Alan Lightman is an excellent writer — I’ve enjoyed his fiction, like Einstein’s Dreams and his nonfiction, like Great Ideas in Physics. I’m afraid my interest has waned a bit with his recent offerings, though, because although beautifully written, they’ve become increasingly soft-focused and fuzzy and gentle, too absorbed in trying to be very delicately lyrical and thereby losing a lot of their edge. Lightman is openly atheist himself, but he’s wafting wispily into faitheism. If you haven’t read him, here’s a short sample: he has a new piece in Salon titled Does God exist?, and it’s a fine example of the faitheist oeuvre, simultaneously insisting that science and religion need to be reconciled and rebuking that philistine, Dawkins.
I knew I was in trouble straight from the opening, in which Lightman talks about the salon of scientists and artists he participates in at MIT, in which they “drink merlot and munch on goat cheese and crackers” and chat conversationally about intellectual subjects. I’ve been there (well, not at MIT)—these sorts of academic soirees are common fare at universities all around the world, including even us bumpkins in flyover country. They’re pleasant and interesting, but let’s face it: they are rather rarefied events held in sheltered environments, and they aren’t even close to sharing much in common with thought outside the ivory tower. Especially when the subject is religion. And according to Lightman, his group talks about religion all the time.
Well, sort of. They talk about the etiolated religion of humanist academics, where people will say they’re religious, and even profess to be members of very specific sects with creeds and miracles and magic men, but they are very cautious to divorce their science from their mythology.
Devoutly religious scientists, such as Collins, Hutchinson and Gingerich, reconcile their belief in science with their belief in an interventionist God by adopting a worldview in which the autonomous laws of physics, biology and chemistry govern the behavior of the physical universe most of the time and therefore warrant our serious study. However, on occasion, God intervenes and acts outside of these laws. The exceptional divine actions cannot be analyzed by the methods of science.
This is not a strong foundation on which to build an argument that science and religion are reconcilable. Actually, it seems to support the opposite: I’d use that very same description to argue that those religious beliefs are explicitly unscientific. They are admitting that their magic miracles are inaccessible to science, that they cannot confirm them with science, and that therefore they are not acting as scientists when they claim belief in them. Case closed, we’re done.
But that will not stop Lightman, who insists on waffling softly on, and we get to see quotes from believing scientists trying to justify their delusions. For instance, Elaine Howard Ecklund, the sociologist who over-interprets data to make it conform to her religious beliefs, says this:
I’ve not had a problem reconciling science and faith since I became a believer at age 27 … if you limit yourself to the kinds of questions that science can ask, you’re leaving out some other things that I think are also pretty important, like why are we here and what’s the meaning of life and is there a God? Those are not scientific questions.
Those are scientific questions! If you’re going to postulate an interventionist creator god, then that generates hypotheses that you can evaluate — it’s only unscientific if you’re claiming that this god is invisible, undetectable, and has never ever left a single trace of his activity — which makes it a singularly useless and irrelevant entity. I also think that if you have a mechanistic explanation for the origin of humans (and we do) or of life itself (which is more tentative, but still…) then the “why” question is pretty damned silly — it’s only relevant if you accept the premise of intent, which is begging the whole question.
And then Owen Gingerich weighs in:
I believe that our physical universe is somehow wrapped within a broader and deeper spiritual universe, in which miracles can occur. We would not be able to plan ahead or make decisions without a world that is largely law-like. The scientific picture of the world is an important one. But it does not apply to all events. Even in science we take a lot for granted. It’s a matter of what you want to trust. Faith is about hope rather than proof.
And that’s all bullshit.
He “believes” in a “spiritual” universe wrapped around ours? How? Why? How does he know this? Calling it “hope” as in, “I sure do hope I get a pony!” is a cop-out.
So this is the best Lightman can do: noise and fluff and unevidenced assertions and wishful thinking. He’s simply endorsing a vacuous version of religion that is practiced by a few intellectuals, and ignoring religion as it is actually practiced.
Now here I could easily trot out a thousand examples of atrocities and horrors committed in the name of god, all guaranteed to make the participants in his little salon back away and shake their heads and insist that no, no, that’s not their religion…which is my point entirely. Religion is a fantasy, but their version is a spun-sugar fantasy of a fantasy, even more distantly removed from reality.
So let me show you a subtler example. This is something my wife and I spotted on the drive home today: it’s a grove of crosses erected on a low hill near Sauk Center, titled “Cemetery of the Holy Innocents”, where “each cross represents 40 babies whose lives are ended by abortion each day in the US”. It’s a religious hallucination, that somehow fetuses are equivalent to babies (like the ones pictured on the billboard), and that ending abortion will motivate a god to bless our country.
This is bad reasoning. It doesn’t matter whether you’re for or against abortion, this is religion poisoning people’s minds and driving them to stupidity and extremism: this is the thinking that leads people to scream and wave posters of bloody fetuses at women trying to get into women’s health clinics, that leads them to murder abortion doctors, that impels them to vote against their own economic interests in the name of “saving babies”.
This is religion as it is practiced in the real world, outside of the merlot-sipping world of academe. The New Atheism is not a reaction against that attenuated faith of the professor who goes to church on Sundays (although we do think that is goofy and nonsensical), but against the religion that gets women mistreated and gays strung up on barbed wire and schools filled with creationist lies and pushes incompetents like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann and George W. Bush to the pinnacle of the electoral struggle every four years. It’s the religion that says we need to defend a myth of a sacred holy kingdom of Israel rather than a secular nation of human beings; that worships an apocalyptic end to all things; that fills children with a fear of hell. It’s religion, the goddamned LIE, not religion the frilly poem some intellectual likes to ponder over brie and crackers.
But Lightman ignores the real conflict to complain about those New Atheists.
In my opinion, Dawkins has a narrow view of faith. I would be the first to challenge any belief that contradicts the findings of science. But, as I have said earlier, there are things we believe in that do not submit to the methods and reductions of science. Furthermore, faith, and the passion for the transcendent that often goes with it, have been the impulse for so many exquisite creations of humankind. Consider the verses of the Gitanjali, the Messiah, the mosque of the Alhambra, the paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Should we take to task Tagore and Handel and Sultan Yusuf and Michelangelo for not thinking? Faith, in its broadest sense, is about far more than belief in the existence of God or the disregard of scientific evidence. Faith is the willingness to give ourselves over, at times, to things we do not fully understand. Faith is the belief in things larger than ourselves. Faith is the ability to honor stillness at some moments and at others to ride the passion and exuberance that is the artistic impulse, the flight of the imagination, the full engagement with this strange and shimmering world.
And what about truth? Did Allah build the Alhambra, did Jesus paint the Sistine Chapel? Does Richard Dawkins, or any atheist, deny the existence of poetry or music or paintings or sculpture or dance? Faith, as portrayed here, is the lie that says human accomplishment, our love of beauty, the awesomeness of the universe, are somehow to be credited to phantasms and illusions — that they can’t be appreciated as the work of people or our understanding of reality, but that their profundity is to be found in our ignorance.
I so despise that attitude. It enables a greedy, rapacious religiosity that devours everything the human mind produces and claims religion as the source; it takes the hand and eye of Michaelangelo, the skill of his art and the labor of hard-earned practice, and grants all its profit to god…a god who was not there, did nothing, deserves nothing, and does not even bother to exist to enjoy the art.
Lightman the atheist even surrenders his personal experience to the defense of religion — he enrolls his world to serve in the legions of the church.
Then, one August afternoon, the two baby ospreys of that season took flight for the first time as I stood on the circular deck of my house watching the nest. All summer long, they had watched me on that deck as I watched them. To them, it must have looked like I was in my nest just as they were in theirs. On this particular afternoon, their maiden flight, they did a loop of my house and then headed straight at me with tremendous speed. My immediate impulse was to run for cover, since they could have ripped me apart with their powerful talons. But something held me to my ground. When they were within 20 feet of me, they suddenly veered upward and away. But before that dazzling and frightening vertical climb, for about half a second we made eye contact. Words cannot convey what was exchanged between us in that instant. It was a look of connectedness, of mutual respect, of recognition that we shared the same land. After they were gone, I found that I was shaking, and in tears. To this day, I cannot explain what happened in that half-second. But it was one of the most profound moments of my life.
How nice. How poetic.
But notice: every event was natural. The ospreys, the flight, the look — the perceptions were a product of his mind. The wonder he felt was real, as was the flight of the ospreys, and he felt a moment of real awe…and nowhere was a god made manifest, no miracle was invoked, no magic required. Why make it numinous and spiritual when reality provided all the power? Why throw the beauty of this moment into god’s imaginary corner when it belongs to physics and chemistry and biology and psychology?
Why betray the truth with delusions?
I don’t think Dawkins has too narrow a view of religion at all, but Lightman has too wide a view: he glibly sacrifices reality, even a lovely reality, on the altar of faith. I would not surrender one glorious moment of life to the pretense of religion, and I honestly do not understand why any scientist would.
From the Salon article:
Sure. If by religion, you mean the careful examination of evidence to construct, and/or determine the validity of, hypotheses about the way the world works. Oh, and dropping those hypotheses which do not conform to evidence.
I’m sure that Brody can produce ample evidence to support his “science is the religion of the twenty-first century” assertion. Or are we supposed to take it on faith?
Wow.
This post? Possibly the best and most beautifully evocative thing you’ve ever written.
I hate that sort of claim. It’s very much akin to the stupid accusations of the IDiots that we just assume that life wasn’t
poofed into existence by Goddesigned, that we just don’t allow our premises to be questioned.Lies, both of them. We expect evolution to explain the currently unexplained biological questions because it has answered so many previously (and the evidence for non-teleological evolution intensely pervades all known life), and we expect the “laws” to hold in the classical realm because, dammit, they do. We have massive evidence that they do, and any pretense to the contrary is dishonest and/or stupid.
And why did I say that the “laws” hold in the classical realm, except that some don’t hold throughout the quantum realm?
Plus we all know that “traditional laws” likely don’t hold at the beginning of the universe, or possibly, somewhere in the multiverse. Sure there might be a god not bound by laws, but we have absolutely no reason to begin to suppose that it does, and the existence of regions/times of breakdown of laws gives us no more reason to suppose that God exists than that Shakespeare’s Ariel does.
I don’t especially mind if he’s some kind of accommodationist, in fact, but he needn’t open a pack of nonsense to use to defend his position.
Glen Davidson
This time PZ has just gone TOO FAR…
Merlot is REALLY good stuff.
Or, does he?
And, I should just add that “laws” are empirical findings, not a priori premises–and evolution brings life under their classical operation. Science certainly is fortunate that “laws” hold in so much of experience, but could have found out otherwise were it the case, and would then have to ask just how much it can know–with a good deal of “law violation,” it might not have been much.
Glen Davidson
That was truly epic PZ, loved this post to bits.
You are the most awesome. That is all.
“And then a miracle happened” is not science. It’s the antithesis of science.
My son, an awesome 1 year old, is running around discovering his world. Outside, the leaves are changing on a beautiful day as the earth makes its weary way around the sun. Beyond, my fellow man is exploring the workings of the planet, the solar system, and the universe; one could spend a lifetime immersed in the immense knowledge we are gaining, and never be able to keep up. I am thrilled to be alive and aware in this day and age, and only lament the limits of my abilities to take it all in and do all I can to advance humanity’s existence.
How can anyone who should know better prefer to waste their precious little time in this universe, worshiping such godly nonsense??
PZ, thanks for saying things like this. Never, ever stop.
I shed a genuine tear for a man who, when faced with the raw, pure beauty of reality, and of our place in the natural world, looked it in the eye and said “magic fairies.”
That last sentence of yours, PZ, is a fantastic quotation I’ll be committing to memory
<Hides bottle of wine selected for tonight’s dinner>
Just go for a walk in the woods. You don’t need any faith, (except perhaps, that there are no bears, etc, nearby).
This is an irrelevant dichotomy. When ideologies have caused great suffering and death to other human beings, it’s usually been deliberate. Attributing suffering to science & technology is like blaming the gun, not the gunman.
What garbage.
It gets worse. Her recent article goes beyond over-interpretation. The whole “argument” rests on the refusal to consistently define key terms like “sprituality” and to set out methods clearly and the assumption-laden interpretation of data.* More recent information suggests that some of her claims about her methods were not true to fact. I started to write a post about it, but became too angry. I may have to go back to it.
It appears from a brief check that Gingerich is an evangelical and on the Templeton board of trustees. This group isn’t remotely representative of scientists.
*e.g., spirituality can be characterized by “engagement with the ethical dimensions of communal life,” as though “non-spiritual” atheists have no such engagement.
Except those miracles never do occur. Tsk. Suspension of disbelief can help you enjoy a movie or a book, but it’s not a good state of mind to be in on a regular basis.
Precisely, this (Or QFT as the kids say these days). Humans are filled with delusions, the Demon-Haunted World as Sagan put it. It has been my experience that looking at it as a natural phenomenon makes it much more awe-inspiring.
Let’s not ramble endlessly on about the texture of the scales of our Garage Dragon. Let’s stand back and be in awe of the garage. Humans built that utilitarian ‘nest’, and it is not unimpressive (even if it is common).
But notice: every event was natural. The ospreys, the flight, the look — the perceptions were a product of his mind.
For once, being a humanities major or an artist of some kind may have helped this moron understand what he was experiencing: Seeing the world with the eyes of an artist.
I often see the world with incredible intensity of color and form that’s more real than real (if that makes sense) when something hits my eyes just right. It’s an intense feeling that’s tough to describe to those who haven’t experienced it, but I never thought of it as religious, only that the world can be an incredibly beautiful place sometimes if you’re able to see it this way. It never even occurred to me to associate it with religion; however, most people are too ignorant and gullible to know what’s going on, and think it has to be the only thing that they’ve been allowed to associate with a feeling like that: stupid garbage religion. But it’s not religious.
Go take an art class, bLightman.
No one is denying the value of creativity or the worth of art but the fact remains that a work of art, however beautiful, does not have the power to transmute a delusion into a fact, a fiction into reality, or a lie into a truth.
Some examples of religious art are wonderous testaments to the creativity, skill and artistic vision of great human artists, but they are hardly evidence for god, nor are they sufficient to offset the very real and very ugly harm that religion has caused throughout history and across the globe – including the shelling of priceless statues of Buddha by the Taliban.
Religion has as often (most likely more often) been used to stifle expression and deface art as it has functioned to inspire it.
One of the best things I’ve read in a while.
And I have nothing else to say on the matter.
Aquaria:
As an artist and photographer, I see the world that way, always have done. I rarely see things the way others do and I’ve never once been tempted to hang god/spiritual tags on what I see or feel.
I am often motivated to be even more active on some fronts, such as environmentalism and conservation, but god stuff? No.
That is not a scientific definition. It’s not even coherent.
All, like Ecklund, affiliated with Templeton. I suspect Lightman might be joining that illustrious cast soon.
Wrong, Lightman. Faith is accepting something that has no evidence to support it. There’s no evidence for god(s) and so faith is required if one wants to believe in god(s).
Nice piece. I like the spirit, but not all of the details. E.g.:
I think Lightman’s answer should be: “And still, science and religion are reconcilable. You say that I’m not acting as a scientist when I accept religious beliefs? Of course I’m not! But so what? I’m also not acting as a scientist when I order pizza in a restaurant. Do you want to say that science and ordering pizza are not reconcilable? Case closed, we are done?”
Faith is the belief in things larger than ourselves.
What fucking hogwash.
Right in the middle of my city’s downtown is an over-rated tourist trap of a monument to people who believed in something bigger than themselves. I don’t have to agree with why they fought to death for that something, but I can appreciate it. There was idealism and courage and the willingness to make sacrifices for the greater good, but faith wasn’t what happened there.
There’s no faith involved for anything, only the realization that you’re fucking human and are aware of the world and those around you. There can be hope, but faith is stupid and pointless. It doesn’t get things done. Hard work, persistence–these get things done. These move mountains, literally. Not fantasizing about a genocidal scumbag in the sky.
But the question then becomes, how do we know that’s the case? If laws are violated, then surely that should be detected and is in the realm of science. If it’s not within the realms of science, on what grounds can they be said to know it’s the case? Can they distinguish between a God that works within the framework of natural laws, one outside the natural laws, or that there’s any God acting at all if it’s beyond the realm of scientific inquiry?
I actually agree that science and religion need to be reconciled, but if this is the kind of pap that’s going to pass for a reconciliation then religion is in a really bad shape. It seems especially absurd when taking aim at the critics for being unsophisticated, while allowing through such feeble argumentation on the view being expressed. It’s a reminder of the documentary Did Darwin Kill God? where after the fundie from Answers In Genesis gave his view, the counter was “that’s not any version of Christianity I know”. It’s like it’s treated as just plain obvious that they are compatible, so any criticism must miss the mark. That it’s not obvious is why we have this conversation over and over and over and over.
As an artist and photographer, I see the world that way, always have done. I rarely see things the way others do and I’ve never once been tempted to hang god/spiritual tags on what I see or feel.
Do you still remember the first time when you realized you didn’t see things the way other people did?
Hell, it took years for my mother to understand why I talked about how I felt in colors, like when I was car sick, and she asked me to describe what was wrong. My answer was always, “It’s yellow,” as if that would explain everything. I really didn’t get that other people had no idea what I was talking about. They couldn’t comprehend that I literally felt like the grossest shade of yellow one could ever see, and I’d see it too, somewhere between my reality and theirs. It was so frustrating when i’d try to explain it, and not be understood.
Artistic kids. What a bunch of nuts, eh?
“You say that I’m not acting as a Catholic when I molest young children? Of course I’m not! But so what? I’m also not acting as a Catholic when I order pizza in a restaurant. Do you want to say that Catholicism and ordering pizza are not reconcilable?”
You’re using “reconcilable” in the most trivial sense. Humans can believe all kinds of incompatible stuff simultaneously. That doesn’t mean the concepts are compatible.
I recently posted on my blog “The expanding scope of science; the shrinking scope of religion“.
I think that a lot of religious people, or their sympathisers, haven’t caught on to the extent to which science has encroached upon what many of them think is the eternal domain of religion.
Also, the scope of what can even be discussed by science is escalating, and it is science that is pushing at the previous boundaries. Religion trails behind in its aspirations. Its niche was carved out a long time ago, and it can only expand it if it follows science.
Why are we here ?…. As opposed to…where?
What is the meaning of life?.. What is the meaning of chair?
Is there a God?…. Definitely no!
Is there a god?…. No evidence, but most probably not
When ever a believer says to me “Okay, you’re an Atheist. Can I ask you a question?” I answer ” Sure, as long as you realize that ‘I don’t know’ is a perfectly valid answer and also that I am not obligated to accept your answer by default”
Lightman is imagining he made eye contact with the 2 osprey,
“But before that dazzling and frightening vertical climb, for about half a second we made eye contact. Words cannot convey what was exchanged between us in that instant. It was a look of connectedness, of mutual respect, of recognition that we shared the same land.”
What a bunch a’crap.
I hate hate hate the “religion inspires great art” thought process. So what?! John Wayne Gacy sure painted a lot of clowns, but he was still a fracking serial killer. Religion makes art, but it’s still a poor explanation of reality that allows people to justify atrocities. Don’t degenerate something as awesome as art by saying that religion was necessary for its creation.
Wait a second. I don’t think that even Ecklund claims that 25% of scientists at elite American universities believe in the existence of God. Her whole thing is conflating vague spirituality with belief, but, to the best of my knowledge, she has not yet been so intellectually dishonest as to claim equivalence. So why does Lightman?
I think it should be tempered with some Bill Hicks:
“See I think drugs have done some good things for us. If you don’t think drugs have done good things for us then do me a favor. Go home tonight and take all of your records,tapes and all your CD’s and burn them. Because, you know all those musicians who made all that great music that’s enhanced your lives throughout the years? Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreal fucking high on drugs, man.”
Aquaria:
Oh yes, I was tiny. Artistic talent ran rampant in my family, so it was never considered unusual by them; kindergarten was a bit of shock.
I used to get carsick too and to me, it was like the ebb and flow of a tide, so I used to yell “tide!” and whoever was driving pulled over asap. Carsickness was always a rather disgusting greasy green to me.
All the way.
I love my scientific worldview. I can look outside and see every living creature and know what’s going on in their bodies and know roughly how they’re affecting their ecosystems. I can see the rocks and streams and understand how those things got there and how they’re important to life without having to ask why those things are there or why they’re beautiful.
To put it more bluntly, I don’t need a god pissing on my parade and soiling beauty for beauty’s sake.
Meh
Overrated trendy muted wine.
I disagree. The faitheists and the accomodationists and the merlot-sipping sophisticated theologians and the I’m-spiritual-not-religious woo-woos also react against these same “extremists.” And they tell us again and again and again that this extremism is the real problem and they offer the solution: a more benign version of religion. A better way of understanding God.
So they want us to stay away then from the existence of God. Don’t be so analytical: bend over backwards to ignore the supernatural components and focus on the secular aspects which make sense. Stop looking at the existence of God as if it were a scientific question and instead approach it as one would approach poetry or hope or love — or a hobby. If we atheists would just agree to do that, then we’ll see that faith is fine, spirituality is wonderful, and religion is neutral: “bad” people distort it, is all.
And then they will like us… even though we are apparently incapable of feeling anything deeply or committing ourselves to values or believing in anything “larger” than ourselves. They can be magnanimous.
Forget it. The New Atheism is not defined by its reaction to intrusive and intolerant versions of religion. The professors with attenuated faith would be perfectly fine with that. That’s how they are trying to define the new atheism: a reaction against the extreme versions and an unwillingness to recognize the nice versions.
What sets the gnu atheism apart from faitheism and accomodationism is its unwillingness to give religion a pass as long as it’s one of those versions that aren’t overtly intrusive and intolerant. Live and let live. Let’s agree to disagree and move on to some other topic.
No. The problem lies at the core. Is it true? That question needs to be asked. And asked. And asked again. And demand clarity from the other side. And method, method, method.
None of this bullshit bait-and-switch games played with “faith” meaning anything and everything.
Religion cannot be combined with scientific thinking. Believing some non-scientific ideas that are completely unprovable like a deist position are possible but religion is always about a lot of dogmas and creeds that can easily get disproven by science
PZ Myers #26
You missed my point. Molesting children is not reconcilable with Catholicism in the sense: Catholic teaching tells you that you shouldn’t molest young children. Now, in order to build an analogous case from observations like:
you would have to claim that science tells you that:
you shouldn’t accept anything which is inaccessible to science, something which cannot be confirmed with science
And the point is that science doesn’t tell you this – no more than it tells you that you shouldn’t order pizza. Science doesn’t contain such normative claims. They are part of an ideology, not science. And Lightman should retort: “yes, religion is not reconcilable with this ideology. But it’s still reconcilable with science”.
(Whether he would be right, it’s another question. What I say is just that your criticism is too easy. More work is needed here.)
A bit of an aside (ok a LOT of an aside, but it’s important)
“drink merlot and munch on goat cheese and crackers”
You Yanks (and the Aussies) have just got to cut it out with this monocepage stuff. Really. MIX DIFFERENT GRAPE VARIETIES IN THE SAME WINE! Most of your wine tastes like alcoholic blackcurrant cordial. Get some sophistication into it, some variety of flavours, some DEPTH. (Oh, and Chardonnay. California is not Chablis. Haven’t you heard of other white grape varieties?)
“No, if anyone orders Merlot, I’m leaving. I am NOT drinking any fucking Merlot!”
It’s questionable whether religion actually inspired any great art. It did commission some great things, though.
Are you suggesting that ordering pizza doesn’t fit into the scientific worldview? That somehow pizzas, phones, and the desire and act of ordering are somehow inaccessible from scientific study? If not, then you’re making an equivocation. If so, at best you have a massive false equivalence. Take your pick.
I notice he didn’t see the ospreys in church.
Not yet, but the Raptor Ready churches know it’s only a matter of time.
Oh, are they talking about faith in it’s broadest sense? Faith as hope, as feeling, as pragmatic reliance on a tentative conclusion based on evidence? Faith as pizza and baseball, scented candles and a new pair of shoes? Faith is not just confined to religion, you see. It’s about elections and electrons and isosceles triangles and going out dancin’ on a Saturday night. Faith is the computer I’m typing on and the hair ball the cat is coughing up and the purple bubble gum stuck to the bottom of your shoe. Faith is believing that existence exists. Faith is every belief, every event, every human endeavor ever.
Oh, let’s do look at “faith” in the broadest sense possible. Let’s stretch that definition wide open! Lightman just doesn’t go far enough is the problem I think.
I think we should start a meme where we say atheism includes theism: believing in God is actually just a subset of NOT believing in God. Everyone is an “atheist.” And see how eager they are to go along with it and get on board with understanding atheism in the broadest sense possible. Dream big.
Subjugation through semantics.
:) Someone had to quote it.
***
Of course it does.
Oh, come on. If he had written that he felt this, fine. He felt this. What is it like to be an osprey? Believing that the ospreys were feeling “respect” at that moment does not respect the ospreys as ospreys.
In other words, pizzas, desire for pizzas, ordering pizzas, and eating pizzas are in principle objects of scientific study. That we don’t do some sort of scientific calculation for our desires doesn’t mean that any belief is somehow compatible with scientific inquiry. That when I choose what music to listen to it’s based on what I perceive to enjoy, it’s by no means saying that psychic powers are just as compatible with science as my music preferences. That’s making a huge category error, and grossly missing the point of what compatibility with science is trying to get at. It’s a massive equivocation between what beliefs an individual holds and between whether two beliefs are reconcilable.
In a scientific sense, no-one is going to question whether ordering a pizza fits into a scientific ontology, even if at present all the steps can’t be explained. A belief in an intervetionist deity, on the other hand, has a great deal of reconciliation to be done; as it is not known whether there exists anything outside of time – let alone some deity that has certain personal traits and interferes through transgressions of nature in the lives and affairs of our species.
The osprey’s were checking him out to see if he was edible.
Ospreys: “Heh. Let’s buzz that asshole who’s been staring at us all summer!”
Kel #41
No, I’m saying that science remains neutral in this respect: it doesn’t tell you that you should order pizza, it doesn’t tell you that you shouldn’t. It doesn’t tell you also that you shouldn’t accept anything that is scientifically unproven. It doesn’t even tell you that everything is accessible to scientific study. If you don’t agree, please tell me which science contains such a claim as its theorem? Biology? Physics? Some other science? Take your pick.
Ok, the rest of the discussion maybe for tomorrow. It’s very late now in Europe, you know :-)
Sastra:
I agree. I had quite the eyeroll over his projection of the ospreys feeling the same thing he did.
Not long ago, I had extended (and close) eye contact with a young buck in a field. I stared, he stared and I took a lot of photos. What there was not was a mystical connection between us, where we shared thoughts and feelings. It was a great and wondrous moment for me, as it’s quite rare for a deer to be so still and quiet around people here.
Sastra #44:
Nice, you made me laugh.
Oh FFS, an errant apostrophe invaded my post @48. I blame the ospreys.
great essay. Einstein’s Dreams is a nice book. And thanks to all for the great comments.
they were actually giving him the stink eye, to warn him not to write some fey bullshit like this…cause they just knew…
I’m not convinced it’s not just the ‘I’m-unique’ syndrome that people tend to catch. All kids have their funny quirks.
Everyone has slightly different perceptions of the world but I never really thought I saw the world that differently from others despite being more artistic than my friends and family. Sure I have a passion for the natural world, colour, light, and abstract concepts. But don’t a lot of people feel that, not just us oh-so-special artists?
All of them. It’s not a claim or a theorem. It’s what science means epistemically. Perhaps you can tell us what claims are accepted scientifically that are not “accessible” to scientific study (because undefined or incoherently defined) or that have not been empirically confirmed, and provide evidence of this scientific acceptance.
Jem, I don’t consider myself unique or oh-so-special. Nor did I say that in my posts. Having been a successful artist for almost 30 years now, I know I see things differently from a great many people. I’ve never considered it a big deal, but it has a lot to do with my chosen career.
The last time the wife, daughter and I were ordering pizza we had a discussion about whether or not to have the quattro fermaggio (four cheeses) pizza. My wife was feeling somewhat constipated and didn’t think that much cheese would help her condition. So we had a scientific discussion about pizza.
Incidentally, we didn’t have the quattro fermaggio pizza.
Ariel #50 wrote:
Trouble is this attempt to reconcile science and religion plays fast and loose with category error. Religion makes fact claims about reality that fall into the same category as other empirical claims such as the Big Bang, evolution, astrology, and parapsychology. “The universe was designed and created by a supernatural Intelligence” is NOT like saying “let’s order pizza,” “cheating is wrong” or “I need a hug.” We don’t use the standards we’d use on those statements on a fact claim like the existence of God. If we are honest, we use philosophical and scientific rigor when examining the question.
It’s like someone trying to defend their belief that there is a monster in Loch Ness by saying that this belief is similar to believing that we need to protect endangered species. It’s an ethical question — so all the scientific arguments against the Loch Ness Monster are besides the point. Nice try. What would he say if he had caught it in a net?
Again, this is pure equivocation. You’re not making the distinction between thinking scientifically, and whether something is scientific. Pizzas exist, phones exist, desires exist, and dialling for pizza exists, and with science we can study why it is that people like pizza and would order it (in terms of taste, nutrition, advertising, etc.)
Psychology would be a good start, neuroscience a further advancement. But again, you’re missing the point badly here. Pizzas exist, they can in principle be scientifically studied, they’re not inaccessible to scientific study. The claims of religion, on the other hand, are.
Perhaps you can tell us what claims are accepted scientifically
And by claims I mean claims of fact, not value or aesthetic judgments.
Dawkins sums up the merlot-drinking professorial phenomenon perfectly in The God Delusion. He describes the naturalistic pantheism of such folks as “sexed up atheism.”
It’s just fine, I suppose, for when one wants to read some lovely bronze age poetry, or engage in some festive pageantry around the holidays of one’s choice, or even argue a bit about the bizarre in-group reasoning of a particular religious tradition (aka Sophistumacated Theology™).
The problem is that most people who call themselves religious really truly do believe in a magic sky fairy who cares extra special for them and not for children starving in Somalia. The merlot-drinkers are missing the point that those of us who deal with the real religious every day, the Boots on the Ground Atheists, see a lot more of the danger of the magic sky fairy delusion and can use other language besides religion to describe the wonder/awe/magic-of-reality involved in the osprey example.
I called myself a theist until about 3 years ago, despite the fact that I believed in exactly the same personal god that my life-long atheist husband did: none at all. I was all naturalistic pantheism all the time. What tipped me over the edge into full-on honesty? Realizing that no matter how much I tried to seek common ground and shared goals with the magic sky fairy fans, we had no shared goals or common ground to find. Would that the merlot-drinker set could get out of their universities and meet some true believers – it’d make atheists out of them for sure.
Which is redundant anyway, since the latter couldn’t possibly gain scientific acceptance in the sense under consideration.
Proofreading would be my friend. Sigh.
Every semester, I use choosing to eat pizza as an example in class–it is in context and it is scientific. Anyone who thinks that pizza is beyond the realm of science is thinking too narrowly.
Merlot and brie? Meh. A nice robust burgundy with gougere for me.
Oh, and by the way, great post PZ.
That wouldn’t help him a bit. Any interaction with the universe would still leave evidence which potentially can be used to reconstruct details about the interaction itself.
It should be noted that the three guys Lightman lists as examples of religious scientists – Collins, Hutchinson, and Gingerich – are not deists but all as far as I’ve gathered evangelicals.
Mattir #62
The merlot drinkers are the ones who complain that Dawkins’s target in The God Delusion are the wrong set of goddists. “Nobody believes in an old dude with a long white beard and an unhealthy preoccupation with masturbation. The goddists we deal with believe in a deist, philosophical god.” Unfortunately, the majority of true believing Christians do believe in the guy pictured on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, the one who answers prayers* and thinks anal sex is icky. Certainly the vast majority of Christians who come to Pharyngula to preach to us are long white beard goddists.
*Except for amputees’ prayers, for some reason.
Mattir, I’m reading Lightman more as deism (despite the naturalistic language), or “watered-down theism”.
See, that to me makes science and religion incompatable, like two people who refuse to talk to each other. It seems rather odd to argue that two things are compatible because they cannot step onto the others lawn.
‘Tis:
Even if every single theist from every single flavour of religion on the planet believed in a deist, philosophical god, it’s still God as the MacGuffin of life. Pointless.
I agree. But Lightman doesn’t.
Quoted for truth. It’s about hoping you’re special, cupcake. And you’re not.
@ Ariel;
Ordering, eating and even enjoying pizza are all perfectly compatible with a scientific worldview. Not all the steps in the decision making and aesthetics of enjoyment parts are fully understood, but we can reasonably assume a naturalistic explanation courtesy biochemistry and physics. Science says nothing about whether or not you should order a pizza, but no supernatural agency need be invoked in order to explain the processeses involved.
Religion, on the other hand, absolutely requires a belief in the supernatural. It requires that one assume, without evidence, the existence of an omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient immortal creator of the universe. A being that is able to rewrite the principles of the physical universe at will and that, for all its immense power, is entirely undetectable.
It requires a belief in an explanation that is conveniently placed beyond science – beyond evidence – and so can never be analysed or challenged. This world view is entirely incompatible with science. More than that, it is anti-thetical to the scientific method because it demands blind faith while refuting the very idea of ever supporting its extraordinary assertions with evidence.
In such a case, for the rationalist and the scientist the null hypothesis must hold. If there is no evidence, then the phenomenon will not be treated as real until some hard, replicatable evidence is forthcoming.
For a scientist to do anything other than this is indeed for that scientist to behave unscientifically in this instance. Would they convey the same special dispensation on other unevidenced beliefs? Would they accept that belief in literal unicorns is reasonable and compatible with science because such creatures embody a sense of wonder and ‘spiritualism’ that supposedly ‘goes beyond’ science and rationalism for some people? Or is it the case, as I suspect, that it is only their own sacred cows (and those of their allies) that are beyond slaughter?
If every single god-bot believed in a deist or naturalistic pantheist version of god, we could all stop worrying about religion, since Dawkins is correct that these versions of god are functionally indistinguishable from atheism. The problem I have with the merlot-drinking deists (MDDs) is the same one I have with a lot of liberal religious groups – their use of god-language, without qualifiers, provides cover for and an illusion of common ground with some very unpleasant and dangerous magic sky fairy folks.
This is really truly dangerous, and yet few of them (or at least few of the ones I’ve met) are remotely aware of the cover-phenomenon or the danger. This is why, even though I still enjoy a good dose of bronze-age-god-talk from time to time, I identify as a non-theist/atheist. I do not want to camouflage the ugliness of those who truly believe that god helps them pick out which color underwear to wear today and yet does nothing to help the people living in the Horn of Africa.
And this time, I’ll use that spiffy preview button.
from the article:
He’s got an awfully low bar for what counts as “miraculous.” Or maybe this is some literary flair in a bit of creative writing. Does he know the difference?
Ah, yes. Surveys of what Americans believe. Surely, concerning the existence of magic sky fairies, surveys of Americans are by far the most relevant piece of data.
It’s too bad that, for a working definition, there’s nothing to work with. Nonsense.
Nonsense. This group is composed of intellectuals? Seriously? I hope Alan Guth wasn’t around to proofread this article.
——
SC:
“Ariel” is very confused, so this is really a response to him/her, not you.
And, in any case, value or aesthetic judgments do reduce to statements of fact about a person’s psychology. Whether they are “correct,” or whether “correctness” is even a property of such judgments would not currently be a scientific statement, but such judgments certainly do exist. There’s no question that they are real and can be studied. Being a “subjective fact” is a contradiction in terms, so anything which falls into the category of being subjective, if it exists, is ultimately a matter of objective facts, even if practically we don’t or can’t know those facts right now.
Only by assuming minds have some super-special magic power (either specifically when ordering pizza, or in general) could one assume they are “outside” the purview of science. But there’s quite a lot of evidence this is not the case. Minds work because brains do.
Thus, if the analogy is that “God” has or is a mind, then likewise one would think it has or is a brain (or more than one). Of course, few believe this because (implicitly at least) they reject that the mind is entirely a product of the brain, and believe minds do have super-special magic powers. “God” just happens to be a unique instance of this general property about the world, a belief for which they must be ignorant of or deny a great deal of scientific evidence. Anything you do, every experience down to mundane bullshit like ordering a pizza or looking at some birds, is “spiritual” because it happened in your oh-so-magical mind, and you’re too fucking ignorant or dishonest to use the word “psychological.” That’s not science, and it isn’t compatible with science.
No such thing as a good dose. Look, you can wean yourself off it slowly. You don’t have to go cold turkey, and that can be sort of dangerous anyway. There are places you can go to get help. One of them is called…. uh, Pharyngula, I think. ;)
@Sastra – 44
This is SO FUCKING TRUE!
After all, being an atheist is simply being willing to live life, to act, without consulting god/religion! Therefore, the only non-atheist out there is someone who never takes any voluntary action at all unless ze consults hir god first and receives specific permission. Each conversation includes a pause so as to ask some god or other what the next word/sentence shall be, each keystroke is delayed while seeking permission to wiggle one finger or another. The only reason why such a person waits motionless while seeking permission is because the god who guides hir stated specifically that motionlessness was the appropriate default state while waiting for orders. The only reason why such a person does not die when the god in question is busy answering other calls is because the standing orders that detailed how to ask for permission and insisted on motionlessness during any interim also very magically and specifically exempted the para-/sympathetic nervous systems and the results of para-/sympathetic nervous systems’ signals from the command to “do nothing”.
Unless the religionists can find me such a person, then we all act without god, it’s common in so many endeavors – breathing, walking, swimming, blinking, clitoral engorgement, salivating – the only thing that’s differs among all these different kinds of atheists is a matter of degree – how often we’re willing to restrict our actions to the strict commands of a god and which categories of behavior we include as relevant to permission-seeking (I note that nowhere in the Torah have I ever seen a mitzvah that specifies when or when not to breathe, though our diaphragms can certainly be subject to control through pathways outside the para-/sympathetic ones).
I shall forever after, when not in the midst of bowing to Sastra’s brilliance, refer to every single human ever as an atheist. In fact, my universal is more common than most universals, as most such universal statements typically ignore dis/ability. “everyone walks – it’s just a matter of how much” is a statement I’ve heard in an argument about encouraging children to be more active. But this isn’t true. However, “everyone has taken a breath without asking a god for permission” is as true as you can get, if we become persons only after achieving independent life.
I look forward to the religionist response.
Well, I think I can appreciate bronze age god talk occasionally without becoming a zombie. Just last week I read the Epic of Gilgamesh aloud to the Spawn. A few weeks before that, we read about wickedness in a basket (Zechariah chapter 5), which my kids thought was basically an ad for why one shouldn’t eat the moldy rye flour. (It would also make an epic Halloween costume tableau.) The Mister would hazard the opinion that the Spawn and I spend entirely enough time on Pharyngula as it is, without needing MORE to detox from the dangers of Gilgamesh.
Also, I think the word spiritual is not entirely captured within psychological. Spiritual refers to a particular type of subjective experience – one involving partial collapse of ego boundaries, an experience of flow or timelessness, and existential/personal meaning-making. These are, of course, psychological, but it would be good to have a single word that captured that particular flavor of subjective experience. I agree that spiritual has unacceptable overtones of dualism and is often seen as the territory of goddists, but it’s a nice shorthand word for a fairly universal human experience.
Any suggestions for substitutions?
As I often am. I am reminded of Doctor Who. In the show the Doctor makes the large demand of his friends to trust him.
Amy “How can I trust you if you don’t always tell me everything?”
Doctor “If I always told you the truth I wouldn’t need you to trust me”
*paraphrased.
Religious people try to act like this is faith. Trusting in something benevolent and wiser than you, even if it hasn’t filled you in on everything.
The problem is that Jesus has NEVER made this request. Not once has Jesus ever come down and given the “I will save you, but you need to trust me” speech.
In the Doctor Who verse it makes sense to possibly trust the Doctor. You can empirically see that he can turn away armies and conquer monsters. Sure the first time it might be a leap of faith, to trust the mad man when he says he’s here to help, but quickly it’s not “Trust for no reason” but “Well he got us out of those other impossible situations, it’s a good idea to trust him in this case”
Any suggestions for substitutions?
everything you mention is an expression of emotion.
sort of a combination of awe and joy, and conscious awareness of such feelings.
we can use whatever word we like as a placeholder, and I don’t think “spiritual” as a word is any better than “emotional” myself.
so, how about “emotional awareness”.
there is nothing magical about that.
In the show the Doctor makes the large demand of his friends to trust him.
did you catch the last episode?
tricksy Doctor!
tricksy and FALSE, my precious.
woo fu?
@icthyic – emotional doesn’t capture the specific quality of the experience. I’m emotional when I’m annoyed at my husband, angry at the drunk driver who almost smacked into my car, lonely because my internet access is down and I can’t access Pharyngula, happy because my package of NZ possum fur finally arrived, or gleefully amused that Rick Perry finally got struck by a lightning bolt out of a clear blue sky, with sky-writing saying “stop the bullshit now or else -god.”
Having specific words to discuss specific emotional states is actually quite important.
that impels them to vote against their own economic interests in the name of “saving babies”.
this is America.
and don’t you question it, ’cause…
9/11!!!!
emotional doesn’t capture the specific quality of the experience.
which is why I called it emotional awareness instead.
go ahead, build your case that it’s something different.
five bucks says that in the end, you won’t be able to build a case that doesn’t end up smacking of duality, otherwise.
That is literature, not religion.
Again, if one doesn’t read it religiously, there are no such dangers.
It is. You say so yourself:
If it is a flavor of such, not a separate kind of experience, then you’re saying it’s a subset of it. Perhaps by saying it’s “not entirely captured,” you actually mean the word isn’t specific enough. I would suggest your descriptions of what counts as “spiritual” are rather too vague to refer to any meaningful, specific, all-encompassing term. It’s trading on these vague ideas, pretending they all belong together, that is a definite characteristic of people talking about “spirituality,” but this is not some kind of life-fulfilling activity. It’s a state of being confused.
As I said, you’re not talking about an experience, and confusing all of them under one blanket term doesn’t help. Further confusing them with dualistic nonsense is yet one more problem.
I think I’ll go with the word numinous for such experiences, given how Pfft’s history of the word emphasizes that it was coined to describe a very particular sort of emotional experience (the flow/awe/fascination quality). Much less dualistic than spiritual, since it relates to the individual’s experience of feeling as if one is in the presence of the uncanny or supernatural (useful, since there are documented neurological reasons for why one feels that way in some circumstances), without actually implying that one has a “spirit” or that there are such supernatural beings.
Now off to pull Dennett off the shelf…
Also, Gilgamesh is literature in exactly the same way that the bible is literature. It’s plum-full of gods and advice on behaving so as to please the gods. The only difference is that there are still people around who worry about Yahweh, whereas I haven’t run into anyone who worries about the gods in Gilgamesh.
Anyway, Mattir, I thought you were saying something about believing in a sky dictator of some kind. Evidence?
I was only riffing on your (apparently unintentional) use of “dose,” since it does sometimes seem like an addiction. I’m also fairly sure you’re not the kind of theist I ought to worry about the most. It just strikes me as odd that, given your comments and with so much exposure to Pharyngula, you’d have any inclination to actually believe in a god of some kind.
There is nothing wrong with a cheap merlot if you’re using it to wash down a decent pizza.
I like anchovies.
Yes, I really do.
Just to be clear, numinal is a subset of emotion. It’s a variety of emotion, not a separate thing, and thus comes in handy as a word for describing one’s subjective experiences with other people. One ought not seek out special guidance from specialists in imaginary supernatural beings just because the brain’s normal workings occasionally offer up such an emotional state.
Exactly. I’ll bet the chances your Spawn will believe anything in Gilgamesh to be somewhere very near zero. If read properly, that is also what happens in the case of the Bible.
Fuck, I’ve been performing sacred music my whole life. (Won’t compose a note of it, though.) You don’t have to apologize to me for appreciating religious art.
I do not believe in a deity. I enjoy the poetry of those who did. That’s all.
Chas:
You would need considerably more than a cheap merlot to convince me to eat one of those things.
numinous
definition:
“an English adjective describing the power or presence of a divinity”
popularised by Rudolf Otto in his book, The Idea of the Holy.
hmm.
no baggage there, no siree.
;)
I like anchovies.
they’re always too damn salty.
now sardines OTOH, I rather like those.
but both are too strong for pizza imo.
squid or scallops are subtle enough to work, or even some nice mild firm-fleshed fish chunks like groper or halibut or seabass of some kind.
ChasCPeterson #92
Note to self: Don’t let Turtleman order the pizzas.
The IDEA of the holy. Not, necessarily, the EXISTENCE of the holy. Neuropsych research is full of interesting things that give rise to feeling like one is in the presence of whatever, which is different from there actually BEING an other.
I would like it if we had a word that could capture the osprey experience succinctly that did not imply that there actually was a magic sky fairy, and I think at this point numinous comes closest. Really, now I will go peruse my library in search of a better word.
This reconcile science & religion stuff that PZ is describing is the stuff my dad spouted to me for several years before he died in January. He was heavily into NOMA & I think that quote about the definition of god sounds familiar. He would be telling me this kind of thing & really wanting me to admire his brilliance & scholarship & come back to the Church where it was his duty to bring me and I would be running through my entire repertoire of non-commital mmm-hmms and feeling terribly sad and embarassed for him because he was once a pretty bright guy and, while he was never a free thinker, he was keen on his kids questioning what they heard in church & school, thinking critically and reading widely. So, in some alternate universe, I would have liked to have come to him & said, “Look, I finally get what science is about. I see how evolution works. I see why science & religion are in conflict. And isn’t it all cool & interesting?” In this universe, that would just have been an invitation to my father to start prodding my thoughts, looking for the route by which to make me “really understand” and come back to god. The whole thing sucked, it sucked, it really sucked.
But I do like to think that if my dad felt compelled to, metaphorically, sit in a dark basement & watch the shadows on the wall, at least he had taken pains to prop the door open a bit so some of his kids could find it and get out.
This is on the whole a very well-written post, and I entirely agree with its overall messages that the worldviews of science and religion are incompatible and that it is ludicrous to attribute the wonders of the universe – including those produced by the human intellect – to supernatural powers, given that we have made such astonishing progress in mapping out physical explanations for them.
However, the post is rather spoilt by a part in the middle that veers away from anything to do with a defence of rational thought, and into a subject that is only peripherally relevant, and yet has been highlighted by the presence of a large photograph and some subsequent bold text as if it were the central point of the piece. Here is the nub of it:
This makes no sense. You are talking about equivalence in value, which is no more decided by the scientific method than it is by the decrees of imaginary beings.
The extent to which a person values anything or anyone else depends on their personal value system, which may or may not be religiously derived, but which is certainly never determined by the results of scientific experiments, which are always value-neutral.
Of course, you can design experiments to distinguish the different stages of human development, both before and after birth, by comparing physical characteristics, but this tells you nothing about the value you should place on the objects of study, any more than the fact that you can scientifically determine the darkness of a person’s skin tells you anything about whether or not you should treat people of different skin colours differently.
It is just a matter of historical contingency that mainstream Western liberal thinking has, at this moment in time, passed through the phases of widening its blanket of moral equivalence to cover the lower classes, women, ethnic minorities, and gay people, but has not (yet?) done the same for young people (who still have no say in how they are governed), or for unborn children and non-human animals (who still have no right to life).
This may or may not change in the future, but that’s beside the point. The point is that just as science says nothing about whether or not you should order a pizza (as someone rightly pointed out above), it also says nothing about who or what we should value.
No, Mattir, the very concept of numinous was dualistic in nature, and intended to be so.
it’s right there in the wiki page you yourself linked to:
“The numinous experience also has a personal quality to it, in that the person feels to be in communion with a Holy other”
this was also the way Jung used it.
for those interested in seeing live debate between those who fundamentally disagree that the very concpets of religion and science are compatible, vs various accomodationist positions, you might check out Jerry Coyne’s upcoming debate:
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2011/10/02/kentucky-newspaper-gives-biased-account-of-our-upcoming-debate/
I expect most of those “debates” will feature people talking past each other, but even THAT would be informative.
It seems clear that those who hold to this kind of attenuated faith do so for reasons that have nothing to do with empirical truth, and it is very difficult to get them to admit to it. Equivocation will always be used to hide the real reasons behind their choice of belief: truth in general or a specific truth, we ask. oh, well we meant truth in general. I’m sorry you didn’t understand that. We don’t really believe the historic miracles of Jesus actually happened. You don’t understand. But Jesus’ miracles prove that God exists. Pick any word that is commonly used by believers in religious ways: faith, love, truth, Reason, miracle etc etc, and you will find an equivocation or category error waiting on their lips, ready to be used. Why? Why is there such semantic deception among believers? There could be many reasons for this ranging from willful deception to indoctrination to not really caring about what one says as long as it sounds comforting, but what is clear is that their reasons are all related to social interactions , and not related to discovering empirical truth. The reasons for a chosen faith, I have come to appreciate, have a great deal to do the believer’s wish to maintain working or friendly relationships with close friends, family, colleagues and/or community which have been built up over the years, or which some try to enter into. The atheist is perceived as an outsider, a skeptic, but not a skeptic of empirically defined truths, as we would like to be seen as, but a skeptic of social interactions. The atheist asks too many questions, according to them. They do not accept the unspoken social contract to respect faith. I can see how it could be for some scientists working at a university or a lab that community is important, a secure and welcoming group of family members and friends is important. Disturbing the unspoken social contract could lead to others disturbing your own important scientific work, or cause you to focus attention on matters not related to it. If given the choice to continue your important scientific work undisturbed, or invite unwelcome criticism or social friction for beliefs not related to it, I can see how some might choose the former, even despite the cognitive dissonance it invites. Not everyone has atheist friends or a supportive family of freethinkers, or has the freedom to step outside this social contract. As we see constantly, day-in and day-out, believers are willing to do or say anything, even the most ridiculous, outlandish and irrational, to defend their “faith” but what they are really trying to defend, I believe, are the social interactions of the communities they find themselves in.
…Coyne will be pitted against John Haught.
and if you’re not familiar with Haught, he’s been covered here before:
http://www.google.com/cse?cx=017254414699180528062%3Auyrcvn__yd0&q=haught+site%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fscienceblogs.com%2Fpharyngula%2F&sa=Search
I will go peruse my library in search of a better word.
cool.
I’m genuinely interested in what you find!
The proper toppings for pizza are jalapenos and pineapple. That is all.
Mushroom and pineapple, actually.
Common or garden idiot: There is so much I don’t know, therefore, God.
Religous scientist: There is so much I know, and yet so much more I don’t know, therefore, God.
PZ:
Oh, the pineapple is gonna bring the haters out. I like pineapple on pizza.
jalapenos and pineapple! Burn the heretic! The one true topping is salami and anchovies. I know, ‘cos the almighty Lord of all Pizzas, blessed be his crispy perimeter, spoke to me, AND ONLY ME, and told me this was his truth.
@ichthyic – what I’m looking for is a word that captures the “unseen companion” or “god helmet” experiences described by Michael Shermer in The Believing Brain, without implying that there IS an unseen companion or god. Fine, numinous fails, although I still think it’s better than spiritual, since it focuses more on the subjective quality of the experience than on the existence of the unseen other.
So we still have no specific word. Which is ok, I suppose, but for people who deal with non-scientists in mental health settings, it really would be far more useful to have a specific label for such common experiences.
Also, anyone who puts pineapple on a pizza without being in the presence of an unseen other with a gun is truly disturbed.
Splitter!
Pesto, prosciutto, capers, and black olives!
(and garlic) It simply never occurred to me that I had to mention the garlic. Sorry about that.
I suppose pepperoni is too pedestrian for this ivory tower crowd.
Sorry, martha. Though I know it doesn’t help hearing this, but I’ve had to deal with the same sort of things in my family. Some are pretty science-oriented and positive about education, critical thinking, skepticism, but somehow religion belongs in a separate category in their minds. I just don’t get it.
Nice image. In Plato’s allegory of the cave, someone from the outside is the MacGuffin, freeing the philosopher from his chains. I’ve always thought it would be more realistic if he somehow figured out the shadows aren’t the real thing, but continued to stay there and rot.
The proper toppings for pizza are jalapenos and pineapple. That is
allnot enough.yes, those always go on my pizzas.
but also mushrooms, some kind of spicy red meat (often 2 or three kinds!), garlic, olives, bell pepper (capsicum), and a touch of oregano.
So we still have no specific word
descriptions do work without the need for boxes though, right?
we don’t always need to slap a label on something to properly understand it; in fact, labels often get in the way.
I hate to beat this into the ground or to jump on this one comment, but the people Lightman’s talking about aren’t deists. They’re evangelicals. The same thing happens with Ken Miller – accommodationists talk about him as though he’s a deist when he’s a Catholic. It’s a shell game.
This argument of “people built and painted great things related to religion, therefore religion is good” is amusing. If good things related to religion prove religion to be good, does that mean bad things related to religion (torture instruments, the pope saying condoms spreads HIV, etc.) prove religion to be bad?
Yup and again note that he asks someone to trust him with doing something that seems horribly wrongity wrong wrong and when they can’t he freaking explains WHY it’s the right thing to do.
If you had a perfect working knowledge of any one person’s tastes, both the emotional, memory, and physiological factors that go into determining such things; you could, in principle, empirically use that data to decide what would be the most delicious pizza for them.
spinach, feta, and garlic
jose writes:
That.
he freaking explains WHY it’s the right thing to do.
…while cheating in the end.
bastard!
;)
It’s a shell game.
that’s what the Scotsman’s fallacy analogizes to, does it not?
soon there will be no true Scots left, we will always know which shell the pea is under, and I await that day with much anticipation.
Mattir:
The problem is that you’re probably going to be inclined to find a word that validates their “spiritual/numinous/woo-woo/whatever” experiences, rather than give them a nice big dose of reality. That wouldn’t be honest; and to me (speaking as a non mental-health professional), it doesn’t seem like a good way to promote mental health. And, as I tried to say above, finding a single word for all that seems not to be appropriate anyway, though I guess it would be really convenient if it were.
Regular scientist: There is so much I know, and yet so much more I don’t know, therefore, research proposal.
I am a philisophical naturalist. People think that means “Only that which is natural exists” but it actually means “That which exists is natural”
If Psionics or magic existed it would be part of natural seience
You got a mention from Tim Minchin:
http://twitter.com/#!/timminchin/status/120604759496462336
Hm. I’m not sure I’m following. My point is that a number of these well-known scientists aren’t deists or even just vaguely Christian, but members of denominations characterized by a number of specific beliefs (often contradicting those of other religious scientists). Evangelicals are quite far from deists. But the accommodationists write as though if they could successfully argue that deism or nonspecific theism is compatible with science – which of course they can’t – they’ll have made a case for the compatibility of science and “religion.” This isn’t the case, of course, since each would have to show the compatibility of the specific substantive claims of their religion with science and how those of the other denominations are wrong. I think we don’t point this out often enough, and too often let them get away with this deist notion (and really, how many deists are there these days? have we ever even talked about specific deistic scientists?) in these arguments while proclaiming their specific faith elsewhere.
No, being sane tells you this.
Hm. I’m not sure I’m following.
Ken Miller, classified as deist instead of Catholic.
why?
because he’s “no true catholic”.
they just keep hiding what “true” means like the pea under the shell.
it is, like you said, a shell game.
I am a philisophical naturalist. People think that means “Only that which is natural exists” but it actually means “That which exists is natural”
that’s an excellent way to put it.
I have been eyeball to eyeball with ospreys. I felt about as much connectedness as I would with a T. rex. The only thought I could interpret from those unblinking eyes was “If you were a bit smaller, I would rip your heart out and gobble it right down.”
I’ve watched ospreys crash into the water and rise up with a big fish. They then have to fly around for a while, looking for all the world like a WW II torpedo bomber until the fish drowns in the air and stops wiggling, so the osprey can go perch on a branch and start ripping and tearing.
oliverpereira:
Yes, it makes sense, and no, he ain’t talking about value, but rather about being. After that, you debouch along the path of your misapprehension, so there’s no point in my addressing it.
See, unborn ≠ born; babies are those who have been born.
(an omelette ≠ roast chicken, either)
—
The religious routinely speak about “unborn babies”, which makes about as much sense as ‘unborn codger’.
pizza, omelettes, roast chicken…
gettin’ pretty hungry here.
doesn’t help that over on Jerry’s blog there is a thread on pies.
One thing before I toddle off to bed. Re: Ospreys
Several years ago I visited my son while he was stationed at Fort Monroe, on Chesapeake bay. He was a veterinarian tech, and one of his jobs was to deal with the young ospreys that, during certain times of the year, were brought into the base vet, sometimes at a rate of one or two a week. It seems that while they are learning the craft of fishing, they sometimes grab a fish that is too big for them to be able to lift out of the water. When this happens they can’t or won’t let go, and sometimes drown as a result. People out boating find the floundering birds, wrap them up in something, and bring them in. Usually all they need is a little rest, some food, and then they can be released.
There was one in my son’s clinic when I visited. I made eye contact, too. What I got, in a look that lasted a hell of a lot longer than a couple of seconds, was pure murder. The bird was scared, of course, and was doing its damnedest to scare me.
My son told me that when he released them they would always circle around and make a run at him. It was pure threat gesture. When I tell him about Lightman’s great “connectedness” he is going to laugh his ass off.
SC #121
The unlamented John Kw*k originally came to Pharyngula to whine about PZ calling his buddy, Ken Miller, a creationist. The point that Miller admits to being a theistic evolutionist and the argument that theistic evolution is a form of creationism was lost on Kw*k.
Hm, again. :) No, I don’t think anyone’s classifying him as this or genuinely doesn’t acknowledge his religion. It’s just that his Catholicism, like the others’ evangelicalism, is strategically muted or brushed aside in these particular debates. It doesn’t get them any further with their arguments, but it pushes to the margins some basic issues they’d otherwise have to deal with.
Nick (#110) says: “Common or garden idiot: There is so much I don’t know, therefore, God.”
I prefer: Common or garden idiot: “I’m scientifically illiterate, therefore, God exists.”
The second quote in this post is by Francis Collins, that great appreciator of frozen waterfalls, not by Elaine Ecklund.
pineapple?
really??
I have been eyeball to eyeball with ospreys. I felt about as much connectedness as I would with a T. rex.
ditto, only with THIS particular great white shark:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ichthyic/2863577741/
was eye to eye with it (the picture was taken as it was falling back in the water).
what did I see there?
only what I projected.
I can guess it was curious about what the hell this thing that smells like seal blubber and salmon but clearly wasn’t was doing in its territory, but that’s just a guess.
I didn’t feel a sense of one-ness, so much as I felt a sense of paralytic awe and fear at the same time.
I never even heard it rise up out of the water. I was sitting on the transom, fiddling with my underwater camera, and then my buddy poked me on the shoulder. When I looked up, she was right there, eye to eye with me, close enough for me to reach out and touch her on the nose.
then she just slid back down in the water.
do I need a word to describe that?
nope.
Yeah, the recent shake-up at BioLogos following all of the ridiculous contortions about Adam and Eve is another illustration. These problems wouldn’t arise for deists.
really really.
the world is a big place.
http://www.thepizzajoint.com/pizzafacts.html
check out the section:
“facts about toppings”
Mattir@77
magic sky fairy = msf
flying spaghetti monster = fsm
Coincidence? I think not!
I note we share pizza preferences :-)
This whole ivory tower wankfest about reconciling religion with science reminds me of the Vatican’s “courtyard of the gentiles”. Have some nice and pleasant elite discuss matters nicely and pleasantly, without rude loudmouths like that Dawkins fella, and make it as remote from real practiced religion out there as possible.
This discussion was going so well until some fool suggested putting pineapple on pizza. WTF? ewww!
I just felt their great contempt for anthropomorphism.
Hey, it’s as believable as Lightman’s story.
Glen Davidson
Pizza with Pineapple on it is the most popular pizza in Australia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawaiian_pizza
I have a bald eagle at the nature center where I work. He weights around 8 pounds. When we have to dremel his beak and claws, it takes 3 adults, a whole lot of protective gear, and everyone gets to feel the bird’s wrath. I don’t think ospreys are likely to be any more warm and fuzzy.
For consciousness razor, the thing about such experiences is that they can feel really really good. It would be nice to have a word for discussing them that would allow people to discuss them as a normal neurological phenomenon and thus figure out how and when to seek out such experiences, without having to posit the Magic Sky Fairy as an explanation. I think this is well within the purview of reality and shouldn’t require tolerance of woo to achieve.
Ichthyic:
Yep. I’ve been up close and personal with sharks when diving and it’s a hell of a thing, but I’ve never felt this mystical “we’re all one” nonsense that Lightman went on about. I’ve certainly felt awe and exhilaration and fear. However, I don’t project those things onto creatures of any kind.
The times that I’ve encountered Fred* unexpectedly, I’ve damn near had a heart attack and he’s caused a lot of feeling in me, but connectedness ain’t one of them.
*Fred is the name of an extremely large black bull who, at random times, decides to leave the farm and wander into town and hang out in front of the Muddy Creek Saloon. I’ve run into him more than once while out on a photo walk.
Okay, damn it, one more thing. The idea that “religion” inspired great works of art is bullshit. What inspired the art was 1) the need to create; 2) the need to eat; and occasionally 3) a real devotion to a religious idea. Since the churches, throughout most of recorded history, had the most money, they got the most art.
Yeah, that sounds about right. I guess that puts it closer to equivocation or a fallacy of omission in a lot of cases, but if the claim were made explicitly, it’d be a no true scotsman.
Don’t go getting any ideas. :)
(TV preferences, too.)
Yeah, but we’re weird.
Mattir (#90) wrote: “…I haven’t run into anyone who worries about the gods in Gilgamesh.”
We all have run into one of them: Ishtar, the goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex – and really bad movies.
I still say sex has inspired the most art; certainly far more than any religious affiliation.
The aussie idea of pizza is not what pizza is.
Yeah, but we’re weird.
it was invented and became popular originally in Canada…
hey, tart/sweet is an excellent complement to spicy/salty.
what’s in a Hawaiian Pizza?
Ham (salty) and pineapple.
makes perfect sense.
what did PZ suggest?
jalapeno (spicy) and pineapple.
it just works. There aren’t all that many readily available toppings that work to fit the sweet/tart niche like pineapple does.
The aussie idea of pizza is not what pizza is.
speaking of the Scottsman’s fallacy…
this!
Will you people stop being cool and let me go to sleep?
That happened to me once when I was swimming further out from the beach than I really should have been. Fortunately it was a dolphin, not a shark. We looked at each other and then ii let out a little squawk and disappeared. One of the most intensely satisfying moments of my life.
Okay, NOW I am going to bed.
this!
wrong, for the very reason I mentioned just upthread:
It wasn’t an Aussie invention, it was a Canadian one, and originally gained popularity there, and then in the US, long before it did in OZ.
@Otrame
Ocean Kayaking as a kid in a group. Two fins breach the surface, swims right under the boats
Councilor “Wow did everyone see that dolphin
ChibiIng: But dolphins have a flat fluke, wasn’t that a-
Councilor “Let’s head back to shore now”
ChibIng: I think that was a
Councilor: *aside* IT WAS A DOLPHIN AND WE ARE HEADING BACK TO SHORE
Okay, take an example that’s close to home for me. Most people don’t use “aesthetic” in everyday conversation, but I’d say many “spiritual” experiences fall under that heading. (Mind you, something need not be art in order to appreciate it aesthetically, which is sometimes a bit confusing.) Watching a pair of ospreys, enjoying a beautiful sunset, and the like, certainly can feel really good. You’re enjoying how the experience is affecting you on a sensory level, and often conceptually in terms of how various components complement one another and fit together to form a whole.
Sex, romantic love, masturbation and meditation can feel really good. Likewise, the reasons these feel good should be obvious enough. None of these are “spiritual” or “numinous” in reality. By recognizing them for what they are, you’re right that one is better able to figure out how to reproduce them. I’d argue we ought to be more specific by describing each on its own terms, rather than less by heaping them all together into one conceptual category.
I’d argue we ought to be more specific by describing each on its own terms, rather than less by heaping them all together into one conceptual category.
ayup.
Yeah, like when Nekron reanimated dead superheroes as mind-controlled zombies, and they had to be defeated by the combined Lantern Corps.
We are talking about comic books now, right?
The flow/awe/connection type experiences should be treated with the same careful precision as affection/arousal/love/sexual experiences are. It’s just that we have a range of vocabulary for the latter (sex, love, crush), but we’ve ceded the vocabulary of the former and to some extent the how-to-achieve-the-emotional-state methodology to woo and godbots.
Tomorrow I’m going to go find some good words invented by Freud. He may have been wrong on a whole lot of fronts, but one really can’t dispute his atheist credentials.
Tomorrow I’m going to go find some good words invented by Freud
hmmm, since I mentioned him earlier, I will again in this context.
try Jung before Freud.
he was more more involved with investigating this aspect of human experience than Freud was.
I’d bet you could probably find something useful in his writings on synchronicity, or the stuff on the “phenomonology of self”
it’s just been over 20 years since I read that stuff now, and have forgotten the specifics at this point.
Don’t commit the genetic fallacy here, the origin of the pizza doesn’t stop Aussies having very weird ideas about pizza.
Yeah, but if I look at Jung, it’s going to be the same problem as with “numinous” all over again – too tainted by the god-bot woo stuff to be useful. Maybe William James…
The “uncanny” would work for at least some of the sense of the spiritual.
I realize that it doesn’t capture its totality, but it does get at the sense of a kind of “connectedness” that one might feel that is mental and not supported by any real evidence.
Glen Davidson
example:
so, he would probably call things that would be describe as invoking a feeling of “spirituality” as those that somehow touch on or reinforce archetypes within the collective unconscious of all humans.
I’m sure you’ll find some specific terms in his writings that appeal to you.
I myself eventually found his writings to be too much projected analysis, bathed in too much jargon, but jargon is exactly what you are looking for in this case.
good luck!
Don’t commit the genetic fallacy here, the origin of the pizza doesn’t stop Aussies having very weird ideas about pizza.
the origin of protestantism doesn’t stop baptists from having some very weird ideas about the bible.
makes about as much sense.
IOW, the baptist would not consider their ideas “weird”, and to claim they are not a part of christianity IS making a genetic fallacy.
sorry, but pineapple has been a part of pizzadom since long before you were born.
it’s no more “weird” than anything past the “original” concept of italian pizza to begin with.
I seriously cannot believe no one has yet mentioned the absolutely essential pizza topping.
Bacon, loads.
Troglodytes!
OK, this may create controversy, but I only intend to put this out as an interesting variation.
In China, a very popular pizza topping is corn niblets. Not a ton, just a sprinkle. First time I saw it, I thought, man, can’t they get anything right about Western food? Then after I’d been here a few months, I actually grew to like it. The corn is crunchy, mildly sweet and looks nice as a touch of colour.
I draw the line at silkworm pupa, though. No way, no how.
Bacon, pineapple, and hot peppers together make a perfect pizza. Amps up all the salty, sweet, spicy, tart, all at once – perfect.
I’m surprised to hear there is enough pizza in China to discuss “popular” toppings. I thought the Chinese didn’t eat cheese, or not much, and without cheese it’s not really a pizza, no matter that it’s a flat breadish thing with baked-on toppings …
So, is it weird for me to experience the numinous during a good defecation?
(It just feels… right!)
PZ, this is a great post that explains clearly why Dawkins is correct when he says that the attenuated, intellectualized religiosity of “enlightened” folks just gives cover to the morons who honor-kill raped women, assassinate doctors who perform abortions and fly jets into skyscrapers.
Sastra @ 36
Hilarious! Oh if only every believer could investigate the existence of God as though it were a hobby like scrapbooking or knitting. What a great decrease in human suffering would result.
@ hotshoe #183
Western food is fashionable, so there is a fair bit of pizza. Pizza Hut, Papa Johns, Walmart, all well-established here and all make pizza. Lots of small Chinese independent shops as well. You can even get delivery.
Usually the crust is on the thin side, with a light spread of tomato sauce, then the toppings. Sliced sweet peppers, mushrooms, Chinese sausage (which is unfortunately sweetened) some ground meat, and a bit of cheese. I always order double cheese and it is about right. The corn is considered standard, along with onion slices. Strong cheese is not popular, but regular mozzarella really isn’t that powerful a flavour.
The list of extra toppings can be quite … intimidating. I have seen silkworm pupa on pizza. I backed away slowly and no harm came of it.
Two questions:
1) Does the presence of a divinity seem to come from what you are defecating, or is it that you feel as if a deity is watching you? (I suppose it could be both; but for the latter case, I mean that there seems to be a third party, in addition to you and your excrement.)
2) Does it normally occur after experiencing the numinous while eating pizza?
(And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest.)
Mattir, what about going with something simple, such as uplifting, exhilaration/exhilarating or ethereal? Or there’s always thaumaturgic and anagogical.
(And remember, this is for posterity, so be honest.)
+1 for the Princess Bride reference.
CR, well, it’s as close to religion as I get, but I must admit that there’s no sense of presence*, as such — I guess that rules out using ‘immanence’, too. ;)
—
* Smell doesn’t count, does it?
Ichthyic:
Bah. I totally missed that one.
(-1 Geekiness quotient)
I had corn on a pizza in Japan. Also tuna. And seaweed.
There is no reason to put pineapple on pizza. or anywhere.
Unless you’re feeding it to horses along with the peas.
Caine, anagogical? Mine was analogical.
John:
Yes, I got that. Works out well for you, doesn’t it?
I thought Mattir would like the 2nd definition in regard to her word search:
an·a·gog·ic adjective
1. of or pertaining to an anagoge.
2. Psychology . deriving from, pertaining to, or reflecting the moral or idealistic striving of the unconscious: anagogic image; anagogic interpretation.
Just tossing it out there.
PZ
Yeah, I agree. I think one of the strongest memes keeping religion afloat is this pernicious idea that the material world is somehow “debased”, and that meaning has to come from “something more” or “something greater”. Here we find ourselves, inexplicably existant, and in a realm of unfathomable scale and complexity, but that shouldn’t be meaningful. In order to have meaning we need to invent invisible people and then put words in their mouths. Its fantastically weird if you get right down to it.
Lightman
This summer I went to Belgium and the Netherlands and saw a large number of technically perfect paintings of people being tortured to death. I find this tragic on multiple levels. On the one hand many people have gone to their deaths as martyrs over ideas not worth supporting. On the other hand, what would these artists have been painting if they could have gotten payed (or evaded execution) for painting something outside the realm of theology?
Let’s set the record straight; religion isn’t necessary for inspired art. We have troves of wonderful art from the impressionist period onward that has little or nothing to do with religion. IMO some of the most painful art to look at, and some of the least inspiring has been religious. Call me a philistine, but I’ll take Van Gogh’s self portrait over any depiction of Hell or Jesus that I’ve ever seen.
I have just finished reading this article. I am sitting here in Montevarchi, Italy after 4 weeks of being in Tuscany, travelling to the hill towns, Pienza, Cortona, San Gimignano, Volterra, Siena … enjoying the food the wine and especially the people. After a visit to Assisi in Umbria to look at the art we drive back to our Agriturismo, Borgo Rapale (a wonderful place with a great caring couple who run it). At 4am my wife gets amazing stomach pains and we thought it was Gall Bladder attach. It gets worse we call an ambulance 24 hours later we are told that she required life or death surgery as there is a blockage of some sort and her bowel will rupture without intervention, My wife is cut open they find a twisted colon, untwist it sew her back up. The mortality rate from twisted colon is 37%. She is alive and I am so thankful, to the surgeons, the staff, the hospital, the technology, and the science that saved her. I didn’t see god, or hear god, or speak to god, or feel god or taste god or ask god. The concept of God is like an appendix. A useless appendage from our cultural evolutionary past they needs to be removed today due to the clear evidence that it has no value and can only poison humanities co-existence.
It has been a week since the surgery, I am expecting to pick her up at the hospital and go to a hotel so that she can recover enough to allow us a long trip back to Vancouver. I got up at 6:30am because I woke up thinking I have to call Visa and tell them that I am going to be in Italy at least another week. No luck as they were closed (9 hr time zone diff).
I decide I need to have a little lift and have been hard pressed to keep up with PZ’s output. I read this article and out of my mouth came these exact words “This the best fucking thing that PZ has ever written.” I have not read a single comment by any poster and maybe its because of what has been happening over the last week, but this spoke to me with such clarity and intensity that I could not help myself and so here I am posting this comment along with hundreds of others. PZ I met you at your presentation at the University in Abbotsford where I thanked you for what your blog that helps foster a rational world view based on reason, facts and evidence, atheism and secularism. PZ I want to thank you again for this as well.
It does not seem to occur to Lightman to ask “why can’t science deal with the question of God(s)?”
He seems to accept on faith that there are things that the scientific method cannot define, and I do not accept that premise. You might say “Science cannot answer that question at present. ” but never “Science cannot ever answer that.”
The statement makes perfect sense. A clump of dividing cells (a blastocyst) that is regularly expelled each month without thousands of females’ knowledge that they existed is not the equivalent of a baby. However, religious extremists claim it is – if a female chooses to use a method of birth control that does not allow that blastocyst to continue to develop. Their claim is not scientifically valid.
Science has provided terminology for phases of fetal development and our laws have determined when there are competing interests for a human based upon these phases of development. Even when there are competing interests, the life of the baby may not take precedence over the life of the mother, by law. This is a private medical decision, not the decision of a religion or the state to make for someone. To do so would claim that women are less valuable to society than their capacity to reproduce. Thankfully, this nation does not hate women this much.
The medical and legal definitions of fetal development are what matter for the issue of abortion in this nation, not a religion’s view of whether or not someone may use a method of family planning based upon their terminology.
Anti-abortion rights people regularly play semantic games to undermine a female’s right to decide whether or not to give birth. A blastocyst is not viable and has no brain. It is not a baby. This is not a value judgment. This is a scientific reality.
Someone who claims that birth control is an affront to the value of human life is not someone with whom it is possible to carry on a rational conversation about the subject. Someone who claims a clump of dividing cells has equally compelling rights as an adult woman is not someone who can rationally discuss such an issue.
Steve Gray, I’m glad your wife is going to be okay and that she had a good medical team. That must have been very frightening.
There is no reason to put pineapple on pizza
there is no reason to put peppers on pizza.
there is no reason to put sausage on pizza.
there is no reason to put anchovies on pizza.
except, of course, if YOU LIKE THEM.
seriously, this anti-pineapple shit is getting tiresome.
Now that’s poetry. Well said, PZed.
If you don’t like it, then you shouldn’t have stood by and watched as the “new atheism” destroyed any notion of preference by pushing all reality through the narrow window of science ;)
oh, and just to note – since the 18th century philosophers have had a term for what Lightman could not express in his experience with the osprey: “the sublime.”
a philosophical theory of the sublime coincided with the west’s discovery of nature as something to be studied and not just something to hide away from after dark.
This seems to me a species of nostalgia which, as Iris Murdoch tells us, is the most poisonous emotion.
then you shouldn’t have stood by and watched as the “new atheism” destroyed any notion of preference by pushing all reality through the narrow window of science ;)
ah! but it’s that very evidentiary egalitarianism that makes me able to say that all pizzas are in fact, equal!
re 199 comment Caine, Fleur du Mal
Yes it certainly was. My wife thought she was going to die. She reminded me of the promises I made to take care of my two daughters. After staying up all night with her in a chair by her bed, and giving her a last kiss as they wheeled her off to surgery, I wondered if I would ever see her again. I had to leave the hospital during the surgery to go back to Rapale to get 2 hours sleep and get my car. (The wonderful owners of the Agriturismo drove me back to their place.)
Driving the 45 minutes down from the little hilltop town of Rapale to Gruccia hospital in Montevarchi, I couldn’t stop wondering what I was going back to find.
When I turned the corner to go into her room the flood of relief to see her there was like a drug injection. When she told me that she had a twisted bowel and they cut her down her middle (11 to 12 inches) to get inside and so no internal surgery I was overjoyed.
The doctors didn’t know what the cause of the blockage was before surgery. They warned me it could be cancer as many bowel obstructions are. They told me to expect that she would have a colostomy bag which she does not have.
Yes it was hellishly scarey. Things turned on a dime, having a great time for 3 weeks in Venice and Tuscany and then boom. The god is not there unsurprising did not appear. Shit does happen. We need to be prepared. But you only have this one Dawkinsian life, against overwhelming odds of being the “you” that we all are, and we need to live it fully. This trip is part of 4 vacation trips this year. As the saying goes life is no dress rehearsal, but maybe we need to take the foot off the pedal a bit.
Pineapple is vile enough on its own. I can’t possibly imagine why anyone would want to ruin a pizza with it.
sorry I will go back and finish reading the whole thread but I just had to say something.
I went to read the link to Lightman but had to stop after I read about a god being that was all I could take.
the other thing I react strongly to are to my mind 2 of the stupidest questions I know and they are why are we here? and what is the purpose of life.
they are not even close to what I would say are important questions let alone answerable.
They imply that we know where we are and what life is. If we take here to mean anything it means this existence we seem to be experiencing this universe well what and where is it then?
what is this life we are experiencing really?
I go back to the top and continue
uncle frogy
@ Arial #50
Ever heard of Conversion Theory ™? And yes it is scientific. And yes it was developed by a religious person – like a hell of a lot of other science. Folly and brilliance can certainly exist in the same mind. Brand loyalty to Pizza Express or Yahwe or Coca-Cola runs deep with some people.
Dr Oetker frozen pizza. Feta and spinach. Got me through Uni, and is for some reason available in Australian supermarkets.
What I don’t really get is why people, even atheist, are so inflamed about Dawkins, and yet say nothing about the terrible effects of institutionalised religion, whether it manifests itself as institutionalised rape, mutilation, suppression of human rights extending to those outside the religion, or other things.
Why do we continue to provide taxation privileges to these predatory organisations?
Oh c’mon. They are right up there with, “Where does the other sock disappear to when you do the laundry?”
@ Mattir #113
[alternative to numinous]
sublime (per fauxreal), transcendent, exhalting, ethereal,…
Personally I still like numinous.
The “other” is not necessarily a conscious metaphysical entity. It is just accepting what is outside of yourself into yourself. It is still your own consciousness, though writ large. Perhaps nothing more than inter-hemispheric brain chatter brought about by the “numinous” experience. Or a stroke a la Jill Bolte Taylor.
It s most unfortunate that the Liars For Jeebus ™ have scoured the English language while they held power, and shanghaied all these words into their service. We should just go in and take them back. We could of course simply go and raid Greek/Latin/French instead.
@ Lyn
Pizza Hut, Papa John’s
Bleeaugh! (Spaghetti House is less dreadful.)
………………….
ArialArielRead the last paragraph of Lightman’s article.
Now tell me he isn’t fantasy prone.
In other circumstances he would have been one with god.
Thankfully we have been spared that.
@ Rorschach
Ok, I’m off to the supermarket now. (Weird how you can influence someone’s behaviour half a world away. Feeeel teh Power!)
@ PZ
Cleanup in aisle #212 (beats headphoney = spam)
@ raven
“Fish People”
@ theophontes #215
I was not saying I liked them. I was just saying there are lots of places in China selling pizza-like substances.
@ Lyn
True.
You are in Shanghai IIRC? (I am in Hong Kong now. More pizza opportunities than Shenzhen.) If you get the chance the duck pizza is pretty good.
@ theophontes
I’m not far outside Shanghai, but have not had the nerve to try duck pizza. I just couldn’t get my head around that.
How’s Hong Kong? I went for a week awhile ago. Had the best dinner ever up on top of the Island Shangri La at Petrus. Maaaaaan, that was good food.
@ Lyn
Great… weird… (They mean the same don’t they?)
We are moving to the island in a fortnight (Soho). I am planning to build a pizza oven on the roof terrace for making sourdough pizzas and bread. (I trust you will be coming down to this end of the world when we break it in.)
… Woh de tiana! Fu ren…
@ Rorschach
No feta and spinach Dr Oetker. I went with Mozzarella but added green peppers, olices, onions and anchovies + a sprinkling of very old parmesan.
Tony Lloyd (@39):
I’m reliably informed that the Yanks do make decent wine, they just don’t export it. Certainly not to the UK, anyway.
I guess that’s not surprising – if you’re a small vineyard, and you can sell everything you make nationally if not locally, why would you go the effort of setting up international distribution? Whereas if you’re a huge corporation turning out lakes of mediocre wine you’ll sell it anywhere there’s a demand.
There is of course a huge market here for easy to drink but dull wine, and those people are very happy with the stuff we get from the US. Those of us who want a more interesting drink know to avoid American wine (and the big brands from anywhere), and mostly buy French or Spanish – any decent US wine would probably not sell well as all the potential buyers would be put off by the country of origin.
I hate this kind of bullshit. He is comparing apples and oranges. You can see clearly in his own words that he is not offering a fair comparison. “human beings, in the name of religion” have done things versus “science” has done things. This is an unfair comparison. Science hasn’t done anything. Science isn’t an entity, capable of action, it is a method for finding truth.
It would not even be fair to contrast things done in the name of religion with those done in the name of science. The important distinction is that religion tells you what you should do. Science only tells you how you should do what you do, and only in terms of pursuing knowledge.
Furthermore, it wasn’t science that used nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons on people to cause death and suffering. It simply made them available. Just as it made stone spear heads, steel swords, lead bullets, and every other weapon man has employed against man available. The motivation to use those weapons is not provided by science, but it is often provided by religion.
I am incredibly uncomfortable with the idea of equating the bullshit of a particular sect of Christianity, mostly confined to America, with all religion everywhere. If I had to look at religion as it is practised, here, I’d see a bunch of ordinary people I know who believe a variety of goofy things, and certain relatively powerful but distant people that abuse their privilege. So basically it looks like every other social structure man has yet created.
I’m sorry, it appears we’re talking about cooking now. Nevermind me.
@ theophontes
Why, that would be delightful. Next time I am headed that way, I will let you know, so if you have time, we could meet up. Your own pizza oven, wow. Serious baking power there.
Oh, you have an advantage of numbers and a different time zone over me! It’s not fair‼! But it doesn’t matter, since you are all wrong anyway. The best pizza in the world is made by my wife. Bad news: the recipe is top secret.
This settled, we may move to more trivial matters.
SC (Salty Current), OM #56
No disagreement between you and me (and Lightman perhaps?) over this. If it’s not a scientific claim, then your “what science means epistemically” belongs to your worldview inspired by science. And Lightman could admit that religiosity is in conflict with this worldview, but still insist that it’s not in conflict with science. Try harder.
Sastra#59
Agreed. But if this is enough to generate a contradiction between religion and science, you haven’t shown it yet. You used instead the assumption:
And this falls into the same category as “cheating is wrong” or perhaps even “I need a hug”. If you need such an assumption to generate a conflict between religious and science, your argument is of a “worldview” type, not scientific. I’m afraid it is you who is making a category mistake at this point.
Kel#60
You are being evasive, to say the least. The question was not “why do the people like pizza” (analogously: why do the scientists use scientific method), but “why the people should order pizza” (why the scientists should apply scientific method and nothing else in every possible cognitive context). Answers to the first question are factual, answers to the second set the normative standard, and as such they belong to a “worldview”, and not to science (although they can be motivated by science). You still failed to grasp this simple distinction.
Gregory Greenwood#76
No supernatural agency needs to be invoked in order to explain why Lightman is religious. A scientist should know that. Fair enough. But how does it follow that a religious scientist is inconsistent? Supply the missing premises please.
So in the last sentence you restated the claim. And where is an argument for that?
I could agree with this. But still, where is the argument for “science can’t be reconciled with religion”? In order to generate a conflict, you would need something like “scientific method should be always applied – in every possible context”. But this looks like a normative statement, of a “worldview” type. It’s not science.
Does science demand from a scientist that she behave scientifically in all instances? Assume that a scientist trust his boyfriend on a very little evidence, unsatisfactory from a scientific point of view. Then in your terms, she is behaving “unscientifically”. Fine. But why do you think it is problematic? Does the demand “always behave scientifically” follow from science, or from your worldview? As for “other unevidenced beliefs”, there is no single answer. Various things can happen – as illustrated by my example.
Ok, enough for today. There are too many of you – all shouting on a poor, naked, bearded, propheting me. I wave you bye-bye with my crown of thorns! See you later!
Seems I’m a woman apart from the fray:
Green peppers, olives, diced tomatoes. That’s all that goes on my pizza.
echidna, I think in many European societies it’s been like this: as long as religion mostly stays out of politics, the great role Christianity has played in civilising Europe will be acknowledged, representatives of Christianity will be accorded public roles (and in the case of Germany even be paid by the state). While atheists can freely acknowledge they are atheists, anyone who goes beyond that and attacks religion for whatever reason, is seen as a troublemaker rocking the boat. This makes an atheist movement in many European countries an exercise in frustration: religion has greatly diminished in influence thanks to secularisation, but this makes it hard to try and get rid of the few privileges that remain.
Example: one time, in high school, we were at some kind of political event hosted by the local chamber of commerce, and we were discussing the fact that the German state is working as tax collector for the State Churches, and the CoC representative asked us if we were church members, otherwise she thought it shouldn’t concern us. Our reaction was like WTF?
I had hoped that the abuse scandal would lead to a change of attitude, but in Germany there also have been scandals involving secular private schools, including a bastion of liberal pedagogical thoughts, so the Churches can spin it as an issue independent of religion, I’m afraid.
Thanks, conciousness razor. It actually helps just to say it & be heard.
Why would I give myself to something I don’t understand it could be dangerous and stupid!!
And so the Earth is larger than ourselves, let’s… oh wait, belief. I think most people believe in the Earth…
So basically this guy is saying “faith, is different, from religious faith, and…” Okay I do not even understand the point there.
Secretly my imagination come from a remote outpost on Pluto.
nO no punzip you see clearly allbireds are angles and therefore a part of god and so he was lookin at theyes of god god and realized heneeded to build an ark made of desks, stuff existing outside science and the sixteen chapels
What.
A beautiful and wonderful post, PZ.
If you’ll forgive a tiny spelling correction, though, it’s spelled “Sauk Centre.”
I’m really digging this post by PZ and all the comments. And it has absolutely nothing to do with being over-tired from a sleepless tech-support marathon. OK, maybe my condition is a bit of an appreciation-enhancer.
This Lightman thing reminds me of that wossname Harvard psych UFO/abduction/spiritual experience guy. It’s as if, to validate the experiences of these people, instead of considering the experience as part of their psychology plus whatever initiated the the experience, one is supposed to consider these experiences as not “merely” subjective, but externally/objectively subjective and real, but just not in tune with observable phenomena, empirical data, and consensus reality. It’s real, but it isn’t, but it is. Or something. Because we’d like it that way, for some reason.
\\Did that make any sense?\\
It’s also a sort of punchline for mathematical jokes. Including a one-panel comic thingy I saw once.
It slowly dawned on me, but by the time I was 4 or so, I knew. Not that I didn’t occasionally have reminders/revelations on this. I am/was an art and science nut, and always colors what I perceive and how I process the perception. I’m not particularly an artist or scientist, or much of anything but a generalist quasi-hacker of things. These days, I fix shit.
It isn’t about some sort of semi-haughty oh-so-special-ness. It’s about recognizing that almost no one will even begin to entertain even slightly grasping something you have tried to describe, or something you have created. You’ll know it when it happens. Consider trying to get a handle on someone’s migraine aura.
“Jawe.” Possibly made “J’awe, for the sake of double-puntendre.
You’re confused.
It’s a definition: that’s what science is. The discussion was about claims or beliefs about reality and on what grounds these are compatible with or accepted by science. I asked you for specific examples in support of your argument, and you failed to provide them.
Try fucking off.
@ Lyn
Ganbei!
@ Ariel
Absolutely not. Many great scientists where goddists. Many others had unscientific quirks (beating bongo drums and hanging out with strippers, in one famous example) without being at all religious. I can’t think too many people here see it quite so cut and dried.
Dawkins considers the problem as a matter of “truth”. The religious world-view is bad (aldus Dawkins) because of its disregard for truth. Worse still, it actually encourages the promotion of lies by huge numbers of people.
Personally I am not concerned that people hold false views (that is their loss), but do worry that they promote views which are directly harmful to other people or are severely damaging to others basic human rights. Also, many religious viewpoints are actively anti-science, anti-medicine and anti-environment. These types of religious worldviews are extremely anti-social and can be very dangerous. Many are also very dishonest (looking at you Bob Enyart) and appear to have no logic other than fleecing the ignorant believers.
I am not sure that the creative process has much rationality in it. Rearranging the known is not the best way to come up with new things. In such a case “outside the box” may well mean “outside the mind”. Getting to that point may be inherent, or brought on by drugs/alcohol, exhaustion, distraction, pain, meditation, dance …. this list is endless and many of these things are part of religious ceremony. Some are also used by scientists (Merlot anyone?). These techniques seek to move mental frames of reference, which can be very liberating. They are the opposite of restriction and restraint that are the main features of so many religions in America, and many other lands, today.
………………………
@ [pizza]
There are many ways to bake bread/pizza. You can follow strict recipes. You can make it up as you go. You can guess.You can do extensive research and develop new technologies. You can turn it into a meditation or a religious ritual (think corn-gods like Dionysus or jeeebus). What is important is that it works.
/engineer
Science is not a government. The point is that in this instance someone would be behaving in a way that is incompatible with science, as you acknowledge in your question.
You’ve now conceded the entire argument. You’ve admitted that this behavior is not consistent with science. It is not compatible with science to form beliefs or make claims of fact about propositions that are not amenable to evidence or not supported by evidence.
This is a separate question, a moral one: is it morally condemnable, neutral, or commendable, outside of a professional scientific context (we know the answer within a professional scientific context), to make claims of fact or form beliefs that are not amenable to, unsupported by, or inconsistent with evidence? Run along now and read Allen Wood on the ethics of belief.
Ariel:
The key here is your use of the word “worldview.”
What does that mean, exactly? What is a “worldview?” And how does epistemology fit into a “worldview?”
Ariel #226 wrote:
The “worldview” which values the honest pursuit of truth and reason includes both science and religion. Where science and religion come into conflict is over the supernatural. Fact claims, not value claims.
If we form and examine supernatural beliefs as hypotheses they fail. Therefore, the religious make the illegitimate move of special pleading: THESE facts are not supposed to be treated like ordinary facts. Approach them as if the values that motivate their acceptance are the significant part of the claim. Confuse the existence of God with the love of God — or the need for God.
This is a category error.
To bring back the pizza example, it would be like trying to determine whether there was a pizza in the refrigerator by asking people who think there is a pizza in the refrigerator to talk about how delicious pizza is, how much they love pizza, and how terribly eager they are to eat the pizza — upon which one declares that whether there is a pizza in the refrigerator or not is a matter of hope and value, immune to empirical investigation.
Does it change the fact of his guilt or innocence? If he’s abusing their relationship does it help for her to have ‘faith’ and act like he isn’t?
Ugh. You’re mixing together various meanings of “conflict.”
1) epistemic conflict: You’ve now acknowledged several times that a fundamental epistemic conflict exists, so no further argument is needed here. I’ll remind you that this was what this discussion was about, however.
2) psychological conflict: It’s true that there have been and are religious scientists, who use various psychological tricks to evade the problem. Because of the fundamental epistemic conflict, however, we would expect scientists to be more atheistic and less religious than others. This is in fact the case.
3) social/political conflict: This is another empirical question. Again, though, due to the basic epistemic incompatibility we would expect a good deal of conflict between science and religion. History bears this out.
4) normative/ethical conflict: Again, see Allen Wood.
This.
Exactly this.
That was extremely beautiful, elegant and eloquent. I wish I could write like that. Thank you.
5) existential conflict: Again, see Woody Allen.
@ Kitty #227
Yeah, simple pizzas without cheese are delicious and not as filling nor fattening. Other simple ideas: potato(par boiled and sliced) & fresh rosemary; (just) grapes ; garlic and oil … but you need a really good base. (Our local pizzeria in back in Cape Town would do anything on the menu without cheese. One of my favourites was courgette/eggplant/onion.) I’m gonna get experimenting.
@ Sastra
A typical evangelical ruse. Smoke and mirrors so people realise it doesn’t work like that. And then apologists will talk about the “ritual of pizza making” I mentioned. These are unrelated aspects of religion as the former simply does not work. I wouldn’t say that all religious positions are ridiculous.I just find it bizzare that they don’t (a la Kurt Wise) cut out all the bullshit out of their holy books.
(Oh wait, that would mean teh babble would just fall apart.)
:)
Not really. The first time that I really, really grasped the concept of a star, of a solar system, of a galaxy, of clouds of gas and dust that were hundreds of light years across, I was indeed filled with many powerful emotions. But none of them related whatsoever to anything religious that I had ever heard. But then again, I’ve also seen a galaxy, with my own eyes, from my own backyard. There are real things in this universe that are larger then ourselves. No need to believe.
Am I abvsurdly high off my cold meds or is there a side conversation about chinesse pizza here?
*whimper* Room spinny
“We cannot prove the meaning of our life, or whether life has any meaning at all.”
This essay (which I did not write, but wish I had) demolishes that kind of talk.
I’ve always believed in cars and houses larger than myself.
I don’t fit into the other ones.
Glen Davidson
Elephants do not run on faith though.
Lightman: The magnificent birds and I exchanged meaningful looks! Their glances told me that we share the same worldview! They see me as a fellow traveler through the ineffable ground of being!
osprey: Let’s try to scare the crap out of that damn thing.
lazybird: stupid birds, you had a clean shot at him but you chickened out.
Ray Ingles (quoting someone else):
This is a standard mode for theists — the reification of the abstract. Whether it’s “love” or “meaning” or “morality” or “mind,” they seem to have an idea that these things exist outside their context, on a Platonic plane absolutely loaded with ideal chairs and frolicking design (which is a real thing) and lovely love and concrete thoughts.
It’s this ingrained dualism that is the source of their conceptual problems. It’s not reality that’s real, but your worldview. Reality is just that place where you keep all your stuff.
I’ve mentioned this place before, they do a great job with their pizzas and the various local fresh toppings they use.
The Pistachio pesto is amazing.
Had one with sliced potato, broccoli raab, fresh local goat cheese, fresh ricotta, speck and a garlic olive oil base.
sooo good.
They have their staple pizzas daily every day and a new special pizza every day based on what’s good at the market.
They started their company with a wood fired pizza cart selling at events. Then moved to a Brick and Mortar location and it’s some of the best pizza I’ve ever had.
Once again, the lumineries of the atheist/skeptic/humanist movement voice my thoughts in a measured, calm, logical and yet extremely thought provoking and emotional essay. HURRAH!
Pelamun – “I had hoped that the abuse scandal would lead to a change of attitude, but in Germany there also have been scandals involving secular private schools, including a bastion of liberal pedagogical thoughts, so the Churches can spin it as an issue independent of religion, I’m afraid.”
It’s not the crime, it’s the cover up.
++++++++++++++++++++++
2 things bothered me right from the top about Lightman’s article:
1) science is a religion. (wrong.)
2) atheism is a religion. (wrong.)
Normally I would stop reading when 2 wrong assumptions are made at the start of a paper. I wish I had done so this time because I will never get that time back.
++++++++++++++++++++++
Pizza did not become popular in Canada before America.
Ariel,
Obviously I can’t (or more accurately won’t) argue on behalf of other people, but I think the “irreconcilable” part could be better summed up as follows:
Religion X makes a certain claim about how the world is. Call it Claim Y.
Claim Y rests upon miracles, supernatural agency, something of that nature – something patently non-naturalistic.
Claim Y is defined – by necessity – as being somehow ‘beyond’ our science.
Person A asks, why is this beyond our science?
Person B responds, because it isn’t natural at its core, or at its root cause.
Person A is confused because:
1) Person B is either making a factual claim that they are literally unable to back up, or:
2) Person B is making a factual claim based upon the examination of natural evidence, which would suggest that Claim Y is open to scientific examination.
So you’re left with Person B either appealing to science or ignoring science. In the case of 1, obviously they’re not acting in an ‘incompatible’ way because they’re simply blathering nonsense. In the case of 2 they are suspending the employment of science so as not to disturb a religious claim.
Would be interested to hear your thoughts on it. I jotted it down in just a minute so it might well be wrong :D
What are you referring to?
A cover-up occurred at that secular school as well, with peer pressure and code of silence etc.
If anything, the Lutheran Church has looked better in handling these crises. The bishop of the North Albian (= Hamburg) Evangelic Church, Maria Jepsen, resigned in 2010 because she didn’t act on allegations of child abuse concerning a pastor in 1999. (Also, the head of the German Lutheran Church, Margot Käßmann, resigned in 2010, because she ran a red light while being slightly drunk). Can you imagine Catholic bishops acting in this way?
Rev. BigDumbChimp,
here are some links to it. Apparently it was never widely reported on outside of Germany
http://www.thelocal.de/society/20100306-25709.html
http://www.andrewcusack.com/2010/04/11/odenwaldschule/
Is there a “platonic plane of ideals” on the Platonic Plane?
Pineapple? No.
A Fiorentina for me every time. Spinach, black olives, and an EGG.
This word for the experience of communing with ospreys, sunsets or sharks etc? How about “trippy”; an emotional experience, way beyond the ordinary but still just the brain doing it.
nigelTheBold:
Standing up and clapping for the way you phrased this !
Ariel @ 226;
and;
If a scientist starts identifying specific classes of actual, physical event as somehow occurring in a fashion that is beyond scientific analysis, then they are placing an unreasonable limit on the scope of scientific endeavour. If a scientist sees an unusual or currently unexplained phenomenon that happens to fit their preconception of the ‘miraculous’, and they are prepared to go to a position that states that “well, miracles happen and those miracles are beyond science”, then the risk of religious or spiritualist credulity compromising scientific objectivity is very real indeed.
Remember the quote PZ included in his post?
(Emphasis added)
A scientist must be prepared first and foremost to seek the scientific explanation to any phenomenon. They must be prepared to look objectively at the evidence and come to a rational conclusion. This stance is complicated if you have religious baggage floating around in your head that explicity denies the need for evidence when dealing with certain classes of supposedly ‘miraculous’ phenomena.
As noted above, rigorous science requires that one accept the evidence and follow where it leads. Supernaturalist preconceptions obstruct this. The gaps are shrinking, and god needs one hell of a dietary regimen. Conflict between a rationalist, materialistic scientific method and a supernaturalist worldview are inevitable when the roles traditionally assigned to a deity one by one become the purview of naturalistic processes. At some point the cognitive dissonance must be resolved, or the temptation will be to contort the evidence to fit ones confirmation bias.
When dealing with truth claims pertaining to the nature of reality, most certainly.
Please do not misrepresent my position. The interpersonal relationships of the scientist in question , and whether or not they choose to trust their partner, is hardly comparable to a belief that an unevidenced sky-fairy created the universe by waving a magic wand. The former is a subjective matter of personal choice in how to deal with a relationship. The latter is a truth claim about the nature of reality itself, a claim that requires that one throw rationality and the scientific method out the window in order to accomodate a supernaturalist explanation of an actual physical event.
You must always behave scientifically when making claims about the nature of reality if you wish to maintain credibility as a scientist. ‘Goddidit’ is not a scientific answer to any scientific question. And such things as whether or not literal ‘miracles’ occur is most certainly a scientific question. The answer determines how we view the nature of the physical world around us. Either a naturalistic explanation suffices, or magic godly short-cuts are required.
My example was a specific like-for-like. If a person is prepared to confer unevidenced belief on an entity with supposed physical agency (indeed, unlimited physical agency), then how can this belief be considered intellectually consistent without confering equivilant belief upon other unevidenced mythological creatures? If belief in god is compatible with science, then why not belief in unicorns with magic, silver-laced horns? Or werewolves and vampires? Or goblins and ghouls?
You either require evidence to make claims of the supernatural, or you don’t. You can’t just pick and choose and call it consistent, still less scientific.
There’s a pizza chain called Bertucci’s which has a slightly more interesting range of toppings than most. When I go there, I get roasted peppers, sun-dried tomatoes and caramelized onions.
That said, living here in the greater NYC cheese-on-a-shingle pizza desert, what I really crave is Chicago style.
Merus, where do you live? I have no doubt soneone on here will know about how religious bullshit is warping your part of the world.
How?
Science as a body of knowledge is different to how scientists live. Your argument, carried to its ends, says that young earth creationism is compatible with science because scientists don’t use science for everything.
Do you think normative statements exist somewhere beyond all scientific inquiry?
I don’t see how you’ve missed my distinction: “You say that I’m not acting as a scientist when I accept religious beliefs? Of course I’m not! But so what? I’m also not acting as a scientist when I order pizza in a restaurant.” was what you said earlier. Yet by this, it’s like saying science and homoeopathy are reconcilable because scientists don’t do science for all they do. That’s not the reconciliation being talked about, science and astrology aren’t reconcilable because scientists read astrology when they’re outside the lab. That’s personal reconciliation, not the underlying question of whether a belief is compatible with a body of knowledge.
Imagine someone said monogamy and adultery are perfectly compatible, I’m just not being monogamous when I cheat on my partner. We’d think that when they describe themselves as being monogamous as lying. There’s a basic incompatibility between the two concepts. And that’s what people are going on about with the science/religion compatibility. Not whether scientists can be religious while still being scientists (of course they can), but whether religious beliefs are compatible with what we’ve learnt through the sciences. Astrology is not reconcilable with astronomy because some astronomers also practice astrology, but whether the two bodies of knowledge fit together.
I’ve never been artistic, but I do remember describing a certain sound (the noise that a car makes as it drives past your house late at might, while you’re lying awake in bed) as being red. The kid I was describing it to looked at me as if I was an idiot (which he often did- not that he was any smarter than I was, but he was always a hell of a lot more self confident. If I knew something he didn’t know, I must have been making it up, or it was some science-nerdy stuff that only an idiot would have learned; if he knew something I didn’t, he took that as proof that I was stupid).
I’ve had corn on pizza in Brazil, and I’ve long forgotten anything odd I’ve seen on pizza in Germany, Ukraine or Hungary. Had some very creative pizzas in France recently, though- the sausage and potato one was interesting, and the mixed seafood one was very good (the oddest part of it was that it came with a tossed salad, which had been tossed directly onto the pizza).
Well, if you had that sort of experience consistently and weren’t just using a color term metaphorically, you wouldn’t necessarily be artistic but may have a form of synesthesia. That certainly doesn’t make you an idiot, even if it were a metaphor.
Ever heard of Conversion Theory ™?
that could refer to any number of things, and I bet none of those have been trademarked.
And yes it is scientific.
assuming you meant the thing Max Weber developed, it isn’t a scientific theory, and has been discarded since.
did you mean something else?
#265- It wasn’t really consistent (in fact, I can’t remember thinking of any other sound as having a particular colour).
I’m just wondering why a god would go through all the trouble of doing a miracle and then make traces of it undetectable. I’m sure most people already realize that this just blurs the line between undetectable and non-existent.
I don’t think science demands that, I think intellectual integrity demands it. In all of human history, one method of dealing with truth claims has shown consistent reliability and none of the others have come close.
Assuming that all truth claims about reality are best evaluated empirically is not some abstract philosophical position, it is the only reasonable conclusion based on the entirety of human experience. If someone chooses to trust their romantic partner based on very little evidence we would judge that person to be behaving very foolishly, regardless of whether that person is a scientist.
The same goes for American beer. There is fantastic beer here, but very little of it is exported. I know you can get Sam Adams in Europe but that’s not even the best of the independent American breweries.
truthspeaker
QFT.
@ Ichthyic #266
No, it refers to a trademarked product (service) offered by a large market research company. Essentially it looks at brand commitment. It can examine, for example, the extent of a persons commitment to “Pizza Express”, “Yahwe “, Coca-cola etc etc. Very importantly it can find those people who are looking to change brands. The idea is to save significant time and effort in not pursuing the lost cases (Say, died in the wool goddists for the brand called Yahwe ™ ). The original research was conducted to understand religious conversion. It was later worked out that brand loyalty is far more generic than just the religious case. http://www.tnsglobal.com/business-information/commitment-research/
Quote from website:
I meant something else. The work was undertaken by Jannie Hofmeyer at the University of Cape Town in 1979 for a doctorate in the psychology of religious belief formation. His methodology is owned by the company in the link above. Linky:UCT-Department of Religious studies
If you can get a copy as an academic, both Kel and I would be keen to hear more.
PZ
Half right.
—
Caine
I can see how a wild FRED could be startling.
If you can get a copy as an academic, both Kel and I would be keen to hear more.
sadly, in NZ, I have no more access than yourself at this point.
the rules for access to standard journal subscriptions here are… strange.
I can’t even get access as a member of a government institution, or a guest academic!
Oddly, I could if I was enrolled as a part-time undergraduate.
phht.
nope, I have to go to the library at Victoria University and scan the periodicals, just like it was when I was in high school!
In short…
you’re on your own.
I don’t know how my name got on there, but one more paper to add to my collection couldn’t hurt.
@ Ichthyic
I’ll be deploying Spawnphontes to university next year. (Don’t we have a few undergraduates lolling on deck here on Pharyngula? Put them to task I say!)
@ Kel
We had a long discussion on this topic once. I said I would try and get you more details, but have not really followed up. Added your name as I knew you would be interested, but perhaps more because I feel guilty.
The discussion was wrt arguing people out of their religion. Obviously talking to convertible (read: intelligent?) goddists will be far more efficacious than trying to talk sense into a Bob Enyart or a Piglet Ham.
That sounds like something I’d do. Glad you remembered.
Thanks for that.
@ Kel
You will apreciate that it could be really difficult to find new research in this regard (one reason I would like to get hold of the original) because it is strictly guarded by the company that applies these techniques.
I have two short youtube posts that are interesting:
Bruce Rice (One of the boffins that developed the marketting aspects): “Consumer’s behaviour is … NOT RATIONAL.” Linky
Nicky Liddle (branding): “The average woman is more committed to her brand of tomato sauce than she is to her husband …” (1:00) Linky.
On the role of marketers (priests): ” Constantly remind people what it is they love about their brand (religion) and develop that brand love.” (The role of constant goading is very important. “Pray five times a day.”)
And for the record, I can’t imagining always getting the same toppings on my pizza. I don’t like corn on pizza (had it in Germany), and I’m not usually in the mood for olives or mushrooms, but otherwise anything goes. And if there are olives or mushrooms on there, I’ll still eat it.
And if you really want to get my attention, throw on some buffalo mozzarella or some goat cheese. Or both.
theophontes,
Thank you for the link to Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED talk as I’m reading her book (My Stroke of Insight) at the moment. Her descriptions of what goes on in her brain when the analytical left hemisphere is silenced by a stroke and the intuitive right side is suddenly not just dominant but completely in control is fascinating (despite the woo-ish elements) because of her background as a neuroanatomist. She explained some things that puzzled me.
I get TIAs with different symptoms caused by arterial spasms in different parts of the brain. When I am unable to speak (or my speech comes out as gobbledegook) if I’m able to move my hands I can still type coherent messages. Jill was able to type even when unable to read or write because typing is controlled by both hemispheres and her right one was still functioning.
Also, the total lack of fear or feelings of urgency (replaced instead by a sense of peace and inner calm) whilst in a condition that should be causing panic, is apparently caused by the left hemisphere no longer being in charge. On Saturday, after waking normally and then dozing off, I re-awoke totally paralysed. When hubby managed to get me mobile again (by a combination of massage and nitrates), before I got speech back I was giggling. Poor hubby.
There have been experiments where feelings (including religious ones) have been induced with magnets. Perhaps the scientists who want to hang on to their religion do so because they don’t know how to induce the rather pleasant ‘numinous’ experience except by imagining a deity. Perhaps we should round them all up and, instead of listening to their deistic blather, fit them all with specially designed magnetic helmets. When they can get those experiences by throwing a switch, whatever they happen to be doing or thinking, perhaps they will then acknowledge that we, and our emotions, are solely a product of our brains.
Tigger_the_Wing,
… And some enterprising person will market them as GodBridges™, and the rubes will queue up to snap them up, and the supernaturalists will claim it proves the reality of Other Spheres of existence.
</cynic>
@ Tiggerwing
Here is an image of the type of “God Helmet” that you refer to. (Image from Pfft.) Apparently you have to have a proclivity for such things, though other critics say it simply doesn’t work.
Perhaps it is better to go the drug route. Fascinating in this regard is “The Doors of Perception” by Aldous Huxley.(Linky) He gnawed on peyote to open himself to experiences similar to Jill Bolte Taylors. He was studied throughout the experience and also carefully recorded the effects on his perception (a very fluid thing indeed).
Huxley concludes that the brain actively suppresses information in order to make “sense” of the world. By opening “the doors of perception” we can see the whole picture.
He later took LSD and regarded the original experiences as:
Drugs could be used to “stimulate the most basic kind of religious ecstasy”. (My own numinous experiences have been completely without drugs. Perhaps I actually have the right neurology to be religious?)
@ John Morales
Theopontes ™
@ Tigger
Hail Tpyos!
Thank you, John, for restoring my (lack of) faith in human nature. =ô.ô=
theophontes,
Very droll!