I have been chastised for hating framing and shown an example of “framing” done right. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like framing at all, at least not the kind Nisbet has been pushing, and what I actually hate is the way framing is being used as a stalking horse for irrelevant atheist-bashing.
The example is exemplary. Carl Safina took a group of evangelicals to Alaska to show them first-hand the ecology of the area and the effects of climate change. This is great stuff, and a beautiful instance of public outreach and education, and I am all in favor of it. Do more! However, it’s not framing. It doesn’t resuscitate Nisbet/Mooney’s argument — it says more about the importance of engagement between scientists and the community. The power of the lesson isn’t that Safina spins it to suit a political agenda, or that he panders to the biases of his guests (although he does do that), it’s that he shows them directly what they will lose if people don’t act to preserve the environment. The learning comes from the experience and the reality, not the “frame” he throws around it.
“Framing” seems to be becoming a buzzword for mollycoddling religion, however. Powell and Safina both indulge in some of that.
So you stone-throwers determined to “defeat” religion and expunge “superstition” from our culture. Go ahead and shout about why nobody cares about science in the US if you want, but if you really want to change things (instead of just hearing yourselves rant), then go learn from Carl Safina about changing the world.
There’s nothing in what Safina did that couldn’t be done by a godless atheist, a buddhist, or a moslem. Except, that is, the indulgement of religion. Infidels can also appreciate nature and science, you know, and can show people what reality looks like. We can even talk to Christians! Although we’d probably decline to suck up to their superstitions. But then, what is this about? Doing something for the environment or fostering delusions?
Safina says something that is entirely true, but that some of us regard as a serious problem.
As scientists, we have scientific authority. But for moral authority, people look to religious leaders.
Yes, people look to religious leaders for moral authority — but they don’t have it. Moral authority is not something that comes from a mastery of old dogma. It’s a human attribute that has to be earned by one’s actions, and it shouldn’t matter what your religious beliefs are — yet here we go, pretending that graduating from Podunk Bible College makes one a better human being than having a degree from Urban Secular Tech. It doesn’t, but we have scientists using the hook of recruiting religious leaders to perpetuate it.
The fact that people look to religious leaders for moral guidance is an additional problem that some of us are fighting. Now maybe the members of Safina’s evangelical group were all fine examples of humanity who deserve their moral authority, but they shouldn’t get it because they believe in a magic man in the sky — it should be because, for instance, they are open to evidence and ideas and are willing to investigate to learn where the truth lies.
Those are values that we don’t need the baggage of religious nonsense to appreciate. Some of us are trying to spread the word that you can still be a good and commendable person without the superfluous mythology — and some would rather indulge the false notion that faith is a necessary virtue. We do want to change the world: by educating people about its beauty, which Powell and Safina do, but also by expunging the unwarranted respect for ugly lies, which Powell and Safina are not doing (and that is fine — we will all have different strategies.)
The learning comes from the experience and the reality, not the “frame” he throws around it.
Yeah… The point here that you seem to be perpetually missing is that they’re a lot more receptive to that experience and reality than they would have otherwise been because of the type of frame he’s using there. By making his rhetorical appeal in ways that they understand, he’s speaking to them, not past them, and that’s basically what framing (no scare quotes, please, we’re liberals) is about.
Honestly, I think you’re overshooting, overthinking, overcompensating, oversomething. This isn’t actually as hard as you’re making it out to be. (Maybe you don’t have the language to hang the concepts on?)
Know your audience.
Talk to your audience.
Use your knowledge of them to make your point in ways that resonate with them. (Even the reframing stuff works the same way — find a better, more resonant image that works for people. Instead of talking about taxes as a burden, tell them they live in a nice place, and it’s only fair to pay for all the privileges you get. Back it up with examples.)
I have posted here a couple of times supporting the Idea of framing. I don’t mean to support spin. I think you have to reach people within the limits of their own set of values, experience, and education. So when you set out to reach younger children you frame the discussion around their knowlege level, when you try to reach an evangelical you have to frame the discussion around their world view. You don’t have to change or avoid certain facts, just tailor the examples so they get it. As I said once before they don’t know zebra fish, they know dogs though and they are a good example of variation available in one species. Hard for em not to get that! Bad example in a room full of biologists, but the only example for evangelicals so that they will all nod in unison, at least they get variation, forget all the reasons it’s a bad example, move on – evolution operates on variation…
The real problem is reaching them at all. They are totally insulated from any scientific discussion. They have been brain washed to believe any discussion on topics like abortion, evolution, etc. that don’t tow the ministerial line is wrong and probably satanic, note I don’t say biblical on purpose, the bible says nothing about most of their hot button issues. We (atheists) are all so far outside anything they can tollerate they don’t even hear our voices much less read anything we write. Scientists might as write in martian, they wouldn’t touch a scientific paper if it was the only fuel for a fire on a cold cold night. We have to go to them to reach them with someting in our hands other than a lighter and a can of lighter fluid.
So what’s wrong with framing (using my definition) if it could reach a few of these brainless lost souls.
amen! Amen!! AMEN!!!
;-)
And your explanation of that assertion is totally spot on. Authority comes from Example! How many religious authorities have we seen take the moral plunge into human depravity, or simple human unconventionality (which only a closed-mind could consider depraved), in the last couple of decades, much less the Entire Course of History?
Atheism or Theism does not authority make. Personally, I don’t find it easier to accept a person’s assertions because they’re atheist, though I do, and again to note the personally, tend towards early dismissal if I know they’ve a religious/theistic motivation.
But that’s just ’cause of countless examples to recommend my understanding. There are still plenty of religious folk whom I admire for plenty of practical reasons. It’s the leaders under the “mantle of god” who’s record instigates my instant doubt.
Seems to me that framing requires a degree of dishonesty from the framer. If I think something’s stupid, for instance, I can’t pretend that I don’t think it’s stupid if I want to be honest. So I can’t honestly use a frame that implies I think that that something, whatever it might be, isn’t stupid. I find I can’t do other than to say “that’s stupid,” if that’s what I really think.
I’d make a terrible used car salesman.
whose (!) record…
{sigh}
:-)
The problem comes when people bring up framing, supposedly as advice on how PZ can better get his point across, but really are saying that he should just shut up with his message entirely.
Of course, there’s also the overlooked fact that a lot of people don’t look to scientists as scientific authorities, and instead go to religious leaders for scientific answers.
Ever since this discussion started, people have been defending things which aren’t “framing”, and probably attacking things which aren’t “framing”, though since the advocates of “framing” have effectively parsed that word to mean “kick Richard Dawkins in the crotch”, a good many of the criticisms leveled against it are probably on-topic.
Remember when people were defending “framing” on the grounds that professors dumb down their lectures for freshman classes, so simplifying the message a little more for the general public makes good sense? This argument has the advantage that it points us toward specific actions: we can take a press release (real or hypothetical) and debate the wording back and forth, indulging in mature disputation about the demands of truthfulness and comprehensibility. However, this argument has jack to do with Goffman, Lakoff or anything in cognitive psychology: professors and students are already operating in the same mindset, a worldview in which facts matter and evidence rules. What you do in that situation doesn’t translate to what you do when trying to persuade people whose notions of “is” and “ought” are all tangled — people who decide factual matters on moral grounds.
In other words, what you do in Biology 101 isn’t what you do when crafting a message to push the high-RWA buttons.
This seems to be very hard to get across to people: I don’t hate the idea of framing, I hate the implementation of it and the way its become a popular buzzword to try and silence controversial points of view. We can’t possibly frame everything: that would become an exercise in rationalizing the other person’s position, and the framer would become the framed. When you always use framing to conceal anything the other might disagree with, you’ve lost the point of the argument.
The strength of Safina’s work wasn’t that he tried to hide the uncomfortable truths of climate change, but that he took those people out and showed them that he was right. All that nonsense about religion was irrelevant to the lesson being given, but it’s of use to the pathological framers who want to use dread of atheism to erect a protective wall around religion. And that isn’t framing.
For those of us who work in sociology, and particularly the sociology of social movements, that’s certainly not the case. We go back to Goffman’s classic work “Frame Analysis” (1974) which refers to frames as “schemata of interpretation.” Indeed, the concept is central in fields such as social psychology, and we in the field of movments have been studying it, and it’s relationship to public discourse and movement recruitment and mobilization for over two decades.
Frames are little more than socio-cognitive systems of organizing ideas and thoughts (and how they’re related to objects, images, etc.).
Everything is framed, though.
PZ Myers (#8):
MAJeff (#9):
Aha! The Law of Misplaced Apostrophe Conservation strikes again!
By the way, any time the social psychologists would like to take back their word would be fine with me.
You can take the pragmatic view, that framing is a tool, and we shouldn’t blame the tool for how it is used. Some of the examples of framing on Wikipedia are priceless in how they demonstrate the problem. Some examples:
– “energy exploration” instead of “drilling for oil.”
– “washington” instead of “the U.S. government.”
And here are some more we are all aware of:
– “militant,” “fundamentalist,” or “new” prefixed to “atheist”
– “intelligent design” instead of “Biblical creationism” (yes, I know intelligent design has other clever nuances to help stealth it in the wider discussion)
I’m sure you can think of many others.
We can’t just rant about framing being bad, we have to fight to expose that it’s happening, explain the parts framed out of the picture, and frame back some things on our own terms. I agree, the part of framing that tries to hide or change the reality of something is bad. But the part of it that tries to simplify or clarify a hard-to-grasp facet is well worth the time figuring out.
I think the main problem I have with this “framing” rhetoric is that it usually presented with the false dichotomy that one must either pander to religious superstition or risk never reaching religious people. Nonsense. One can quite firmly hold the position that religious faith is irrational, faulty, and undesirable and still discuss other subjects with religious people quite productively. This idea that one must first totally capitulate on theological matters before discussing other subjects is ludicrous. Just put theological matters aside while pursuing other goals. The mere fact that PZ is both an outspoken atheist and a successful professor of biology proves that facts need no “framing” to be transmitted between people who disagree on other matters.
And if you get that particular sort of zealous theist who is unable to tolerate the idea of conversing with an atheist, who refuses to acknowledge any topic could be divorced from god and indeed refuses to recognize the category of “secular” at all, well then those people are simply unreachable, and no “framing” or any other effort should be expended upon them.
I agree, which is why I would rather criticize people’s actions rather than their belief systems, unless their actions result from those belief systems. That is, if someone is religious but does not engage in offensive behavior, I have no motivation to criticize them.
“We do want to change the world: by educating people about its beauty, which Powell and Safina do, but also by expunging the unwarranted respect for ugly lies, which Powell and Safina are not doing (and that is fine — we will all have different strategies.)”
I do have a great deal of sympathy for the position that a very good way to “expunge the unwarranted respect for ugly lies” is to educate people about the beauty, then grant them the space and time for their own minds to work. However, that’s not what I want to discuss here.
It seems to me that much of the discussion/argument about framing puts the onus on the non-religious to accommodate the religious, treating the non-religious as if one day in the recent past they’d suddenly decided to attack unreason.
But of course that isn’t the way it happened. After quite a long period of accepting that religion had to accommodate scientific facts, like the earth orbiting the sun, or even more revolutionary and totally unintuitive breakthroughs like special and general relativity or quantum mechanics, it is religion that has been fighting to roll back reality from the schools and other public discourse. Decades after Scopes, schools are again having to fight to teach evolution in science classes, and to keep the supernatural out of science curricula. The President and Presidential candidates can come out against the scientific fact of evolution and not lose one iota of support. In fact, they are liable to gain support from the like-minded who not only don’t wish their comforting myths to be bothered by reality, but want to impose those myths on the schools and the rest of society.
The current debate is not the result of atheists suddenly deciding to attack unreason. It is the result of supporters of reason wishing to defend hard-won gains in knowledge and education against those who’d turn back the clock to 1858.
The book “Doublespeak” by William Lutz gave this example of Doublespeak. (It’s my own paraphrase and possibly elucidation.) Consider Diet Beer. Would any self-respecting beer-drinker ever drink diet beer? However, now label it “Lite Beer,” then it becomes popular. This, I think, is an example of framing.
“Tax Relief” is now what Bush et al. used to call tax cuts.
“Greenhouse Gas” without an explanation may not mean anything to many average persons. And when you’re explaining, you’re losing. “Blanket Gas” was a suggested alternative. I prefer “Heat-Trapping Gas.”
I agree that taking them to Alaska and showing them the facts is not framing.
In the context of religion or creationism, I think that many persons have been preprogrammed to react to certain words in a certain way. Then when we scientists try to persuade them of the fallacy of their beliefs, or try to explain the truth, we fall into the trap of using those trigger words.
In any case, I think that we should be aware of the issue of framing even if we don’t use it. Our enemies, the lie-tellers, will use it against us. They are wealthy, and can test-market their propaganda using marketing research and focus groups.
I’ve been using “Three Bright Dots” as a phrase. I’m probably going to change to “Three Light-Bursts” or maybe “Three Bursts of Light.”
Many babies being thrown away with bathwater here.
The strength of Safina’s work is that he was respectful of the people he was working to persuade while he demonstrated important scientific evidence of climate change.
God wasn’t necessary to Safina’s exchange, but attacking God wasn’t necessary either.
Unfortunately, the most successfull marketing is always the marketing that your consumer finds least threatening (at least, at their first glances). Finding the most clear and effective way to present your message is a necessity. Don’t like the idea of “framing”? Unless you’re going to state only dry facts, dragnet-style, you’re always framing.
> Of course, there’s also the overlooked fact that a lot of
> people don’t look to scientists as scientific authorities,
> and instead go to religious leaders for scientific answers.
Or economists, or sometimes lawyers.
Some people have the idea that working scientists are the last ones to understand their work. “Heaven forbid that we actually believe working scientists over Libertarians, Limbaugh, and LaRouche.”
The part of framing that PZ doesn’t seem to get is this: if we can “coddle” religious folk so they aren’t scared so we can keep scientists deciding what is taught in science class, we should do it. If telling them the hard, cold truth will scare them to the point that we can’t teach science in science class, we’ve lost. We have goals and if we have to use spin to achieve those goals, we should use spin.
I think the legend of Jesus Christ is largely fiction, the Bible is contradictory bullshit, the concepts of heaven and hell juvenile and YEC and ID totally fallacious. But if I say this at the school board meeting I will not achieve my goals.
Framing is about achieving goals. It’s not about philosophical purity. It’s stating your argument in a way that gets you what you want.
“God wasn’t necessary to Safina’s exchange, but attacking God wasn’t necessary either.”
Yes, but – see Blake Stacey’s comment re people confusing “is” with “ought.” Many people who don’t “believe in” climate change hold this opinion not based on sober consideration of the evidence but on how well it conforms to what they consider a larger belief system (see the bumper stickers with “TRUTH” swallowing “Darwin.”) This is of course the frame in which they see such matters. It may happen that such out-of-the-ordinary experiences as a visit to Alaska may change opinions (though I wonder if opinions will have changed back in a year or two when the experiences are less fresh in the mind and more easily “unrationalized” away). But it may also be that all contrary evidence, no matter how strong, will be treated as unsatisfactory unless the frame – the larger belief system – no longer controls.
I think it was Einstein that said “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler”
Scientists don’t really have authority; nothing any scientist, however distinguished, says is true by virtue of her saying it. All scientists are required to show their work, and their work must be evaluated on its own merits.
At best, I can grant scientists a degree of expertise, and believe them without checking their work, but that’s pure laziness, not authority.
Calls for “framing” are nearly always disingenuous calls which translate, roughly, to “pay token deference or shut up” — particularly since those calls are usually directed at people who spend their spare time running Cafe Scientifique and club meetings and other venues with which to popularize and publicize their viewpoints in a civil manner. When calls for framing aren’t cloaked calls to shut up, it’s actually because they’re coming from one of our supporters, but one who is asking us to be dishonest (again, because those calls are directed at people who are already doing their part to further their opinions in a reasonable manner).
Yeah, it’s really easy for the framing advocate to sit back and act smug and derisive and retort with an “Oh, but I only meant you should…” but the context has already exposed the real content of the framing advocate’s message. If they’re hostile towards science, it means “shut up”, if they aren’t, it means lie or throw buzzwords and slickly produced movie trailers around.
I think you are exactly right here, PZ. “Framing” should not be about pandering but about knowing one’s audience. Safina et al well realized that there was at least a subset of Christian evangelicals who were willing to look through Galileo’s telescope, as it were. Their “frame” was to present them with an enjoyable and interesting journey to see the effects of global warming for themselves, not merely read or hear about it.
I further agree with you that statements like the following are not framing so much as playing to what comics call a tough crowd, ie, pandering:
“As scientists, we have scientific authority. But for moral authority, people look to religious leaders.”
While people often look to religious leaders for moral authority, there are plenty of other places to look for it, including one’s own introspection on the good. But this statement seems to exclude all but clerics, priests, etc. It’s wrong.
Michael, do you really think PZ doesn’t “get it,” or do you think maybe you have simply failed to comprehend his goals?
I’m quite fond of framin. Without it, the house I live in would be nothing more than a foundation and some basement walls.
All this just shows that scientists are not very good with dealing with politics/marketing.
As long as you guys can’t even agree on the basics, ie what is your objective, how can you start discussing about the communication strategy and target audience. This is ridiculous.
Is the main objective :
1. to maintain a secularist public education system
OR
2. to maintain a secularist public education system AND reduce (eliminate) the influence of religion in Government
It seems to me that it is quite clear that PZ/Dawkins do not have the same objective as the other group.
I think it’s very telling that Cizik had already changed his mind on global warming prior to the trip.
I don’t know for sure about the other evangelicals that were there, but I suspect that the reason this trip happened at all was not not because an argument was framed successfully by Sarfina, but because they, like Cizik, had already acknowledged reality and were open to what the scientists wanted to tell them.
It would be interesting to know what made him change his mind, though.
It’s useless to make the argument in the comments of this blog that framing is useful. As far as PZ is concerned, and consistent with his life experience, the battle lines have been drawn. You’re either with him, or you’re with the creationists. That’s his role, it’s a useful and valuable role, and one he is perfectly suited to fulfill.
I get the point that framing doesn’t require speaking in religious terms, and I get the point that the example he is complaining about is a bad example. You need to understand, however, that although attacking religiousness is as unnecessary as religiousness itself for framing things in general, his posting on this blog does in fact require an attack in religiousness.
Why? Well, someone has to do it, right?
Yes, people look to religious leaders for moral authority — but they don’t have it. Moral authority is not something that comes from a mastery of old dogma. It’s a human attribute that has to be earned by one’s actions, and it shouldn’t matter what your religious beliefs are — yet here we go, pretending that graduating from Podunk Bible College makes one a better human being than having a degree from Urban Secular Tech. It doesn’t, but we have scientists using the hook of recruiting religious leaders to perpetuate it.
The fact that people look to religious leaders for moral guidance is an additional problem that some of us are fighting. Now maybe the members of Safina’s evangelical group were all fine examples of humanity who deserve their moral authority, but they shouldn’t get it because they believe in a magic man in the sky — it should be because, for instance, they are open to evidence and ideas and are willing to investigate to learn where the truth lies.
As a skeptic and an agnostic, I find this section a bit, um, problematic.
First, on the trivial level, the graduate of the seminary does, presumably, have moral authority for members of her congregation.
Second, and less trivially, it’s not at all clear to me why we should invest moral authority in someone because they are open to evidence, unless we think that condition is somehow related to moral goodness. It’s certainly possible to argue that it is, but it’s not clear to me that it’s required (necessary), unless we think that morals can only be derived from human experience (or biology) and not through reason alone. Now, again, I’m not saying that’s a wrong position, but it does seem to entail a denial of any claim to moral authority from any source other than science. We may well get there some day, but given the gaps in our understanding today it seems a bit premature to throw the moral philosophers (including all the religion people) overboard.
By the way, this “framing” word is just bad.
What Safina did was to “preach to the ones already convinced”. What’s with this “framing” ?
Many religious leaders (including the Pope) have already said that they see global warming as a great danger for humanity. So, what is this “framing” about ?
As you essentially note, everyone is fighting for #1, but some think that you won’t get #1 in any long-term sense if you don’t get the last part of #2. But that’s actually OK — scientists and pro-science supporters are no more a homogenous group than theists, and there’s no reason why they all have to have the same opinions or goals on the issues.
That said, the most telling objections to framing (as usually presented by Nisbet et al.) is that there’s no good evidence that it actually works in this context, and some polling numbers that actually suggest the opposite.
I think we are comparing apples and oranges here — comparing different goals. It is one goal to persuade people to do something and it is quite a different thing to actually educate people.
As someone who has been an activist political organizer for years, I often had to use persuasion to get people I did not agree with to take a certain action, i.e. vote for a candidate or sign a petition. You may only care about people’s beliefs to the extent that you could use them to create arguments that would be more persuasive. For example, if you are talking with a religious person about global warming or the environment, you would talk about “stewardship of God’s creation” or “protecting life”. But, it was extremely important to have the dialogue. On one statewide campaign I worked on, we talked to the the 20% of the state Democratic delegates that were pro-lifers. We didn’t change our position on the issue (we had a pro-choice candidate) and we didn’t try to get them to change theirs — BUT WE TALKED. When the convention was dead-locked, we used the relationships developed with these delegates to get them to vote for us. Our opponent had written them off and we won the endorsement!
PZ’s goal is different — he’s a teacher. Teacher’s need to dig into people’s perconceived ideas and challenge them to ask questions. He’s got nothing on the line other than getting people to learn to better understand the world around them.
I’m not going to say that one goal is loftier than the other. They are both necessary and require different tactics.
I don’t believe that in traveling with several religious leaders to see the effects of climate warming on nature and people, we were “pandering” to religion, any more than they were pandering to science. (It is worth noting that the evangelicals we’ve been in dialogue with have had to deal with criticism from within their own ranks for reaching out to scientists; I would hope scientists can do better, but this may be another thing we have in common.)
We as scientists were helping bring recent advances in scientific understanding to an important audience of people who are curious and concerned. They just happen to be religious, and they just happen to account for a quarter of U.S. voters. They had the decency to want to cut through the dis-information and understand the real current state of scientific understanding. As a scientist, helping influential non-scientists understand the science seemed important. It also seemed important to begin replacing “they” with “we,” on at least this issue. We were coming from different directions but converging toward the same place.
There is another delusion operating, and this one tends to come from the science side: the implied belief that if you ignore millions of religious people in the U.S. who vote their religion, they will somehow count less. Several key religious leaders believe that climate and other matters of environment and biodiversity (Creation care, in their relatively elegant single term)are matters of religious concern. That is their assessment, and I’m pleased to help them understand current scientific knowledge as best I can.
Though I am a scientist (PhD in ecology), my scientific understanding of the state of the world has led me to profound concern for the ethical and moral dimensions of the issues. I seek engagement with like-minded people, religious or not.
As for why people look to religion for moral authority, it’s because religion assumes and exerts moral authority. My hope is that scientifically well-informed moral authority will be wiser moral authority.
And why doesn’t the public, or the religious community, for that matter, look to science for moral authority? Because scientists are trained never to presume such authority; we are trained to report the facts without suggesting whether the implications will be good or bad, and we’re taught not to engage the non-scientist public because doing so is unprofessional. Time spent talking to non-scientists is time that will undermine preparation for tenure and grant-writing. If you reach ten million people with a book, or an article in National Geographic, assessment of your “impact factor” during tenure revue amounts, in most institutions to: “Sorry, that wasn’t peer-reviewed.”
Until scientific activities are understood to include not just teaching students what science has to offer but teaching everyone what science has to offer, we will be doomed to the moral and ethical marginalization that science has chosen for itself.
Stating the facts and then clearly stating opinion about the implication of the facts is possible (just as the Results and Discussion sections of a paper are easily understood to be two different things). Avoiding public engagement de-humanizes and devalues science.
I was delighted to discover that the evangelicals I traveled with seemed like fine people, actively, personally engaged in issues like ending human trafficking in Sudan. While I don’t share their theology, I share their concern, and admire their commitment and involvement to such significant moral issues.
Their involvement in these issues is precisely what helps create moral authority. One does not have to believe in God to be a fine person, but the religious groups seem to be involved in more than their share of social work (or perhaps I should say the science groups seem involved in less than their share). Science does an incredible amount of good in the world. And its technologies, applied unwisely or misguidedly, also create enormous problems. Religion has similar parallels. Neither is a pure a source of goodness as people inside each discipline would like to think.
A point secular people most miss, and something that has become evident to me as I correspond and travel with religious people, is that religion is not the same as theology. Theology is belief in the existence and workings and characteristics of spiritual beings. Theology underpins most religions. But a religion is a set of beliefs PLUS rituals, values, communities, works, etc. It would be hard to argue for comforting the sick or feeding the poor on scientific grounds. Neither science nor religion have all the answers because they ask themselves different questions.
Regarding theology, I might also report that I’ve learned that being an evangelical is not synonymous with being a fundamentalist. Few, if any, of the evangelicals I’ve talked with in the last year believe the world was created in six 24-hour days 6,000 years ago and that life does not evolve. Many evangelicals who are not scientists do not know much about climate science, ecology, or evolution, but I don’t know much about religion. That’s why we were together, and we amicably discussed all those things. We were there to understand each other better and to find ways of working together to prevent Earth from getting more overheated by human activity. If religious leaders choose, they can share their message with millions of people who value what they say (whether it’s peer-reviewed or not) and do not read Science and Nature–but who do vote.
I think we made a little progress improving mutual understanding. I greatly valued the opportunity, and I will be pleased to do much more, if I can, to build this bridge.
— Carl Safina
Although I was not mentioned in Mark’s post by name, I could still feel the chill air on the back of my neck.
So I wrote a response:
http://gregladen.com/wordpress/?p=1242
In short, I don’t think the Baked Alaska post says anything at all about framing except for those few sentences pointed out here (people get their morals from religious leaders,etc.) and those statements are so whimsical and strange that I simply don’t believe that they were very well thought out.
Thus, I totally agree with PZ:
“Safina spins it to suit a political agenda, or that he panders to the biases of his guests (although he does do that), it’s that he shows them directly what they will lose if people don’t act to preserve the environment.”
That’s good framing.
Plus, I want to go on a cruise too.
Greg
In Hitchens’ book ‘God is not great’ he tells a story of listening to his elementary school teacher say that god is wise because he made the world green which is the color that is easiest on our eyes. He realized then, as a schoolboy, that the teacher is wrong, and that green is easy on they eyes because its so ubiquitous, not the other way around.
I was amazed when I read this. As a schoolboy I would have never contemplated the teacher being wrong. I think that Hitchens’ brain is dramatically different from my brain as well as that of many others. My learning style gravitates toward authority.
Many scientists and researchers are probably the opposite and question things with an innate curiosity from early childhood. Someone who takes the world on authority probably seems like they are being irrational or nonsensical to someone like this.
However most people start out learning thru authority. I became an atheist slowly, first Sam Harris methodically reasoned it out, then Dawkins made an argument that was strong but polite, then Hitchens delivered the roundhouse kicks (I was cheering the verbal jabs by the time I got to Hitchens, really).
Even though I have an extensive background in science, it took years of struggeling, and multiple books for me to come around to rational thinking.
In order to increase the prevalence of rational thought in society, it will take multiple techniques, to account for the multiple learning styles of so many people.
Evangelists do it. There is very little success of their approach in a mall or airport: “if you died today will you go to heaven or hell?” Most people tune them out. If rational thinkers take the same direct approach, people will tune them out. However, some evangelists ‘frame’ their approach and evangelize through christian atheletic organizations, clubs, recreational activities, humanitarian aid, etc. etc.
Keep the message consistant, vary the delivery technique according to the audience and the message will spread. Don’t pander to religous nonsense, but don’t ruin your chances to communicate either. Its ok to disrespect god, but be respectful of individual people.
Some people get their morals from religious leaders, but that doesn’t mean they buy young earth bullshit and ID. They may be willing to help fight climate change if we don’t ask them to reject God first.
We who want to fight climate change (and see science used in public policy) are well served to be clear about what we’re doing. Are we fighting climate change or fighting God?
Greg (#12) cites some great examples of framing. It’s a simple concept, but executing it successfully is a bit of an art. The idea is that whoever presents the audience with the strongest, most compelling narrative will most affect the world-view of the audience. Advertisers use a similar approach with the motto “sell the sizzle, not the steak”.
Zoroastrianism innovated the frame of the Cosmic Battle between Good and Evil, which is about the most powerful frame ever, and is still effective in the religion’s many ideological descendents, such as Christianity, Star Wars, and Steven King.
PZ, you and Dawkins are pretty effective with that same frame: in my daily life, religion seems like a curiousity rather than a big deal. But when I read you or Dawkins, I get the idea that rationality and religious superstition are in a big showdown with the future of western civilization at stake.
Still, the Christian/spiritual frame is stronger for people who buy into superstition. Luckily, we’ve got evidence, and they don’t. But persuasion still requires framing rational assertions so that the stories are compelling. Sagan did it well.
While all narratives are framed, in that narratives are forms of organization (of events, characters, actions, etc.), not all framing is narrative.
I’ll all for the big, grand goal to “change the world” that PZ is shooting for. I just think we need to achieve some things along the way. I’d rather protect our science curricula (for example) than delude myself into thinking I can rid the world of religious superstition. The former is imminently achievable, the latter much less so.
I do think that framing just seems distasteful to people who spend most of their time involved with more pure, intellectual pursuits. Your average school board meeting is a hell of a long way from a pure, intellectual pursuit. Atheists are pretty much impotent at your average school board meeting.
You can’t fight god. He doesn’t exist.
You are fighting for a narrower issue, for rational responses to climate change. These issues will come up all the time, though, so some of us are saying you’ve also got to invest in promoting a wider rational, secular perspective in the population. While getting the imams … I mean, evangelical priests to support you now is a shortcut to achieving a specific goal, it’s going to bite you in the ass in the long run when you discover you’ve vested your scientific authority, as well as moral authority, in a group of unqualified leaders who make decisions on the basis of poetry in an old book.
Oh, I’m not missing it. I’m defying it. What you’re really saying is that evangelical christians are such shameless bigots and deluded morons that they won’t listen to a purely secular explanation unless we throw an occasional sop to their super-powered fantasy figure.
I’m an optimist. I don’t think they’re that stupid.
I also think the failings of an audience should be something we address directly, rather than pretending they’re virtues.
PZ Myers:
rAmen.
I may be wrong about this, but when I read:
“scientists and leading Christian evangelicals traveling to Alaska to gain, together, first-hand looks at the ongoing effects and implications of climate change” (from Safina’s blog) I see a subtext of “to convince the Christians that it’s really happening.”
Those Christians, always such sticklers for evidence.
“Yes, people look to religious leaders for moral authority — but they don’t have it. Moral authority is not something that comes from a mastery of old dogma. It’s a human attribute that has to be earned by one’s actions, and it shouldn’t matter what your religious beliefs are — yet here we go, pretending that graduating from Podunk Bible College makes one a better human being than having a degree from Urban Secular Tech.”
What you say after the first quoted sentence entails that religious leaders *may* have moral authority, if they’ve earned it through their actions. That means that the absolutism of the first quoted sentence is not warranted–it’s not that no religious leaders have moral authority, it’s that they don’t have it simply in virtue of being a religious leader.
That’s pretty much impossible. Most people who believe in Sky Papa have fully invested their identity and self-worth into the existence of Sky Papa and his slaughtering of everyone they don’t like. Pointing out that their deluded fantasy is, well, a deluded fantasy, rings in their ears as a murderous assault on their identity and person and not merely criticism of a silly idea.
Do not answer a fool according to his folly,
or you will be like him yourself.
Answer a fool according to his folly,
or he will be wise in his own eyes.
Proverbs 26:4-5
They’re ahead of us.
OMFG. Are you seriously saying that Sky Papa is not real?
stogoe:
“Pointing out that their deluded fantasy is, well, a deluded fantasy, rings in their ears as a murderous assault on their identity and person and not merely criticism of a silly idea”
You can point out the fallacies in their argument without attacking the person. If they get their feelings hurt and feel like they are being attacked personally, even though they are not and only their ideas are being attacked, then there is not a lot you can do about that. Move on. Possibly the person is just starting to think rationally and will come to grips with reality later.
From the standpoint of someone who had a lot invested in religiosity, it was initally very painful to realize there was no god. I was quite worried about how it would affect relationships with my family, wife, kids, etc. It all turned out OK but when initially confronted with reality… I fought it at first, then reality won in the end.
I think I may have missed the point of PZ’s initial message. Framing doesn’t have to equal pandering to religon, it is just a form of communication. Delivering information that is useful to a person in a way they can understand is framing. Giving a nod to religous leaders in order to gain an audience is not framing, it is appeasment. It is also confusing to people who might be contemplating a move toward more rational thought. The more out of touch and nonsensical religous leaders seem to people, the more likely they will reject their teaching.
Keep the message consistant, tailor the delivery methods to the group you are talking to, and eventually it will come in loud and clear.
Alistair (#48) for the win!
I recently wrote a post called “Thank You, Mother Teresa. You’ve shown me a new way to frame atheism” on my blog where I said:
I also compared taking on the broad subject of religion to trying to nail Jello to a tree.
The big flaw in my argument is that most atheists don’t really take on God and religion directly. We only seem to because of book titles and the claims of accusers who want to attribute too much certainty to our beliefs.
Most of us do argue like Thomas Paine and Voltaire already.
For example, I bet Richard Colling, not even agnostic, would agree with a lot of what PZ says in his post on Colling. I bet Christians would also be amused at the schism happening in Scientology. That stuff isn’t actually divisive unless you’re a Scientologist or a creationist. The only divisive thing we say is that we believe differently than you and every religion feels the same way about every other.
Carl:
I think what you did is good, but I disagree with some of what you say in this post. Well, actually, a lot of it. My comments are kind of long so I put them here:
http://gregladen.com/wordpress/?p=1243
“open to evidence and ideas and are willing to investigate to learn where the truth lies.”
I believe that it is deeply immoral to fail to be open to evidence and ideas, and willing to investigate to learn where the truth lies.
PZ: “Yes, people look to religious leaders for moral authority — but they don’t have it. Moral authority is not something that comes from a mastery of old dogma.”
Exactly, and for some of us the pretensions of religious leaders to moral authority are exactly what we are fighting against. Unfortunately, there is no nice way to tell the truth to either the religious leaders themselves or the general community. There are only so many ways that you deliver the message that mastery of religious books and traditions confers no moral authority because these books and traditions are not, themselves, repositories of moral truth. If we are going to attack the moral authority of religious leaders, we are into debunking mode. We can try to be gentle, as Dawkins does, or we can be harsher, like Hitchens, but either way we are going to cause offence to people who don’t like the message itself.
But it has to be done.
PZ said: “What you’re really saying is that evangelical christians are such shameless bigots and deluded morons that they won’t listen to a purely secular explanation unless we throw an occasional sop to their super-powered fantasy figure.
I’m an optimist. I don’t think they’re that stupid.”
With all due respect PZ, I think that they *are*, but that (hopefully) it is a temporary condition… Nevertheless, I agree with you on how the rhetoric and tenet of the faithful should be approached – that is, straightforward and honest. No apologies, no cringing. We lack belief because there is no evidence to believe. This is purely rational. By extension, we should also be straightforward about our disbelief that anyone would consider faith a virtue! In time, many *will* be reached – as I was.
I understand the mentality of a believer. Deep down, believers doubt from time to time. They experience these doubts as shameful and agonizing, and often refuse to admit it even to themselves. They work hard to suppress this – often by becoming even more extremist/dogmatic in their belief, at least outwardly. These *doubts*, of course, is their sense of REASON bursting to be recognized. Reason can win. Wishful thinking (delusion) will be seen for what it is – weak and immature. It’s often a long, hard, slow process – much like growing up…
So, stay on message, PZ. Don’t allow the controversy over ‘to frame or not to frame’ to muddle your goal or methodology. Many are busy defending what isn’t even framing (as I understand it, at least).
This whole thing started over Carl Safina taking a bunch of evangelicals on a cruise and showing them important issues relating to ecology? And that’s a framing issue? Is it some kind of guilt by association thing, where being in the presence of evangelicals equals pandering to them?
It seems that everyone is loosing track of the issue, and that’s whether or not we’re compromising science. In this case, it hardly seems like a framing issue.
The other thing is that when we talk about the religious, are we talking about individuals who may or may not be too stubborn or stupid to grasp scientific concepts or are we talking about an institution that relies on maintaining its own definition of ‘truth’
while everyone is snarling and biting I think a few things need to be pointed out… that everyone in the discussion agrees that science can/ should be presented to everyone in an unvarnished way. I will also add that sometimes individuals do not deserve (nor is it beneficial to assault them with) the same level of contempt we show the institutions they have so inappropriately placed their faith in.
People tend to place scientific knowledge in faulty frames based on personal viewpoint, pop culture, faulty education,… many reasons. So, maybe what’s needed is to unframe it. (Not starting a linguistic argument here, only trying to say through analogy, something hard to say otherwise.)
Sometimes people aren’t aware what their pre-conceived ideas are, so it can be good to show them where their frame is or what it looks like and how it’s flawed. That conversation, seems to me, is what some people are talking about when they say “framing science” and I can get behind that type of framing (though prefer my term “unframing”). Some people are talking more of a compromise, and that I do not get. To some people “framing” seems to mean engaging in conversation without insulting or berating, and I like that approach with reservations – it’s lost on people who refuse to see reason or use deception, and are educated enough they ought to know better.
Does anyone besides me wonder if we know what the hell “framing” is to begin with? Alternately, is there an agreed-upon definition that I’m missing?
Dorid said: “It seems that everyone is loosing track of the issue, and that’s whether or not we’re compromising science. In this case, it hardly seems like a framing issue.”
Whether or not we are compromising science in the immediate future (a critical issue, indeed) is not the *only* issue. Equally as important is that we do not send a mixed message to believers/borderline-nonbelievers regarding the irrationality of a belief system in the supernatural. As PZ says, we’ve “got to invest in promoting a wider rational, secular perspective in the population. I believe this is important because our leaders, and their belief systems, are the ones making decisions which impact all of us.
Dorid said: “The other thing is that when we talk about the religious, are we talking about individuals who may or may not be too stubborn or stupid to grasp scientific concepts or are we talking about an institution that relies on maintaining its own definition of ‘truth’
I will also add that sometimes individuals do not deserve (nor is it beneficial to assault them with) the same level of contempt we show the institutions they have so inappropriately placed their faith in.”
I’m not sure what you mean by this. Institutions are comprised of people. It is the belief system of the people that is in question. Their faith (or lack of faith) in the institutions they use for worship is not the issue and is separate and apart from their personal belief in, and defense of, the supernatural.
I didn’t place the end-quote for PZ’s words. My apologies. Here it is…
As PZ says, we’ve “got to invest in promoting a wider rational, secular perspective in the population.”
Dorid,
No, Mark Powell presented Safina’s cruise as an example of good framing. PZ and Greg Laden replied that educating evangelicals is a wonderful thing, but it isn’t a framing issue. What PZ described as “pandering” is, specifically, accepting that moral authority should be ceded to religious leaders, and going along with their irrational beliefs. Presumably that’s not a necessary part of education, although (depending on your views on framing), it may or may not be helpful.
But no, no one’s saying you shouldn’t interact with evangelicals.
It seems to me that the framers can’t even persuade their supposed allies to adopt their version of framing.
So why should I expect them –or their preferred frames– to be successful in persuading those who are already strongly hostile to scientific data and reason?
Where did all this “framing” nonsense come from? I’m sure that these creationists must have taken to using the word in a specific way to set you guys all off. But I’d always been of the understanding that “framing” was a general and broad term for a persuasive way of presenting ideas so as to lead people to believe the truth of them.
For instance a child who is raised as an atheist (I’m still not sure if they’re lucky for missing the religious rubbish or unfortunate for not having “earned” that freedom on their own) has a certain “framing” about the world around them through which they view every part of their life. Sort of like how children raised to be creationists (the poor things) have had things framed for them in a way so as to make it almost impossible to see the world as it really is.
I say don’t like them take our words from us. They don’t know what they mean anyway. “Framing” is a technique, not an ideology, and is only as “good” or as “bad” as the ideas it is used to further. Unless, of course, someone has evidence to convince me otherwise, which is unlikely. Probably because the concept was “framed” for me in such a way.
We ignore communication science at our peril.
Here is the one science the anti-science crowd is better at than the science crowd, that is, the science of communication (including marketing and persuasion sciences).
Take framing of the evolution debate, for example. It’s why things are moving so slowly in the evolution vs intelligent design debates. Science will eventually win, the evidence will take care of that. But when the Discovery Institute spreads the word to frame the evolution debate in terms of “fairness” and “inclusiveness”, the debate changes from why intelligent design doesn’t hold up to scientific scrutiny to, “why are scientists arbitrarily excluding a theory that supports the Biblical version of Creation”? Once the debate is so framed, you can talk all you want about the evidence, but now the evidence becomes suspect as the debates shifts from, ‘evidence for evolution’ to, ‘anti-god bias in science’.
There is a reason why there are countless companies, blogs and websites on the subject of framing, naming and branding. There is even an annual international conference on branding which last year was held in Dubai. What are these people doing? They are coming up with ways to say British Petroleum stands for alternative energy even if BP only has a token budget for non-petroleum based energy exploration.
Petroleum companies have spent billions on marketing campaigns to convince the public of things which benefit the company, not which convey the truth. The same companies spend billions on lobbying efforts which in the last 6 years has included efforts to suppress government controlled science if it didn’t support corporate bottom lines.
The scientific community doesn’t have billions to put on counter campaigns. We haven’t yet rallied the masses to counter the lobbying efforts of corporate interests. We better at least be using science to fight this anti-science effort. We need to recognize there is a whole field of science out there traditional scientists have been ignoring. That is the science of communication. Madison avenue and people like Karl Rove’s minions have done a tremendous amount of research in this area. We’d better take note and start using science to communicate science to the public.
Framing is not a fad. It is the identification of a communication principle that those who have been using it effectively are all too aware of and those that are just now figuring it out have a lot of catching up to do.
And on the subject of morals, science, religion and framing
Here’s an excellent place to re-frame the debate. Science self flagellates by allowing questions of morality to be excluded from science. A measure in science has no intrinsic value of good or bad. So what? Neither does your brain. How does your brain decide something is moral or not? You develop criteria by which to judge or weigh the thing you are deciding the morality of. Once you identify the criteria, a moral value can be measured using the scientific process just as your brain does using subconscious and sometimes conscious processes.
And we can study the way psycho-socio-cultural beings develop those criteria by which the moral value of something is assessed. The criteria certainly don’t come from some magical source and they most certainly cannot be found in the Bible unless you count being able to find anything in the Bible from commands to kill to commands to not kill.
But as long as we allow morality to be framed as something nebulous like a soul rather than something which can be studied using the scientific process, then you can expect people to continue to wrongly equate science with being soul-less and moral-less. The implication is morality comes from religion and that couldn’t be more false.
This is a Post script. I forgot to add how to re-frame the evolution debate.
We can re-frame the debate once we recognize what the Intelligent Design and Creation promoters are trying to do. The ID crowd makes the claim science has a bias against Intelligent Design because it confirms Biblical accounts. We need to respond, not with long explanations why ID and Creation are out of the realm of science. That feeds into the ID promoter’s hands.
Instead we need to simply re-frame the debate right back. “Yes, science should and does include all viable theories. Intelligent Design is based on the claim that some things are irreducible and had to have been developed whole. But genetic science has solved that question and we now know how complex organs like the eye developed. There is overwhelming evidence Irreducible Complexity is a not correct hypothesis. And if IC is not correct, ID has nothing to stand on.”
Last comment, as I read some of these posts I see a lot of people have a vague idea about what framing is but perhaps not quite a focused idea.
Framing is an angle by which something is viewed, but it is a bit more than simply one’s perspective. Rather, it is a direction you point the viewer to see through. It is not intrinsically dishonest though it can be used to manipulate in dishonest ways. It is dishonest for the ID/Creation debaters to make the argument about scientific bias against religion which does not exist. It is not dishonest for the evolution supporter to re-frame the debate in terms of the strength of the evidence.
Is it “tax relief” or a “tax cut for the wealthy”? Is it a “war on terrorism” or a “war for oil access”? Are you “pro-life” or “anti-choice”? Those are political frames and they vary from equal but legitimate ways of looking at something to completely manipulative and dishonest. I see the role for science here is to reveal the framing going on in order to immunize people from the influence framing has. People make better choices when they are better informed. Recognizing marketing and manipulation techniques offers some measure of immunization from the tactics.
Look for frames and you’ll begin to see them more clearly. The news is full of them. Political speech is full of them. And of course, advertising is full of it’s unique branch of framing, that is ‘branding’.
“The Law of Misplaced Apostrophe Conservation”
When in such close proximity, I think it’s also described as “apostrophe drift”.
(Not quite grammatically correct, but I trust you get my, er, …)
Charles
I think you should put that in the random quotes on the blog. If you aren’t comfortable with quoting yourself (and who would be, now that John A. Davison has let us all know what a laugh-riot self-quotation can be), you could go ahead and attribute it to me. I’m happy to help.
Dustin:
Hah!
It’s definitely a statement worth preserving. The extent to which spinning the facts and relying upon emotional suasion work is, fundamentally, the extent to which our society is not scientifically literate.
“Many babies being thrown away with bathwater here.
The strength of Safina’s work is that he was respectful of the people he was working to persuade while he demonstrated important scientific evidence of climate change.
God wasn’t necessary to Safina’s exchange, but attacking God wasn’t necessary either. ”
I have never seen a conservationist say, “We should save the planet, BUT I HATE GOD, blah blah.”
They may blog or chat on their own time about the ridiculousness of religion, but it seems to me like no conservationist is stupid enough to bash religion while trying to hit home an important message about saving a species/the planet. So I’m not quite sure what makes this different. Other than the guy specifically grabbed a group of religious people. Which, in itself, seems conspicuous to me. “Hey you silly god-worshippers. I know you all deny global warming because you’re a bunch of sheep, so let’s go on a field trip!”
“…young earth bullshit…”
(?)
Good framing? Bad framing?
bullshit…
Good framing? Bad framing?
..or good farming?
That was pretty funny, Ich, but how the hell did you get to this thread?