Don’t let the first paragraph stop you—it’s awful. Once the reporter gets out of the way and lets Shermer get going, though, it’s a good interview.
Here’s the bad part of the opening:
Some of Shermer’s ivory towerish science pals, like Richard Dawkins and the late Stephen Jay Gould, told him not to bother with the I.D. boosters, that acknowledging them meant going along for their political ride, where the integrity of science was being run into the ground.
Gould and Dawkins have both said we shouldn’t debate creationists—we shouldn’t elevate them to the same status that science holds. But both certainly have ripped into ID; the argument isn’t that we shouldn’t criticize them forcefully, but that we shouldn’t give them the opportunity to pretend their dogmatic foolishness is the equal of science.
After that, though, the article is good godless fare.
I found the following troubling:
He implies that you cannot use philosophical or logical argument to arrive at a conclusion that God does not exist, when God is always given criteria by which it is possible to evaluate this proposition, even if not scientifically so.
I also thought the following was nonsensical:
I mean, come on…”before time”? He should have said (coherently) “a model to describe the origins of our universe, possibly a cyclic model, or multiverses, etc.,”
I get so tired of creationists using the cosmological argument that it makes my head hurt, and he’s just giving into the same lack of logic they display.
PS: Don’t you love how Shermer has to give scientific responses to George Freakin’ Gilder, economist and student of politics?
Why would I debate someone who doesn’t know how to demonstrate his rightness?
Yeah, the whole bit about being uncomfortable with the term “atheist” just tells me he doesn’t understand the term.
Our best bet is to be “scientific” in all we do. Assumptions – Hypotheses – Data – Theory
Tie it all together with valid logic.
pz wrote:
“Gould and Dawkins have both said we shouldn’t debate creationists–we shouldn’t elevate them to the same status that science holds. But both certainly have ripped into ID; the argument isn’t that we shouldn’t criticize them forcefully, but that we shouldn’t give them the opportunity to pretend their dogmatic foolishness is the equal of science.”
Seems to me that all the books written by Darwinists “ripping into” the theory of ID has for quite some time given the public reason to believe that it is a threat to certain aspects of evolutionary thought.
Not debating them at this point seems a bit cowardly to me.
Phil Plait also thinks that we shouldn’t debate pseudoscientists. The problem is that none of those discussions will ever be a debate, more likely, they will be like popularity contests. Pseudoscientists don’t care for a debate, they just care to look good to the public; they don’t support their claims on evidence, but on public appeal.
No, I don’t think he does imply that. His statement is very clear that it is “insoluble problem from a scientific point of view”. Philosophy and logic are not mentioned explicitly or implicitly. From a purely scientific point of view agnosticism is the only tenable position one can hold as you can neither confirm nor refute the hypothethesis the “god (or gods) exists” any more than you can its antithesis. From that perspective atheism is just as much a faith as any form of theism.
What is wrong with wanting to know the answer to the question of what existed before time? Physicists posit that time started with the Big Bang so it is still valid question even if semantically it breaks down because there is no “before” without “time”.
It’s the letters that I like. Or am amused by.
That’s it! We have all this proof of gods and like a bunch of toddlers, refuse to acknowledge it.
Not debating them at this point seems a bit cowardly to me.
Unfortunately that’s a common perception, but you have to remember that I.D. advocates/YECs almost invariably run from any proposal by scientists or educated nonspecialists to submit detailed written responses to an online forum or a debate by correspondence.
Creationists love their flim-flammy gimmicks in front of the crowd, the verbal “gotcha!” because they know that the audience is easily taken in. I was pretty cowed when I saw Michael Behe speak, even though I knew he was a huckster, because he had had plenty of time to formulate his shell game and I could not at first put my finger on exactly how he was doing what he was doing. A few months later I made Dembski run away from me because I had figured it out.
Debates are not the best forum for ideas; they’re more akin to boxing matches. (And once it starts, where does it stop? Who wants to debate every dingbat who will crawl out of the woodwork?)
He says a lot of stuff I disagree with,
He seems to prefer the ‘bury your head in the sand’ model of science and religion. And, of course, there’s the usual error of claiming the existence of God is an “unknowable, insoluble problem” from a “scientific point of view.”
Why is this an error?
No god is detectable ( even if that god exists)
And, since he/she/it/they are not detectable, why should we bother ourselves witht hem ( oe they us, for that matter? )
As someone who has debated creationists (with some success!) let me get my two cents in. Directly engaging them in open debate is:
1) risky
2) difficult
3) often thankless
4) often necessary
It is risky because you represent the scientific community, which has values and standards of evidence, things which are alien to most creationists. One should never debate them unless there truly are ground rules in effect that will prevent things such as the “Gish gallop”, administered by an independent party in a neutral setting.
It is difficult because, unless the forum is exclusively a gathering of academics and university students, the learning curve is steep. You will find it necessary to teach the audience not just the evidence for evolution, but why evolution is science and creationism not. You will have very limited time to do so. You must be brief, but vigorous in establishing that there is no scientific debate, and why that is the case, what the nature of science is, etc. During this time, your opponents will use a variety of rhetorical tricks in an attempt to distract the audience. You need to directly confront tricks with brief dismissals along the order of, “that’s a false argument, because of this basic reason”, and you’ll need a quick pithy analogy to make that point. To be persuasive, you can’t just be assertive. You need to be personable, and funny, etc.
In other words, command of the facts is not enough. You will need mastery of special skills relating to the facts. Ken Miller has such mastery, for example.
The job is thankless because many scientists are ostriches when it comes to engaging anyone outside of the lab bench and many will claim you should never debate on principle, as Gould and Dawkins have stated. Many of these same scientists will not, however, step up and engage the IDevotees on any level. That’s disappointing, and not (as PZ has remarked) not really what Gould etc. were really getting at. I agree that we should never engage them in any fashion that acknowledges any scientific credibility.
As for its necessity? The failure of non-engagement as a strategy seems to be indicated by the growing number of Americans with YEC views.
Comments? Scott
I have to admit, the latter part of this line of his bugs me: There’s a serious problem if you are forced by your faith to reject the most well supported theory in all of science.
It’s better supported than the theories of gravity or optics?
Strictly pedantically, I would be willing to debate pseudoscientists. I would be very wary about agreeing to debate with one, though. After all, the issue is precisely that many of these cranks don’t debate. The “Gish Gallop” and other obnoxiousness is too common, alas.
DF: Why? You simply asserted that one cannot decrease the warrant of various god hypotheses asymptotically towards zero.
G. Tingey: An undetectable [something] is not what believers claim. They claim that there is a reason (however bad from the perspective of a decent epistemology) for their belief. This sort of thing happens repeatedly – if you try to make moves to avoid challenge to your pet beliefs, you also empty them of the reasons for which people want to hold them. Thus one is caught between the horns of a rather unpalatable (from the perspective of the believer) dilemma.
just john: I agree. Geometric optics (depending on what one includes) probably is. Curiously, at least last I checked, optics is a great example where there is no unifying theory. (Can a physicist check this for me? See Bunge, Philosophy of Science, where he discusses various theories of optics.)
I was impressed with the article. He’s quite an interesting personality and puts things well. One quote struck me in particular:
Now, as I’ve gotten older, I try not to define myself by what I don’t believe. I think that’s a fruitless enterprise. We should define ourselves by what we do believe in.
Nicely said indeed. And, indeed, how I’ve come to feel as I’ve aged (gracefully, I hope).
forthekids,
Would you form conclusions about which scientific theories are correct or flawed by watching live debates, or by reading the best reviews with the best evidence put out by groups of experts [ie textbooks]? I would hope you are rational enough to understand the pitfalls with the former approach…
Yes, you can use “if A then not B, if B then not C…” to reach a logical probability for the existience of god(s) that is for all practical purposes zero. But you still end up with a hypotheses that is untestable and does not deserve to be called “science”. In my opinion to claim, or infer, otherwise makes one guilty of the same sort of hubris as the DI nut cases.
Can’t you apply that logic to any imaginary being?
Dragons? Unicorns? Elves?
What makes a “god” so special?
PZ,
Thanks for the pointer to this fine interview. However, I don’t understand your comment above:
Given Shermer’s background, recent book, and being a founder and executive director of the Skeptics Society, it’s probably fair to assume his understanding of atheism is pretty complete. Shermer says:
which fits with the quote that DragonScholar highlights:
As the blogosphere’s most visible, militant atheist, what do you think about this one:
Haven’t scientists tested evolutionary theory a lot more than gravity or optics? It is my understanding that the amount of experiments that have been done that confirms evolution exceeds the amount that confirm gravity and optics.
And it is also my understanding that the theory of gravity can’t explain quantum gravity.
That first paragraph is a travesty. Mentioning Gould with the likes of Dawkins is ridiculous.
Since science deals with nature but God is supernatural, if an argument (such as Creation or ID) assumes God is part of nature, all further reasoning about nature is flawed. With God in the loop, all things are possible, and there can be no natural science.
It is possible to describe and reason about dragons and unicorns as long as their existence is not assumed as part of the argument.
There is no proof of their existence either… how is god different? Because god is supernatural? There’s nothing that is supernatural. The supernatural itself is make believe.
‘What is wrong with wanting to know the answer to the question of what existed before time? Physicists posit that time started with the Big Bang so it is still valid question even if semantically it breaks down because there is no “before” without “time”.’
In the sense that it’s valid to wonder what a four-sided triangle looks like? Is the realm of reasonable questions circumscribed only by what can by physically uttered and vaguely felt to be important?
I think its a bit off as well, but then, we had a debate a while back about the definitions and I had to agree with someone’s assertion that the words agnostic and atheist are talking about entirely different things, not just “levels” of the same thing. It was proposed that agnosticism describes how one “gets” to a believe in the lack of a god, which atheism describes the “conclusion” reached. In other words, one describes “why”, the other “what”. PZ was one of those that disagreed with this stance, as did quite a few others. Personally, it makes more sense to me, since even those stating hard atheism which totally discounts gods, admit to being willing to adjust their view “if”, how ever rediculously improbable it might be, someone found “proof” of some God. Thus, their atheism is, “Due to a total lack of believable evidence, there almost certainly isn’t one.”, which is only a hairs breadth from the slightly sloppier, “There might be one, but I can’t find one shred of evidence for it.”
Frankly, I don’t know if creating a clear deliniation between the two would help or hinder, but right now the term atheist is getting a bad rap “precisely” because it describes a denial of people’s fairy tails, without saying anything in and of itself about “why” it denies such things. Or at least not by itself, without stacking an explaination on it, which barely differs from the stance of an agnostic only in how extreme the stance is, but not how they got there. It might be a bit harder to be lambasted by idiots if people allowed atheism to describe a “what” and didn’t whine about “weak” atheism when talking about agnostics, but instead used that to describe “why”. It also might get some of the later to pull their heads out of the sand and realize how silly they are for not wanting to be called an “unbeliever”, while still essencially being one.
There might be a ‘god’ whose definition meant that it exists but can’t be proved. That god I might believe in, but there wouldn’t be any point to believing in it. Any god that interacts in any way with the universe (beyond possibly “speaking the Word” that set it all in motion) doesn’t exist. Any god described by any religion I’ve ever heard of doesn’t exist. So, occasionally, depending on what mood I’m in and who asked and in what context, I call myself an apatheist: I neither know if there is a god, nor do I care. But in most circumstances I call myself an atheist, because in most circumstances I am indeed repudiating some specific god being invoked by someone. And in regard to that god, I am an atheist – just as that god’s fervent worshippers are atheists towards others’.
Steve_C:
That’s a good point. Nothing makes “god” any more special than any other mythical being. You can’t prove that they don’t exist. You can only reach the conclusion that there is no evidence to support their existence.
ÃdeagusDei:
Yes, very droll. Better answers to the unreasonable question of “What was there before the big bang?” might be “nothing” or “it is unknowable” and then to explain why. But please describe where the boundary between reasonable and unreasonable questions lies so that I may never transgress again.
I must admit, I’ve never understood the sometimes vitrolic “atheist versus agnostic” debate. It seems counterproductive, attacking an enemy that really isn’t an enemy (which goes for both ends of the argument, mind). Then you get into the whole “weak atheist versus strong atheist”, and it gets awful confusing.
In recent years, when pressed on the subject, I’ve taken to describing myself as an agnostic philosophically but an atheist. There may or may not be a supreme being, but it doesn’t really affect how I live my life or how I make my moral choices. There’s nothing to sell me on the existence of a supreme being and I’m not comfortable with saying I know for sure there isn’t one, but it doesn’t really matter one way or another. I admit it’s a pretty wishy-washy stance, but it works for me.
Of course, the above doesn’t really factor in religion and/or spiritual thought, the vast majority of which comes off as complete and total horseshit designed only to keep the rubes in line. But that’s just me.
If you believe God created the world, it’s reasonable to ask, How did he do it? What were the forces and mechanisms he used?
Fine and dandy, but I still remain troubled by squeezing facts into any form of preconceived worldview. If you become convinced of “how God did it,” won’t that be detrimental if, later on, the “how” comes under question? At what point does one separate the God from the how, since a change in one will force a revision of the other?
Conservatives can find family values in nature. We are pair-bonded. We practice serial monogamy.
Tell that to the sects within Mormonism, or to certain Muslim groups, that still practice polygamy, or to the African tribes that still practice polyandry. Human “nature” is mutable and complex. I think that Shermer is pandering a bit here.
Mentioning Gould with the likes of Dawkins is ridiculous.
I know that not everyone here esteems Dawkins and Gould equally, but I think they were both mentioned in context of their relationship to Shermer, that’s all.
When I was in college, I was once asked outright what religion I was, and I responded that I was an agnostic.
The guy asking me scoffed and said that I had to choose a religion or atheism; no fence sitting allowed.
I didn’t have a response then, but now it occurs to me that as far as all religionists are concerned, by not believing that the statement “God exists” is true, as far as they are all concerned, I am an atheist for all practical purposes.
But I think “philosophically agnostic” is nevertheless still more suitable. When certainty is impossible, I think it’s appropriate to doubt.
DF: ‘Yes, very droll. Better answers to the unreasonable question of “What was there before the big bang?” might be “nothing” or “it is unknowable” and then to explain why. But please describe where the boundary between reasonable and unreasonable questions lies so that I may never transgress again.’ (apologies; my HTML skills are lacking).
Well, I would certainly think noncontradiction constitutes a suitable minimal boundary. That God in the very least is obedient to the rules of logic is tacitly accepted by anyone who chooses to argue for His existence (why bother if otherwise?). Any claim, therefore, which posits God “outside of space” or “before time,” as would be required to initiate the Big Bang, is untenable– it requires God to exist in a contradiction. This is, of course, providing that the theory that time and space themselves originated with the Big Bang holds (note to compatibilists and nonoverlapping magisterians: this makes the possibility of God contingent, via logical ramification, on the truth or falsity of an empirical claim). Now, I’m sure this doesn’t exhaust all hypothetical beings which people might wish to call God, but it does seem to preclude any Creator who is philosophically investigable.
From the “scientific point of view” a theory is correct if it has the weight of evidence on its side. There aren’t any limits to the contents of a scientific theory that would exclude “supernatural” elements. The history of physics is littered with uncaused causes, for example. Nor would inference to the best explanation be able to limit theories in this way. The notion that these questions are “unanswerable by science” belongs to (lay) philosophy.
Personally, I think the idea that our being able to utter the question “Does God exist?” implies that there’s a thing called “the problem of God’s existence” is a case of obvious magical thinking. These words are supposed to create something of substance (two “possible worlds”–one where God exists and another where he does not, perhaps). One of the profound things about science we often overlook is that scientific hypotheses are also constrained by evidence. A question doesn’t appear in science merely because it’s conceivable (as it does in philosophy).
I’ve thought about that too, which is why I’ve recently considered defining myself as a “deistic pantheist” instead of an atheist. At least when facing off against theists–they couldn’t just dismiss me as a dirty atheist outright.
The tenets of my “doctrine” would be:
1) There is a God; God is the entirety of Creation.
2) Humanity is gifted with the tools of reason (i.e., science, philosophy, mathematics, etc.) to try to understand God, AKA nature.
3) There are no miracles. All things are either part of Creation, and thus definable through the exercise of reason, or do not exist.
4) Scriptures are the works of men, not God. They are at best didactic stories; as sources of science or morality they do not stand up to reason.
5) We have the tools of reason to determine ethics and morality according to our contemporary needs. We do not consult Scripture to fix our cars or heal broken limbs; why would we consult the fairy tales of 2500-year-old shepherds on the subject of ethics? The Old Testament supports slavery, theocracy and genocide, things our civilization has long rejected. It is not an appropriate source for contemporary ethics.
This is basically the atheist/rationalist point-of-view, but labelling nature as “God” to put those hostile to atheism off their guard. The other difference being, I think this “doctrine” has a better shot at tax-exempt status than atheism. ;)
I dunno, False Prophets. I think bothering with the term “God” at all is just begging for quotemining. Witness countless theoretical physicists since and including Einstein.
D’oh…sorry for accidentally pluralizing your handle. I caught just after clicking the Post button, but ’twas to late.