Wired has the perfect article for you: it’s called the Battle of the New Atheism, and it’s message is that the New Atheists (Dawkins, Harris, Dennett) are, well, right, but they’re also obnoxious and unsettling and foolish, and gosh, but youth pastors are cool and nifty and caring.
Where does this leave us, we who have been called upon to join this uncompromising war against faith? What shall we do, we potential enlistees? Myself, I’ve decided to refuse the call. The irony of the New Atheism — this prophetic attack on prophecy, this extremism in opposition to extremism — is too much for me.
The New Atheists have castigated fundamentalism and branded even the mildest religious liberals as enablers of a vengeful mob. Everybody who does not join them is an ally of the Taliban. But, so far, their provocation has failed to take hold. Given all the religious trauma in the world, I take this as good news. Even those of us who sympathize intellectually have good reasons to wish that the New Atheists continue to seem absurd. If we reject their polemics, if we continue to have respectful conversations even about things we find ridiculous, this doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve lost our convictions or our sanity. It simply reflects our deepest, democratic values. Or, you might say, our bedrock faith: the faith that no matter how confident we are in our beliefs, there’s always a chance we could turn out to be wrong.
Ah, yes. The classic response of the comfortable: both sides are bad, both are threatening my cozy life, so I’ll just damn them both and ignore them, hoping they’ll go away…and heck, misrepresenting the upstarts is always good. Actually, what these New Atheists are saying is that sure, we could be wrong, but the other side is almost certainly wrong. What we have to offer is uncertainty and a demand for some degree of rigor; it’s the theists who are arrogant in their certainty, who are willing to believe in the ridiculous, who reject the author’s “bedrock faith” that there’s a chance they could be wrong. The real irony is that he doesn’t recognize that his last sentence is a good summary of the principles of this “New Atheism,” and that it is directly contrary to the philosophy of the New Religion he finds so unthreatening.
The article is a perfect example of the tepid atheism that closes its eyes to the world, that advocates the kind of bland semi-solipsism that reassures itself that everyone else thinks in the same happily reasonable way, so we don’t need to exert ourselves to confront the opposition. It’s an attitude that will be popular, unfortunately.
In the first place, fuck tepid atheism. It is clear that appeasement is exactly the wrong tactic to use on theocrats, who best understand firmness and conviction and ardor.
But in the second place, we atheists really should try to come up with some stuff to say to people like the clerk in Dennett’s book, whose life had no real adventure or purpose or transcendant value to it, except through his faith. His church made him feel part of something special, a cosmic struggle between titanic forces, a key player in a role of historical importance. OK, that’s pure dulusion. But do we have to damn this poor bastard to life as mere Wal-Mart clerk? I say no, but we have to work at this part.
We have Camus with “The Myth of Sisyphus,” the hero who is happy because he defies all convention and continues his task with irony and humor and rebellion. There’s atheist Joss Whedon’s heroes, especially Captain Mel of Firefly/Serenity, a disillusioned atheist who makes himself a family and does brave deeds of goodness just out of cussed determination, and makes himself part of something important and bigger than himself (same with the Angel character in the eponymous series). There is Lyra in atheist Phil Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy, on a courageous quest filled with adventure and meaning. There’s the fuck-you rebellion of atheist Greg Graffin’s songs with the punk band, Bad Religion.
Didn’t mean to go off on a rant there. It’s just..as much as we much come up against theism in all its guises, for it is all deluded and harmful to humanity, ultimately, it is not enough to leave people, then, with nothing. We atheists must start looking for and actively promoting the adventure, the values, the wonder…all that is good in clear-minded, open-eyed living. To date we have been better at hurling stones through the stained glass rather than erecting something more attractive to take its place.
Fuck tepid atheism indeed; my own take on it is a little different from Greg’s — I have a sense that at least some atheists are atheists out of anger. They’re mad because their idea of what god should do or be doesn’t match a reality they encountered, and so decided to go the “fuck god” route out of a sense of vengeance or rebellion.
I wonder how valid that is, and if it is valid, how many people are hearing the angry atheists instead of those of us who simply think the idea of a god is twaddle and don’t get very upset about it — until superstition begins interfering with rationality. (Particularly when that superstition takes the form of legislation attempting to abrogate the rights of others, or attempting to define something that really can’t be easily defined.)
I’m still surprised when I come across individuals who wonder where atheists get their sense of right and wrong from; or who wonder where atheists get their sense of purpose from — these folks seem to believe that without a god, life is meaningless.
Wrong, of course. It’s liberated, but it’s also frightening, because ultimately that makes us each responsible, fully, for our own actions. There is no devil to blame; there is no god to thank.
The question might be what scares religious people more when they consider atheism? Is it the idea that there is no god — or that they can’t blame their bad deeds on some dark Other, that they are wholly responsible for the bad stuff that runs through their minds, that the things they do undo others arose in their own minds?
Fanatics come in many forms, theists, fundies, politicos and atheists.
By any standard, you all act lick pricks.
I’m afraid your comments above illustrate the original author’s point – fundamentalist atheists can be just as arrogant and judgemental as fundamentalist theists.
I did not interpret the author’s rejection of the New Atheist movement as a slide back to the comfortable mediocraty… rather, I interpret it as a refusal to be an evangelist of the absolutes professed by either side. While atheists always talk about the slight chance that they may be wrong, the millitant way that they often argue their beliefs reveals the lie.
I consider myself an agnostic – I don’t know what’s out there, and as that’s the case I’m certainly not going to force others to believe in anything (or nothing). I will do what I can to limit the harm caused by politicized religion, and promote scientific thought and ideals… but evangelism can only be driven by absolute certainty, and I can’t be a part of it.
“We hear leaves rustle and we imagine that some airy being flutters up there; we see a corpse and continue to fear the judgment and influence of the person it once was.”
WE don’t do any such thing, you doofus!
Someone get the doofus stamp, yea the big red one, and stamp that fellow’s forehead.
Cuckoo, cuckoo!
I think that the majority of theists have never seriously considered the question of why they think God exists – they just do, they always have, and so has their family. I think insulting the average religious person is a wrong way to go about fighting fundamentalism (i.e. calling your grandmother an idiot is most likely a bad way to go).
I don’t think we should take a ‘middle ground’ stance about it either though. We should fight the extremists and let education weed out the rest of religiosity over time (unfortunately, perhaps a looooong time). I think many people of little faith or agnosticism may get offended by the outright accusation that every believer is a moron.
On the otherhand, I agree that if I HAD to side with one camp, it would be the atheists…
Although I tend to agree with Dawkins across the board, I find myself taking the tact that this author prescribes in dealing with believers out of discomfort with the sort of conflict that will result. That makes me a wimp, I know, but many of them are waiting in such breathless/thoughtless anticipation of the opportunity to be a martyr or victim that they become rabid quite easily. You see, it makes them holier. I think they see themselves standing at the pearly gates saying, “You remember that time I had your back?”
I think, to be fair, sometimes some atheists will perhaps go too far- I have a friend who blames religon for all problems, which is perhaps too broad a brush to tar it with.
I dunno, I very much believe that I am right to be an atheist, but I don’t fee a duty to convert others that some do. I actually date a christian, so maybe I’m a tiny bit biased here, but there do exist christians who feel the presence of god but do not feel the need to follow the bible (or holy text of your choice)… well… religiously.
I hope that I am not personally arrogant–I don’t believe very many who know me well would say that I am. But I am an elitist. Absolutely, one hundred percent. The elitism is not for myself, however, but for a method…the method that assumes as little as possible, asks questions (the root of “arrogant,” by the way, means something like “to question for oneself”), and accepts knowledge, provisionally, only on the base of merit. This elite METHOD is far less arrogant than is a the “method” of assuming an answer and then brooking no questions. I will not apologize for that sort of elitism.
As to judgmental, hell yes. Very. Not because I have a superior intellect–no one’s more familiar with my bad memory, my ticks and flaws, than I am. But because I ascribe to a method that has proved without doubt to be the best of human inventions. Again, it is that combination of scientific inquiry, critical thinking, rational thought, and logical reasoning. It is assuming little and questioning much rather than assuming much and questioning little. I can take precisely no credit for this method, having bumbled onto it, who knows how, long after great humans had developed it. But I will not feel abashed in saying clearly that I am an elitists, a highly judgmental elitist, as a result of a successful and satisfying commitment to these principles of thought.
Perhaps it would seem more diplomatic to use a phrase like “exercising judgment” rather than “being judgmental,” but I think most of the naysayers would read it the same anyway, and there’s no feeling quite like embracing an intended insult as a badge of honor.
“[T]he difficulty of selling your ideas among those to whom you so openly condescend.”
Beautiful phrase, no wonder it got PZ’s goat.
PZ — you point out the advantage inherent in religion.
Science follows the evidence to figure out what is the truth. Religion can change and adapt “the truth” to whatever is most appealing.
hm, sounds like Wired hasn’t changed since I stopped reading it in the late 1990s. Sad, but not really surprising.
Here’s what gets my goat: that the author of this article uses the confidence and strength of advocates for atheism as a weakness…as if what would make our position better is if we were uncertain and weak and hesitant.
Seriously. That’s bullshit.
But in the second place, we atheists really should try to come up with some stuff to say to people like the clerk in Dennett’s book, whose life had no real adventure or purpose or transcendant value to it, except through his faith. His church made him feel part of something special, a cosmic struggle between titanic forces, a key player in a role of historical importance.
There’s a lot of things to be part of and join in that are real. Go rafting or hiking with some friends. Take a trip to the Grand Canyon, The Painted Destert, Yosemite, Yellowstone, or any of the other beautiful national parks that we have. Raise some pets, kids, or both.
If you want fanstasy in book format there’s plenty of that out there for you. I advise people to look into the works of Terry Goodkind, Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman, and Frank Herbert. If you want fantasy that includes you as some sort of central cog in a life or death struggle play D&D, World of Warcraft, Oblivion, NWN II, Dark Messiah, or something like that. It’s just as much fantasy but with better special effects.
If people aren’t willing to accept atheism without being bribed then I don’t want them on my side of the fence.
I doubt if atheism or even mere indifference to religion will ever be a majority position but the infidel counter-offensive of Dawkins and others does seem to be having an effect. Even though there is hugely more pro-religious propaganda than anti-religious propaganda, the visible presence of an opposition makes it more likely that individuals will be willing to question cultural orthodoxy and voice their doubts. Which is probably why we’re hearing such anguished cries about the stridency of the atheists, not because it is ineffectual, but because it works.
There’s that sloppy thinking again. Absolutes are not only ubiquitous, they’re inevitable. They also tend to be uncomfortable, so people like to delude themselves into a comfortable state of “wishy-washy”ness where words are just empty symbols and every position is compatible with every other.
(Much as I’m sure you hate to admit it, most of you people agree with Rand on most of her principles. Accept it and move on.)
Well, that’s quite a lot of it right there. Every girl I’ve dated was (at least nominally) Christian. It’s not that I was looking for such girlfriends, and I certainly wouldn’t date anyone who was fanatical about religion (or even tended to bring it up much in conversation, as such people tend to be tedious and not fun to be around), but (particularly in the US Midwest where I grew up) it is practically inevitable to date Christians unless you date people at the Campus Atheist League or something. But, while I know people who date people based on their political or religious views, I sure as hell don’t.
What Jim Harrison said. (It’s a point that Larry Moran has also made forcefully around here.) This is what many “tepid atheist” types just don’t get. In my opinion one of the main reasons why, in countries more civilized than the US, religion (together with its apologists and ministers) doesn’t get the automatic deference it receives in the US, is precisely the existence of many such voices in those countries over the last 200 years or so.
…
…
Ahem. Again I say: There is no such thing as a “fundamentalist atheist.” Since there is no atheist Bible, nobody has strayed from its original message, and there is no original text to fundamentalize back to.
However, there are LOUD atheists. And that can be good or bad, depending on the message.
Regarding the LOUD atheists, I think anyone who’s even the slightest bit aware of the issue of religion has to have noticed that the Christians in the U.S. (and Muslims elsewhere) are eating us alive right now. Personal freedoms, personal safety, is vanishing faster than coral reefs.
I think it’s stupid in the extreme to sit back and hope for the best.
If ever there was a time to be LOUD, it’s now.
…
…
Warren said:
There is a very small subset of people who CALL themselves atheists who are really not. They actually believe in their god; they just happen to hate him — for the death of their mom, or for not delivering some promised better world, or whatever.
I guess they’re welcome to call themselves anything they want. But by any stretch of the definition, I don’t think any careful thinker could really consider them atheists.
…
…
The core of religious belief is that non-believers are bad. Modern, liberal versions of religion go so far as rejecting their own content outright and only retaining this core. There are versions that try to go by the names “atheism” and “agnosticism” and such that retain this core while going so far as to reject even the symbolism of religious belief. I think we need to recognise that our real enemy is bigotry and that this bigotry is espoused in its purest (although not most heinous) form not by fundamentalists but by liberal believers and the sort of self-hating “atheists” who write stories such as the above.
Such religious bigotry is bigotry no less than racism and sexism. The confusion comes from the fact that racism and sexism track physical features, even though they are essentialist, while this religious bigotry does not. (Although, that said, racism often tracks physical features very weakly if at all.) A further confusion is created because many people are convinced that religious bigotry only occurs between religions or against them. In fact, all religious bigotry is against non-believers; attacks on other religions are considered attacks on non-believers, regardless of whether they follow other religious practises or have none at all.
The discrimination involved is obvious. Almost all supposedly positive statements of religion and spirituality are clear cases on discrimination against non-believers. The idea that one needs something “more to life” and the implication that non-believers lack this essentialist something is a product of simple bigotry. The simplistic, bigoted characterisation of atheists as materialistic, nihilist, immoral, shrill, angry, oppressive, etc, is the characterisation against which almost all affirmative statements of modern religious belief are made. This applies to New Age spirituality and Western Buddhism as much as it does Christian Fundamentalism.
This sort of atheism isn’t “tepid” in that it doesn’t confront the opposition, it is the opposition.
Greg, not all religion has a Grand Narrative. Plenty of people seem to find meaning in religious beliefs that are arguably more nihilistic than a naturalistic outlook. I don’t personally know what it’s like to go from religious belief to atheism, but I can imagine the simpler things in life taking on greater value, rather than less, when they don’t have to vie with Cosmic Purpose.
Hey, I have a great idea for us “Brights”: let’s tell everybody else how friggin’ stupid they are!
Worked like a charm in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.
If most theists were willing to admit that their personal beliefs in deity were just that – their BELIEFs, founded in faith rather than reason, which could be in error – it seems that it would make sense to criticize these beliefs in more respectful and restrained ways than those demonstrated by the “New Atheists.” The believers would be less deluded and dangerous and more worthy of respect.
Most of the theists that I encounter don’t seem to have any such modesty or uncertainty about their beliefs, though. They are right because they are right and that’s that. I had a conversation with a megachurch-attending sister that literally ended up with this astounding conclusion after I showed her the error in all the other reasons she expressed that I’m certain to end up in hell unless I become her particular type of Christian. Actually, the conversation didn’t quite conclude that way; she went on to proclaim that she would pray for me. I’m sure that I will be eternally grateful. I should probably return the favor and make supplications to the FSM on her behalf, but I don’t have the time.
I hope that the New Atheists continue to shout the errors in theistic thinking to the rooftops. This will make absolutely no difference to the beliefs of those theists who are irrational, but maybe it will catch the attention of at least some rational theists and jar them into reconsidering their beliefs – or at least into recognizing that irrational beliefs and policies founded on such should not be foist upon everyone else.
I wonder if exaggerating and carping on the views of people like Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris in order to portray them as atheist boogey-men won’t end up actually shifting the social acceptance of atheism to the positive side. They want to rant and rave at the “close-minded bigotry” of some of those atheists, the ones who go too far. So they do.
Which, of course, leaves the ones who don’t go as far. Who now, perforce, seem better by comparison. Who are, of course, the majority of atheists. Not the wacky extremists like Dawkins and Dennett and Harris.
Possible, perhaps. I don’t like it, but the rants could end up having a curious positive effect.
…
…
As to loudness, I want atheists to be loud and proud, following the models of the gay rights and civil rights movements, at least until a majority of Americans recognize that it’s NOT OKAY in public to denigrate atheists, atheist beliefs, or atheist rights (and until laws are passed guaranteeing it).
Right now, over large swaths of the U.S. — have you listened to Christian radio lately? — “atheist” is the hate-speech equivalent of “faggot” or “nigger.”
And my sense is that it’s getting WORSE.
…
…
As a “Bright”, am I supposed to react to all forms of God-belief the same way I do to young-earth creationism?
I find evangelizing for any belief, be it god, gods, atheism or something else, to be offensive. An evangelist of any stripe assumes that he/she knows the TRUTH and feels compelled to convert every one else to that truth. The premise is that any belief that doesn’t conform to that of the evangelist is contemptible and wrong. Such a view contains the seeds that could easily destroy the pluralism that distinguishes countries like the US from others. And should we lose that pluralism, we lose the country. Which explains why I so strongly object to Bush and company.
I’ve been an atheist since my teens (more than half a century ago) but I don’t hold my belief as the only truth. It’s true for me, but may not be for others. Can I prove that it’s absolutely true? No. But that doesn’t make it any less true for me. Proving or disproving the supernatural is simply impossible. I’m tolerant of others whose beliefs differ, but the minute those others seek to evangelize me or impose their views on me, I bristle like a porcupine. Such bristling is often seen as hostility. It’s not. It’s simply my demand for respect for my views. In other words, tolerance. That’s a word and an idea that all too few worshipers of god(s)–and a few zealous atheists as well–omit from their lexicon.
Perhaps we are arguing the wrong argument, so far on my journey through life, I have found the oppositions to be not the theists and atheists, but the decent and the indecent.
I don’t see what’s wrong with being angry at human stupidity. Going with the flow does not work for me.
This has come up before, but people are going to be a lot angrier in a forum like this than they will be in person.
If my Mom says something nutty, I’m going to be nice. She’s my Mom. If she were to publish a nutty religious diatribe, on the other hand, she should expect to be criticized. That’s because she’s choosing to enter the public sphere and engaging the public in debate.
I don’t know of any forums for wishy-washy atheists out there but maybe the writer should start one if he feels so strongly that “new” atheists are doing something wrong. I doubt very much he cares enough about atheism to make the effort.
You guys make me feel exactly the way I felt in the run up to the Iraq war: I’m supposedly a pussy because I don’t think the war is a great idea. Okay. I can survive being called a pussy.
I just think its one thing to be vicious against terrorists and even dictators without taking on a full on enterprise against all religion that looks to have more potential downsides than upsides. But more than tactical concerns, my biggest concern is simply about being sloppy and wrong. I don’t really care even if being extremist really is a good tactical move. I’m not an extremist.
I think you are going to find this problem in general. Atheists are not a very good or unified team. That’s because not believing in gods doesn’t necessarily make us have anything in common. Also, the very fact that we generally aren’t sheep generally means that we are all going to have our own agendas, concerns, and niggling doubts and questions about any enterprise.
Put simply, if you think you are going to go to war with atheists as your army qua atheism, I don’t think you are going to find a very coherent or reliable movement behind you. If you want to fight something, or even be fired up and extreme about something, I still suggest that it be a broader value or principle that more than just atheists can get behind.
Adopting an attitude of uncertainty about first causes can hardly be called a comfortable position in a society which demands certainty of one kind or another.
Very well said, PZ.
I wonder if exaggerating and carping on the views of people like Dawkins, Dennett, and Harris in order to portray them as atheist boogey-men won’t end up actually shifting the social acceptance of atheism to the positive side
Exactly, not to worry. As of the last few weeks, there have been an increase in attacks from UD and other sites. That’s cuz they’re worried. Dawkin’s book is climbing in popularity, and they’re helping by giving it more exposure. If things climax by halloween, they’ll start calling him satan (he has the eyebrows for it).
I find evangelizing for any belief, be it that HIV causes AIDS, magical elephants cause AIDS, HIV doesn’t exist or something else, to be offensive. An evangelist of any stripe assumes that he/she knows the TRUTH and feels compelled to convert every one else to that truth. The premise is that any belief that doesn’t conform to that of the evangelist is contemptible and wrong. Such a view contains the seeds that could easily destroy the pluralism that distinguishes countries like the US from others. And should we lose that pluralism, we lose the country. Which explains why I so strongly object to Deusburg and company.
The above should clearly indicate why this line of thinking is wrong. There are facts, we argue based on facts. This sort of wishy-washy, anti-intellectual relavism is part of the problem, not part of the solution.
Wars? Armies?
Are you just projecting?
Like Keanus I’ve been an atheist for decades. When, years ago, I first came across Harris, Dawkins, and Dennet my reaction was “Cool, my beliefs are actually getting some air-time.” A couple of years ago or whenever it was that PZ started this blog and I stumbled across it, I had a similar reaction. But in the last six months, PZ has started to sound like an evangelical to me — complete with the persecution complex: “Oh, we poor atheists are getting dis’d left and right.”
I’ve never felt persecuted for my atheism, nor have I ever felt the need to poke religious people in the eye. Why bother? It is a failure of compassion that causes the ills in the world, not a failure of reason. Being a loud mouth about atheism is addressing the wrong problem.
Lothaire’s comment is typical of agnostics in that it sets up a false dichotomy. This is easy to latch onto because of the relativistic training we all receive, but fundamentalist theists and “fundamentalist” atheists are very different animals. One is rational, the other irrational.
While atheists always talk about the slight chance that they may be wrong, the millitant way that they often argue their beliefs reveals the lie.
The “slight chance” aspect come from the fact that a lot of these people are scientists and so are being very careful and exact in the way they explain their beliefs. To a thinking atheist (I would probably venture to say a thinking person), the probability of god in any traditional sense approaches zero. We’re as sure as are sure in the theory of gravity, and feel completely comfortable basing life decisions on that relative certainty.
Caledonian,
If you are referring to Ayn Rand, please go find a better thinker/writer. I tired of her while still in high school — which is about the level of her ideas. If you mean someone else, who might that be?
“New Atheism”? More like Straw Atheism. It’s exactly as PZ said. What these “fundamentalist atheists” stand for is actually taking a stand, nothing more or less. If some people find that threatening, they should hear what the other guys think! Even the most quiet and unassuming of apologetic Christians believes that I am going to spend eternity tortured in a lake of fire. This is a moderate position?
Fuck it all. This backlash against “New Atheism” is precisely the brand of stupidity that drives the rightward center-shifting that has infected the United States and sent the train of Democracy flying off its rails.
If apologists are feeling threatened, it’s because their faith rests on a bunch of silly superstitions and specious logic. If they actually had a firm faith, what would they care if Richard Dawkins or whoever else thinks they’re a bit silly?
I haven’t listened to the Dawkins vs. Quinn thing linked earlier, but I think the exerpts demonstrate exactly how hateful, rabid, and threatening Dawkins is not.
OH, FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST, HE’S NOT ACCEPTING OUR UNFOUNDED ASSERTIONS THAT WE GOT FROM A REALLY OLD BOOK!@#$!@ WHY DO YOU HATE FREEDOM, RICHARD DAWKINS??!??!?
To quote Robert Redford in The Sting, “He cheats. But he’s better at it than you.”
The contrast between the hip fundie ministers and the dour Dawkins merely points out that most deeply held positions are ultimately non-logical.
This probably is why so many Brights are cursing the darkness.
Poke:
There is a tremendous amount of that, yes. It also hurts. If you’ve seen the movie Cast Away, you might recall Hanks’s character’s response to Wilson bobbing off to sea.
Losing religious faith is a little like that; at first there’s an intensely painful period of separation, until you realize that what you’ve lost is basically an imaginary friend — and that the imaginary friend is really an aspect of your own personality.
So, perversely, for me at least the gradual change to atheism was healing rather than pathological.
Another element of wholeness arose when I didn’t have to keep making excuses to myself in my own mind for hanging on to a patently absurd belief (such as in resurrection or virgin conception) while at the same time seeing the undeniable evidence against such possibilities play out in reality all around me, every day. The intellectual discord was difficult to live with, and the worst times came when I was just certain that I was trying to lie to myself.
Once I began accepting, for instance, the Genesis simply couldn’t be literally true, well, that was the fabled thin end of the wedge that so many goddish fear. Eliminate creation or special creation, and the whole damn cookie eventually crumbles. It has to.
On a slightly different tangent, I think some posters’ sense that the perceived stridency of atheists is merely perceived is probably correct.
That is, when we say something that is simply true, such as that it’s absurd to suggest a Jew will go to hell, we’re perceived as being strident only by those who believe, sincerely, that Jews go to hell; when we say it’s absurd to suggest eating a magic cracker will guarantee you everlasting life, we’re perceived as being strident only by those who eat magic crackers.
Well, fuck those people.
And yes, I’ll cop to elitism as well, for more or less the same reasons Greg enumerated.
Bottom line, as I see it: Atheism is much more likely to be correct than, say, Catholicism, and it’s not elitist to say so, nor is it strident, nor is it an attempt to “convert” anyone. It’s a fact, that’s all; and those who argue against such a statement are arguing not against atheism, but against (what appears to be) reality.
This thread has a very strong ‘herding cats’ feel to it.
But in the last six months, PZ has started to sound like an evangelical to me — complete with the persecution complex: “Oh, we poor atheists are getting dis’d left and right.”
The frustration doesn’t come from persecution. It comes from the fact that many self-loathing atheists feel the need to walk on eggshells around theists. Thus they consider the more strident, consistent defenders of rationalism to be just as much, if not more, a part the problem than the fundies. To paraphrase the late Senator Barry Goldwater: Extremism in defense of reason is not a vice, and moderation in the pursuit of sanity is not a virtue. If attacking beliefs that are pervasive despite being improbable in the extreme (like God, virgin births, prophets riding up into heaven on winged horses) then get out of the hot iron and brand me and extremist.
What we have to offer is uncertainty and a demand for some degree of rigor; it’s the theists who are arrogant in their certainty
Horsefeathers. Third-grade playground “you hit me first” mentality.
YOu have no uncertainty. You know that your world-view is correct. Stop posturing as one who is “open-minded.”
It seems that even among those who call themselves ‘atheists’ there are denominational differences, a sort of secular sectarianism at work.
For the record, as a believer I’m not the least bit threatened by atheism and the caricature of Dawkins’s views which the author calls ‘The New Atheism’, if not a straw man, is certainly based upon the perception of Dawkins, Harris, et. al. rather that what the latter are actually saying.
I’d write more about how this thread reminds me of a religious schism, but frankly I have to get back to enabling the Taliban. Amused….SH
As Warren says,
So why go all gah-gah over it? Some of you guys act like you are surrounded by fundamentist Christians who are doing their best “Come to Jesus” chant. That’s not my experience. Sorry. I don’t want see the world through lense of Fox “News” and don’t believe that Pat Robertson represents the typical religious believer.
Horsefeathers. Third-grade playground “you hit me first” mentality.
YOu have no uncertainty. You know that your world-view is correct. Stop posturing as one who is “open-minded.”
I prefer the more American slang-term: Bullshit.
Open-minded means being willing to consider a viewpoint and then judge it on it’s merits. We have judged theism, and found it to not only wholly lacking in, but utterly contrary to rationality, logic and empirical evidence.
Being open-minded is fine, but it’s not a virtue to be so open-minded that your brains fall out.
I’ll buy this the second I see a theist revise their position to incorporate evidence contarry to their beliefs. Until then, there’s really only one system that retains an “open mind” as a matter of process.
I suggest that everyone concerned with this debate, from Gary Wolf to David Quinn, find a dictionary and look up the word fundamentalist, and start to use it correctly.
Huh? I haven’t read Collins’ book myself, but I thought his whole “moral law” schtick was allegedly evidence for the existence of God. Perhaps those who have read his book could comment on this.
For the record, as a believer I’m not the least bit threatened by atheism and the caricature of Dawkins’s views which the author calls ‘The New Atheism’, if not a straw man, is certainly based upon the perception of Dawkins, Harris, et. al. rather that what the latter are actually saying.
We might be more inclined to take these sorts of comments seriously if you would actually articulate what qualifies your beliefs as being more rational than those of Pat Robertson. If they’re not any more rational, they’re also not any more plausible.
A relative tells a racist joke. You’re sitting at the table. You hear him.
You say nothing. Don’t laugh, don’t tell him you don’t approve.
He may or may not count you as an ally, assume you agree. Probably depends on how bright he is, what your expression is, what your relationship is, whether you’ve said anything on such subjects previously.
I’d suggest I’d want to say something, regardless, there. Better to risk making a scene than leave that ambiguous. If you *don’t* want ugly attitudes like that spreading, that’s your opportunity to try to prevent it. Make it clear: it ain’t all right with you.
That goes doubly if there’s a six year old sitting next to you. For them, I’d want to make it clear: not everyone thinks this is all right. This isn’t a given. This isn’t just how the world is. You can’t assume everyone says these things, so don’t go assuming repeating that joke is a particularly good idea, either.
The trouble with a ‘tepid atheist’ who says nothing when religious nonsense is espoused is similar. It risks letting people just assume everyone thinks this way. Particularly for the impressionable, who may well see a lot of that, depending on the culture that surrounds them. You do them far more service by being visible, by saying: ‘well, listen, I don’t believe that’, even if it does risk causing a scene. Even if does feel a little like ‘evangelism’.
As to being ‘shrill’: that’s what they’re going to call you when you call bullshit bullshit. It doesn’t matter how politely you say it. Religion is transparently nonsensical superstition protected by a tradition of reverence; say anything halfway honest and unequivocal about it, you’ll get called ‘shrill’; it doesn’t matter how reasonable is your argument, or pleasant your tone.
And that’s because however nicely you say it, you probably do sound shrill by contrast. The folk so complaining are used to their dear old legends being treated with reverential kid gloves. That’s a major part of the system that keeps them alive. The only way anyone can maintain the suspension of disbelief that keeps bizarre fictions like the resurrection alive is to speak of them only in hushed tones, as though they are somehow great mysteries, great profundities.
Say ‘that makes very little sense’. Say it kindly. Say that there was an old mythical tradition of birth-death-rebirth gods, almost certainly long, long divorced from any remote relationship with any actual historical spark for the story centuries before Christ. Say it with footnotes. Say it in a scholarly article, point out the parallels with Osiris. Talk about the lack of evidence honestly, openly, with an open mind to hear any actually relevant objections that might come up…
They’ll still call you shrill. That’s what they do. You’re ‘extreme’ because you’re pointing out an absurdity. It *is* absurd; that’s not your fault; you can hardly open up the subject without that becoming rapidly apparent to all concerned. Even those who believe you’re right will call you shrill, because this is ground into the culture: you don’t say honest, blunt things about such subjects. It’s just not done. The tradition of reverence sunk in centuries ago; it won’t let go easily.
So I at once find nothing outrageous about Dawkins, nor anything surprising about critiques like the one linked. Man’s just saying something rather obvious, really no more bluntly than seems reasonable to me. He’s been doing it so long he’s repeating himself, now, but that probably can’t be much helped either. Sad fact is, there’s really not that much more to say about it. Not that much that’s interesting, anyway. Only reason he’s gotta keep saying it in new and ever so slightly different ways is the one above: it’s important to stay visible, you have to keep telling it like it is. Just to make it clear: yes, there are answers to all these transparently silly old arguments. Yes, there are people who don’t buy a word of the silly old stories. No, we haven’t died out, gone away, or retreated. No, we’re not backing down. No, we’re not shutting up about it, either.
But sure they’re gonna call him shrill. He’s a basically calm, sensible guy, just saying again what still sadly needs to be said, and he’s still gonna be called shrill.
And so are you if you say the same. Pretty much however you say it.
So I say don’t let it bother you.
Whatever they call you, just call bullshit bullshit.
Now now, be generous. Most Christians have given up on the Biblical concepts of a Flat Earth and a Geocentric Universe.
Scott,
I was wondering what you would have to say. And I agree: this does feel like a religious schism with the militant atheists who feel the need to trumpet their position breaking off from — for want of a better term — the quite atheists who go about their lives looking a bit askance at their louder brothern.
I wonder how much this debate is a function of the simple fact that it’s easier to be perceived as ‘nice’ if one speaks from a moderate position than if one comes from an extreme end of the spectrum. I say this as an atheist who thinks belief in religion in our society is inexcusably stupid. This attitude has exposed me to considerable marital discord, so the subject is no longer mentioned, let alone discussed, at home.
My wife has taken offence at my denigration of religious belief; she has taken it as a personal insult. In this respect, she saw me as not being ‘nice’. Of course, I don’t see myself as not being ‘nice’; rather I see myself as simply stating the obvious. What I was trying to do was intended to be helpful, by exposing the stupidity of religious belief.
Does a desire to be perceived as ‘nice’ inform the stance taken by Terry Eagleton and other apologists?
I guess that as science encroaches on mysticism and as it delivers the goods, one has no choice but to accept an erosion of ones superstitions in order to avoid chanting at the fax machine. As we progress, deities become smaller and smaller. Already devout theists argue about just how small they can make their god and still keep it relevant. Some are mighty small indeed.
So to this degree — the degree to which a theist must acknowledge a fact because it is useful as well as demontsrated — some religions do indeed appear to be open minded. The body of work by which these facts are made sense of in terms of the books that underly religion is known as “theology”. It grows in inverse proportion to the size of the god that can exist under the weight of evidence.
My view:
We need different approaches. Richard Dawkins’ approach is vocal an unapologetic towards even the moderate religionists. Ultimately it’s a matter of the eroding and potentially dangerous thing called faith vs. reason and science.
I think it’s precisely the fact that Dawkin’s is UNAPOLOGETIC that riles some people up. So instead of considering the viewpoint of Dawkins’, some people just have this “we don’t WANT you to burst people’s bubbles!” attitude towards him.
OTOH, we need moderate and theistic evolutionists etc. as well, because they cause some people to rethink their fundamentalist position, and become more “reason-driven”, maybe ultimately even abandoning faith altohether.
And they rejoiced.
I tend to agree that Dawkins should not argue from theology but for slightly different reasons than his critic asserts.
Theology is essentially science fiction. You take as axiomatic a document that desceribes a supernatural entity and then develope a story that, in light of what we know about the world, is logically consistent. Obviously as we come to know more about the world, this story must become more and more convoluted. Certainly by now it is very difficult indeed to follow and newcomers are bound to misstep.
However, as the very definition of theology involves as axiomatic a position that an atheist by definition disagrees with, arguing theological points is nonsensical. It would be like arguing against a mathematics that derives from an axiom that 2+2=5 — no matter how huge the logical work is that is based on the axiom, the axiom itself renders discussion about its relationship to the real world impossible.
Stepping into that mudfight is a mistake. Yes, to argue theology you need a very deep and long-studied understanding of it and to that extent Dawknins was in error. To deny the axiom, however, you need nothing in particular except the observation that the reality of our world does fine without the axiom and, as an added bonus, a huge body of dense reasoning (that becomes more dense with every new discovery) can be discarded as purposeless.
“Are you just projecting?”
No, it’s an extended metaphor.
woosh….blew my hair back. lot of people with strong opinions and low levels of tolerance.
ok scientists, consider this: my lab partner in grad school used to muse; “ya know, basically there’s physics, and then, there’s stamp collecting.”
according to him, what most of us do is less than rigorous…
guess my phd in synthetic organic chemistry has more in common with theology…
I was wondering what you would have to say. And I agree: this does feel like a religious schism with the militant atheists who feel the need to trumpet their position breaking off from — for want of a better term — the quite[sic] atheists who go about their lives looking a bit askance at their louder brothern.
Andy, the bigger question is, as raised by AJ Milne above:
do you look askance or say anything to your louder bretheren who openly talk about their extreme religious beliefs without being asked?
Does Scott?
I bet not.
this is where the “taliban enabling” comment comes from.
It’s only extreme for effect, but essentially correct in usage.
If you don’t vocally denounce the extremism of some of your fellow xians, then you enable them.
simple.
When the author of this article one day finds that his rights have been abrogated by the Believers, what’s he going to say, “wait…I forgot to tell you that the premise of your belief system is completely without foundation”? Shucks, too late.
ok scientists, consider this: my lab partner in grad school used to muse; “ya know, basically there’s physics, and then, there’s stamp collecting.”
Your lab partner was a dumbass, at least in this regard. Just because there is a spectrum of mathematical and scientific rigor in the sciences doesn’t mean that everything beyond particle physics is stamp collecting. And besides, computer science is waaaaayyy better. NARF!
My experience is most people don’t have a problem with atheists, not even the Dawkins, Harris, Dennett type. The only fight out there is between the rabid Christian fundamentalist and the rabid atheists. Lots of evangelicals are not interested in changing science education. Lots of rabid atheists realize the futility of agruing with rabid fundies.
What we atheists don’t have — and personally I don’t see it as a lack — is a coherrent take on morality. Simply concluding there is no reason to believe in the supernatural has nothing to do with any positive statement about ethics. So we don’t have an “agenda” or any way of building a movement. There are no atheist leaders trying to build a coalition. That’s just fine. Who cares if you’re an atheist. Get over it. If it floats your boat to call, for example, typical Presbyterians stupid — even while they are lined up with you on every significant issue — well, you’re just a jerk, a righteous jerk, but a jerk nevertheless.
My experience is most people don’t have a problem with atheists, not even the Dawkins, Harris, Dennett type. The only fight out there is between the rabid Christian fundamentalist and the rabid atheists. Lots of evangelicals are not interested in changing science education. Lots of rabid atheists realize the futility of agruing with rabid fundies.
This is the exact sort of head-in-the-sand attitude that Sam Harris constantly rails against, and you prove his point about moderates in spades. Fundamentalism is not a fringe phenomenon among Christians in America, unless the ~44% of Americans who literally believe that the eschatological events of Revelation is going to occurr with their lifetime, that creationism should taught exclusively in public schools, that God literally promised the land of Israel to the Jews, etc. are somehow still on the “fringe” despite being so pervasive (and well organized).
My experience is most people don’t have a problem with atheists, not even the Dawkins, Harris, Dennett type.
that’s certainly NOT been my experience.
I suppose it depends on the crowds you hang with, but in general, in non academic circles, I find most to think that challenging someone’s openly stated superstitions (whether it be religion or some kind of homeopathy), to be considered “shrill”.
I think AJ hit the nail right on the head.
Scott, sorry, but you ARE enabling the Taliban. Your superstitions are just as valid as theirs (by which I mean Not At All), and for every one person who still hangs desperately on for the sake of the warm fuzzies, there is at least one other who sees this desperate grasp and, without comment from you indicating otherwise, silently assumes you’re grasping at something substantial rather than mere memories of family togetherness. This is how religion propagates, and the ‘warm fuzzies’ people ARE a part of this process.
AndyS, you wrote, “Who cares if you’re an atheist. Get over it. If it floats your boat to call, for example, typical Presbyterians stupid — even while they are lined up with you on every significant issue — well, you’re just a jerk, a righteous jerk, but a jerk nevertheless”.
A creationist, (Prof Andy McIntosh, of ‘Truth in Science’) wrote me, “If any philosophy is true on origins it clearly cannot be a private matter, since it affects us all”.
I replied, “Your interpretation of ‘revealed’ texts is, for you believers, the TRUTH. Given the opportunity, those with the ‘duty’ of making the interpretations, would inflict their ‘TRUTHS’ on humanity. We would then have a situation where all the evils of the past can be revisited upon us, and maybe some new ones. The way would be open to torture and execute heretics and apostates, and whoever else you don’t like. We could even end up with you, or one of your cronies, as the Witchfinder General”.
The point is, AndyS, the religious cannot be “… lined up with you on every significant issue”. Can’t you see this?
That’s an illusion. Freethought has always been a herd of cats because it’s, well, free thought. There are certain social instincts to go more or less the way others are going (except the mavericks who lack or ignore those instincts), but there isn’t an official party line and never has been. There’s always been a range of diverse opinions among atheists.
Trouble is, essentialism is one of the characteristic flaws of the human mind. Individual atheists exist; the atheist community is a highly heterogeneous collection; the “typical atheist” is a pipe dream. (So is the typical oak tree, actually, but in their case it’s less obvious.) But even people who know better sometimes find themselves thinking about “the typical atheist” or some such rot, so it’s not surprising that they would then be (or act) surprised to find out that not all atheists are “typical”.
Sometimes there’s also the hidden agenda of trying to push the “abnormal” atheists back into the “mainstream” (which is the version the commentator finds more comfortable). This doesn’t work so well on most atheists because with the social pressures toward religion already in place, damn few conformists are atheists to start with.
The concept of “typical” only really works for elementary particles, atoms and smallish molecules. Anything bigger than that, idiosyncracy is the norm.
I am not sure whether to consider myself a militant* atheist or a tepid one. It’s an interesting debate, but I just want to say that I was Catholic when I started reading A Devil’s Chaplain, and I was an atheist when I finished it. Dawkins is not trying to convert the world, he is trying to convert the fence-sitters. This former fence-sitter is quite grateful for Dawkins’ un-tepid writing.
*I have heard this word used to describe Dawkins several times, and it is quite awful. Loud yes, but militancy implies warlike activism, and characterizing Dawkins as some Black-Panther-like leader is just hysterical.
Well stated, PZ. Props and kudos.
Gary Wolf reminds me of some of my friends who, in all pie-eyed credulence, forward on various urban legends and nonsense as being Absolutely True and, when confronted with the inevitable debunking from Snopes or The Straight Dope, start to whine “You’re spoiling my fun! Why can’t I believe what I want to believe? We all have the right to our own opinions! Waah!”
What Wolf, as well as these friends, seem to have forgotten that one’s right to an opinion does not equate to the right to assert that point of view in public without question or challenge. What is being called “militant atheism” or “fundamentalist atheism” is simply an unapologetic refusal to bow down and automatically respect the gilded mantle of religious autocracy. Just as one is not absolved one of legal culpability simply by wrapping oneself in a flag and chanting political slogans such as “Defending Uhmurika,” neither is one shielded from having to examine one’s beliefs in light of facts and evidence simply by holding up a sacred text in one hand and a symbol in the other (“My cross of Knowledge-Warding Hovind rhetoric counters your cladogram, evil-doer!”).
I think what bothers Wolf more than anything else about atheists is their audacious refusal to grant religion the right of presuppositional superiority. The atheist dares to question and challenge. Thus, it appears to me that the whole “fundamentalist atheism” controversy is not about reasoned discourse or the philosophical nature of God or finding common ground. Not really. It’s about power, to borrow a phrase from Joss Whedon. We have it, and they don’t. And THAT’s what’s got them running scared, trying to overturn the democratic process, overrule the independent judiciary, and change the rule of law into the rule of force. That’s what’s got them bombing family planning clinics, assaulting professors and judges, flying airplanes into buildings, and murdering innocent people in the name of peace and love.
Damn right, PZ. No backing down, no middle ground, no appeasement or tolerance. We can’t afford it.
The point is, AndyS, the religious cannot be “… lined up with you on every significant issue”. Can’t you see this?
Why? It floats his boat to call, for example, typical [atheists] [jerks].
Thank you, AJ Milne. I’ll follow your advice, rather than that of AndyS. If the best I can hope for from somebody who claims to be on my side is that I’m too shrill to become a house atheist, he ain’t on my side.
Either your lab partner was Ernest Rutherford, or else he was not as witty and original as you imagine.
.
BTW, it was a joke. If you are saying that you took his joke seriously, well then the joke is on you.
Tyler DiPietro,
Where do you get this stat that nearly half of all Americans literally believe in Revelation and creationism? That’s just the sort of ignorant hype that makes rabid atheists look like evangelicals.
Ichthyic,
The thing is, no matter what crowd you hang with, there are always ridiculous notions being bandied about. The belief in God or whatever is pretty low on my scale of idiotcy. What about the 3-strike laws or demonizing pot or the people stranded in the Superdome post-Katrina or the large percentage of people without access to health care in the richest nation the world has ever seen?
To me, the “shrillness” is about misplaced values. I don’t give a damn if you believe in God if you’ll stand beside me in addressing real problems.
I have heard this word used to describe Dawkins several times, and it is quite awful. Loud yes, but militancy implies warlike activism, and characterizing Dawkins as some Black-Panther-like leader is just hysterical.
It does seem that religious extremeists first offensive technique is to project.
Well congratulations, you don’t live in a “red state”, do you?
The thing is, no matter what crowd you hang with, there are always ridiculous notions being bandied about.
indeed, the issue is one of a double-standard applied to the ridiculous notions of a religious nature.
or did you miss my point entirely?
if we continue to have respectful conversations even about things we find ridiculous, this doesn’t necessarily mean we’ve lost our convictions or our sanity.
No, it just means you’re a fucking twit or retard.
A TIME/CNN poll finds that more than one-third of Americans say they are paying more attention now to how the news might relate to the end of the world, and have talked about what the Bible has to say on the subject. Fully 59% say they believe the events in Revelation are going to come true, and nearly one-quarter think the Bible predicted the Sept. 11 attack.
Poll: Creationism Trumps Evolution
Whatsametter, AndyS, is your google busted? I hope you enjoyed the “ignorant hype.”
Hush Quork, you wouldn’t want the Presbyterians to hear you being shrill now, would you?
If you have a world in which you only have the religous the fence sitters, and terribly polite, tepid atheists, it is very hard for people to get liberated from the false gods of religion because they have nothing to grasp. From time immemorial religion has been the norm, the accepted and the socially acceptable. This has given the religious incredible power to make laws, dominate ethics, and tell people what they can or cannot do, on stupidly false ideas.
People are welcome to choose what sort of athiest or agnostic they want to be, but it seems obvious that the world is in dire need of some sort of balence to the crazy religiosity you have in the USA today (Europe would appear to be somewhat saner till the Muslims take over). So I for one am thankful for Dawkins the other thinkers who are at last getting the other view out there where it can be seen, and help people realize there are kindred spririts out there.
I’m not sure exactly who “you people” are, but I find Ayn Rand about as appealing as a tureen of lukewarm vomit, and I suspect most readers here feel likewise. If I remember correctly, her big thing was advocacy of absolute capitalism, completely unrestrained by social or environmental concerns, which is hardly a position favored by the liberal-leaning crowd PZ draws.
In short, no, I don’t believe in God, but I do believe there’s a hell of a lot more to the world than “A is A.”
To a certain extent, I see where the author is coming from – live and let live – except in this case, human life and welfare is directly on the line. If those of us who know that HIV causes AIDS remain silent and let the “magical elephants” faction persuade the masses, then actual people will suffer and die for it.
Evangelists, I think, see their activities in a similar light: by propounding “the truth,” they are saving other people (and themselves) from eternal damnation. Some atheists – PZ Myers and Dawkins come to mind – have a similar sense of gravity of purpose, but for many of us, one’s religious allegiance has about as much real-world significance as one’s favorite football team, and we’re not willing to start fights over it.
…Of course, there are plenty of people who cheerfully start fights over their favorite football teams, so let me amend my previous statement: there probably are some atheists (and, I suspect, many many more evangelicals) who are not purpose-driven, but argue their point for the sheer contentious hell of it. For these people, it’s not about “right versus wrong”; it’s just “us versus them.”
When my grandmother talks about “Chinamen,” I object in the strongest possible terms. When she expresses her hope that her dead husband is in a happier place, the most I can say is “Well, I hope so too, but I don’t really know…” For whatever reason, I can ignore the possibility of wounded feelings and condemn racism outright, but I can’t quite work up the nerve to say “Sorry, Grandma, but he’s decomposing and that’s about all.” Possibly there’s some tiny part of me that wants to believe, even though I know better. Possibly I just don’t want to make my grandmother cry.
Is Saint Andy the Asshole still trolling the comments?
“Being a loud mouth about atheism is addressing the wrong problem.”
But being a whiny beeatch about loud-mouthed atheists on internet blogs is addressing the right problem?
Give it a rest, asshole.
Gay politics is strictly civil rights: Live and let live. But the atheist movement, by his lights, has no choice but to aggressively spread the good news. Evangelism is a moral imperative.
What the–?
Try this on for size: Intelligent design is “live and let live,” but evolution “has no choice but to aggressively spread the good news.” Science “is a moral imperative.” (Well, yes, I would argue that science is a moral imperative.)
Or how about:
Nice treatment of slaves “is strictly civil rights: Live and let live. But the Abolitionist movement, by his lights, has no choice but to aggressively spread the good news. Evangelism is a moral imperative.”
Or:
Not voting “is strictly civil rights: Live and let live. But voting for a candidate, deciding upon who is to be president or senator, by his lights, has no choice but to aggressively spread the good news. Evangelism is a moral imperative.”
Get my drift?
What I am coming to understand is that, aside from the queer use of the “we” (which I assume is not the royal “we,” though it begins to sound like it!), these so-called get-along atheists/agnostics (is that what they indeed are?) who get so fired up about Dawkins are upset that he may help their point of view win the day! Does that make sense? Does that make any damned sense? (Oh, now I’m asking things to make sense. Fundamentalist me!)
What are these people scared of? What is it, exactly, that these “agnostics” are agnostic about? Changing people’s minds? Determining the facts of a matter? Having to make up their own damn minds?
Yeah, that’s probably it.
“Possibly I just don’t want to make my grandmother cry.”
Then you’re out of the club. The first act of the True Atheist(TM) is to get in your Christian racist granny’s face until she dies of a heart attack.
Then dump the body in the ocean and find another granny. Rinse. Repeat.
This may be off topic, but I have always found what I though to be a limitation of books by dawkins, harris, dennett. I have very little training in biology or genetics, but wouldn’t atheists be so becuase of some gene expression (freethink gene)? On the other hand wouldn’t theists believe in God becuase they have some other gene expression? So, isn’t it especially disingenuous for scientists to claim that purely empirical evidence proves that a god does not exist? Doesn’t a scientists genetic makeup “filter” whatever they observe. Perhaps what I am descrbing (probably unclearly) is a crude reductionism. I think in the future geneticists could “flip a switch” in an embryo and all but assure that person is a theist or atheist. If this is true, then I doubt these existential questions will ever be answerable with any degree of certainty. In other words PZ/Dawkins/Dennett did not choose to be an atheist as much as Pope Benedict did not choose to believe in a God. I haven’t read Dawkins book, but does anyone know if he discusses that he may be an atheist because his genetic code made him that way as opposed to his scientific traning?
Will,
I totally grok what you are saying, and I’ll take it in a slightly different direction:
For Dawkins to be able to say that God’s existence is “improbable”, and have it actually mean something, we must also grant that Dembski can say that evolution of the flagellum is “improbable”.
The problem with BOTH is that you can’t simply say >>this< < God, or >>that<< evolutionarily path, is improbable. You have to sum over all possible "God"s, and over all possible evolutionary paths (and over all possible, comparable "flagella-like" things) to make your inference valid. I think Dawkins is way off base. Maybe, when he starts getting a bit of resistance from former allies, he'll have a melt-down as dramatic as Christopher Hitchens' earlier this decade? One can only dream.
Goddammit I forgot that I can’t use less or greater than for emphasis as the editor thinks I’m typing html.
My second paragraph should read:
The problem with BOTH is that you can’t simply say *this* God or *that* evolutionary pathway is unlikely, you have to sum over all possible gods and evolutionary pathways. (It’s that old Feynman quip, “While driving to school today, I saw the exact license plate 2TNB185. What are the chances of that?!?) For Dawkins to be talking about the “improbability” of God’s existence, he’s opening the door for tons and tons of ridiculous probability calculations, like we see from the creationists/IDers.
Of course they can both say those things, and both are meaningful statements. As it happens, Dawkins is quite correct and Dembski is quite wrong. I’m sure you imagine that you have a point, but that is a delusion, as is your eager anticipation of “friendly” “resistance” to Dawkins followed by a “meltdown”.
No. You’re falling into the trap of thinking something as complex as human behavior can be coded for in “a” gene. Just as there is no gene for a specific language, there is no gene for believing, freethinking, etc.
TTBOMK no scientist says so. Proving a negative is effectively impossible, so the claim that such-and-such thing disproves god is, on the face of it, false.
Ordinarily I don’t use the term “impossible” as a literal, but I think what you just suggested here is precisely that. Not unlikely, but actually impossible. Human behavior — particularly something as complex as a worldview, philosophical attitude or even perceptual bias — is simply not beholden to a genetic “switch” someplace.
I don’t know what Dawkins is running around saying that God is improbable for in the first place. How exactly would anyone do such a calculation? Just say there is no evidence to support, and be done with it: it’s simpler and more telling. Claiming that there is some measure of probability for such things is silly, and it gives people an out that isn’t there.
Dawkins calculation of the “improbability” of God is a good example of equivocation and the use of non sequiturs.
OR, it indicates that he does not understand probability to the extent he claims.
After all, he suggests that no matter how improbable life is, and we don’t really have enough information to determine that, at least we know “Here we are”; thus arguing in a circle but don’t let that stop you.
Dawkins is clearly motivated by hate.
He’s no Bertrand Russell, more like Madlyn Murray O’Hair.
When I was an undergraduate I started to read Bertrand Russell’s “Why I am not a Christian” but I put it down when I realized that he was completely missing the point of religion. Dawkins seems to be making the same mistake–belief in God is not a pseudoscience or mere superstition to be refuted with a few well-documented experiments.
On the contrary, what I’m seeing here is people who “understand” probability only in a very naive frequentist version which is actually of little relevance to science or much else.
Dawkins is a doo-doo head. He won’t sound so smart when his flesh is being peeled off one skin cell at a time for all eternity.
All you shrill religion-haters will burn in hell and there is at least 50% chance there is one because either there is one or there isn’t. I can do math and so can the 99.9% believers who did the math, too, and arrived at the right concussion.
You know whats a hoot?
Atheists, after telling me there is no God to tell me what to do…start telling me what to do.
HILARIOUS!
Atheists just KILL me!!!
…there is no gene for believing, freethinking, etc.
actually, there have been several studies released in the last few years that provide support for the idea that extreme religious behavior may in fact have measurable genetic components to it. Unlikely that there is a particular “gene” specific to the behavior, but very probable that there is a complex of interrelated genes that might contribute to a predisposition towards particular behavior modes.
sure, human behavior is complex, but to automatically make the assumption that there is NO genetic component at all, is just as ridiculous as saying that it’s entirely genetically predetermined.
all traits, both morphological and behavioral have genetic components that, as they intereact with various environmental inputs both during initial development and after, produce what we observe and categorize. You could even say that of traits that appear derived from other traits, even if you are a “gestaltist”.
“When I was an undergraduate I started to read Bertrand Russell’s “Why I am not a Christian” but I put it down when I realized that he was completely missing the point of religion. Dawkins seems to be making the same mistake–belief in God is not a pseudoscience or mere superstition to be refuted with a few well-documented experiments.”
Okay….what IS the point of religion? To provide an imaginary friend?
…
…
All of you whacking at Dawkins grew up, whether you know it or not, in an extremely goddy social matrix. You’re inclined to view Dawkins’ work with this unconscious filter, which strongly colors your concept of the debate. Even if you’re not a believer, you’ve grown up accepting a field of basic argument which is drastically skewed in the direction of religion.
I can give you a specific real-world example of this broad bias: Even long after the Catholic altar boy molesting flap reached the public, the Catholic hierarchy was still allowed to treat molestation charges as some kind of minor internal matter. When anyone else under accusation of molesting would have been arrested, in a violent police raid if necessary, priests got special treatment, both from the Catholic Church AND the police. It took a literal tidal wave of coverage and public approbation for this to change.
This matter illustrates two things: One, that religion gets a pass on stuff that nobody else would. And two, and more important, that our minds are affected in some truly pernicious ways … which inclines us to allow this.
If you don’t see this pernicious effect, it’s because you haven’t really thought about it, or perhaps because you’re been UNABLE to think about it. The true picture of this mental effect is only starting to come out, it seems to me, and Dawkins is one of the pioneers in uncovering the ugly facts.
After this massive social bias is addressed, when every public panel addressing ethical issues contains at least one well-respected atheist or secular humanist for every religionist, THEN I’ll start to believe there’s some bit of fairness in the mix.
…
…
Dawkins is a doo-doo head. He won’t sound so smart when his flesh is being peeled off one skin cell at a time for all eternity.
All you shrill religion-haters will burn in hell and there is at least 50% chance there is one because either there is one or there isn’t. I can do math and so can the 99.9% believers who did the math, too, and arrived at the right concussion.
Why did my comment appear three times? I pressed button four times.
Old hippie,
I usually find you comments right on the money, but this one isn’t:
The fundie religious have created a lot of noise and created some real problems in South Dakota. That’s not anything like having “incredible power” or dominating ethics. SD doesn’t even have a million people — which is not to say that their proposed abortion ban isn’t troublesome but to point out that it is only in a small state that the radical religious can get any traction at all.
Great White Wonder,
As usual your own words are enough to undercut any point you might be trying to make. In fact, you are the best example for my point of view. I just don’t get how using terms like “asshole” and the clever “beeatch” makes your case more compelling.
Oh, good.
The dimwitted have found us.
…
Regarding that imbalance I spoke about earlier, try creating a chat room called “Atheists Only.” You’ll get a lifetime’s worth of “God loves you anyway!” and “I’ll pray for you!” in a half hour or so. Not to mention the “burn in hell” brigade demonstrating their big-hearted Christian charity … in the most lurid terms imaginable. (Read the hate mail at http://www.normalbobsmith.com for a sample.)
Catholics do great work like feeding people and take their condoms away all around the world, even in dirty places like Africa where nobody likes the people there. That is why our society is willing to forgive and forget when it comes to priests and nuns having sex. The good outweighs the bad and besides it’s hard to not want to have sex with all the sex on TV and music and movies and on the web like sites like XMovies and SpermShack.
That is why the priests are always telling us to be careful!!!!!
“As usual your own words are enough to undercut any point you might be trying to make.”
No, I’m sorry, but they don’t.
As usual your own words are enough to
*Yawn*
Too bad you can’t buy stock in sanctimonious bullcrap. AndyS is sitting on a fucking goldmine.
Ichthyic:
I agree with you, to the following extent, that if you suggest that when a believer of any stripe declines to denounce the wickedness of other believers, they do in fact enable that wickedness. I wholeheartedly agree with that, and I see nothing wrong with taking other believers to task, and publicly. And I’ve done so. Repeatedly. And now and then I’ve taken heat for that, but (as I’ve said to my critics) they don’t get a free ride on the basis of their beliefs.
Stogoe, you make a different point that I don’t agree with, which appears to be that the assertion of belief enables any and all belief systems. Please. The Taliban could not be less interested or more diametrically opposed to my own views, so I doubt very much that they give a fig *what* I believe. I might add that the same thing goes for our own fundamentalists.
Firmly…SH
Grady:
Dawkins clearly motivated by hate? I’m sorry to disagree with you, but you are clearly projecting rather than reflecting. As a believer who has corresponded with Dr. Dawkins, I found him to be courteous, urbane and helpful. I don’t find his writings hateful, merely trenchant and assertive.
I can quietly demur from Dr. Dawkins’ position without demonizing him. What are you afraid of, that you would mischaracterize him so?
Sincerely….Scott
Catholics do great work like feeding people and take their condoms away all around the world…
this sparked a vision in my mind of roving bands of inquisitors, rabidly raiding the nightstand drawers of “nonbelievers” to deprive them of prophylactics.
talk about nobody expecting the Spanish inquistion…
That’d be the Trojan inquisition, Ichthyic.
GWW – “Then you’re out of the club. The first act of the True Atheist(TM) is to get in your Christian racist granny’s face until she dies of a heart attack.”
I guess I’ll have to leave and come back after she bites it, then. I get the feeling(/hope) that my extended family is only holding together for her sake. I for one can’t wait to shout my atheism at my crazy family, but I just can’t break my old gammer’s heart. She’ll be gone soon, though, and then we can all lay into one another*.
As an aside, Hank, do I get anything for kissing your ass?
(Go see http://www.jhuger.com/kisshank.php)
Scott,
irrationality breeds irrationality, brain rot breeds brain rot. Children learn not to think from parents who were never taught to think. I stand by that. The warm fuzzies breed true believers, if they hide their ‘warm fuzzy’-ness.
*Please note that my eagerness for a verbal meltdown with the up-tight relatives will in no way diminish my sadness and regret that my grandmother didn’t have more days of healthy life. Just so you don’t think I’m some kind of monster.
Dawkins is a doo-doo head. He won’t sound so smart when his flesh is being peeled off one skin cell at a time for all eternity.
All you shrill religion-haters will burn in hell and there is at least 50% chance there is one because either there is one or there isn’t. I can do math and so can the 99.9% believers who did the math, too, and arrived at the right concussion.
Okay, how many skins cells is that? Are we still growing skin cells in hell? I have lots of questions, Mr. Concussion… are there places to go to the bathroom? What is for dinner? How crispy does the flesh get? Why don’t people just burn up into ashes – what keeps the whole process going? Do you get to make jokes about your neighbor? Do you just say “owwwwww, owwwwwww” for all eterity, or what?
Enlighten us, Mr. Concussion!
Where do you get this stat that nearly half of all Americans literally believe in Revelation and creationism? That’s just the sort of ignorant hype that makes rabid atheists look like evangelicals.
I get the stats on creationism from here.
And that is just what I had on hand. Do a little research yourself on the percentage of people who literally believe in religious miracles, the devil, etc. It’s not all that hard to find. The fact that the only industrialized nation with less disbelief in evolution than us is Turkey isn’t the scariest thing out there.
But once again, appeasers would rather simply stick their head in the sand and not deal with the very real dangers of irrationality in a modern, technological society.
Sorry. “Less disbelief” should be “less belief” (and now that I look at it, it should really be “less acceptance”). Wish you could edit post.
Stogoe, I’m curious. Do you think that the mere profession of faith promotes brain rot or irrationality? I’m not clear, since you seem to add a caveat: “The warm fuzzies breed true believers, if they hide their ‘warm fuzzy’-ness.”
By “true believers” what do you mean? Belief in general, or some sort of rigid dogmatism? And, does this mean if my ‘warm fuzzies’ are on display, my children might not become true believers? Like many skeptics who shoot from the hip, it’s not clear what your target actually is, sorry.
Just for the record, I’m a Methodist and my ex-wife an observant Catholic. My son is openly skeptical about many Christian teachings, which I’ve never sought to influence one way or the other. My experience is that if you encourage your children to think for themselves, they will draw their own conclusions. I’m sorry that your experience leads you to assume otherwise when writing to folk like me.
Cordially…SH
Andy S
You disagreed with: “This has given the religious incredible power to make laws, dominate ethics, and tell people what they can or cannot do, on stupidly false ideas.” You don’t think that is expressed in the following:
You could not become a president of the USA at this point and be an avowed athiest.
Only a handful of states will consider civil Unions/ Gay marriage.
Only one state allows right to death for the very sick.
Abortion is at least partially illegal in many states, and big efforts are now being made to increase its illegality.
Whatever they call you, just call bullshit bullshit.
Oh, that’s just so coarse. It conjures up an image of a stinking steaming hot cow patty being ejected from the ass of a shitting (no pun intended) bull!
Are you really suggesting I not even bother with an attempt at being polite and maybe call it “finely refined yak dung”?! I mean you are talking about very deeply held beliefs here, at the very least you have to show a modicum of respect…
See, the problem is reading Wired in the first place. It is the People Magazine of Tech. I stopped paying attention when they were pushing Iridium satellite phones. Wired is as dumb as a box of rocks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iridium_(satellite)
Scott, apparently your warm fuzzies bled through. And yes, I am saying that trying to hold onto the warm-fuzzies fosters, festers, and exports magical thinking. Magical thinking hurts people.
(by the way, I’m using ‘warm-fuzzies’ as a term to mean those people who believe because ‘it makes them feel good, so stop picking on them about it’.)
“I mean you are talking about very deeply held beliefs here, at the very least you have to show a modicum of respect…
No, no we don’t. And no we shouldn’t. Demented Fuckwits, the lot of ’em!
Anyone who thinks American culture is not heavily influenced, if not dominated, by our religious heritage is just not noticing it because they are too used to it. For example, imagine an athlete getting interviewed after his victory saying the following:
“I’d like to thank my coach, my teammates, and I’d just like to add that no deity had any role whatsover in this event.”
Sound pretty weird? Can you imagine the media uproar that would elicit? And why? Because he isn’t toeing the religious party line we were all trained to follow. Athletes make irrelevant religious comments in that circumstance all the time, sometimes literally crediting the god of their choice with their victory, as if the supreme creator of the universe gives a rodent’s posterior that you won a football game. And yet no one in the media says anything about it.
Or imagine an announcer responding to a boxer who thanked God for his victory by saying “Joe, doesn’t it seem weird to credit God with beating the crap out of Bob there?”
I once spent an hour getting grilled on local talk radio for suggesting, in a letter to the editor, how stupid it is that football players point to the sky (God) or kneeling in prayer when they score. Did God like them better than the defense? Can you imagine Jesus in the crowd yelling “Go Blue!”? Of course not. And yet I was called arrogant and angry and had all sorts of psycho babble hurled my way merely because I stated the obvious about something that concerned with religion, and you just aren’t supposed to do that. And neither, apparently, is Dawkins.
A scene from a nightmare:
PZ Myers, speaking fluent Arabic, standing in the town center in Riyadh, telling the passersby that Allah does not exist.
Quite the opposite of the classic response of the comfortable.
I would just like to go on record as saying Scott Hatfield is one of the good guys and contributes much to this forum even when I disagree with him.
Cheers Scott.:-)
What we atheists don’t have — and personally I don’t see it as a lack — is a coherrent take on morality.
So, you are actually going to claim that the religious “have” a coherrent morality? Sorry, the fiction of one maybe, combined with a distressing tendency to jump on the band wagon of some cause, just because someone claims its “moral”, and without necessarilly thinking about it. However, you will find among the religious everything from those that actively use religion to gain power and how no morals, to those that state they wouldn’t have any without God, to those that think both of the first two groups are sick, albeit to a wide range of degrees, some of which are indistinguishable from an athiest position only by the belief that God is somehow involved in forming that moral code. Basically, the main difference is between a church group and a athiest convention would be that, having lobbed a moralistic hand granade into the center of them, the athiest will all dive in different directions, while the religious would all follow the first one that moved on the faith that “they” somehow knew the correct direction to run. This is precisely why religion continues to promote the idea that good religious people are like sheep and led, while athiest are almost always desribed as herding cats.
As for some of the comments about genes. Yes, there is some evidence that extreme religous belief might have a genetic component, as there is less direct or clear evidence that full blown athiests that never did get into religion might be genetically predisposed to that. There are a lot of reasons for this, not the least being that genetic quirks seem to effect the formation of parts of the brain involving sense of self. Some people have so little sense of self they find it nearly impossible to make decisions, but must have someone else make them for them when ever possible. Others find any suggestion from someone else about what to choose irritating. I am likely one of the later. The more people push me to do something, even something I admit is important, would help me, but which I don’t consider *immediately critical*, the longer I will delay actually doing it. There are likely other factors involving cross talk between brain regions that tend to cause illusional connections between things, similar, though not as extreme as the auditory illusions and the like some people experience, but which only “some” people are disturbed by or heavilly driven to do things because of. In other words, it is possible to hear voices and not think they are significant, because you know they are part of your own mind, while in others, the connection between them and one’s self is fuzzier, leading to false impressions that they originate some place else.
Its all quite complicated. Its also bound to be heavilly influenced by environment, so that borderline cases might go either way, like identical twins that both exhibit suspected genetic markers for homosexuallity, but where one, do to different factors, fails to develop the trait. Or, they both might have the trait, yet it may be recessive in the other. Or it could be a mix of both. Genes are not predestination, same that someone with a, say, 70% chance of being religious is going to have a lot harder time becoming an athiest under circumstances that give those with the median gene set a 50% chance of becoming one or the other. However… If the social system they are in has an 80% chance of making someone religious, that skews the numbers by a huge margin. Suddenly the extreme ender has (damn, I wish I had taken statistics…), a nearly 100% chance of being a complete nut.
Well, personally I’m one of those “timid atheists” who get annoyed with Dawkins on religion because:
1) I think that attacking theism directly is a _complete_ waste of time and doomed to failure. Theists, in general, aren’t deconverted by arguments; if they were, Lucretius, Hume and Nietzsche would have killed religion before Dawkins was born. And I really don’t see what Dawkins has to offer over previous thinkers on the subject; it’s like the people who work for years on new forms of English spelling reform who don’t seem to realize that George Bernard Shaw’s doomed system was all theirs and more. The public just doesn’t want to reform English spelling, as irrational as it is.
2) I’m an evolutionary biologist and often get the “Isn’t evolutionary biology just an atheistic ideology?” question quite a bit. Convincing people that it is no more atheistic or ideological than physics or chemistry is harder when the most vocal atheist is also well known as a science writer on evolution. I care about science far more than I care about atheism. I have to wonder if Dawkins doesn’t have his priorities in the reverse order.
Yes, it would be nice if all religion went away. Oh, and if rainbows were cotton candy, too. But it is more realistic and productive to focus on particularly obnoxious religious beliefs. That battle has a chance of succeeding.
Dawkins is clearly motivated by hate.
I suddenly remembered a scene on the bus a few years ago: some evangelical Christian lambasting a Muslim Somali woman and saying, “Jesus is the only way!” etc., same old crap. The Somali woman replied, “Your religion good for you, not for me.” “Why?” screeched the old bag. “You can’t have your own religion! Jesus is truth!” blah. “You’re going to answer for that to God, and I don’t want to be in your shoes!” yakkity-yak.
I couldn’t stand it any longer and informed this dingbat that, while I certainly don’t worship Allah, Muslims revered Jesus and knew all about him, because he’s in the Koran too (new flash, ya yahoo) and didn’t need some abusive loser to yell at her. This belligerent twit just stomped off the bus and went searching for new victims.
It seems that people like Grady (would that be Delbert Grady? A little joke) wish to characterize Dawkins as a vicious, screaming spectre when in fact, it is the religious who are so damned nasty to each other that it shocks me. Now that my mother is becoming more serious about church again she has new stories about controlling bitches who are treating her like crap. (She used to work in a church, and I heard about all the backstage intrigue for years). You want backstabbing, go to a church!
I’m not mean to people and I doubt that Dawkins is, either. But whether he is or not, I think that people are projecting not only their wars and armies, but their own hatreds onto him. For pity’s sake, why are people fighting about God anyway? How can they fight about something that ostensibly exists completely independently of them? Why do believers think that atheists are meanies when they’re so damn mean to each other?
I am motivated by hatred, hatred of hate!
Stogoe:
Thanks for your reply. I’d have to say that views don’t have much to do with the warm fuzzies; for instance, I’m inclined to view the Eucharist as the reification of animal sacrifice, and I routinely suggest that gender differences in behavior are largely a product of different reproductive strategies.
In other words, I prefer explanations with natural causes that can be tested, like the rest of you folk. Good tests require skepticism, almost to the degree of being ‘professionally paranoid.’ In that context, a *reliance* on magical thinking is definitely contra-indicated, and I would agree that any sort of indoctrination/modeling that encourages people to accept things unquestioningly does harm not just to science, but to people, as well.
I would say, though, that the harm proceeds from the narrowing of human experience and potential implied, rather than from the impossibility of that experience embracing aspects not amenable to scientific investigation.
My personal experience is that what I know about the natural world need not detract from what I believe, and that what I can not prove true (and what might well be false, for all I know) nevertheless motivates me to pursue what can be known, and what is true.
Cordially…SH
And now, a song break..
———————————————–
“Drive”-Incubus, from their 1999 album Make Yourself-
Sometimes I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear
And I can’t help but ask myself how much I’ll let the fear
Take the wheel and steer
It’s driven me before, it seems to have a vague
Haunting mass appeal
Lately I’m beginning to find that I
Should be the one behind the wheel
Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there
With open arms and open eyes yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there, I’ll be there
So if I decide to waiver my chance to be one of the hive
Will I choose water over wine and hold my own and drive, oh oh oh
It’s driven me before, it seems to be the way
That everyone else gets around
Lately, I’m beginning to find that when I drive myself
My light is found
Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there
With open arms and open eyes yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there, I’ll be there
Would you choose water over wine
Hold the wheel and drive
Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there
With open arms and open eyes yeah
Whatever tomorrow brings, I’ll be there
I’ll be there
———————————————-
I think that attacking theism directly is a _complete_ waste of time and doomed to failure
I disagree. Like anything else, the more something is repeated in the media (especially by authorities like dawkins), the more legitimate it becomes. Almost like a battering ram pounding a thick door. It can take many tries. The first attempt may not succeed, but it will at least weaken the door for subsequent attempts.
“On the contrary, what I’m seeing here is people who “understand” probability only in a very naive frequentist version which is actually of little relevance to science or much else.”
That is an ironic claim on a thread about agnosticism and atheism.
Yes, possibly Dawkins is discussing bayesian inference (BI). But AFAIK it is a minority view that this is a way to define probability. The frequentist definition of ensembles of events is necessary and sufficient to satisfy Kolmogorov’s axiom. It ensures that there is a probability to start with and not a discussion about plausibility. It also naturally separates discussions on unobservable or too rare events.
My favorite example of bayesian faith is Ikeda-Jefferys argument on finetuning.
Given a multiverse (not a bad assumption BTW since we observe a predicted negative spatial curvature, though not with low enough uncertainty yet) they assert by BI, contrary to theistic reasoning, that the less a multiverse seems finetuned the less it seems to be naturalistic.
Meanwhile cosmologists who tries to define observational probabilities in such scenarios may with some difficulty establish probability measures, but so far none of them are bayesian AFAIK. So Ikeda-Jefferys clearly remains an argument about plausibility.
Duh! “Kolmogorov’s axiom” – Kolmogorov’s axioms.
A scene from a nightmare:
PZ Myers, speaking fluent Arabic, standing in the town center in Riyadh, telling the passersby that Allah does not exist.
fastest nightmare in history.
“I can do math and so can the 99.9% believers who did the math, too, and arrived at the right concussion.”
Malapropism of the Year
The frequentist definition of ensembles of events is necessary and sufficient to satisfy Kolmogorov’s axiom. It ensures that there is a probability to start with and not a discussion about plausibility
Well, only if you insist that the frequentist definition of ‘probability’ is the correct one, which is rather circular.
My favorite example of bayesian faith is Ikeda-Jefferys argument on finetuning.
Their argument seems sound. Put simply, they point out that if we observed a Universe where the laws of physics didn’t allow life to exist, we would be forced to conclude that something other than physics was in play. Therefore making the opposite observation cannot also support that conclusion. What do you find wrong with it?
For evil to triumph, all that is necessary is for good men to do nothing.
So, lets not protest too loudly about the religious liars and blackmailers, huh?
Arrrggggh!
I think that attacking theism directly is a _complete_ waste of time and doomed to failure. Theists, in general, aren’t deconverted by arguments; if they were, Lucretius, Hume and Nietzsche would have killed religion before Dawkins was born.
I’m not quite sure how you managed to reach that conclusion. Not all atheists are born atheist: many (most?) were born in to religious families and had religious upbringings. Many (such as myself) have also been deeply religious.
For a deeply religious person to become an atheist requires – amongst other things – good, solid, strong arguments to first make them question, then to make them understand, and finally to deconvert. The existence of ex-religious people demonstrates that it is not at all pointless to directly attack theism. Just as the existence of ex-non-believers demonstrates to the religious the value of prosletyzing.
And this is the problem. The religious will prosletyze. This will happen regardless of whether or not vocal opponents of religion such as Dawkins and Harris speak out or not. If vocal opposition to the very concept of religion itself is not heard, then the only views that will be aired are those of the various religions, leaving many people to wonder soley which religion or “spiritual view” they should adopt, rather than question whether any religion has any merit whatsoever.
Stogoe, if my suggesting that one call “bullshit, “finely refined yak dung”, in the name of politeness isn’t a good enough attempt at being facetious then I guess I just have to throw in the towel…
Never heard of that claim…. Could you elaborate more on it, please…
We can’t expect a secular atheist society in our lifetimes, but maybe we can expect some changes, like some degree of respect for atheism and everyone to stop confusing tolerance of religion with deference to religion.
I think Richard Dawkins is generally correct, but his target is too narrow. How much should we consider the possibilty that religion is a specific case of a general human propensity toward tribalism and group cohesion at the expense of rationalism? Irrational belief in gods seems to be different from irrational belief in Pol Pot, eugenics, the bestness of the USA, racial superiority, male superiority, the glory of your frat house, or the absolute good of free market capitalism. Maybe it is different in important metaphysical ways, but maybe the practical outcomes are about the same.
Anyway, although I very much want it to be true because it would be another positive argument for atheism, I’m not completely convinced a religion-free world would be appreciably less violent and ridiculous. I personally feel that my atheist beliefs value individual life more than any religion, but I have no evidence for this being generally true of atheism.
So it seems possible to me that the real problem is something else cultural or biological, perhaps it arose to enforce group cohesion or territoriality that was beneficial during primate evolution but is disastrous in a dense, over-crowded world teeming with so much cultural garbage (though I shudder to engage in armchair evo-psych). Religions are specific manifestations of this inherent irrationality and aggression. In the absence of religion, tribalism and territoriality could perhaps just as easily manifest in other ways. Football hooligans don’t need god, neither do genocidal armies or fascist politicians. Under certain circumstance of desperation and societal stress, it is easy for anyone to become the Other That Must Be Destroyed (Indonesian communist purges, Rwanda, the Cultural Revolution), and the reasons don’t have to be good ones. Religion happens to be one that is often at hand in our societies, and it seems to be particularly well-suited to emotionally manipulating people, but it could be anything. Red team, blue team.
I’d love to have my mind changed because I would really like to figure out how much of this shit to blame on religion… anyone?
I think the goal of Atheists should not be convicting people of the lack of God(s). What it should be, is to convince people that you can’t base a society on God(s) that you can’t prove to exist.
Look at US lawmakers, and how often the US religious arguments for their positions.
Shouldn’t you provide some kind of proof for your religious stance, before you use it for lawmaking? Shouldn’t you at least demonstrate that you have applied a minimum of critical thinking to it?
This is, in my opinion, what Dawkins et al is telling people. They say that there is no credible evidence of God(s), and try to make people understand this. It doesn’t mean that people should stop believing, but at least tehy should acknowledge this. When they have done that, then they can’t use their religious stance as a fundation upon which to make laws that affect others (and they should be wary of using it as a fundation of which to makie personald ecisions, but that’s a completely different matter).
However, as long as people are not allowed to “attack” the faith of others, then it’s perfectly acceptable for those people to use their beliefs as a fundation on which to base decisions that not only affect themselves but also others. And tehy can always defend their decisions by refering back to their fundation, which others are not allowed to “attack”.
I hope that made sense.
Here is a blogpost that seems relevant to the subject – and at Huffington Post of all places.
Well, I wouldn’t count my upbringing as “deeply religious”, but my parents are Episcopalians and did take us to church on Sundays. When I stopped believing (sometime in high school) I didn’t do so because of some argument — I had heard and read all the standard arguments against religion etc. long before. They just weren’t very convincing at the time. Heck, my mother has a background in 19th century German intellectual history and can cite Nietzsche in the original — yet she is a practicing Episcopalian to this day despite her education and intellect. Why did I stop believing? To be honest, it was an emotional decision internal to myself. Afterwards, the typical atheist arguments seemed convincing, but not before.
I have no doubt that sheltered home-schooled Christians have never heard arguments against religion or even against Ussher’s 4004 BC chronology — Creationism in particular is easy to shake by facts because the believers don’t take it merely on faith — they honestly believe the facts support their beliefs. And so it is possible and useful to debunk their “facts”. However, the more educated the believer, the fewer external “facts” exist to debunk, and the greater chance that they’ve read people far more eloquent already like Hume and Nietzsche and were unconvinced. Ultimately it just gets into the pointless “there’s no objective evidence for your god/yes, but I have faith” argument that goes nowhere.
Kristjan Wager – that was a good article for HP. I particularly liked:
“Equally importantly perhaps, science is a way of vaccinating the mind against religion. The religious mindset is one of blind obedience to, and belief in, whatever you are told. The scientific mindset is one of skepticism – whatever you are told you challenge. The charismatic religious leaders all over the world who have led their people down so many dark, blind alleys could never have succeeded if they were faced with minds trained to assess claims in a scientific manner.
You get your children vaccinated against a range of
dangerous health conditions, and give them immunity to measles, chicken pox, cervical cancer. Get them mentally vaccinated with a science education against the dangers lurking in the advertising of consumer goods, politics, and religion, and give them immunity to Big Macs, great leaders, and imaginary friends. They will thank you for it in later life.”
And so will society
“Okay, how many skins cells is that? Are we still growing skin cells in hell? I have lots of questions, Mr. Concussion… are there places to go to the bathroom?
According to “toby” there are no such facilities as it’s damnation without relief.*
Ross
* Rowan Atkinson’s “Welcome to Hell” sketch. including my favourite two lines:
“Atheists! Would the atheists line up here along the front please – Well, you must be feeling a right bunch of charlies now, eh?”
and
“Christians – over here please. Yes, I’m afraid the jews were right.”
don’t know what Dawkins is running around saying that God is improbable for in the first place. How exactly would anyone do such a calculation?
Dawkins does not pull a number out of his ass to support his argument, he just points to the lack of evidence for the existance of God. He’s just rephrasing Occam’s Razor. I don’t see you questioning the highly improbable nature of invisble dragons in my garage and silver tea services orbiting Pluto, so I must assume that you agree with Dawkins on this.
As for Rand: “A is A” is a tautology. Get over it.
He can’t tell you more because the “necessary” part of his statement is simply not true. Of course any properly formulated subjective interpretation of probability obeys Kolmogorov’s axioms, otherwise it wouldn’t be probability. Duh.
I recommend as an excellent and very well written introduction to Bayesian probability Howson and Urbach’s Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach.
Lack of evidence is half the argument. He also quite properly addresses the point that ever since Darwin, any scientifically literate person should assign a very low prior probability to the “poofing” into existence of anything exhibiting a high degree of organized complexity. If you start out with such a miniscule prior- and let’s be honest, the only motivations for not adopting it are completely irrational ones: wishful thinking and parental indoctrination- and combine that with the utter lack of credible evidence (so that there are no rational grounds for updating the prior to a higher value), the conclusion is obvious, and is correctly drawn by Dawkins.
There is nothing wrong with the argument as such; the only grounds for quibbling lie in the assignment of that prior probability. But the people in this thread arguing that Dawkins is all wet are extremely poorly placed to attack him at that point since 1) it’s obvious in practice that, as Dawkins says, they dismiss without a second thought almost all of the gods who have ever been conceived by humans; and 2) they offer no argument against the Darwinian induction, that as far as we have ever observed organized complexity does not arise by “poofing” but by many cycles of variation and differential replication.
How can I resist such an interesting thread?
With regard to the ‘militant’ atheists. I’ve listened to Dawkin’s speak a few times, I’ve only read two of his books, _The_Selfish_Gene_ and _The_Ancestor’s_Tale_, neither of which dealt with religion. So I’ve never really found Dawkin’s to be a militant atheist. I’ve never gotten the impression that he wants to bomb churches. He just wants people to learn and think. For those people who mistakenly want to associate evolution with godlessness, I heartily recommend giving them a copy of _The_Ancestor’s_Tale_. It’s well written. Each section can be read without referance to the others, or in relation to the others to make a coherent whole. And as I recall, there is very little discussion of religion.
But I do have a point I’d like to make. I’ve made it before here, and I’ll undoubtably make it again.
I think morality needs to be seperated from theology. Morality is, in all practical senses, unrelated to theology.
However, I recognize that there is a great deal of religious baggage associated with the term ‘morality’.
So, I suggest that we start changing the terms used from ‘morality’ to ‘ethics’. If someone asks, ‘How can an atheist be moral without religion?’ A good response is, ‘What makes you think an atheist is necessarily unethical?’ Change the discussion from ‘morality’ to ‘ethics’ and I suspect that the religious will be more willing to accept an atheist is ethical.
Now all of us who actually use a dictionary know that the difference between morals and ethics is the difference between theory and practice. Ethics is the practice of conforming to moral standards. (Ethics is also the study of standards of conduct, but I’m not concerned about that aspect.)
Those fanatics who claim that without religion people wouldn’t have morals, are making the mistake of confounding their personal underlying theory of ethical practice with ethical activity itself. In other words, if a religion truly does promote a morality resulting in the adherants conforming to an ethical standard, the same ethical standard may be reached by a different religion, or even the lack of a religion.
Identical ethical behavior can be reached by several paths. If this idea can be spread, it would do a lot to pull the teeth of those fanatics who claim that without their particular version of religious morality, ethical behavior would be unknown.
Of course, there are those of us who realize that since ethical behavior is independant of religion, ethics itself must be independant of religion. But that inference may be lost on the fanatics.
Cheers,
-Flex
I know, that’s why I was so surprised that someone obviously not completely clueless could make that claim, and asked him to explain just how he arrived at it.
By the same logic, there’s also a 50% chance that Hades also exists, and Tartarus, Hel, Gehenna, Jahannam, Naraka, Sheol… What steps are you taking to avoid all these less-than-pleasant afterlives? How did you decide that the Christian Hell was the only one of these that was probably real? How did yopu decide that the Catholics, Mormons, Presbeterians, Anglicans and every other sect of Christianity you don’t belong to is wrong about how to stay out of Hell?
And do you really think that only one religious person out of every thousand chose to worship for any reason other than to avoid eternal punishment? Is there so little good in religion that this is their only selling point?
In short, Pascal’s Wager is not convincing. Anyone who joins a given religion because of it is an idiot.
You cannot do math. Let’s see if you can figure out your error with a simple substitution experiment:
Either a rolled die will come up with “6” or it will not. Therefore the probability that a rolled die will come up “6” is at least 50%…
Can you spot the weakness in that argument?
Is it really so hard to figure out that someone who calls him- or herself “Rhea Tahrdit” is pulling your leg? Sheesh.
You are saying we have to show respect for such as this:
Cult leader headed to execution in Ohio
I have no reason to suspect that Lundgren’s beliefs are not deeply held, and yet I will not show the least trace of respect for them. You ask too much.
If there’s one thing you should learn from the success of the American right over the last 30 years or so, it’s that you don’t normalise ideas by toning them down. You do it by putting forth an even more extreme position, which makes your original position seem perfectly reasonable and centrist. That’s how a certain vocal minority has succeeded in pushing American politics so far to the right that what is regarded as far-left in the US is regarded as centre-right in the rest of the civilised world. Sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander…
Steve LaBonne: I have seen crazier.
He would be immediately murdered, proving the superior morality of the religious.
But then, I suspect PZ has more sense than to do this in the first place, outside of a nightmare. Being murdered wouldn’t do himself or anybody else any good. (Except perhaps his murderer, who might become a local hero in the eyes of those moral, upstanding religious folks.)
‘Is it really so hard to figure out that someone who calls him- or herself “Rhea Tahrdit” is pulling your leg? Sheesh.’
The people who responded to Rhea’s posts apparently aren’t aware that the word “gullible” isn’t in the dictionary.
Incidentally, I stand by my comparison of Dawkins’ and Dembski’s “probability” arguments. They both argue against straw men, erecting a paper-thin cartoon of God-belief or evolution, respectively, then pushing them over with an appeal to improbability.
Most of my husband’s family is currently not talking to us because they’ve finally realized that we don’t believe any of the same things they do–if we were to tell them point-blank that we are atheists, our kids might never see their grandparents again.
In the small, podunkish red-state town where we live, if you don’t believe the things the uber-churches tell you to, you pretty much keep your trap shut about it… unless you want to lose your friends, alienate your neighbors and see your small business fail.
I’m glad you’ve never felt persecuted for your atheism. I have, and do, and admit that the urge to poke back at a few Christian eyes is pretty overwhelming at times.
You have no “argument” to stand by, Stephen. You haven’t made any principled objection to Dawkins at all. As to Dembski, his unreasonably low prior is clearly derived more from theology than from science, and he simply ignores the massive evidence that should, if he were rational, nevertheless have led him to strongly revise his beliefs in the direction of accepting that flagella evolved. Dawkins’s Bayesian reasoning to the likely nonexistence of gods thus is vastly different from Dembski’s parody of reasoning at both stages: 1) his prior is consistent with contemporary science whereas Dembski’s is flagrantly incompatible with it, as even Dembski admits since his stated goal is to revolutionize science; 2)there is no evidence for Dembski’s God. You see, it’s trivially easy to dispose of your knee-jerk reaction. I’m afraid Dawkins is a good deal more clueful than you are.
LaBonne, you are correct to note that each person’s conclusions depend on his prior.
It’s in my dictionary, you twit.
Joshua: I would say it is actually more (ahem) fundamental than that. Rather it is because it breaks the “unwritten rule” that one doesn’t talk about values, religion, and that sort of thing – that doing so is “rude” for some reason. How that arose is an interesting and underexplored sociological question.
BMurray: That remark about theists changing their minds reminds me of a hypothesis I am working on: namely, that while many people in “Western” countries now have a great split between metaphysics and epistemology – in particular that there world view doesn’t supply an epistemology any longer. They hang on to the old metaphysics, because it is less talked about, and yet most people do not have a theological (or religious) epistemology any longer. But there is simply a void there – in part because science and science-oriented philosophy education is bad. Unfortunately, to make the step into the new (“modern”) epistemology, they need to revise their metaphysics, as well, and that strays into the “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude mentioned in my first remark. (Incidentally, this shows how conflicted Descartes must have been …)
AJ Milne: You also raise an important issue – children. One other missing factor in this is that it is considered acceptable to answer children by “shut up and stop asking such things!”. We should not be afraid to answer children’s questions with a critical and inquiry-oriented spirit.
steve: Rutherford’s saying that your partner sited is interestingly refutable, though. This is where the notion of emergence (for example) plays a crucial role. However, even in the reductionist view that R. espouses, I would argue that although organic chemistry might be stamp collecting, at least it is better off than theology, which would be pretending to collect stamps and claiming that one has stamps of inordinate value that nobody else can see.
Mark: It can be put like this: “You can say whatever you want, and I have the right to say whatever *I* want in response, rebuttal, agreement, disdain or whatever. Moreover, in many matters, I have a *duty* to argue with you, because many of your views affect others.”
Halfdan: Every religion I am aware of makes factual claims about the universe. (Some more extreme or numerous than others, of course.) What is wrong with subjecting these to the scrutiny one should apply to any other factual claim?
Great White Wonder: If you could buy stock in sanctimonious bullcrap, I dare say the US would be even more disproportionally affluent …
(Aside: On interpretations of probability, see the paper “What is Probability?” available on my website. I’m a propensity-guy, but that’s not important now.)
You only read half of what I wrote. The other ingredient in the recipe is evidence– one’s prior is only a starting point (and a well-known basic theorem of Bayesian probability shows that given sufficiently strong evidence, rational actors will converge on the same belief even starting from radically different priors.) Evidence as in, no evidence for gods, plenty for the evolution of flagella.
Stephen Erickson:
Hmm. Dembski, standing at end of long trails of evidence of common descent, nested hierarchies, genomics, and other indicia of evolution and adaptation too numerous to mention, claiming that evolution is “massively improbable.”
Dawkins, standing at end of long trails of utterly unevidenced claims of any supernatural intervention into the world of consensual reality, claiming that an intervening supernatural entity is “massively improbable.”
Yep, pretty parallel. Glad you pointed that out so convincingly.
quork: “It’s in my dictionary, you twit.”
Perhaps, but it’s not in the Oxford English Dictionary.
“Gullible” is definitely in the online version of the Compact OED- I just looked. Try it yourself! http://www.askoxford.com/dictionaries/?view=uk
This is like shooting fish in a barrel. Will somebody help these two out?
We’ve all heard that joke years ago, buddy. The joke’s on you- I’m playing along because I’m enjoying seeing you belabor it, waiting in vain for someone to compliment you on your cleverness…
Mr. Erickson, Mr. LeBonne, Mr. Pinhead: Just out of curiousity, which one of you Stevens do you think is playing the martyr here?
Cheers…SH
Incidentally, I stand by my strawman of Dawkins’ and Dembski’s “probability” arguments. They both argue against straw men, erecting a paper-thin cartoon of God-belief or evolution, respectively, then pushing them over with an appeal to improbability.
yes, that’s exactly what you have created, your very own strawman.
Hi, Scott. Didn’t know we were conversing, particularly about martyrs.
Have you taken some position here that my follow-the-evidence response to Erickson implicates? I woun’t pretend to have read the whole thread, so if you’d like to chat, why don’t you tell me about what…
Thanks ever so.
…
…
I can unashamedly admit it took me a few minutes to figure Rhea Tahrdit out. HOWEVER …
“Gullible” is another word for “trusting.” I tend to believe in people until they prove me wrong.
Yeah, I get taken in occasionally. Sometimes I feel really stupid about it.
But it seems to me that the people who prove themselves undeserving of that generous extension of trust, those are the ones doing something to be ashamed of.
…
…
“Gullible is not in the dictionary.” Har har har … that’s the oldest joke in the monastery. And all those that hurriedly check their dictionaries, are simply defining the word! They have been gulled! Gulled, as in gullible, as in being tricked.
Ah, c’mon, everybody knows that “gullible” means something that sea-birds can eat.
Squid, anyone?
My dearest quork, I suspect you may have missed my reply to Stogoe… here it is again.
“Stogoe, if my suggesting that one call “bullshit, “finely refined yak dung”, in the name of politeness isn’t a good enough attempt at being facetious then I guess I just have to throw in the towel…”
I am now officially throwing in the towel!!!
RedMolly,
Sorry to hear that. Please, poke away. No need to take shit for reasonably held views.
No – people who accept that ‘gullible’ doesn’t appear in the OED are gullible, while people who seek experimental confirmation of this claim are skeptical. People who take it for granted that the word is there when they can easily check are simply fools.
Steviepinhead:
I’m sorry, I wasn’t really interested in following the whole thread. I just thought it was mildly amusing that there were three Stevens and two of you appeared to be getting after the third pretty good. So I made an allusion to the book of Acts…..I guess my standup needs a little work.
(and now we count…..:)
I’ve been reading this thread with interest. I urge those here who think that the Pastor Matt is the hero and Richard Dawkins the villain to please take another look at the story. The style of magazine writing is different than the give and take online, and sometimes points get missed.
But the main attacks here, the criticism of “tepid atheism” are well-aimed. While this may be taken only as repeating the fault, I have tried to reply to these criticisms in a recent post on aether.com.
Martin:
“Well, only if you insist that the frequentist definition of ‘probability’ is the correct one, which is rather circular.”
True. But it is a warranty.
Btw, seeming circularity isn’t uncommon in models, observations from the ‘template’ should break it. (“Hooke’s law: linear-elastic materials have a linear response to forces. Linear-elastic materials are those who Hooke’s law applies to.” The break is that linear-elastic materials and their behaviour are observed, and that they are also observed to be a defineable group, so the law makes sense. A graph makes it clearer, but Pharyngula doesn’t like ASCII art.)
“What do you find wrong with it?”
Sorry about the confusion – I don’t find anything wrong with it. Excellent condensation, btw. But I find it to be about plausibility, not probability.
Any variable that obeys the Kolmogorov axioms is a probability as that word is customarily defined, so a properly formulated Bayesian “plausibility” IS a probability whether or not you happen to like subjective interpretations. I really don’t understand the theological wars over interpretations of probability. All the major ones that have been proposed capture legitimate aspects of the way we use the concept and all have circumstances and types of analyses for which they are particularly well-adapted. It seems folly to regard them as mutually exclusive and cling to only one in all circumstances.
T_U_T:
“The frequentist definition of ensembles of events is necessary and sufficient to satisfy Kolmogorov’s axioms”
Never heard of that claim…. Could you elaborate more on it, please…”
“The probability P of some event E, denoted P(E), is defined with respect to a “universe”, or sample space Ω, of all possible elementary events in such a way that P must satisfy the Kolmogorov axioms.” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov%27s_axioms )
“Frequentists talk about probabilities only when dealing with well-defined random experiments. The set of all possible outcomes of a random experiment is called the sample space of the experiment. An event is defined as a particular subset of the sample space that you want to consider.” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_probability )
The confusion here may be that the frequentist definition of events need to be taken into account. (Or they wont satisfy Kolmogorov’s axioms (KA).) I leave it to the interested reader to find out if it is consistent with KA. (Read: I need to eat now.)
Note that probabilities may be a part of a model, implied by the rest of it even, as I understand it. But if you can’t make enough experiments, you can’t use observed events to define a probability by itself. Herein lies the bayesian-frequentist controversy IMO.
Steve:
“He can’t tell you more because the “necessary” part of his statement is simply not true. Of course any properly formulated subjective interpretation of probability obeys Kolmogorov’s axioms, otherwise it wouldn’t be probability. Duh.”
Uh, duh. But “sufficient and necessary” should rightly apply to the statement in question, not the whole universe of alternate models, right?
So as Martin said, don’t take this to be a guarantee that it is the only way to define a probability. But it is a guarantee that the needed axioms are fulfilled. Which is why it is mainstream, AFAIK:
The axioms do not require any particular interpretation. All the axioms of probability really say is that a probability is a non-negative real number between 0 and 1 associated with a “proposition” (or “event”, “outcome”…)and that probabilities should be additive for disjoint events. This is a very abstract definition. The axioms are as essential to bayesians as they are to frequentists. If you investigate the foundations of bayesian probability you will quickly encounter the Dutch book theorem which shows that under certain defined circumstances the odds which you would be prepared to give on a set of propositions must obey the axioms; the penalty for violating this condition is that it will then be possible to construct a system of bets which you would individually consider fair, under your alternative axioms, but which would guarantee that you would lose (such a betting arrangement is called a “Dutch book”). I suggest you consult a better source than Wikipedia. And bayesianism is pretty much just as “mainstream” as frequentism.
Steve:
“Any variable that obeys the Kolmogorov axioms is a probability as that word is customarily defined,
True.
“so a properly formulated Bayesian “plausibility” IS a probability whether or not you happen to like subjective interpretations.”
I’m not a byeasian expert. But as I understand it bayesian inference gives results when a frequentist can claim, rightly AFAIK, that we aren’t guaranteed that Kolmogorov’s axiom are fulfilled with events that are observable. In these cases the subjective interpretations are still a matter of faith, AFAIK.
“I really don’t understand the theological wars over interpretations of probability. … It seems folly to regard them as mutually exclusive and cling to only one in all circumstances.”
I don’t understand either. But as long as physicists like Vilenkin or Susskind (those I read now) AFAIK uses frequentist definitions instead of accepting bayesian ones (which in their case of cosmology must be tempting), I will abstain conflating them.
“Uh, duh. But “sufficient and necessary” should rightly apply to the statement in question, not the whole universe of alternate models, right?”
Duh! Duh! Duh! I *am* totally clueless. (I fervently hope it is today only. I do need to eat. ;-) The statement is the KA’s, so yes, it isn’t necessary. But then see my comments about the sufficiency regarding few observations, where frequentists admit defeat to make certain that it is probabilities AFAIK, which my comments originally intended to adress.
Steve,
$I suggest you consult a better source than Wikipedia. And bayesianism is pretty much just as “mainstream” as frequentism.$
Sorry about the ad hoc citation signs, I need to reboot, and eat. But first this.
Wikipedia is fine for citations, it’s not like I keep bookmarks to probability pages about.
I’m curious about your claim. What is the support? Apart from bayesian blog sites, I see some papers use it at times and some books explaining it. But otherwise courses and most papers still seem to be frequentist uses.
I repeat my earlier recommendation to read Howson and Urbach, Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach for a well-written and mathematically non-demanding introduction to bayesian reasoning.
Frequentist discomfort with the foundations of bayesianism (and at least equally cogent criticisms can be and have been leveled at those of frequentism; you’ll find plenty in Howson and Urbach) has nothing to do with the question of whether the quantity bayesians call “probability” obeys the axioms. It most certainly does.
Finally, I will say again that regarding one interpretation of probability as “true” and otehrs as “false” seems very silly to me. The frequency, propensity, and subjective interpretations all have both virtues and limitations, all capture different aspects of what we commonly mean by the rather complex concept of “probability”, and all have important uses.
Gary:
I enjoyed your article….SH
Scott H.–gotcha now! Thanks.
Steve:
“Frequentist discomfort with the foundations of bayesianism (and at least equally cogent criticisms can be and have been leveled at those of frequentism; you’ll find plenty in Howson and Urbach) has nothing to do with the question of whether the quantity bayesians call “probability” obeys the axioms. It most certainly does.”
That is news to me. My own learning goes back several years, so maybe the textbooks have changed without my noticing it. But I have mostly seen the discussion that bayesian approaches aren’t valid for few observation cases, or to use in Hilbert spaces for QM.
One frequentist physicist said:
“It is often said that there are two basic interpretations of probability: frequency probability (the ratio of events in a repeated experiment) and Bayesian probability (the amount of belief that a statement is correct). I am, much like an overwhelming majority of physicists, statisticians, and probability theorists (see the Wikipage about the frequency probability to verify my statement) convinced that it is only the frequency probability that has a well-defined quantitative meaning that can be studied by conventional scientific methods.”
“The Bayesian probability cannot be even defined without vague words like “belief”, “plausibility”, and so forth. It’s just not a well-defined quantitative concept because it cannot be determined or measured with ever higher degree of accuracy. Such a kind of probability is not predicted by meaningful physical theories of physics either. The predictions of quantum mechanics are always about the frequentist probabilities.” ( http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/01/bayesian-probability-ii.html )
“Also, when we predict the death of the Universe or any other event that will only occur once, we are outside science as far as the experimental tests go. We won’t have a large enough dataset to make quantitative conclusions. The only requirement that the experiment puts on our theories is that the currently observed reality should not be extremely unlikely according to the theory.”
“While the text above makes it clear that I only consider the frequentist probabilities to be a subject of the scientific method including all of its sub-methods, it is equally clear that perfect enough theories may allow us to predict the probabilities whose values cannot be measured too accurately (or cannot be measured at all) by experiments. It is no contradiction. Such predictions are still “scientific predictions” but they cannot really be “scientifically verified”. Only some features of the scientific method apply in such cases.” ( http://motls.blogspot.com/2005/12/bayesian-probability.html )
Unfortunately you don’t, or can’t, provide support for your claim “bayesianism is pretty much just as “mainstream” as frequentism”.
One bayesian said:
“-Jaynes’ book was only released in 2003, before that, Bayesianism was pretty muched snuffed out. You have to give it a little time for it to take root in academia.” ( http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2006/07/yet_another_crappy_bayesian_ar.php )
“Finally, I will say again that regarding one interpretation of probability as “true” and otehrs as “false” seems very silly to me. The frequency, propensity, and subjective interpretations all have both virtues and limitations, all capture different aspects of what we commonly mean by the rather complex concept of “probability”, and all have important uses.”
I don’t think we disagree much here. (To my shame, I claimed to be a bayesian a few years back, when this approach interested me and I thought it was a more parsimonious definition for essentially the same thing. Nowadays I too attempt to stay away from one view only.)
My view, considering citations as above and that the frequentist definition guarantee both axiom compliance and observability in all cases, is that bayesian methods are well suited for some tasks in parsimony comparisons (occham’s razor comparisons on parametrised models), for filtering and for easy estimation of plausibility when an observable probability can’t be deduced from a model or measured. Further applications to be noticed. :-)
“I’ve never felt persecuted for my atheism”
Perhaps all such comments should come with where the author has lived. I haven’t felt persecuted either, in Chicago and at Caltech and in San Francisco — though once on the school bus I did chicken out and call myself agnostic, so I guess even in Chicago I felt some fear. But people who grew up in Indiana, at least outside of Bloomington and maybe Indianapolis, have different stories.
The author of the Wired article came by, and no one noticed. Gary Wolf said:
I went to his site, and pulled a quote from this article:
I think we all see the effect of gentle respect — the spreading cancer that is religious fundamentalism has grown and grown. It is time to say “fuck tepid atheism” and “fuck gentle respect”; those with brains will understand the danger, and willingly sacrifice their sensitive religious sensibilities to the greater cause of preserving the human race from religiously-driven extinction. Those who don’t, won’t. There is a greater concern here than feelings and causing offense.
Gary doesn’t focus enough on that.
“Frequentist discomfort with the foundations of bayesianism (and at least equally cogent criticisms can be and have been leveled at those of frequentism; you’ll find plenty in Howson and Urbach) has nothing to do with the question of whether the quantity bayesians call “probability” obeys the axioms. It most certainly does.”
Since I happened to read something that bears on this discussion and I like to collect the notes, I return to this discussion of “necessary and sufficient”.
AFAIK Kolmogorov’s axiom can be derived from a simpler set of probability axioms (see Wolfram math), and happens to define a measure, which is useful. Measures are countably additive. (Infinitely additive or sigma-additive.)
AFAIK Bayes theorem can’t be used to derive Kolmogorov’s axiom (or they could easily be supplanted and we wouldn’t have any discussion), but the usage of priors mean that the derived quantities satisfy Cox’s axioms (see Wikipedia). Such quantities are finitely additive.
One problem here is that finitely additive quantities can’t be used to describe probabilities that obey the ergodic theorem in infinite dimensional systems, so they aren’t sufficient for describing entropies in dynamic systems. The same problem occurs for Hilbert spaces in quantum mechanics.
Another problem is that bayesian methods with priors are used for infinite dimensional spaces without checking for the needed “coherency”. As in the Ikeda-Jefferys’ argument as originally stated. (But looking at a finite subsample makes it work.)
It is easy to see that the problem to smear out probabilities onto infinite dimensional spaces topologically goes through countably intersections of subsets back to assigning priors for infinite systems. Uniform priors means 0 prior here, which prevents bootstraping to posteriors.
Since bayesian methods are able to discuss information, there are work ongoing to define “nonparametric information geometry, involving projection onto infinite-dimensional exponential families”. ( http://golem.ph.utexas.edu/category/2006/11/infinitedimensional_exponentia.html#more ) This involves looking at manifolds locally isomorphic to the frequentist approach, and it may still be an outstanding problem.
Which makes me return to the statement that frequentist probability is “necessary and sufficient”. Today it seems to be, to guarantee it’s usefulness in physics everywhere. But if the more general bayesian quantities also find their way out to infinite dimensional systems, it could turn the table and be exciting to boot.
“This involves looking at manifolds locally isomorphic to the frequentist approach, and it may still be an outstanding problem.”
And if I reach back to something vaguely remembered and not found by googling now, QM probabilities in Hilbert spaces may not always be so nicely localized. So perhaps it is an unsolvable problem there, even by mapping methods, which would explain the string physicists disregard for bayesian methods.
Another thought, way out there. Symbolic methods use convenient shortcuts such as infinities, but in a CS algorithmic context they don’t apply.
I don’t know enough to see if Hilbert et cetera infinities can be replaced. (And I think I may have seen the opposite assertion – though operator (volume-dependent) infinities can be removed in a quantum cosmology.) But if they can, perhaps the CS view of constructive algorithmic processes is what happens in real physics. Which of course makes bayesian probabilities the real probabilities instead.