The 2014 annual Edge question was “What scientific idea is ready for retirement?”. That’s an interesting question, but as usual, there are a few answers that are complete bullshit. This year’s big dumb answer comes from Douglas Rushkoff, a media consultant, who suggests that science needs to get rid of The Atheism Prerequisite. It’s entirely a whine about a false premise.
We don’t need to credit an all-seeing God with the creation of life and matter to suspect that something wonderfully strange is going on in the dimension we call reality. Most of us living in it feel invested with a sense of purpose. Whether this directionality is a genuine, pre-existing condition of the universe, an illusion perpetrated by DNA, or something that will one day emerge from social interaction, has yet to be determined. At the very least, this means our experience and expectations of life can no longer be dismissed as impediments to proper observation and analysis.
But science’s unearned commitment to materialism has led us into convoluted assumptions about the origins of space-time, in which time itself simply must be accepted as a byproduct of the big bang, and consciousness (if it even exists) as a byproduct of matter. Such narratives follow information on its continuing evolution toward complexity, the singularity, and robot consciousness—a saga no less apocalyptic than the most literal interpretations of Biblical prophecy.
It’s entirely more rational—and less steeped in storybook logic—to work with the possibility that time predates matter, and that consciousness is less the consequence of a physical, cause-and-effect reality than a precursor.
By starting with Godlessness as a foundational principle of scientific reasoning, we make ourselves unnecessarily resistant to the novelty of human consciousness, its potential continuity over time, and the possibility that it has purpose.
Let’s make this perfectly clear: there is no atheism prerequisite in science. We don’t ask job candidates whether they are atheists or not (and in fact, asking such a question would get us into tremendous trouble with HR), there are plenty of successful scientists who are believers in their private — and sometimes public — life, and even many of us atheists are open to hearing evidence for a god.
And that’s the problem. We don’t have an atheism prerequisite, but we do have an evidence prerequisite.
Science has an epistemological foundation. You believe a cosmic consciousness started the Big Bang? OK, tell us how you know that. Run us through the evidence you have that has led you to that conclusion. We’ll evaluate your evidence, and let’s just say that I read it in ancient Holy Book
is lousy evidence, as is I have a feeling of universal purpose
.
Another instance of poor reasoning is to argue from the undesirability of a result. You don’t like the singularity? I don’t either, I think it’s a silly idea built on cherry-picked evidence and crappy arguments. I’m not really at all worried about the Robot Apocalypse. I don’t think such conclusions are at all necessary extrapolations of our current understanding…but if they were, so what? It wouldn’t be a virtue to hide from the truth, and it wouldn’t save you to close your eyes and deny the possibility of robot consciousness as the claws clamp down on you and the machines throw you into the disintegrator.
I’m pretty sure that I’m going to die someday. That I don’t like the idea is insufficient impetus to make me immortal.
Saying that something is a “possibility” is not enough for good science. OK, it’s a possibility that consciousness preceded the existence of the universe — and it’s also possible that the cosmos was raked into existence from a fabric of amorphous chaos by the twitching claws of a giant immortal tardigrade. Show us why you should think that. And I’m afraid that the best example of “story-book logic” would be to simply assert that once upon a time, before time, there was a supreme being who decided that the universe should exist.
That explains nothing, least of all why you should conclude that.
As for the idea that I have a cosmic purpose…I am a tiny, fragile speck of organic compounds reacting within a thin film of gases and fluids on one small planet in an immense universe, most of which is utterly inimical to my existence. I was produced by a random shuffle of genetic elements by two other specks of organic compounds; approximately 250 million other male gametes tried to fertilize that one female gamete, and it was pure chance that my particular combination happened to fuse and develop and survive childhood.
I have found purpose in the very narrow domain of my existence, but to claim that this purpose somehow traces back to some kind of intent that predates the Big Bang is absurd and arrogant and contrary to reason.
Rushkoff can be satisfied that his request has already been met: there is no scientific prerequisite for atheism. But he’s going to have to be frustrated by the fact that the only respectable conclusion from the scientific evidence is that there is no god-thing, whatever that is, given the usually awful definitions believers give for it, and that his own attempts to rationalize a faith in the origin of the universe in a cosmic consciousness are absurd, pathetic, and laughable.
And that won’t change.
Well said, PZ.
That’s why Michael Behe had his doctorate revoked, right?
(I think he’s got no credibility, and I wonder how Lehigh thinks he’s qualified to teach in his field, given his demonstrated weakness in reading the literature, but… yeah… No requirement for atheism)
I wouldn’t say “What scientific idea is ready for retirement?” is interesting to be honest.
The thing is that science isn’t a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact and proposing theories which explain the facts. As such “What scientific idea is ready for retirement?” is pretty much never going to work as an question because scientific ideas get retired as new evidence comes to light, along with a requirement for a better explanation for the data.
And the people being asked aren’t psychics. We don’t know when some new data is going to come along to upend everything, and any speculation on that is going to inevitably tell you more about the person being asked’s biases than anything else.
And you can get that by reading just about anything else the people who were asked have written before.
Awe and Wonder
Purpose
If not God, then Illusion
No absolute proof, therefore anything goes
MATERIALISM!!!1!!
Time must have a starting point
My Little Deity: Consciousness Is Magic
Science is just another religion
It is perfectly logical to ignore science I don’t want to know about
Atheism is the status quo, be a rebel and think religious
It’s consciousness all the way down!!
I must have got Bingo at least twice by now.
yet another, to paraphrase: “Since no one knows what actually happened, let ME make up something that I believe happened. Scientists just make up their own fairy tale stories. Let’s have none of _those_, mine is much better.”
re:
rational? to whom? Not to me, I believe something completely different. I like the narrative you call ‘storybook logic’. Use your rationality to proves me wrong!
“Consciousness” is not an “object”, independent of matter. Consciousness is only what the brain DOES, it can’t be separated from the matter of the brain. (or so MY storybook logic tells me FWIW)
twas brillig:
The thing it is not story book logic at all. It is incredibly counterintuitive. People like the person in the OP want the real storybook narrative, the way things make more sense to them, from a common sense, layman’s perspective. He is essentially whining and arguing to restore a naive, old view of the world.
Time is a straight inflexible line that is not linked to matter at all and spacetime is a lie.
Consciousness is an immutable logic that is not linked to brains at all and neuroscience is a lie.
Science tells us the difficult to understand, counterintuitive way things actually work. Religious apologists ignore it, or propose the refuted old way of thinking as an iconoclastic brand new way of understanding the world.
What Rushkoff calls “storybook logic” seems to be the scientific process itself — along with its working assumption that things are the way they are because they got that way. Mind and all its attributes (like Consciousness and purposes), as Dawkins has pointed out, “come late in evolution, they are a product of evolution. They don’t come at the beginning. So whatever lies behind the universe will not be an intellect. Intellects are things that come as the result of a long period of evolution.” We have learned that the development of human-like brain and mind are embedded in a history which interacts in an environment which requires a social environment. This is an entirely rational conclusion.
The true advantage in positing that Mind is embedded into the very fabric of fundamental reality is that its proponents don’t feel any obligation to approach that idea like a hypothesis. There’s no “working with the possibility.” There’s only assuming the possibility and running gleefully with it from then on, with no possibility that ANY discovery or event could prove it wrong.
Atheism is not a prerequisite of science, true. But treating a highly significant and controversial assumption as a testable hypotheses IS. Otherwise, we’re all staring intently at our hands and wondering if maybe the whole universe is only a quark inside another universe which is simply the dream of a butterfly, man. Deeeeep.
I’ve never understood why the notion that a fully formed, intelligent creator being either came into existence all on its own, or had, somehow, always existed, should be any more easy to understand than that there was a timeless time before time, so to speak. Regardless of evidence, just how is it supposed to be a more sensible and easily understood explanation for the Ultimate Existence of Existence?
I should have stopped reading right there. Sadly, I didn’t.
Is this guy just another anti-science airhead wedded to irrationality or is there some reason he should be listened to?
uncle frogy
ummm… I think he was thinking of the big bang singularity, not the robot one. That’s why he’s talking about time before matter, though a few hints about how you would detect such a phenomenon would be useful, and it makes very little difference to the general numptiness of his arguments.
I’ve pointed this out before, but I think it is important.
If you posit an omnipotent, omniscient being as the creator of the Universe, then science is possible only to the extent that said being keeps its almighty appendages off of its creation. By definition, an almighty being can do whatever it wants–the laws of physics be damned. So was your reading on that meter an indication that your theory is wrong, or is Yahweh fucking with you? How do you decide?
God is a cosmic divide by zero error–you can use it to get any answer you want. The fact that science works is the best argument that either gods don’t exist or that they keep their thumbs out of the celestial clockwork.
Good afternoon all,
NPR’s Science Friday asked a similar question a couple of weeks ago in Which Scientific Ideas Must Die?.
My favorite response was “time and space” in the same way that temperature and pressure did when we understood that they are the result of molecular motion.
Jeff
Daz #8 wrote:
You’re overthinking it.
Close your eyes. Now pretend that your body has disappeared, the world has disappeared, the universe is gone and you’re there before the beginning of everything. No. Don’t approach this like a serious philosophical thought experiment. Pretend you’re six years old and imagining this. Nothing exists but your thoughts. Try to go all loose and vague, sort of humming pleasantly and not thinking of anything in particular.
Now imagine you’re thinking it all back and open your eyes.
See? There you go. A six year old “gets” it.
A-ray-in-dilbert-space #12 wrote:
I tried this once with a Catholic apologist. He insisted that if you’re a Christian then by definition God would only do what promotes belief in Him. Therefore, he’d never fuck with the reading on a meter… UNLESS this is going to be a big fat miracle deal which is going to strengthen the faith of those who have been weakening.
Since one of the most important proofs of God is the inexplicable and remarkable consistency of nature, then science can just go chugging along (based as it must be on faith in God’s invariance.) The Catholic then tried to use this argument as evidence for Catholicism, which has just provided a version of God which cannot fuck with you only for the sake of fucking with you, thus uniquely solving the problem by defining God around the objection.
Yeah, I know. Better not overthink this one either.
A scientific idea is only “ready for retirement” when a better alternative is found. Until then, even as we acknowledge its incompleteness and flaws, we still use it.
And sometimes we still use it even after a better alternative is found, if there are applications where it is easier to use than the better alternative, and the answers it gives are close enough an approximation for practical purposes.
(Eg NASA uses Newton, not Einstein, when calculating probe trajectories for missions outside the orbit of Mercury.)
Sastra,
Ah, but if God (TM) cannot fuck with you, then by definition, it is not omnipotent. And if it has such a limitation, might it have other limitations?
“Oh dear,” says God, and vanishes in a puff of logic.
a-ray-in-dilbert-space #16 wrote:
I tried that. He replied that, as a matter of logic, “omnipotent” can’t include the ability to go against one’s inherent nature of invariance.
God may not be able to fuck with us, but Catholics can — and keep it up, too. Theological Viagra.
42?!
“time before matter”. Yes, Science agrees with that statement. It took a really long time for matter to form from the overly energetic creation of timespace. Consciousness before matter? I don’t think “consciousness” means what you think it means. Without matter, nothing exists that can be conscious. To say consciousness is energy, leaves out the middle; Consciousness uses energy, is more realistic. (even closer: consciousness is the action resulting from matter using energy)
Let’s explore this idea. Suppose time existed, without matter. What would happen in that time? What would differentiate one unit of time from another? Only the ticking of the clock – wait, not even a clock. So what does it even mean to say that time exists in such a scenario?
That sets off my ID alarm something fierce.
Why should a little thing like “logic” get in the way of any omnipotent being? If God allegedly created logic, he can change it at will to suit its purposes.
Well, I say there ought to be one.
And it is important to note that holy books and feelings about what is true were not rejected on a whim. The holy books and their prophesies were studied by scientists for centuries. Cosmos has a great episode about Newton and his obsession with biblical prophecies, but it happened to turn out his secular studies are the ones that lead to incredible predictive power. There have been countless experiments done to show even our deepest feelings are quite fallible, subject to priming, illusion and delusion.
Rushkoff actually doesn’t seem so ridiculous when he talks about technology. But….well….
Here’s more on his directional evolution:
https://edge.org/response-detail/10691
This is why theologians shouldn’t be a thing: they are false and misleading authority figures.
He isn’t blind though. When asked “what is your law” (think something like those pithy internet “laws”, e.g. Poe’s Law):
But this….oh god. It becomes pretty fucking ableist: https://edge.org/response-detail/23685
The question is: What should we be worried about, and his answer is the loss of our collective consciousness
The last paragraph there shows the link he makes between his ableism and his magical thinking regarding evolution. Also, a clear dash of “anti-pharma” conspiratorial thinking.
Perusing the Edge site where Rushkoff’s delusion is posted, I came upon the following amazing bit of business, which I took at first for satire:
http://edge.org/response-detail/23838
re @20:
Reginald wrote:
Since I said matter didn’t exist until long after timespace existed, It seems I gotta follow through…
Even though matter can be transformed into energy, and vice verse, there was a time when energy was too ~~energetic~~ to settle down into atomic particles. Before particles existed, energy was never uniformly distributed, so time could be reckoned by the flow of the energy-density from place to place.
disclaimer: that story is the only rationality for time existing without matter, I can think of.
With respect to what group?
skylanetc @26 you could have warned me that it was a eugenics argument…..ugh I’d rather stick an icepick into my eye than expose my brain to that kinda drivel.
kantalope,
Not just an eugenics argument, but one also mired in ‘Yellow Peril!’ racism. I’m sure Geoffrey Miller’s evo psych colleagues have thoroughly raked him over the coals for that, right? Right?
@Sastra #7:
Consciousness is neither a synonym for mind nor an attribute thereof. The elephant in the room is still subjectivity: consciousness is that which is understanding these words right now. Not the eyes, nor the visual-processing faculties of the brain, nor the mind, but the end-user at the base of this chain.
@Sastra #14:
It’s a useful thought experiment to consider which is more important to you, your body-mind or consciousness. Imagine having to choose between losing your body-mind but retaining consciousness, or retaining your body-mind but losing consciousness. Surely a no-brainer.
skylanetc #26
Ooh, this is a good one:
So in 10 generations, China will have a population of 250 IQ point hypergeniuses! Be afraid, be very afraid!
(I wonder what the IQ of the article’s author is?)
Vijen:
Oh here we fucking go. Your definition is incoherent unless you are presupposing your ridiculous, unsupported worldview from the start. Even when you do, it is still pretty damn incoherent, actually.
i.e. the mind. Let’s try this: what do you think “mind” means? Because you consistently fail to define consciousness at least, maybe trying on the opposite end of the equation will end better.
“Hey, watch me just flat out assert that there is something that is bigger than my mind and present it as if it were an established fact”
What the fuck is a body-mind, you hack?
Vijen #31, Either provide links to third party scientific literature, or you may as well take your presuppositional fuckwittery on the road. You have nothing cogent to say on the subject that is backed up by real facts….And your opinion isn’t fact.
just a couple questions
how do the Chinese manage to tell from a fertilized zygote what it’s IQ will be to be able to tell which one to use so as to increase the IQ by 10 to 15 points over time
how do the consciousness of a stone, a dog or an elephant compare to human consciousness?
from my understanding of the term as used in the east it can be said to include those other consciousnesses as well.
uncle frogy
Well, you see, we killed body-mind dualism, but we still need to have dualism. So our now-united body-mind needs a new partner. Hence bodymind-consciousness dualism. Or perhaps bodymind-gazorninplat dualism.
Rey Fox: Sounds cromulent. But if I remember Vijen, he thinks everything is Consciousness all the way down anyway, so I don’t understand why he would invent that dualism when he supposedly believes in some form of ridiculous, incoherent monism anyway.
I think the one that needs exit stage left is “The Round Earth Theory!” By now we all know the Earth is flat as my sister. The “Round Earth” was foisted on us by globe makers to hype and sell their round maps.
Another suspect “law” is the “Elemental Triumvirate.” You know the one that says elements can be a gas or a liquid or a solid Ridiculous! I say they need to be one or the other or the other! Sounds too close to that father, son, holy ghost nonsense to me.
…buh?
Fairly sure Bob Merlin is attempting humour there, Azkyroth.
Merlin wrote:“Another suspect “law” is the “Elemental Triumvirate.” You know the one that says elements can be a gas or a liquid or a solid Ridiculous! “
News Flash !:!:!:
The Triumverate has been updated into the “Quadverate” == {Solid, Liquid, Gas, Plasma}
Yes, those scientists keep changing the rules and evrythin. They added that Plasma as the 4th state of elements. Those atheists scientists will do anythin to get away from association with that theistic Triumverate.
re me@41:
let me explain that ridiculositous comment. The phrase, “those scientists keep changing the rules and evrythin”, was inspired by The Infinite Monkey Cage, LIVE At NYU, last week. Part of the “discussion/performance” talked about how scientists keep changing Science all the time, unlike FAITH that keeps a single set of concepts FOREVER, regardless of whether it reflects reality or not. They then told us, “That’s the whole point of science: continual learning and exploration, always updating theories to fit the recently acquired data. TESTING theories, and discarding theories that don’t work so good anymore. That theories are intentionally mutable, especially as one theory postulates infinite universe, which yields …” …implications…
Don’t get me wrong!!! This is a GOOD thing about Science, and the illustration a feature I enjoyed about that show. I’m trying to write humorously, NOT trying to mock them in any way.
<disclaimer>not associated with IMC in any way. But if you’re near Chicago, go to their next show, which will be there. (Then SF, then LA)
I realized this. I also observed that the joke apparently had a mistaken premise whose mistakenness wasn’t the source of the humor.
If Rushkoff wants us to consider the possibility of his theories, all he has to do is compile and present some evidence of them. Oh, wait, he has none.
#31 Vijen The choice between consciousness & body-mind is only (repeat, only) a thought experiment because here is ultimately no way to test this, as any non-material subjectivity would not be available to science or any other human mechanism. However, through reading about neurology my sense is that we are inherently embodied beings whose subjectivity/personality can be fundamentally changed by brain injury. How do you think the “I” of consciousness interacts with the world & the brain it is housed in? This is a sincere question not a pisstake.