes up with a way to observe and measure things outside the physical universe the entirely non-material claims of faith based on personal experience are untouchable. Please note that this goes beyond the “you can’t disprove God exists” argument which Dawkins’s dismisses with “that’s not very impressive”. This isn’t an argument, it’s a simple statement of fact about the nature of science. Anything to do with the existence or nature of any supernatural entity is unarguable due to this barrier.
Not all questions of religion fall into this unknowable category. When religion makes assertions about the physical world then those are subject to scientific investigation. Science can show that the Genesis account of creation cannot be real because physical creation is subject to scientific analysis. Creationism is superstition because it makes false claims about things that have been successfully studied by science. ** Evolution, though certainly not complete or uncontested in its details, is as sound science as there can be. Anyone who refuses to acknowledge the scientific validity of the evidence for evolution is superstitious.
I don’t remember if I’ve run on about those ‘prayer studies’ here. But if there is an activity that can’t be defined or observed you can not know if it exists as any one thing or if that one thing will be present at any one time so you can’t study its possible effects. To study prayer you would have to accept the testimony of the people doing the praying that they were each doing the same thing, impossible for them to know, or that any one of them was doing the same thing more than once, something I doubt is any more reliable. None of those ‘studies’ lauded in turn by believers or atheists rises past the first hurdle of what is required of science, a phenomenon that can be studied.
The latest, fashionable scientist anti-religionists are dishonest about their anti-religious activities, many of the entertainers pretending to do science as they parrot them are at least as dishonest. They conflate different religions, ignore those that are inconvenient to their purpose, make wild assumptions based on little but prejudice, and often act like religious bigots. Maybe this would be easier to see if we had a term corresponding to “superstition” to deal with that kind of breech of honesty. Extrasentient deception? When confronted by their inaccurate or repeated false statements about history or theology or even stated individual belief, some of them fall on that familiar tactic of the failing side of a discussion, dismissive rudeness. Some insist that their rude dismissal is the real, correct response to react to religious belief. In fact these pop-atheist celebrities don’t just react, they go out of their way to insult people who believe in one or more gods. Not that believers are particularly impressed by that.
The “prove it or shut up” fad among some atheists sets a pretty high bar for conversation. Do they hold themselves up to the same standard? Do they never talk about things they haven’t got the data to back up readily at hand? If someone wanted to hold them to the standard they advocate what range of subject matter could they discuss? Is anyone who discusses any aspect of science, history, literature required to master the entire range of published material on the subject? Just saying “ well scientists say” doesn’t really get you very far. It would be a mighty silent world if we had to really live up to that level of evidence for any assertion.
Scientists aren’t infallible as individuals and even the community of science has held some pretty wrong ideas over the generations. And not even all respected scientists agree on a lot of stuff. Richard Lewontin is as much of a scientist as Richard Dawkins or Stephen Pinker, and considerably more of one that Sam Harris was the last time I looked, not all scientists agree. They are liable to the full range of prejudice, personal preference, reliance on tradition and social convention as anyone else. Some of these fad atheists seem to have more than their share of class and intellectual snobbery added in.
The attempts to explain away religion as the product of genetics and evolution are naive. There is no way of knowing what the implications of evolution and genetics are for religion, for or against. As has been stated by others, if there is a creator who wishes to be known to human beings then it would be expected that the creator, who would have made the physical world, after all, would create physical means of making that happen. It could be that a creator wanted there to be just a possibility of its happening, no one can say. As a part of the physical world those mechanisms might be subject to discovery but any possible design of it can’t be known. That is exactly the same thing that is so stupid about ‘intelligent design’ when fundamentalists pretend it’s science. It’s not science in exactly the same way that denial of an intelligent designer is not scientific. It is possible to hold the belief in a creator and to accept evolution by natural selection in some form. It is possible to believe that natural selection constitutes the mechanism designed by a creator. The evolution is almost entirely objective science, the belief in conscious design of it is outside of science and personal.
The atheist’s hunch might be right but there is no way to prove it. That must be frustrating to some people pushing a career in this burgeoning area of popular culture but that is no excuse for them to pretend that their methods can do what they cannot do. If they insist on making those kinds of assertions and calling it science, they are dishonest. Of course, since it is a matter of belief they are fully entitled to hold and assert their view point just as any religious person does. I would hope that so long as all sides are honest and polite that they can do so with some tolerance. I certainly don’t know the answer to these questions and since no one can find an one, I don’t really care. Their effects on my own belief are nil.*** Religion, likewise, should not pretend to be or to dismiss science. In other words, I agree with Stephen J. Gould.
* I’m not too hot on defining God. Any definition of God will inevitably be inadequate and incomplete and will almost inevitably turn into an idol of the mind, the most dangerous kind. I will, however, point out that just by being undefinable any possible effect, range of activity or motivation of a proposed deity is impossible to know or understand. Harris, Dawkins and others say that this mandates rude dismissal, I think it mandates that personal beliefs shouldn’t be forced on other people against their will. No one knows who might be right, if anyone can be.
**I would argue that creationism is also bad religion because it turns the Bible into an idol and it lies. Creationists lie about the Bible’s text, its history, its authorship, its many different meanings and the enormous diversity of views of all of those. The Bible is a collection of writings from many different authors from many different times. Many of the individual “books” are pastiche in themselves. Many of the words in the original tongues are subject to different interpretations. The Bible is not what fundamentalists pretend it is. I think we can demand that much of any religion, that it not lie.
*** Reading this over again, it occurred to me that I don’t recall any religious believers, not even the most reactionary fundamentalists, who have denied that there might be a biological mechanism producing faith. It would be interesting to hear religious arguments against a biological mechanism since a devout believer, especially one who believed in intelligent design, would seem to expect there to be one. If anyone can point me to some religious objection to biological mechanisms of this kind, please give a link.
I am sure that it isn’t the intention of Harris or Dawkins or the others but I am quite confident that if some neural mechanism of belief is discovered some gleeful fundamentalists will muckle on to it and hold it up as proof positive that there is a creator and the evidence of his handiwork is encoded into our very molecules. As I say, their attempts are naive
I don’t take any stand either way. My statement that there isn’t any way to know if this is the product of a creator or random natural selection is, I firmly believe, unassailable.
I am not interested in what people believe, I’m interested in how they act.
Comments:
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Anything that might exist outside of physical reality, as a matter of definition*, cannot be observed, measured or analyzed. It might be possible to say that the subject matter of science, though not necessarily the scientist, has to be agnostic, excluding questions of religion just as it has to exclude subject matter and materials that it can’t use.
How very Kantian of you.
- DAS, Kant-wannabe
How very Kantian of you.
- DAS, Kant-wannabe
- DAS, Kant-wannabe
Ah, DAS, I can't hold a candle.
I've been looking at Sam Harris' stuff. How long does someone get to put themselves forward as a scientist without producing any published science? Not to impressed with him or his fans on the internet. I haven't met one yet who doesn't quite rapidly start trying to turn a logical argument into a series of pre-existing stereotypes, even in the face of what you've already written. Then it's name calling and insults. Being no slouch in the namecalling dept, having nine sibs comes in handy sometimes, I'm sort of tempted but it's just not in keeping with objective observation.
Anyway, this was posted as a dare which seems to not be being taken up. I'll keep it here for another day or so, then away with it.
Ah, DAS, I can't hold a candle.
I've been looking at Sam Harris' stuff. How long does someone get to put themselves forward as a scientist without producing any published science? Not to impressed with him or his fans on the internet. I haven't met one yet who doesn't quite rapidly start trying to turn a logical argument into a series of pre-existing stereotypes, even in the face of what you've already written. Then it's name calling and insults. Being no slouch in the namecalling dept, having nine sibs comes in handy sometimes, I'm sort of tempted but it's just not in keeping with objective observation.
Anyway, this was posted as a dare which seems to not be being taken up. I'll keep it here for another day or so, then away with it.
How long does someone get to put themselves forward as a scientist without producing any published science? - olvlzl
Given my publication record as of late, I'm hoping one gets to do this (and get paid to do so) for a whole lifetime.
Given my publication record as of late, I'm hoping one gets to do this (and get paid to do so) for a whole lifetime.
OK, I'll bite:
When people of science stray into the area of religion they shouldn’t expect to use their accustomed tools.
Says who?
Science deals in the physical world as it can be known to the scientist with results that can be verified by other scientists. Science is a human activity that is dependent on the means and limits of the people doing it and on conditions during the time they are doing it.
I would submit that science endeavors to understand the world that objectively exists, and therefore is more than just a human activity or ability.
It depends for its existence on what can be defined and known by people through observation, measurement and analysis.
Sensors, electronics, computers - these continue to extend our senses and our ability to analyze, so our understanding advances as well. Who knows when or where it will end.
Anything that might exist outside of physical reality, as a matter of definition, cannot be observed, measured or analyzed. It might be possible to say that the subject matter of science, though not necessarily the scientist, has to be agnostic, excluding questions of religion just as it has to exclude subject matter and materials that it can’t use.
I think your use of the term "agnostic" here is too narrowly a religious one. I would agree with a broader use though. And yes, you don't find religious references in too many equations.
Gods, saints, or any other possible supernatural entity cannot in any sense be the subject of science.
In terms of psychosis, it is entirely within the realm of science.
Trying to use science to investigate these aspects of religion is like trying to do a cranial dissection with a piece of chiffon cake.
Do tell, what tools does the earnest non-scientist use for the investigation of the supernatural?
Until someone comes up with a way to observe and measure things outside the physical universe the entirely non-material claims of faith based on personal experience are untouchable.
That sentence is so circular and meaningless. By definition, things outside the physical universe are unmeasurable. So?
Please note that this goes beyond the “you can’t disprove God exists” argument which Dawkins’s dismisses with “that’s not very impressive”. This isn’t an argument, it’s a simple statement of fact about the nature of science. Anything to do with the existence or nature of any supernatural entity is unarguable due to this barrier.
Here you seem to be drawing a meaningless line in the sand past which science must stay out. So I agree with Dawkins here, it just isn't impressive at all. You seem to be saying "over here is the set of all things, and over there is the set of things not contained in that set (the null set). It's OK for anyone (except scientists) to speculate about the contents of null set all they want."
When Dawkins in effect says, despite much empty and pointless cogitation, "your null set is empty," you call it unfair, and claim the null set is by definition off-limits to his profession.
As I said before, you are trying to have it both ways here. If something interacts with the natural universe it is by definition a part of the natural universe, and therefore can be studied by science. If it doesn't interact, then by definition no one can know anything about it at all. I don't see any shades of gray here.
Olvlzl, you seem like a sharp guy, so your arguing for some other kind of knowledge that is off-limits to science is deeply confusing to me. All I want to know is this: what is your personal interest in this subject? Why do the "pop atheists" annoy you so? What is your dog in this fight?
I would hazard the guess that you are not a proponent of strong AI.
.
When people of science stray into the area of religion they shouldn’t expect to use their accustomed tools.
Says who?
Science deals in the physical world as it can be known to the scientist with results that can be verified by other scientists. Science is a human activity that is dependent on the means and limits of the people doing it and on conditions during the time they are doing it.
I would submit that science endeavors to understand the world that objectively exists, and therefore is more than just a human activity or ability.
It depends for its existence on what can be defined and known by people through observation, measurement and analysis.
Sensors, electronics, computers - these continue to extend our senses and our ability to analyze, so our understanding advances as well. Who knows when or where it will end.
Anything that might exist outside of physical reality, as a matter of definition, cannot be observed, measured or analyzed. It might be possible to say that the subject matter of science, though not necessarily the scientist, has to be agnostic, excluding questions of religion just as it has to exclude subject matter and materials that it can’t use.
I think your use of the term "agnostic" here is too narrowly a religious one. I would agree with a broader use though. And yes, you don't find religious references in too many equations.
Gods, saints, or any other possible supernatural entity cannot in any sense be the subject of science.
In terms of psychosis, it is entirely within the realm of science.
Trying to use science to investigate these aspects of religion is like trying to do a cranial dissection with a piece of chiffon cake.
Do tell, what tools does the earnest non-scientist use for the investigation of the supernatural?
Until someone comes up with a way to observe and measure things outside the physical universe the entirely non-material claims of faith based on personal experience are untouchable.
That sentence is so circular and meaningless. By definition, things outside the physical universe are unmeasurable. So?
Please note that this goes beyond the “you can’t disprove God exists” argument which Dawkins’s dismisses with “that’s not very impressive”. This isn’t an argument, it’s a simple statement of fact about the nature of science. Anything to do with the existence or nature of any supernatural entity is unarguable due to this barrier.
Here you seem to be drawing a meaningless line in the sand past which science must stay out. So I agree with Dawkins here, it just isn't impressive at all. You seem to be saying "over here is the set of all things, and over there is the set of things not contained in that set (the null set). It's OK for anyone (except scientists) to speculate about the contents of null set all they want."
When Dawkins in effect says, despite much empty and pointless cogitation, "your null set is empty," you call it unfair, and claim the null set is by definition off-limits to his profession.
As I said before, you are trying to have it both ways here. If something interacts with the natural universe it is by definition a part of the natural universe, and therefore can be studied by science. If it doesn't interact, then by definition no one can know anything about it at all. I don't see any shades of gray here.
Olvlzl, you seem like a sharp guy, so your arguing for some other kind of knowledge that is off-limits to science is deeply confusing to me. All I want to know is this: what is your personal interest in this subject? Why do the "pop atheists" annoy you so? What is your dog in this fight?
I would hazard the guess that you are not a proponent of strong AI.
.
# posted by 
: 4:25 PM
: 4:25 PM
Not being able to make out the letters but guessing that your last sentence refers to Artificial intelligence, about that I am entirely ignorant and so don't favor or oppose it. I do wonder just what it means other than that machines can be made to simulate human thought, if not human thought, how are we supposed to understand it?
Why do the pop-atheists bother me. Well, in their work and it's effect on politics I sense another of these futile and damaging rat holes the left is led down through spending political capital on the basis of "fairness". I have written on that and been attacked at great length and with absolutely no accuracy. What I wrote was distorted and spread around the internet by one of your fellow rude atheists much to my irritation. Other than that, it's a matter of favoring politeness and intellectual honesty. I don't find these would be atheist popes to be honest.
I'm not having it any way. I don't know if there is any interaction between the physical universe and a non-material entity. I said so very plainly. I DON'T KNOW MEANS I DON'T KNOW. And until you can prove it to me, neither do you. I used the possiblity as a way to demonstrate that if there was an entity, such as a god, who was not part of the observable universe then we didn't have any way to know what the implications of that would be. Since this might be the case there isn't any way such a god could be studied by science in any way.
The only way I'm interested in having it is honest.
If Dawkins can come up with a verfiable method of dealing with these matters he should publish and make his name for all time. As it is I suspect he is bound for the footnotes.
That sentence is so circular and meaningless. By definition, things outside the physical universe are unmeasurable. So?
So Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, The "Brights" and the entire range of believers, nonbelievers and agnostics can't do science in this area. That, ManonBlog is the entire point of this post. When anyone, believer or nonbliever pretends to deal with these questions as or by pretending to use science they are either mistaken or they are lying. Intelligent design cannot be science either for or against. Since it is not science it doesn't belong in a science classroom or in a science curriculum. It doesn't belong in the public schools. It is simply not science.
I'll read up and answer the rest later except for your continued insistence on equating religious belief with psychosis. Have you ever known someone very well who was really, seriously mentally ill? Someone who couldn't reason, who couldn't function rationally for most of the time? I have, I'd never throw that word around so casually. There are religious believers who display considerably more maturity and ablility to reason than the three rude atheist heros I've named in this exchange. Continuing to use that word is no substitute for dealing with the argument.
Why do the pop-atheists bother me. Well, in their work and it's effect on politics I sense another of these futile and damaging rat holes the left is led down through spending political capital on the basis of "fairness". I have written on that and been attacked at great length and with absolutely no accuracy. What I wrote was distorted and spread around the internet by one of your fellow rude atheists much to my irritation. Other than that, it's a matter of favoring politeness and intellectual honesty. I don't find these would be atheist popes to be honest.
I'm not having it any way. I don't know if there is any interaction between the physical universe and a non-material entity. I said so very plainly. I DON'T KNOW MEANS I DON'T KNOW. And until you can prove it to me, neither do you. I used the possiblity as a way to demonstrate that if there was an entity, such as a god, who was not part of the observable universe then we didn't have any way to know what the implications of that would be. Since this might be the case there isn't any way such a god could be studied by science in any way.
The only way I'm interested in having it is honest.
If Dawkins can come up with a verfiable method of dealing with these matters he should publish and make his name for all time. As it is I suspect he is bound for the footnotes.
That sentence is so circular and meaningless. By definition, things outside the physical universe are unmeasurable. So?
So Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, The "Brights" and the entire range of believers, nonbelievers and agnostics can't do science in this area. That, ManonBlog is the entire point of this post. When anyone, believer or nonbliever pretends to deal with these questions as or by pretending to use science they are either mistaken or they are lying. Intelligent design cannot be science either for or against. Since it is not science it doesn't belong in a science classroom or in a science curriculum. It doesn't belong in the public schools. It is simply not science.
I'll read up and answer the rest later except for your continued insistence on equating religious belief with psychosis. Have you ever known someone very well who was really, seriously mentally ill? Someone who couldn't reason, who couldn't function rationally for most of the time? I have, I'd never throw that word around so casually. There are religious believers who display considerably more maturity and ablility to reason than the three rude atheist heros I've named in this exchange. Continuing to use that word is no substitute for dealing with the argument.
I would submit that science endeavors to understand the world that objectively exists, and therefore is more than just a human activity or ability.
What other species does science? I mean the real stuff, research, measurement, analysis, publication, analysis of the paper, replication of results... I'd go so far to say that science is a collaboration of the entire group of scientists who participate in the proscess and doesn't exist until the collaboration gets underway. I don't think my statement is in any way unclear or unreasonable. Come up with a non-human scientist and I'll amend the statement.
The measurement tools, yes, even those with microchips, are just tools and they can't think any more than a ruler can. Your point on that reminds me oddly of some psychologist who once estimated that an alarm clock had an IQ of 5, more about why I'm skeptical of the social sciences later.
The attempts of this ad hoc group of atheists to explain away religion is an attempt to use the appearance of science to further a personal goal, one that is so illogical and ham handed that it's bound to fail, see my third footnote. The short history of the moronic effort to name themselves "Brights" is pretty clear proof that they're a bunch of egotistical snobs who don't have a clue about how to win over people to your side. If you did win they'd turn on each other in a power struggle. Egos that big always collide.
Coming out of what is charitably called the behavoiral sciences I suspect that Dawkins et all are used to getting by on the kind of lazy thinking charecteristic of too much of the work in that field but there isn't any reason to let that continue. It's crap science.
If there isn't a phenomenon that can be defined, observed and measured you can't know if they exist. Merely proceeding on the assumption that an observed behavior is what the researcher says it is replaces observation with testimony. The results are spotty at best.
Let me point out that you apply the standard I'm calling for to religious concepts, quite correctly, throughout this exchange. About that we agree. You make the leap of faith to say that this means that they don't exist and that the billions of people who believe are mentally ill. I am more modest saying that only means that the entire range of reported religious experience is something that it is impossible to deal with scientifically.
I am not willing to cast the large majority of the species as being fools or nuts and to say that as long as they don't try to force their religion on other people they should be left to their own experience. Believing that most people are fools when mixed with seeing them as being rather stupid machines doesn't lead to freedom and justice for all.
Its high time that the rest of science hold these would be behavioral scientists to the basic level of publishing only about phenomena that are clearly observable. Huge swaths of their work isn't on a higher level than religious speculation. Religion that pretends it is science is bad and this kind of "Bright" thinking pretending it is science is at least as bad. If I was ten years younger I'd go through their work on religion and I'd go through the I.D. nonsense. I'll bet there are many similarities in process and in results.
But more importantly, it's a really bad idea for the left to expend any effort defending this bunch of Chris Hitchens clones. Read Harris at his web site, if he's not on his way to being a budget brand Hitchens I'll be quite surprised. I don't trust any of them to not turn out to be right wingers in the end. The statement of one of my teachers "scratch an ethologist and you'll find a fascist" was taken by us as a joke but maybe he really meant it.
As for Harris being a scientist of any kind, where's the published work? How do you people know he won't turn out to be a crap scientist?
I've worked with lots of atheists on the left, most of them are great to work with but the Harris Dawkins parrots are jerks who are going to do nothing but cause problems for us. Some of the atheists I know want nothing to do with them and their childishness. If they want to go off and vent by themselves and not involve the left I'd probably never have gotten around to calling them on their multiple failings of reason but they seem to want us to take up their silliness to our loss so I have every right as a leftist to point this out. The left doesn't owe the "Brights" a single seat in congress lost on religious issues. They're not worth it.
What other species does science? I mean the real stuff, research, measurement, analysis, publication, analysis of the paper, replication of results... I'd go so far to say that science is a collaboration of the entire group of scientists who participate in the proscess and doesn't exist until the collaboration gets underway. I don't think my statement is in any way unclear or unreasonable. Come up with a non-human scientist and I'll amend the statement.
The measurement tools, yes, even those with microchips, are just tools and they can't think any more than a ruler can. Your point on that reminds me oddly of some psychologist who once estimated that an alarm clock had an IQ of 5, more about why I'm skeptical of the social sciences later.
The attempts of this ad hoc group of atheists to explain away religion is an attempt to use the appearance of science to further a personal goal, one that is so illogical and ham handed that it's bound to fail, see my third footnote. The short history of the moronic effort to name themselves "Brights" is pretty clear proof that they're a bunch of egotistical snobs who don't have a clue about how to win over people to your side. If you did win they'd turn on each other in a power struggle. Egos that big always collide.
Coming out of what is charitably called the behavoiral sciences I suspect that Dawkins et all are used to getting by on the kind of lazy thinking charecteristic of too much of the work in that field but there isn't any reason to let that continue. It's crap science.
If there isn't a phenomenon that can be defined, observed and measured you can't know if they exist. Merely proceeding on the assumption that an observed behavior is what the researcher says it is replaces observation with testimony. The results are spotty at best.
Let me point out that you apply the standard I'm calling for to religious concepts, quite correctly, throughout this exchange. About that we agree. You make the leap of faith to say that this means that they don't exist and that the billions of people who believe are mentally ill. I am more modest saying that only means that the entire range of reported religious experience is something that it is impossible to deal with scientifically.
I am not willing to cast the large majority of the species as being fools or nuts and to say that as long as they don't try to force their religion on other people they should be left to their own experience. Believing that most people are fools when mixed with seeing them as being rather stupid machines doesn't lead to freedom and justice for all.
Its high time that the rest of science hold these would be behavioral scientists to the basic level of publishing only about phenomena that are clearly observable. Huge swaths of their work isn't on a higher level than religious speculation. Religion that pretends it is science is bad and this kind of "Bright" thinking pretending it is science is at least as bad. If I was ten years younger I'd go through their work on religion and I'd go through the I.D. nonsense. I'll bet there are many similarities in process and in results.
But more importantly, it's a really bad idea for the left to expend any effort defending this bunch of Chris Hitchens clones. Read Harris at his web site, if he's not on his way to being a budget brand Hitchens I'll be quite surprised. I don't trust any of them to not turn out to be right wingers in the end. The statement of one of my teachers "scratch an ethologist and you'll find a fascist" was taken by us as a joke but maybe he really meant it.
As for Harris being a scientist of any kind, where's the published work? How do you people know he won't turn out to be a crap scientist?
I've worked with lots of atheists on the left, most of them are great to work with but the Harris Dawkins parrots are jerks who are going to do nothing but cause problems for us. Some of the atheists I know want nothing to do with them and their childishness. If they want to go off and vent by themselves and not involve the left I'd probably never have gotten around to calling them on their multiple failings of reason but they seem to want us to take up their silliness to our loss so I have every right as a leftist to point this out. The left doesn't owe the "Brights" a single seat in congress lost on religious issues. They're not worth it.
Not being able to make out the letters but guessing that your last sentence refers to Artificial intelligence, about that I am entirely ignorant and so don't favor or oppose it. I do wonder just what it means other than that machines can be made to simulate human thought, if not human thought, how are we supposed to understand it?
I bring up AI due to personal reasons. Growing up male in a economically challenged environment made me predisposed to certain memes (if you will) of the Right. A roommate in my 20's became a leftist mentor after a fashion, and she was able to turn me around thank goodness. She is a poet, and had fundamental issues with the concept of AI. Rather than reading up on it so we could discuss it on the merits, she would just dismiss it outright due to what I believe now was an overly exalted and romantic view of humankind. Frankly, I was wondering if religious baggage of some sort on your end was keeping me from connecting with your argument, because otherwise I think I pretty much get where you are coming from (certainly politically, and probably largely scientifically where it doesn't pertain to atheism).
Why do the pop-atheists bother me. Well, in their work and it's effect on politics I sense another of these futile and damaging rat holes the left is led down through spending political capital on the basis of "fairness". I have written on that and been attacked at great length and with absolutely no accuracy. What I wrote was distorted and spread around the internet by one of your fellow rude atheists much to my irritation. Other than that, it's a matter of favoring politeness and intellectual honesty. I don't find these would be atheist popes to be honest.
Very sorry you were mistreated, and I didn't mean to inadvertently pile on. But as you can probably tell, I have a very thin skin when it comes to atheism. I just finished Dawkins "The Selfish Gene" which I avoided for 30 years mainly due to the title. I figured it would be a one-trick-pony, beating to death some ill-fitting anthropomorphizing concept to death. Instead I found it to be a wide-ranging and highly engaging discussion of many interesting topics. Am ~1/4 through "The Blind Watchmaker" and find it almost equally interesting so far. So I'm also particularly sensitive to Dawkins bashing at the moment. (For the record, I haven't read any Harris or Dennett, so I have no opinion of their work.)
I'm not having it any way. I don't know if there is any interaction between the physical universe and a non-material entity. I said so very plainly. I DON'T KNOW MEANS I DON'T KNOW. And until you can prove it to me, neither do you. I used the possibility as a way to demonstrate that if there was an entity, such as a god, who was not part of the observable universe then we didn't have any way to know what the implications of that would be. Since this might be the case there isn't any way such a god could be studied by science in any way.
The only way I'm interested in having it is honest.
If Dawkins can come up with a verifiable method of dealing with these matters he should publish and make his name for all time. As it is I suspect he is bound for the footnotes.
Unfortunately, the task of the atheist (similar to "proving" there are no WMDs in Iraq) is the eternal problem of induction. Which, due to practicality, comes down to inference and best guess.
Dawkins does what he can in terms of banishing a creator from evolution (as did Gould) but there will always be some kind of gap that needs attention. I'd rather see our scientists doing real work in their field, rather than constantly having to swat at the creationist / ID gnats.
Have you ever known someone very well who was really, seriously mentally ill? Someone who couldn't reason, who couldn't function rationally for most of the time? I have, I'd never throw that word around so casually. There are religious believers who display considerably more maturity and ablility to reason than the three rude atheist heros I've named in this exchange. Continuing to use that word is no substitute for dealing with the argument.
My brother is schizophrenic, and my wife's father was bipolar, so, yes, I have direct experience with serious mental illness. My brother's disease pretty much fractured our family, and my wife's father made her family's life a living hell at times.
What else do you call a strong belief (to the extent of basing you life around it) in something that isn't real? Mass psychosis, superstition. Some have it worse than others, and almost all can be reasoned with on some level, but many at their core are not fundamentally living in reality. And this disturbs me. To me it is another indication that our species just isn't up to the task of surviving, or even merely caring about the important issues before us. Maybe we just haven't evolved enough or something. But according to Gould, large evolutionary steps are only made in isolated populations, and there isn't any chance of that for humans anymore.
I'm an electrical engineer, and I work all day around other engineers. Some are very religious, most are not. Some of the religious ones belong to tolerant churches, and they are usually tolerant of various liberal social issues. The ones who belong to conservative churches are fairly intolerant and often racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. And the ones who are not religious are overwhelmingly tolerant. They can all do their jobs more or less, and you can carry on real conversations with all of them. I'm not saying some of them are insane, merely infected with thought systems that seem to cause them a certain level of discomfort in the world, which occasionally leads to harm to themselves and others.
Being an engineer, I had to take ethics classes in college. What are engineering ethics? Don't screw the company. Don't be a whistleblower unless you know almost for certain that a shuttle gasket will blow, causing the certain death of all crewmembers. Nothing in there at all about designing & building missiles, munitions, military communications systems, bombers, ordinance subsystems, or baby killers of any sort. Almost everyone I work with has done this kind of work and they don't seem to have any issue with it (other than the poor management and ephemeral project funding at "defense" firms). Most have families and are good parents. So this is one more nail in the coffin for me when it comes to humanity: they are unfortunately able to hold two disparate things in their head without appearing clinically insane, but it distracts their eye off the real ball.
I digress...
What other species does science? I mean the real stuff, research, measurement, analysis, publication, analysis of the paper, replication of results... I'd go so far to say that science is a collaboration of the entire group of scientists who participate in the process and doesn't exist until the collaboration gets underway. I don't think my statement is in any way unclear or unreasonable. Come up with a non-human scientist and I'll amend the statement.
I was objecting more to your characterization of science as a human activity. I'm not saying that you were necessarily going there, but all too often it leads to a "what is reality?" and "science is a belief structure too!" thing that is a total crock. I would be very surprised if we were the only intelligent species in the universe, and incredibly surprised if only we did science. Folk science is done by all humans, and some birds display reasoning skills.
The measurement tools, yes, even those with microchips, are just tools and they can't think any more than a ruler can. Your point on that reminds me oddly of some psychologist who once estimated that an alarm clock had an IQ of 5, more about why I'm skeptical of the social sciences later.
I'm skeptical of the social sciences too, it is hard not to be with such a fledgling area of study. That, and it seems to attract people with issues themselves.
Along these lines, and for an interesting past review of the field and future predictions of AI, I highly recommend "Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind" by Hans Moravec. He shows many computational devices along with various animals (including man) on graphs of computing power and storage capacity. The book is a bit dated, but wide-ranging and engaging. He introduces the issue of the need for larger brains so as to distinguish individuals in order to keep track of favors & cheating - ties into Dawkins' game theory stuff rather well. Very observant author who is/was a long-time contributor to his field (not a nobody).
I imagine it will take something like real, functioning AI to make the social sciences truly hard science.
Let me point out that you apply the standard I'm calling for to religious concepts, quite correctly, throughout this exchange. About that we agree. You make the leap of faith to say that this means that they don't exist and that the billions of people who believe are mentally ill. I am more modest saying that only means that the entire range of reported religious experience is something that it is impossible to deal with scientifically.
Yes, it seems more a difference in degree of reaction. I think I'm more discouraged by it, and so am more prone to over-estemate the damaging effects.
But more importantly, it's a really bad idea for the left to expend any effort defending this bunch of Chris Hitchens clones. Read Harris at his web site, if he's not on his way to being a budget brand Hitchens I'll be quite surprised. I don't trust any of them to not turn out to be right wingers in the end. The statement of one of my teachers "scratch an ethologist and you'll find a fascist" was taken by us as a joke but maybe he really meant it.
I'll take a look at his site. Hope it doesn't poison my mind against Dawkins!
I bring up AI due to personal reasons. Growing up male in a economically challenged environment made me predisposed to certain memes (if you will) of the Right. A roommate in my 20's became a leftist mentor after a fashion, and she was able to turn me around thank goodness. She is a poet, and had fundamental issues with the concept of AI. Rather than reading up on it so we could discuss it on the merits, she would just dismiss it outright due to what I believe now was an overly exalted and romantic view of humankind. Frankly, I was wondering if religious baggage of some sort on your end was keeping me from connecting with your argument, because otherwise I think I pretty much get where you are coming from (certainly politically, and probably largely scientifically where it doesn't pertain to atheism).
Why do the pop-atheists bother me. Well, in their work and it's effect on politics I sense another of these futile and damaging rat holes the left is led down through spending political capital on the basis of "fairness". I have written on that and been attacked at great length and with absolutely no accuracy. What I wrote was distorted and spread around the internet by one of your fellow rude atheists much to my irritation. Other than that, it's a matter of favoring politeness and intellectual honesty. I don't find these would be atheist popes to be honest.
Very sorry you were mistreated, and I didn't mean to inadvertently pile on. But as you can probably tell, I have a very thin skin when it comes to atheism. I just finished Dawkins "The Selfish Gene" which I avoided for 30 years mainly due to the title. I figured it would be a one-trick-pony, beating to death some ill-fitting anthropomorphizing concept to death. Instead I found it to be a wide-ranging and highly engaging discussion of many interesting topics. Am ~1/4 through "The Blind Watchmaker" and find it almost equally interesting so far. So I'm also particularly sensitive to Dawkins bashing at the moment. (For the record, I haven't read any Harris or Dennett, so I have no opinion of their work.)
I'm not having it any way. I don't know if there is any interaction between the physical universe and a non-material entity. I said so very plainly. I DON'T KNOW MEANS I DON'T KNOW. And until you can prove it to me, neither do you. I used the possibility as a way to demonstrate that if there was an entity, such as a god, who was not part of the observable universe then we didn't have any way to know what the implications of that would be. Since this might be the case there isn't any way such a god could be studied by science in any way.
The only way I'm interested in having it is honest.
If Dawkins can come up with a verifiable method of dealing with these matters he should publish and make his name for all time. As it is I suspect he is bound for the footnotes.
Unfortunately, the task of the atheist (similar to "proving" there are no WMDs in Iraq) is the eternal problem of induction. Which, due to practicality, comes down to inference and best guess.
Dawkins does what he can in terms of banishing a creator from evolution (as did Gould) but there will always be some kind of gap that needs attention. I'd rather see our scientists doing real work in their field, rather than constantly having to swat at the creationist / ID gnats.
Have you ever known someone very well who was really, seriously mentally ill? Someone who couldn't reason, who couldn't function rationally for most of the time? I have, I'd never throw that word around so casually. There are religious believers who display considerably more maturity and ablility to reason than the three rude atheist heros I've named in this exchange. Continuing to use that word is no substitute for dealing with the argument.
My brother is schizophrenic, and my wife's father was bipolar, so, yes, I have direct experience with serious mental illness. My brother's disease pretty much fractured our family, and my wife's father made her family's life a living hell at times.
What else do you call a strong belief (to the extent of basing you life around it) in something that isn't real? Mass psychosis, superstition. Some have it worse than others, and almost all can be reasoned with on some level, but many at their core are not fundamentally living in reality. And this disturbs me. To me it is another indication that our species just isn't up to the task of surviving, or even merely caring about the important issues before us. Maybe we just haven't evolved enough or something. But according to Gould, large evolutionary steps are only made in isolated populations, and there isn't any chance of that for humans anymore.
I'm an electrical engineer, and I work all day around other engineers. Some are very religious, most are not. Some of the religious ones belong to tolerant churches, and they are usually tolerant of various liberal social issues. The ones who belong to conservative churches are fairly intolerant and often racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. And the ones who are not religious are overwhelmingly tolerant. They can all do their jobs more or less, and you can carry on real conversations with all of them. I'm not saying some of them are insane, merely infected with thought systems that seem to cause them a certain level of discomfort in the world, which occasionally leads to harm to themselves and others.
Being an engineer, I had to take ethics classes in college. What are engineering ethics? Don't screw the company. Don't be a whistleblower unless you know almost for certain that a shuttle gasket will blow, causing the certain death of all crewmembers. Nothing in there at all about designing & building missiles, munitions, military communications systems, bombers, ordinance subsystems, or baby killers of any sort. Almost everyone I work with has done this kind of work and they don't seem to have any issue with it (other than the poor management and ephemeral project funding at "defense" firms). Most have families and are good parents. So this is one more nail in the coffin for me when it comes to humanity: they are unfortunately able to hold two disparate things in their head without appearing clinically insane, but it distracts their eye off the real ball.
I digress...
What other species does science? I mean the real stuff, research, measurement, analysis, publication, analysis of the paper, replication of results... I'd go so far to say that science is a collaboration of the entire group of scientists who participate in the process and doesn't exist until the collaboration gets underway. I don't think my statement is in any way unclear or unreasonable. Come up with a non-human scientist and I'll amend the statement.
I was objecting more to your characterization of science as a human activity. I'm not saying that you were necessarily going there, but all too often it leads to a "what is reality?" and "science is a belief structure too!" thing that is a total crock. I would be very surprised if we were the only intelligent species in the universe, and incredibly surprised if only we did science. Folk science is done by all humans, and some birds display reasoning skills.
The measurement tools, yes, even those with microchips, are just tools and they can't think any more than a ruler can. Your point on that reminds me oddly of some psychologist who once estimated that an alarm clock had an IQ of 5, more about why I'm skeptical of the social sciences later.
I'm skeptical of the social sciences too, it is hard not to be with such a fledgling area of study. That, and it seems to attract people with issues themselves.
Along these lines, and for an interesting past review of the field and future predictions of AI, I highly recommend "Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind" by Hans Moravec. He shows many computational devices along with various animals (including man) on graphs of computing power and storage capacity. The book is a bit dated, but wide-ranging and engaging. He introduces the issue of the need for larger brains so as to distinguish individuals in order to keep track of favors & cheating - ties into Dawkins' game theory stuff rather well. Very observant author who is/was a long-time contributor to his field (not a nobody).
I imagine it will take something like real, functioning AI to make the social sciences truly hard science.
Let me point out that you apply the standard I'm calling for to religious concepts, quite correctly, throughout this exchange. About that we agree. You make the leap of faith to say that this means that they don't exist and that the billions of people who believe are mentally ill. I am more modest saying that only means that the entire range of reported religious experience is something that it is impossible to deal with scientifically.
Yes, it seems more a difference in degree of reaction. I think I'm more discouraged by it, and so am more prone to over-estemate the damaging effects.
But more importantly, it's a really bad idea for the left to expend any effort defending this bunch of Chris Hitchens clones. Read Harris at his web site, if he's not on his way to being a budget brand Hitchens I'll be quite surprised. I don't trust any of them to not turn out to be right wingers in the end. The statement of one of my teachers "scratch an ethologist and you'll find a fascist" was taken by us as a joke but maybe he really meant it.
I'll take a look at his site. Hope it doesn't poison my mind against Dawkins!
# posted by : 1:47 PM
: 1:47 PM
I DON'T KNOW MEANS I DON'T KNOW
Based on various things that have happened in my personal life, I think there needs to be a campaign, along the lines of "NO means NO":
I DON'T KNOW means I DON'T KNOW
"I don't know" does not mean "yes". It does not mean "maybe".
Remember, when a nebishy man says "I don't know", he means "I don't know". He wants you to make the decision and leave it at that.
Remember ladies, when a man says "I don't know" he means "I don't know".
Based on various things that have happened in my personal life, I think there needs to be a campaign, along the lines of "NO means NO":
I DON'T KNOW means I DON'T KNOW
"I don't know" does not mean "yes". It does not mean "maybe".
Remember, when a nebishy man says "I don't know", he means "I don't know". He wants you to make the decision and leave it at that.
Remember ladies, when a man says "I don't know" he means "I don't know".
Great post, and I agree completely. In fact, I think I ended a similar post with virtually the same phrasing.
Phila, Yikes. I don't think I read it so it's not a matter of copying. Can you give me a link so I can find it? This is a theme I've been riffing on for a while, since last July, I seem to remember.
ManonBlog, I hadn't been back to check on this in the last two days. I'll read your response and respond, if desired.
Alberich, when I say no, I mean it. Also when I say "know" but especially if I say, I don't know.
ManonBlog, I hadn't been back to check on this in the last two days. I'll read your response and respond, if desired.
Alberich, when I say no, I mean it. Also when I say "know" but especially if I say, I don't know.
Olvlzl, I read an interview with Harris, and other than his seemingly justified yet in poor taste bashing of Islam, I whole-heartly agreed with everything he said.
Could you point me to something on-line that demonstrates or describes your issues with Harris?
.
Could you point me to something on-line that demonstrates or describes your issues with Harris?
.
# posted by : 1:39 PM
: 1:39 PM
ManonBlog, I’ve got some serious writing of my own to do this weekend so I can’t give you an extensive analysis of Harris’ stuff but here is a small sample from stuff he’s posted on his website. My comments are in parentheses.
Science Must Destroy Religion
- Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive. It has also obliged us to lie to ourselves repeatedly and at the highest levels about the compatibility between religious faith and scientific rationality.
(Does he mean that religious believers can’t do science? This would be easily disproved by a number of real scientists who have produced better science than Harris, any number of others have to date? Or does it mean that scientists have to always, in every aspect of their lives proceed only by the most rigorous methods of science, if so I am certain that none ever has.)
- The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.
( Only when there are material claims made by religious dogma that can be disproved by science. Otherwise this is an absurdly broad statement.)
- We need not distinguish between "hard" and "soft" science here, or between science and other evidence-based disciplines like history.
(Oh, let’s do distinguish between hard and soft science. Why ever not? Could Harris have a career motive for this lapse of rigor? Let’s include things like behavioral sciences and social sciences in “soft” science since those are generally reliant on interpretation of behaviors, some in other species, which are hardly precise or bias free. See my section about “prayer studies” but this can also be seen throughout the literature of behavioral sciences.)
Every sane human being recognizes that to rely merely upon "faith" to decide specific questions of historical fact would be both idiotic and grotesque,
(Why stop there? Why not replace the word ‘faith’ with “subjective interpretation” and include anything that relies on observations with the entire possibility of personal bias or error? Also evidences a lack of knowledge about how rigorous history can be in many cases. Facts are often in dispute and what they mean, the essence of history, is quite prone to subjective interpretation.)
- to the resurrection of Jesus, to Muhammad's conversation with the angel Gabriel, or to any of the other hallowed travesties that still crowd the altar of human ignorance.
(I don’t happen to believe that either of these literally happened but neither I nor Harris knows what the people writing them down meant. I am honest enough to admit that I don’t, Harris is typically arrogant.)
- Science, in the broadest sense, includes all reasonable claims to knowledge about ourselves and the world.
(As you can see I have a much more exigent definition, but then I’m generally a lot stricter about what constitutes “knowledge” than is likely to suit Harris or the other behavioral scientists in this discussion. Notice who is the more rigorous. The fact that scientific rigor doesn’t suit the career objectives of a behavioral scientist is, I’m afraid, unimportant to objectivity.)
Faith is nothing more than the license that religious people give one another to believe such propositions when reasons fail. The difference between science and religion is the difference between a willingness to dispassionately consider new evidence and new arguments, and a passionate unwillingness to do so.
(This is typical of Harris in that he puts all religions in one basket, either out of ignorance of the history and literature of religion or by design to present only things that suit his purpose. Just about all of liberal Christianity, Unitarianism, many of the schools of mystical religion and many others contradict this assertion. Religions change and even religious believers change with new experience and with new knowledge. I think that to a lot of religious people faith is a lot more than this. )
The virus of religious moderation
The problem with religious moderation is that it offers us no bulwark against the spread of religious extremism and religious violence. Moderates do not want to kill anyone in the name of God, but they want us to keep using the word "God" as though we knew what we were talking about.
(I don’t know a single religious liberal who would claim to use the word “God” as if they knew what it meant. I don’t know anyone but conservative fundamentalists who begin to approach such arrogance and most of them don’t go as far as Harris claims. As for not providing a “bulwark” against the spread of religious extremism and religious violence, who does he think ended the religious wars in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries? Who does he think produced relative religious peace in the United States and Western Europe? I hate to tell him but there simply weren’t enough atheists to get the job done in either place. Atheists provided no bulwark against the spread of religious violence and they won’t in the foreseeable future because there have never been enough. ”
And they don't want anything too critical to be said about people who really believe in the God of their forefathers because tolerance, above all else, is sacred.
(Clearly he’s speaking out of ignorance here. Since the Second Word War there has been a mania for critical study and apology in many different religious bodies and among religious believers. John Dominic Crossan’s detailed work is full of this kind of thing. Even Pope John Paul II, who I didn’t like at all, did quite a bit. Harris is simply dishonest about this.)
As moderates, we cannot say that religious fundamentalists are dangerous idiots, because they are merely practicing their freedom of belief.
(Oh for crying out loud, this is clearly false unless he deliberately inserted the word “idiots” in there to fall back on if called on it. Sort of like the use of “dogma” above.)
We can't even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivaled.
(Says who? Fundamentalist “christians” often have a very superficial knowledge of the history and background of the bible. They often deny obvious points in the texts themselves because they don’t match their theology or dogma. They won’t even do a critical comparison of the four gospels. I don’t know of many religious liberals who think that fundamentalists have a profound knowledge of scriptures otherwise they would probably convert to fundamentalism in large numbers. )
It is time we recognized that religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.
(What a bunch of hooey. He should read Crossan’s “The Historical Jesus” before he goes on. If you think Harris knows what he’s talking about here you are being hood winked. Religious liberalism has often grown out of more rigorous study of the scriptures and the milieu that produced them.)
The End of Liberalism?
- On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right. This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that “liberals are soft on terrorism.”
(Harris takes the Hitchens road.)
- At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. (Growing? Actually a lot of the people holding that theory are conservatives and, in passing, let’s wonder where that spirit of scientific enquiry went. I doubt that this theory is correct but I haven’t looked at any hard evidence, wonder if Harris has been more rigorous in his perusal of it.)
- A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks... because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode. (I’m extremely skeptical of most polling. I’d want to look at the methodology and the script used by the interviewers before taking even the first step of believing that this was at all an accurate poll of the population of the United States. I would also like to know if the poll broke down that alleged third of the public by general political viewpoint. How did Harris come up with this exposing a “liberal” trait.)
- Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization.
(Farther down the Hitchens’ trail. Which will Harris choose to “save” in the end, liberalism or Western civilization. Which side of the bread will that butter be on. Read the essay before you lay your bets.)
- There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities.
(Even farther. On what evidence, I’d ask. )
- This leads them to rally to the cause of other Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem facing civilization and yet it is regularly misconstrued, ignored or obfuscated by liberals.
(Oh, yes. I remember huge numbers of liberals coming out for the be headings in particular. I wonder if he includes the religious response to Jill Carroll’s threatened assassination in this charge. Or perhaps he means the response of religious people to the Peacemakers captivity and the murder of one of them. Harris is lying.)
- Recent condemnations of the Bush administration’s use of the phrase “Islamic fascism” are a case in point. There is no question that the phrase is imprecise Islamists are not technically fascists, and the term ignores a variety of schisms that exist even among Islamists but it is by no means an example of wartime propaganda, as has been repeatedly alleged by liberals.
(Well, now. We have him saying that “Islamic fascism” is untrue and distorts reality but that alone isn’t enough to have the self-styled apostle of scientific rigor agree that it’s a bad term. I’m not surprised but, then, I the one who thinks you get into trouble when you start calling things what they are not just for the sake of pinning a name to it, a problem I’ve got with behavioral scientists sometimes. You see where Harris is headed with this by now, I’d imagine.)
I suggest you go to Harris’ website and read what he, himself, has put there. Listening to a speech doesn’t show you nearly as much. Ask yourself if it would stand up to the kind of rigorous challenge of the kind that he and the “Brights” require of any religious statement. I don’t think it does.
I don’t care if you are an atheist or if Harris is but Harris is a jerk as well.
Science Must Destroy Religion
- Our fear of provoking religious hatred has rendered us incapable of criticizing ideas that are now patently absurd and increasingly maladaptive. It has also obliged us to lie to ourselves repeatedly and at the highest levels about the compatibility between religious faith and scientific rationality.
(Does he mean that religious believers can’t do science? This would be easily disproved by a number of real scientists who have produced better science than Harris, any number of others have to date? Or does it mean that scientists have to always, in every aspect of their lives proceed only by the most rigorous methods of science, if so I am certain that none ever has.)
- The conflict between religion and science is inherent and (very nearly) zero-sum. The success of science often comes at the expense of religious dogma; the maintenance of religious dogma always comes at the expense of science.
( Only when there are material claims made by religious dogma that can be disproved by science. Otherwise this is an absurdly broad statement.)
- We need not distinguish between "hard" and "soft" science here, or between science and other evidence-based disciplines like history.
(Oh, let’s do distinguish between hard and soft science. Why ever not? Could Harris have a career motive for this lapse of rigor? Let’s include things like behavioral sciences and social sciences in “soft” science since those are generally reliant on interpretation of behaviors, some in other species, which are hardly precise or bias free. See my section about “prayer studies” but this can also be seen throughout the literature of behavioral sciences.)
Every sane human being recognizes that to rely merely upon "faith" to decide specific questions of historical fact would be both idiotic and grotesque,
(Why stop there? Why not replace the word ‘faith’ with “subjective interpretation” and include anything that relies on observations with the entire possibility of personal bias or error? Also evidences a lack of knowledge about how rigorous history can be in many cases. Facts are often in dispute and what they mean, the essence of history, is quite prone to subjective interpretation.)
- to the resurrection of Jesus, to Muhammad's conversation with the angel Gabriel, or to any of the other hallowed travesties that still crowd the altar of human ignorance.
(I don’t happen to believe that either of these literally happened but neither I nor Harris knows what the people writing them down meant. I am honest enough to admit that I don’t, Harris is typically arrogant.)
- Science, in the broadest sense, includes all reasonable claims to knowledge about ourselves and the world.
(As you can see I have a much more exigent definition, but then I’m generally a lot stricter about what constitutes “knowledge” than is likely to suit Harris or the other behavioral scientists in this discussion. Notice who is the more rigorous. The fact that scientific rigor doesn’t suit the career objectives of a behavioral scientist is, I’m afraid, unimportant to objectivity.)
Faith is nothing more than the license that religious people give one another to believe such propositions when reasons fail. The difference between science and religion is the difference between a willingness to dispassionately consider new evidence and new arguments, and a passionate unwillingness to do so.
(This is typical of Harris in that he puts all religions in one basket, either out of ignorance of the history and literature of religion or by design to present only things that suit his purpose. Just about all of liberal Christianity, Unitarianism, many of the schools of mystical religion and many others contradict this assertion. Religions change and even religious believers change with new experience and with new knowledge. I think that to a lot of religious people faith is a lot more than this. )
The virus of religious moderation
The problem with religious moderation is that it offers us no bulwark against the spread of religious extremism and religious violence. Moderates do not want to kill anyone in the name of God, but they want us to keep using the word "God" as though we knew what we were talking about.
(I don’t know a single religious liberal who would claim to use the word “God” as if they knew what it meant. I don’t know anyone but conservative fundamentalists who begin to approach such arrogance and most of them don’t go as far as Harris claims. As for not providing a “bulwark” against the spread of religious extremism and religious violence, who does he think ended the religious wars in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries? Who does he think produced relative religious peace in the United States and Western Europe? I hate to tell him but there simply weren’t enough atheists to get the job done in either place. Atheists provided no bulwark against the spread of religious violence and they won’t in the foreseeable future because there have never been enough. ”
And they don't want anything too critical to be said about people who really believe in the God of their forefathers because tolerance, above all else, is sacred.
(Clearly he’s speaking out of ignorance here. Since the Second Word War there has been a mania for critical study and apology in many different religious bodies and among religious believers. John Dominic Crossan’s detailed work is full of this kind of thing. Even Pope John Paul II, who I didn’t like at all, did quite a bit. Harris is simply dishonest about this.)
As moderates, we cannot say that religious fundamentalists are dangerous idiots, because they are merely practicing their freedom of belief.
(Oh for crying out loud, this is clearly false unless he deliberately inserted the word “idiots” in there to fall back on if called on it. Sort of like the use of “dogma” above.)
We can't even say that they are mistaken in religious terms, because their knowledge of scripture is generally unrivaled.
(Says who? Fundamentalist “christians” often have a very superficial knowledge of the history and background of the bible. They often deny obvious points in the texts themselves because they don’t match their theology or dogma. They won’t even do a critical comparison of the four gospels. I don’t know of many religious liberals who think that fundamentalists have a profound knowledge of scriptures otherwise they would probably convert to fundamentalism in large numbers. )
It is time we recognized that religious moderation is the product of secular knowledge and scriptural ignorance.
(What a bunch of hooey. He should read Crossan’s “The Historical Jesus” before he goes on. If you think Harris knows what he’s talking about here you are being hood winked. Religious liberalism has often grown out of more rigorous study of the scriptures and the milieu that produced them.)
The End of Liberalism?
- On questions of national security, I am now as wary of my fellow liberals as I am of the religious demagogues on the Christian right. This may seem like frank acquiescence to the charge that “liberals are soft on terrorism.”
(Harris takes the Hitchens road.)
- At its most extreme, liberal denial has found expression in a growing subculture of conspiracy theorists who believe that the atrocities of 9/11 were orchestrated by our own government. (Growing? Actually a lot of the people holding that theory are conservatives and, in passing, let’s wonder where that spirit of scientific enquiry went. I doubt that this theory is correct but I haven’t looked at any hard evidence, wonder if Harris has been more rigorous in his perusal of it.)
- A nationwide poll conducted by the Scripps Survey Research Center at Ohio University found that more than a third of Americans suspect that the federal government assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks... because agents of the Bush administration had secretly rigged them to explode. (I’m extremely skeptical of most polling. I’d want to look at the methodology and the script used by the interviewers before taking even the first step of believing that this was at all an accurate poll of the population of the United States. I would also like to know if the poll broke down that alleged third of the public by general political viewpoint. How did Harris come up with this exposing a “liberal” trait.)
- Such an astonishing eruption of masochistic unreason could well mark the decline of liberalism, if not the decline of Western civilization.
(Farther down the Hitchens’ trail. Which will Harris choose to “save” in the end, liberalism or Western civilization. Which side of the bread will that butter be on. Read the essay before you lay your bets.)
- There are books, films and conferences organized around this phantasmagoria, and they offer an unusually clear view of the debilitating dogma that lurks at the heart of liberalism: Western power is utterly malevolent, while the powerless people of the Earth can be counted on to embrace reason and tolerance, if only given sufficient economic opportunities.
(Even farther. On what evidence, I’d ask. )
- This leads them to rally to the cause of other Muslims no matter how sociopathic their behavior. This benighted religious solidarity may be the greatest problem facing civilization and yet it is regularly misconstrued, ignored or obfuscated by liberals.
(Oh, yes. I remember huge numbers of liberals coming out for the be headings in particular. I wonder if he includes the religious response to Jill Carroll’s threatened assassination in this charge. Or perhaps he means the response of religious people to the Peacemakers captivity and the murder of one of them. Harris is lying.)
- Recent condemnations of the Bush administration’s use of the phrase “Islamic fascism” are a case in point. There is no question that the phrase is imprecise Islamists are not technically fascists, and the term ignores a variety of schisms that exist even among Islamists but it is by no means an example of wartime propaganda, as has been repeatedly alleged by liberals.
(Well, now. We have him saying that “Islamic fascism” is untrue and distorts reality but that alone isn’t enough to have the self-styled apostle of scientific rigor agree that it’s a bad term. I’m not surprised but, then, I the one who thinks you get into trouble when you start calling things what they are not just for the sake of pinning a name to it, a problem I’ve got with behavioral scientists sometimes. You see where Harris is headed with this by now, I’d imagine.)
I suggest you go to Harris’ website and read what he, himself, has put there. Listening to a speech doesn’t show you nearly as much. Ask yourself if it would stand up to the kind of rigorous challenge of the kind that he and the “Brights” require of any religious statement. I don’t think it does.
I don’t care if you are an atheist or if Harris is but Harris is a jerk as well.
if some neural mechanism of belief is discovered some gleeful fundamentalists will muckle on to it and hold it up as proof positive that there is a creator and the evidence of his handiwork is encoded into our very molecules.
Indeed ... this sort of thing already goes on.
And not just from the fundies. How much different is this sort of argument than what James said about religion and "the will/right to believe"?
Indeed ... this sort of thing already goes on.
And not just from the fundies. How much different is this sort of argument than what James said about religion and "the will/right to believe"?
alberich, I just had to take the chance to use the word "muckle".
I've never really bought into Pragmatism as a philosophical position, though their point is clear. Not really opposed to it, just don't find it convincing.
I've never really bought into Pragmatism as a philosophical position, though their point is clear. Not really opposed to it, just don't find it convincing.
I am admittedly too lazy to wade through some of these comments, but like a jackdaw, I pick up on the shiny things. Let's start with AI:
First, define intelligence for me. As no less a scientist than SJGould pointed out, we can't measure intelligence until we can define it. When you can define "intelligence" the same way you can define a gram (the scientific standard runs for a long paragraph, carefully delineating a specific piece of metal at a specific location on earth under specific conditions; look it up), we can then go on to talk about "AI."
Does intelligence, for example, include emotions? Descartes carried on the Hellenistic idea that it doesn't, but Descartes ain't lookin' so good these days on that point.
Science is nothing more than empiricism wed to technology, which means it is all about what can be determined via the five senses. Thus the superiority claimed for the "hard" sciences (physics, et al.) over the "soft" ones, like, say, psychiatry. While we're at it, let's get a definition of "love" on the table that is both empirical and universal (i.e., not culture bound). Then we can get a definition of "objective" that isn't culturally bound, too.
Betcha can't do it.
So leave off all talk of AI until you've considered what intelligence is. One philosopher on the subject argues intelligence must be body-bound, since, as Hume and the empiricists pointed out, all learning is done through the senses (and what is intelligence without learning?). Head spinning yet? So if you disembody intelligence, is it still recognizable as "intelligence"? And if you remove it from emotions like, say, curiosity....
...well, you see where this is going.
And then there's this:
Until someone comes up with a way to observe and measure things outside the physical universe the entirely non-material claims of faith based on personal experience are untouchable.
That sentence is so circular and meaningless. By definition, things outside the physical universe are unmeasurable. So?
So "love" does not exist? Or it does, but its meaningless to talk about it (that would be Hume's answer, by the way; he was an empiricist, remember). Or love does exist, but it's merely a biological function? Love is just a reductio ad absurdum that Western Europe has foolishly idolized since the 14th century, and the last victory of the Enlightenment will be to topple this last idol?
And that will improve things how? Or prove what?
Feh.
First, define intelligence for me. As no less a scientist than SJGould pointed out, we can't measure intelligence until we can define it. When you can define "intelligence" the same way you can define a gram (the scientific standard runs for a long paragraph, carefully delineating a specific piece of metal at a specific location on earth under specific conditions; look it up), we can then go on to talk about "AI."
Does intelligence, for example, include emotions? Descartes carried on the Hellenistic idea that it doesn't, but Descartes ain't lookin' so good these days on that point.
Science is nothing more than empiricism wed to technology, which means it is all about what can be determined via the five senses. Thus the superiority claimed for the "hard" sciences (physics, et al.) over the "soft" ones, like, say, psychiatry. While we're at it, let's get a definition of "love" on the table that is both empirical and universal (i.e., not culture bound). Then we can get a definition of "objective" that isn't culturally bound, too.
Betcha can't do it.
So leave off all talk of AI until you've considered what intelligence is. One philosopher on the subject argues intelligence must be body-bound, since, as Hume and the empiricists pointed out, all learning is done through the senses (and what is intelligence without learning?). Head spinning yet? So if you disembody intelligence, is it still recognizable as "intelligence"? And if you remove it from emotions like, say, curiosity....
...well, you see where this is going.
And then there's this:
Until someone comes up with a way to observe and measure things outside the physical universe the entirely non-material claims of faith based on personal experience are untouchable.
That sentence is so circular and meaningless. By definition, things outside the physical universe are unmeasurable. So?
So "love" does not exist? Or it does, but its meaningless to talk about it (that would be Hume's answer, by the way; he was an empiricist, remember). Or love does exist, but it's merely a biological function? Love is just a reductio ad absurdum that Western Europe has foolishly idolized since the 14th century, and the last victory of the Enlightenment will be to topple this last idol?
And that will improve things how? Or prove what?
Feh.
rmj:
Whatever. I find that people who go around quoting Hume and such generally have nothing to add to the conversation. All you want is a categorization war in which you get a chance to show how many names you can drop. How impressive.
Those who really know things can, given enough time, explain them in ways anyone can understand. Which is the mark of a good teacher.
.
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Whatever. I find that people who go around quoting Hume and such generally have nothing to add to the conversation. All you want is a categorization war in which you get a chance to show how many names you can drop. How impressive.
Those who really know things can, given enough time, explain them in ways anyone can understand. Which is the mark of a good teacher.
.
# posted by : 8:23 PM
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