Cognitive stuff from a cognitive person. If you've got any requests, drop me an email. If it takes me a while to get to it, drop me another one.
Because some people seem to be misinterpreting what I was saying in the last post, and even arguing against it by suggesting that I should have taken the position that I did, in fact, take, let me summarize my points in a few sentences.
The main point is that because I don't feel like I can be objectively certain about things about which there is so much more that we don't know than that we do, and which are incredibly complex even in their simplest forms, like religion, truth and falsity seem like poor measures of belief in assigning respect to them or their holders. What's more important, then, is how people get to their beliefs, how they promote them and/or force them down people's throats, and most of all, how they act.
So, I'm not arguing that we should respect blatantly false beliefs like flat earth, because these are blatantly false, but in most cases (e.g., the basic tenets of most monotheistic religions), "blatantly false" is an entirely subjective judgment. It's better, then, to look at whether people believe them for honest, even if not carefully thought out reasons (most people don't carefully think out much of anything), and whether the beliefs lead them to act ethically. If people are honest about their beliefs, they treat them appropriately given the level of reflection with which they've arrived at them, and their beliefs lead them to act ethically, then I think their beliefs are worthy of respect, as are the belief holders themselves. In fact, for the most part I only care whether people behave ethically (i.e., consistent with my basic, immutable values), because otherwise, the truth or falsity of another person's beliefs won't affect me in any way.
Oh, and one more thing: I don't call "New Atheists" fundamentalists because they're loud, critical, or what have you. Then I'd just call them loud and critical. I call them fundamentalists because I think the content of their beliefs, and the ways in which that content causes them to behave, is analogous to religious fundamentalism in many ways. Of course, I've explained that many times before, but every time someone gets angry about me calling them fundamentalists, they say something to the effect that just because someone's loud and critical doesn't make them a fundamentalist. Well, let me reiterate: duh!
Comments
How about basing the amount of respect for another's belief system based on the evidence used to justify those beliefs, the reasoning behind them, and their logical consistency?
If someone worshiped a giant piece of candy corn and it made them the nicest person in the world that's not a valid reason to respect their belief. I would be relieved that their poorly-substantiated beliefs led to socially beneficial behavior, but there's no way in hell I'd respect those beliefs.
And what the heck to you mean about by looking at whether or not people believe things for "honest" reasons?
Posted by: Derek James | March 13, 2008 2:09 PM
Derek, you might try reading the discussion in the last post. At the moment, you're expressing exactly the view that I absolutely do not respect, and am, quite frankly, getting sick of engaging. For one, your own views on this matter have little if any relationship to "logical consistency" or reflexive reasoning.
By honest reasons, I mean reasons that don't involve self-deception or deceiving others. Think, for example, of many young earth creationists for self-deception, and Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor for deceiving others.
Posted by: Chris | March 13, 2008 2:16 PM
"I call them fundamentalists because I think the content of their beliefs, and the ways in which that content causes them to behave, is analogous to religious fundamentalism in many ways."
Can you clarify precisely what 'ways' those are? Because it seems to me that most people who make this charge (maybe you're an exception) are simply responding to one or more of the following features:
(1) New atheists believe that their opponents are objectively in error.
(2) They hold this belief with a high degree of confidence. (But not, I take it, dogmatically. Their confidence would be revised in face of contrary evidence, were such ever to appear.)
(3) They are outspoken in voicing their belief, and hope to persuade others to see the error of their ways.
None of these features warrants the term 'fundamentalist'. So I'm wondering what else you have in mind.
Posted by: Richard | March 13, 2008 2:26 PM
Richard, part of it's their religious adherence to science as the source of Truth. Part of it is their black-and-white thinking: you are either with them or against them, in essence, and in particular, all religions are ultimately the same on the only dimensions that matter, which is their irrationality. Part is the anti-intellectualism I keep talking about. Much like, say, fundamentalist Christians with atheism or Islam or science, they don't feel the need to actually research religion, because it's clear from their own position that religion is irrational and absurd. In fact, if you go back and read comments on this site or PZ's, you'll find many of them claiming that the scientific study of religion is pointless, because we already know that religion is just the product of irrational thinking. Yet, despite not feeling the need to study it, they have no problem writing entire books on its history, its logic, its psychology, and even its theology, much as creationists feel that modern biology is wrong for reasons make studying biology pointless, but still have no problem writing books about evolution without having actually researched it.
To summarize, then: "New Atheist" naive scientism/positivism:fundamentalist literalism;
"New Atheist" black-or-white thinking (overgeneralization, lumping all religion together):fundamentalist ideas about salvation and true believers;
"New Atheist" anti-intellectualism:fundamentalist anti-intellectualism.
When you combine these with zealous proselytizing, they look a lot like fundamentalist Christians to me.
Posted by: Chris | March 13, 2008 2:45 PM
Chris-
I've spent a lot of time attending gatherings of fundamentalist Christians and also a lot of time attending gatherings of atheists and secular humanists. There is simply no reasonable comparison between the two.
First, you compare “naive scientism” to fundamentalist literalism. I'm not sure what you mean by that former term. But whatever you mean by it, it is a specious comparison. New Atheists are saying that fact claims about the natural world need to be justified with reliable lines of evidence. Fundamentalists say the assertions in their holy books are the inerrant word of God and cannot be challenged without risking your eternal soul. You really see comparability there?
Next, even if New Atheists were systematically guilty of overgeneralization (a claim I do not concede), there would still be no comparison between what they say and fundamentalist views on salvation and true believers. There's a big difference between making simplistic arguments based on a failure to appreciate nuances and fine distinctions (again, I do not believe that New Atheists are generally guilty of this) and saying that anyone who does not think like us will spend an eternity in Hell. Even accepting your version of things this is a very weak comparison.
Your third point is also a gross mischaracterization of what New Atheists believe. I have no doubt you can find some irate commenters at PZ's site, but someone accusing others of overgenarlization should not be basing his opinions on such scant evidence. Daniel Dennett wrote a whole book endorsing the idea of studying religion scientifically. Dawkins praises such research in his book, and Harris calls for the scientific study of Eastern mysticism in the much maligned final chapter of his book. What they (especially Dawkins) deride is the importance of academic theology. They are quite right to do so, since such theology has little to do with the way religion is actually practiced.
But even if it were true that New Atheists deride the idea of studying religion scientifically, you would still have a very weak point of comparison. New Atheists routinely argue that an understanding of the world's major religions is an important part of being educated. Fundamentalists, by contrast, do not argue that a deep understanding of science or of humanist thought is important to being educated. You may feel they have not attained such an understanding themselves, but the fact remains that they are not being anti-intellectual in their approach to religion. Anti-intellectualism is when you are suspicious of people who think too much or who analyze things too deeply. That is precisely what Christian fundamentalists do. New Atheists do not do that.
As I recall you were one of those who got very annoyed with Richard Dawkins for using the expression “Neville Chamberlain atheists.” You forfeit your right to take the moral high ground on such things when you cavalierly throw around loaded terms like “fundamentalist.” Your last comment was itself a gross distortion and overgeneralization of New Atheist thought. Even taking your pairings at face value they amount to a very weak comparison between Christian fundamentalists and New Atheists.
Posted by: Jason Rosenhouse | March 13, 2008 3:41 PM
For one, your own views on this matter have little if any relationship to "logical consistency" or reflexive reasoning.
How so?
Posted by: Derek James | March 13, 2008 4:24 PM
Jason, on scientism. I mean a belief that science is the one route to Truth, with a capital T, and the belief that its standards are the only proper standards for assessing truth -- any truth, not just "natural truth" (though positivists these days are almost always physicalists, so it is the only type of truth, by faith). I do, in fact, think this is similar to fundamentalist literalism, because it is, in a sense, a literalist interpretation of science -- as the giver of absolute truth by its findings, and the only giver (if it's not in there, it's not true).
On overgeneralization: the overgeneralization is gross, it glosses over endless nuance (nuance that Myers, for example, believes does not exist, or is irrelevant at least), and makes it impossible to be rational (a true believer, say) unless one is an atheist. This looks just like the "true believer" status of fundamentalists to me.
And on the anti-intellectualism, there may be some "New Atheists" who believe that studying the world's religions, the history of religion, the psychology of religion, etc., are important, but there are just as many who explicitly deny that these are important, and people like Myers, Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens belie any claim to believe that it's important to study these things in their writings, which show a deep lack of intellectual engagement with them. Creationists often claim to have studied biology, but their writings make it clear they haven't. I see the behavior of "New Atheists" who claim that they have or that we should study religion, but then show no real effort to actually do so, while they continue to write on the topic, as a pretty close analog to the fundamentalist's treatment of biology.
Posted by: Chris | March 13, 2008 4:27 PM
Richard summarized the position of the New Atheists thusly:
Numbers 1 and 3 are true (though not necessarily respectable). Number 2 is not.
There is no possible evidence that any atheist would have to unambiguously interpret as proof of a divinity. If an apparition with all the seeming properties of a god appeared to Richard Dawkins, there are at least a handful of "rational" interpretations that he would run through before undergoing a Pauline conversion: e.g., that he was hallucinating, that he had been kidnapped or placed on a holodeck, or that he was being visited by powerful beings from the future.
How would he--or anyone--establish that the holodeck interpretation is more or less accurate than the theological interpretation? The only way to do so is to refer back to the observer's existing metaphysical or ontological inclination. The possibility of true certainty is not available in this case.
It's important to note that many modern cosmopolitan "believers" would probably also presume they were going mad before they presumed they were actually being visited by their deity.
It's simply fallacious to state that one can be open to factual evidence regarding one's metaphysical underpinnings. Dawkins, Harris, and especially Dennett, are learned men and should know better.
What makes them "fundamentalist" is that they believe there is only one valid way to understand the world and one's place in it. Assuming that everyone but oneself is mistaken, not about individual facts or theories but about unifying core beliefs, is the heart of fundamentalism.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | March 13, 2008 4:45 PM
When you mention "truth" other than "natural truth", what exactly are you referring to? I assume that you mean that there are truths which cannot be observed and quantified?
If the answer to that is "yes", that would also kind of answer my next question. What kind of facts can science not uncover? Science here referring to the process: observation, hypothesis, testing, revising hypothesis, and so on and so forth. How do we know anything without this process? Is it really fundamentalism to say: "I know things because I have evaluated the evidence for them" vs "I know things because of a gut feeling/they are written in a religious text"?
Posted by: Wisaakah | March 13, 2008 5:16 PM
Chris Schoen-
Richard Dawkins has praised the writing of William Paley, has said that he thinks Paley's argument was very strong at the time that he made it, and has claimed that it would have been very difficult to be an atheist at the time Paley was writing. Was Dawkins simply lying when he wrote that, or do you think maybe he is open to evidence on the question of God's existence?
Posted by: Jason Rosenhouse | March 13, 2008 5:46 PM
I have no idea what Dawkins believes could be reasonable evidence for God. My personal feeling is that questions like that are pretty poor since the typical state of affairs is that we don't know what would persuade us. Sometimes we do know, such as in scientific experiments. Even then though it seems like evidence that is persuasive to some isn't to others. (Look at the die hard hold outs on modern physics in the early 20th century) Often what makes something persuasive isn't necessarily rational. (Which is not to say it is irrational)
Having said that though I'm not sure the relevancy of Paley. Paley was writing in a time when science was fragmentary and rudimentary - especially with respect to biology. Given that Dawkins feels there is now evidence that makes delusions an especially big problem: evidence really not as strong at the time of Paley what could persuade Dawkins?
Let's say that 80% of scientists get visited by an angel and are convinced by this angel about God. Dawkins isn't one of them. Would he be convinced?
Posted by: Clark | March 13, 2008 6:05 PM
Wisaakah, do you believe that there are moral truths? What about aesthetic truths? Are these discoverable through scientific methods?
Posted by: Chris | March 13, 2008 6:12 PM
Chris,
Thanks for taking up this topic and this fight. As an long-time atheist horrified by the zeal of formerly religious friends who've fallen under the sway of the new atheists, especially Dawkins, I know exactly what you mean when you ascribe fundamentalist thinking to some of them. Fundamentalism, of course, is not limited to religion, but to anyone who believes they have access to Truth as opposed to truth.
I can't speak to those who have been commenting here and on the earlier post, but I've played devil's advocate against a few of my Dawkinite friends and they don't like--either refuse to understand or are unable to understand--the concept of necessary and contingent beings. Is the singularity from which the Big Bang emerged a necessary being? (Or as Chris Schoen put it in a comment to the earlier post "something from nothing" and "first causes.") As we currently can't scientifically observe anything outside our universe (and Quantum Mechanics suggests there's a whole lot of reality outside of our universe), science currently can't even come close to answering questions. As Chris Schoen wrote, questions like this drives a number of Dawkinite atheists nuts. Quite often, in my experience, they just refuse to acknowledge the issue as an issue. Generally speaking, those are atheists who are fundamentalist thinkers.
Posted by: John | March 13, 2008 6:14 PM
Jason,
No I don't think he was lying about that (though the man has had some problems with intellectual honesty in the last few years--e.g. he still maintains publicly the unsupportable falsehood that Mary Midgley reviewed TSG without reading it).
The comparison to Paley makes my point nicely. Dawkins imagines (though he can't know) that he might have been persuaded by Paley's Watchmaker argument at the turn of the 19th century. But this reflects very little on what he does and might believe today. The 1802 Dawkins would have to be a different person than our model, with different parents, different colleagues, in a different intellectual landscape.
Furthermore, Dawkins' main objection to the watchmaker argument would have been just as valid then as now: who designed the designer? In other words, Paley's work was effective for those already disposed to believe in God. For those who aren't, he is easily dismissed. (Note also that a devout Hindu of 1802 wouldn't have found the watchmaker analogy the least compelling, though he may have believed in a number of gods.)
Again I have to ask, what would be the smoking gun for evidence of god? I think any answer would be alternately explicable by madness, time travellers, and the like. Perhaps you can think of an experiment which would rule out these other possibilities, though it's hard to put a hypothetical through the scientific method.
The openness you refer to is not without limit. It can only stretch so far as one is disposed to apply it.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | March 13, 2008 6:18 PM
I suppose that depends on what you mean by a moral truth. Is there some kind of universal Moral Truth that comes from on high, that dictates what is wrong and right? I would say no - I see no evidence for any such moral force. Morality comes from people. I'm not saying that it's all relativistic - there are good and bad approaches to developing a moral code, both on an individual and societal level, and this is evaluated by the outcome. What is best for the individual and society as a whole? What is the best balance between these two "goods"? These are very real things that have very real consequences - morality is complex, but it is in no way ineffable. It is thus available for observation, and I think that, all of that together, meets your definition of a natural truth. I would say the same applies for aesthetics, but I won't belabor the point further.
I think that you perhaps have a more narrow view of what the scientific method is than I do: it is organized and thoughtful observation, which can be objectively (in the best case scenario) analyzed. In that sense, it really does apply to everything that we can observe in any way.
Posted by: Wisaakah | March 13, 2008 6:31 PM
Clark-
I also have no idea what Dawkins would consider to be persuasive evidence of God's existence, but that was not the question at issue. Chris Schoen said flatly that no evidence would persuade Dawkins that God exists. I showed that to be false, unless you believe Dawkins was lying when he wrote those nice things about Paley.
Chris-
If practitioners of scientism are people who think moral truths are among the things that can be discovered via science, then Richard Dawkins, for one, does not hold that view. In an essay for Free Inquiry a while back he said this unambiguously.
You gave a definition of scientism a few comments ago that described a view held, as far as I know, by precisely no one. Can you give a specific reference to either Dawkins, Dennett, Harris or Hitchens defending such a view?
And while we're at it, what do you mean by an aesthetic truth?
Posted by: Jason Rosenhouse | March 13, 2008 6:34 PM
Jason, I know Harris is not even a positivist, given his flirtation with new-age nonsense. Hitchens, I'm not sure, because his writings on religion are barely readable.
Dawkins, however, I'm all-too-familiar with. While it is true that he has stated that morality should not come from science, he hasn't given any evidence a.) that he believes there are moral truths, b.) that he has any other way of getting at them if they exist. Dawkins I would characterize as a rationalist or positivist (perhaps verificationist). His followers are, by and large, scientistic, and you would only have to go back through the comments to my posts to see people arguing with me over whether there is anything else other than the sorts of truths that science can discover. I believe Wisaakah is coming pretty close to doing that right now.
Wisaakah, the two things that I think science requires are quantification (or operationalization, which ultimately amounts to the same thing) and observation. Without those two things, or at least the possibility of them, what you have is not science. Ultimately, what lies outside of the realm of science is not only that which can't be quantified and observed, but that which doesn't fit a scientific model of causal relationships (or systematic relationships, as in some physics). There's actually a fair amount of discussion of this sort of thing in 20th century philosophy. See, for example, this book, or for a historical look at the sort of scientism/positivism I'm talking about, check out this book.
I actually think there are all sorts of truths, everyday truths and grand ones, that science has nothing to say about, but that's just me.
Posted by: Chris | March 13, 2008 6:48 PM
Chris Schoen-
Sorry, I hadn't noticed your comment when I posted my last one.
There is no discussion here about a hypothetical Dawkins of 1802. I'm talking about Dawkins of today. By praising Paley he has shown that he is open to the idea of revising his assessment of the likelihood of God's existence in the face of evidence from nature. Since you agree that Dawkins was not lying when he wrote this, I don't see how you can persist in saying that Richard said something that was false when he wrote:
Notice, incidentally, that Richard was not talking about logical certainty, or Pauline conversions or anything silly like that. He was talking about a level of confidence based on the evidence at hand.
You are simply mistaken when you say that Dawkins' main objection to the watchmaker argument is to ask “Who designed the designer?” In reality his main response to the watchmaker argument is that Darwin and others brought to light certain facts about nature that were unknown to Paley, and which showed that the facts Plaey pointed to could be explained without recourse to a supernatural designer. Prior to Darwin, sure, any sensible person would wonder who designed the designer. But that would not change the fact that complex organisms were here, had to have come from somewhere, and were so far beyond what people thought natural forces could explain that supernatural design would have seemed (and in fact did seem) to most people to be the most reasonable explanation.
The who designed the designer question serves an entirely different function in Dawkins' argument, but I won't go into that here.
Posted by: Jason Rosenhouse | March 13, 2008 6:58 PM
Jason - I think you missed my point. Dawkins seems to be setting up the situation where what is rational is situationally dependent but does so in a fashion that given his situation one can't conceive of a way he could be convinced. Therefore we end up with a position where the Paley analogy is irrelevant.
Ultimately my point is to suggest that questions of persuasion are much more about psychology than reason. I suspect nothing would convince Dawkins as well. But given my limited knowledge of the man it's hard for me to make that assertion with much confidence.
Posted by: Clark | March 13, 2008 7:22 PM
To clarify, given your last comment. It's easy to speak in the abstract of being open to nature convincing one. However in a more practical way if ones stance is such that one doesn't expect such evidence and has extensive tools to be able to deny such evidence it seems at best lip service.
Basically everyone says they are open to evidence. The question is whether in reality they are. That's why I bring up the issue of psychology. Even if we can, via Dawkins stances, show that it's unlikely he'd accept evidence, it's irrelevant. That's because Dawkins, like all of us, isn't perfectly rational. Persuasion is often not a matter of reasons.
Posted by: Clark | March 13, 2008 7:26 PM
Clark-
No! Not everyone says that and that is precisely the point. Christian fundamentalists do not generally claim to be open to evidence when the subject is “the fundamentals” of the faith. They say that such things are beyond question and that if some piece of evidence seems to contradict one of these essential points then you have in some way misapprehended the evidence. Richard Dawkins and the others do not say this, and that is one of the reasons it is so absurd to describe them as fundamentalists.
And you're talking through your hat in your speculations about Richard Dawkins' psychology. I have no doubt that Dawkins thinks it's unlikely that we will find new evidence of God's existence, and that if any such evidence does appear his first reaction will be to look for a natural explanation for it. That makes him a fundamentalist? That implies that as a practical matter he is not open to evidence on the question of God's existence?
Posted by: Jason Rosenhouse | March 13, 2008 8:00 PM
Clark-
Sorry, one more point. You wrote:
Chris Schoen was not as reticent as you. He said flatly that it was false to say that Dawkins would change his level of confidence in atheism based on new evidence.
Posted by: Jason Rosenhouse | March 13, 2008 8:08 PM
Jason,
I posited an 1802 Dawkins for 2 reasons: (a)That's the implication of his own statements on Paley: that he would have found him persuasive if he'd been his contemporary; and (b) if your position refers to modern-day Dawkins it makes no sense.
Paley is one man, making one argument, 200 years in the past. How does Dawkins' praise of him make him open to evidence for god? He unambiguously rejects Paley's argument. Where are you locating this "openness"?
The larger point is of course there can be no "evidence" for god. Evidence is not analyzed in isolation, but in terms of pre-exisiting organizing ideas. Religious people have different organizing worldviews than non-religious people (there's substantial overlap, but the differences are enough to matter.) Looking for god within the existing atomist-materialist causal model of the universe that science is founded upon is like looking for a spot of darkness with a flashlight. It's a search misguided by at least one order of magnitude.
I'm sure you're aware of Wittgenstein's remark about "what the world would look like if it looked like the earth was circling the sun." The same principle applies here. What would the world look like if it looked like there was a god?
Posted by: Chris Schoen, old atheist | March 13, 2008 8:21 PM
Chris Schoen-
Oh for heavens sake! Suppose evolution as we know it came crashing down in the light of some shocking new discovery. Not just Darwinian evolution but any naturalistic theory of evolution any one has ever dreamed of. Are you seriously claiming that if that happened Dawkins' confidence in his atheism would not be diminished?
His praise for Paley shows that he is open to the idea of looking at nature and concluding based on what he sees there that it is likely that God exists. He does not dismiss Paley out of hand or call him a fool or say the whole idea of finding evidence for God is absurd on its face. He says Paley took the best facts that were available to him and came to the most reasonable conclusion he could. I call that being open to evidence. That subsequent discoveries showed that Paley was not in possession of all the relevant facts does not reflect badly on Dawkins' open-mindedness.
The fact is you can't point to anything in Dawkins' writing or public statements to justify your assertion that he is unwilling to revise his level of confidence in atheism in the light of new evidence. In fact, his writing provides considerable evidence that he sees atheism not as some position that simply must be true but rather as the most reasonable conclusion to draw from the facts of nature as we currently understand them. You and Clark have been reduced to arguing based on a lot of silly psychologizing about how you think Dawkins would react to some hypothesized future event or discovery. This is pretty thin gruel for pinning a label of fundamentalist on him.
Posted by: Jason Rosenhouse | March 13, 2008 9:23 PM
Jason,
Let's back up a minute. I never linked atheism to Darwinism, or asserted that theists must take issue with evolution (some do, some don't.)
I agree with you that Dawkins sees atheism as "the most reasonable conclusion to draw from the facts of nature as we currently understand them." My question is, what is the nature of any potential evidence that might change his mind? Challenges to neo-Darwinism don't really apply; there are a growing number of plausible amendments and appendices to natural selection and gene-centric theory that have no recourse to anything divine, as I'm sure you are aware. If Dawkins were somehow forced to backtrack on his biological precepts (hard to imagine) there are any number of non-theistic avenues for him to embrace. So this whole evolutionary line of argument is a nonsequitur.
What continues to make no sense is the idea that praising Paley for what is praiseworthy in his writing is somehow tantamount to being "open" to his argument on a theological level. Dawkins doesn't call Paley a fool, because Paley wrote before Darwin published his theory of natural selection. If there was a hypothetical Paley writing at any time after 1859, it is very reasonable to presume Dawkins *would* call him a fool, as he essentially has for more recent arguments from design. Dawkins is very unambiguous about this point, writing, in TSG, that any non-Darwinian ontological propositions after 1859 are meaningless. So, again, on what statements do you rest this idea of "openness"?
You have not engaged my argument about the nature of how we interpret data. I don't mean to psychologize; the examples I gave are hypothetical and Richard Dawkins is free to respond to an apparent divine encounter however he chooses. In fact that's exactly the point. I don't want to overwrite the Dawkinsian experience with one that I prefer he might have. Why does he want to demean and ridicule an entire class of experiences, many of which are not in conflict with the naturalist view, by insisting that they are delusional? What does he know that religious adherents don't know about their own experience and the way they contextualize their place in the world? I mean know, not suspect, not probabilistically predict, but really know, to the degree of certainty with which one might be justified in essentially calling the greater portion of the world's population a bunch of rubes and suckers?
Posted by: Chris Schoen | March 13, 2008 11:22 PM
Umm. My point was I don't have a clue about Dawkins' psychology and thus can't say anything with any confidence whatsoever. That was the whole point of my comment.
My point is that these are merely words: whether uttered by the fundamentalist denying they accept evidence or the atheist who says they do. Whether they do or not is really a completely separate issue of whether they would or not. That's my whole point.
By taking the fundamentalist and Dawkins at face value you're demonstrating the exact problem I see.
Umm. I think you're confusing me with someone else. I never called him a fundamentalist. I never use the term as I think it's one of those terms that ends up being so vague, muddled and pejorative that it's useless. (Sort of like postmodernist) I only use the term occasionally in a very loose sense when talking about certain communities.
While I understand the point Chris is making I tend to think zealotry rather than fundamentalism is a much better term. I'd probably say a combination of zealous zeal and identity politics.
Posted by: Clark | March 14, 2008 12:28 AM
Whoops. Typo in that last comment. In case someone didn't figure it out.
"Whether they do or not is really a completely separate issue of whether they would or not."
That should read, "whether they they actually do or not is really a completely separate issue from whether they say they would or not."
Perils of writing fast.
Posted by: Clark | March 14, 2008 1:26 PM
Chris Schoen-
Let me remind you of how we got to where we are. Richard wrote this:
You replied with this:
You followed this up by referring to Dawkins specifically. That sure looks like a clear statement on your part that Dawkins is dogmatic in his atheism, and would not revise his confidence in atheism regardless of what evidence came to light.
I replied to this by pointing out that Dawkins has strongly implied, in his writing, what sort of evidence would shake his confidence in atheism. He did that by praising Paley's argument as entirely reasonable and based on the best science of his day. Our modern situation differs relevantly from Paley's only in that we have a viable naturalistic theory of evolution and he did not. The crystal clear implication is that if all modern naturalistic theories of evolution came crashing down as the result of some shocking new discovery, then Dawkins would revise his confidence in atheism. (Incidentally, notice that in my last comment I did not just refer to Neo-Darwinism, but to all naturalistic theories of evolution).
It is not difficult to imagine discoveries that would have that effect. Suppose over the next year scientists discovered dozens of new species and found that their genetic codes were entirely different from one another, and entirely different from the codes found in any other known organisms. People have proposed a great many naturalistic accounts of evolution, but I am not aware of any that could explain such a finding.
You agreed that Dawkins was not lying when he wrote praisingly of Paley. This writing strongly implied a concrete example of the sort of evidence that cause him to revise his confidence. How then can you persist in your claim that Dawkins holds his views dogmatically, and would not revise them no matter what happened?
That is the issue here. Your other points about what would constitute evidence for God or how religious people contextualize their experiences or why Dawkins feels he can write with such confidence against the views of so many people are fascinating topics for another day. They have nothing to do with whether Richard Dawkins is dogmatic in his atheism or whether there is any conceivable evidence that would cause him to revise his views.
In other words, for the moment I am not interested in a philosophical discussion on the nature of religious experience or the possibility of evidence for or against God. I am interested in having you defend a specific and demeaning statement you made about Richard Dawkins, one that is directly contradicted by Dawkins own writing.
Posted by: Jason Rosenhouse | March 14, 2008 6:16 PM
Clark-
I am pleased to hear that you do not think Richard Dawkins should be described as a fundamentalist. I had simply assumed that you were supporting Chris' position on that question, so I apologize for misunderstanding your intention.
But I still disagree with your last comment:
See my earlier comment re silly psychologizing. Yes, I tend to take people at their word when they tell me why they believe what they believe, and what sorts of things if any would change their minds. What else can I do? What other basis can there be for a discussion of these issues?
But let's suppose you are right that Richard Dawkins on the one hand and fundamentalist Christians on the other are fooling themselves about their treatment of evidence. We would nonetheless be learning something significant about what they value from the claims they make in this regard. Dawkins thinks open-mindedness and a consideration of evidence are very important in forming opinions, especially about the natural world. Perhaps he is not as open-minded as he thinks he is but that is not relevant. Fundamentalists believe an unswerving faith in certain fundamental principles, drawn from their reading of the Bible, is critically important. That is a clear difference between Dawkins (and New Atheists generally) and Christian fundamentalists.
As for the word `fundamentalist,' I certainly agree it gets thrown around entirely too casually. See Chris' rather insipid use of the term, for example. But in the context of Christianity it has a precise meaning, and it has reasonably been applied to certain unsavory modes of thinking and behaving that are common among people of such unserving faith. Zealotry is not really an adequate substitute term. You can be zealous in the pursuit of some goal without being dogmatic or intolerant or anti-intellectual, three traits typically encompassed by the term fundamentalist.
Zealotry is not necessarily a bad thing while fundamentalism is.
Posted by: Jason Rosenhouse | March 14, 2008 6:47 PM
Jason,
I have no wish to paper over my opinion of Richard Dawkins as dogmatic. It's no great sin in the scheme of things, and he is in the good company of most of humanity.
It is going to be difficult for me to answer your request that I defend this opinion to your satisfaction, because I still don't understand the point you are trying to make vis a vis Paley. Walking through it:
1. Richard writes that the New Atheists in general are open to scientific evidence, were there any, affecting the confidence of their atheist stance.
2. I reply that it is hard to suggest what that evidence might be, using Dawkins as a rhetorical example (which seems fair enough because he has claimed on several occasions that he is open to dissenting evidence on the matter). I don't claim to know how he would actually respond to, say, a burning bush; the point is to answer the logic of what sort of evidence might really make a difference, ceteris paribus. It is by necessity a philosophical point, since it involves separating truth claims from the metaphysical scaffolding which supports those claims.
3. You reply that Dawkins praised the rhetorical argument of William Paley, made 200 years ago, though you note that Dawkins doesn't actually accept the argument, he just praises it. It is obvious then that Dawkins is considering Paley in the context of his time, and that as such he hardly constitutes a challenge to all of the thinking and observing that has happened between Paley's time and our own. How could he?
4. I reply that Dawkins' putative "openness" to Paley is a non-sequitur, chiefly because a rhetorical argument is not evidence, but rather an appeal to consider existing data in a specific way. There are no observational facts in Paley's argument that would be at odds with post-Darwinian science, and the argument is not hard to refute, given the right cast of mind, even without taking Darwin into account.
That brings us up to the present I think.
You have now suggested that if all naturalist theories of evolution were toppled--for example by the discovery of species with different nucleotide bases or differently constructed genetic codes altogether--that Dawkins would be forced to revise his confidence in atheism. This does not follow, for the reason that it presumes that there is some kind of inviolable logical link between our present biological science and atheism. There's a lot of common ground, to be sure, but neither requires the other to be plausible. There were atheist doctrines long before Darwin, and likewise there are millions of people who find no logical contradiction between theism and evolution.
By the same token, there's no reason to conclude, upon the discovery of strange new life forms: "therefore God." If you would be tempted to draw such a conclusion, I'd be tempted to tell you that you give up too easily!
The point, again, is that it is easy to say that the right evidence would change your mind about something as profound as atheism vs. theism. In reality the way we form our understanding of the world is more complicated. That understanding is composed not just of facts, but also of deeper premises about the nature of things. You don't want to engage that, which is your prerogative, but it's my answer to your request that I defend my remarks about Richard Dawkins, whom I've read widely, and which I consequently do not take lightly.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | March 14, 2008 8:24 PM
Please throw us a hard one: a holodeck is just advanced technology. You don't have to screw with natural reality to postulate one.
I studied fundamentalism in church history class in college. It was a specific movement in Christianity that was started to respond to "modernism" and the "social gospel", which in that context meant the textual reinterpretation of Christianity for modern times. ("Modern times" being about 1880 to 1920) Fundamentalists sought to re-establish certain "fundamentals" and to close off debate about them. The slogan was "God says it, I believe it, that settles it." God, of course, spoke perfect King James English.
So I thought I knew what a fundamentalist was, but it was just an historical abstraction. All the Christians I personally knew were sweet, tolerant, reasonable people who believed in evolution and wanted socialized medicine and an end to war.
Then came two eye-opening encounters; Pharyngula followed by some real Christian fundamentalists.
I was taken aback by the Myers camp's stridency and it didn't make sense to me. I left a few comments to the effect that they were shooting themselves in the foot, and was promptly called a hypocrite and told to bugger off.
Wow... those guys are jerks, I thought. Then I began to encounter some of the extraordinarily stupid, Ray Comfort variety of fundamentalist, and began to see the Myers approach in a new light. Sheesh, I thought, if I had to put up with that corrosive sludge all day, I'd have a short temper too.
On a superficial level the fundamentalists and the Pharyngulites sort of sound alike, and that may be why the label is so often applied to the latter. But unless the fundamentalists are hiding a vast body of solid empirical evidence somewhere (perhaps waiting for the right time to release it) then it isn't the same thing at all.
Posted by: decrepitoldfool | March 14, 2008 10:19 PM
I've decided there is a God, and this thread is Hell.
Posted by: Dan S. | March 14, 2008 11:07 PM
" In fact, if you go back and read comments on this site or PZ's, you'll find many of them claiming that the scientific study of religion is pointless"
This has gone back and forth a bit, so - unless you're implicitly retracting it with the claim that well, it's obvious that many New Atheists haven't bothered to scientifically study it, so there! - perhaps you could:
a) cite - ideally, quote or link - one such comment,
b) do so with three such comments,
c) identify some such remark by any New Atheist with an intentional, rather than incidental, audience.
------
"I actually think there are all sorts of truths, everyday truths and grand ones, that science has nothing to say about, but that's just me."
OK. Can you expand on this? And why does science have nothing to say about it then? And how would you define or describe moral and aesthetic truths?
I dimly think there's a bit of an odd issue here: we can say, ok, science can potentially explain how and why we have a moral or aesthetic 'sense', and how and why we judge specific things moral/immoral or pretty/ugly - but it can't ever say that something is moral or beautiful. But since I believe that such things don't make sense outside the moral and aesthetic senses potentially explainable, it gets a bit loopy.
Posted by: Dan S. | March 14, 2008 11:48 PM
I think a useful way to regard science is as a group of interconnected models, developed through reason and experimentation, that represent our current best approximation of, and can be used to predict and explain, natural phenomena in the universe we inhabit. Predicting and explaining natural phenomena has enabled mankind to control the natural world to a degree which has led to great success for the species so far. Science can thus inform our understanding of the world enormously, and what we understand about the world around us influences how we live our lives.
As far as I know there are virtually no generally accepted scientific models that have helped us develop improved moral codes, whereas religions based on belief in supernatural beings that have influence in the everyday world are models that an individual can use to understand how to live ones life in the moral dimension. However just because science cannot generally help us to make moral decisions, that doesn't mean that an appreciation of modern scientific understanding of the world cannot inform the creation of non religious moral codes, or that secular moral codes are necessarily worse (or better) than those informed by religion.
I concede that, as an individual whose understanding of the universe is based on science and whose moral code is based on simple principles developed without recourse to religious doctrine, I do find it difficult to imagine any evidence obtainable in the course of my life that would convince me of the existence of the supernatural beings described in any of the religious traditions.
There is of course one final test which will prove the issue one way or another to everyone's satisfaction eventually ie death. If I die and find myself before one or another of the gods of judgment I will freely concede to being mistaken and may face grave consequences as a result of my atheistic world view (The annoying thing of course is, if I'm right I'll never know!).
As it's a chance I'm betting my immortal soul on, why not simply take Pascals wager? One reason only, which is ironically based on the very morality I've developed without recourse to belief in the supernatural: intellectual honesty. If I stated to all I believed, in order to hedge my bets and stand side by side with the smug believers, I'd be lying to them and myself.
Does this mean I am as much a fundamentalist as one of the muslim or xtian variety?
I don't think so, given that my world view is arrived at in accordance with modern scientific understanding, and is therefore constantly updated as new evidence comes to light, but I have to admit that I may have something in common with those that genuinely believe.
I reckon the evidence is on my side though.
Posted by: jo5ef | March 15, 2008 1:11 AM
Chris's claim that the "New" Atheists aren't open to data, to revising their atheism, is silly. We atheists could come up with a long list of evidence that would make us seriously revise our take on things. I don't know any atheist who wouldn't crawl away to think for a week if there were miracles on a massive scale, people coming back from the dead all over the world, all independently giving similar stories about an afterlife, some good some bad. If that happened, there would be few naturalists left, and those that were left...well, now they would be the fundamentalists.
As a side comment, while I generally agree with jo5ef's last comment, I think he underestimates the power of psychology in helping us develop techniques for living a better life. E.g., there are lots of studies on the psychology of self-control, on what techniques tend to work for people (for instance, if you want to not eat that piece of pie, imagine yourself eating something that you like even more than pie: for some reason, this just works). So given a goal (e.g., to not eat the pie), science can help.
The problem is that science can't tell us what goals to have (at least the more general goals, of course given the goal of building a plane, subordinate goals can be generated with the help of science--e.g., the goal of building an engine with such-and-such weight and power).
Luckily many major moral disagreements come about due to disagreement on matters of fact. E.g., is a two-hour fertilized egg a person? Others are just not (e.g., should the US try to impose democracy, feminism (i.e., the idea that women are equal to men and should have the same rights), on other countries)? That's where things get tricky.
Posted by: Eric Thomson | March 15, 2008 2:59 AM
Then how do you explain people like Glenn Morton and others who have abandoned creationism because of factual evidence? Or do you not consider YEC a metaphysical stance?
(Morton, of course, was not initially open to evidence, but it seems a mistake to assume that everyone's metaphysical views are as closed to evidence as his were)
Posted by: windy | March 15, 2008 6:51 AM
Chris, you said "...do you believe that there are moral truths? What about aesthetic truths? Are these discoverable through scientific methods?"
Can you give us some examples of moral and aesthetic truths?
Thanks.
Posted by: MH | March 15, 2008 8:53 AM
So someone that doesn't believe in moral truths is a fundamentalist? :)
Both links point to the same book.
Posted by: windy | March 15, 2008 9:11 AM
I should add, I'm not necessarily opposed to the ideas of independent 'non-scientific' truths (frankly, most of this is rather above my head), but I think this whole debate suffers from - among other things - a serious case of failing to define terms up to and including religion.
I do agree that many NAs show what seems to be a rather stunted and tone deaf way of looking at religious practices - in part, no doubt, because they're making an argument against religion - although one also has to add that many theists share a somewhat similarly cramped view, not just about every other religion, but also their own. And I've noted before that one tends to find a very different view among (although certainly not exclusively, of course) those 'academic atheists' with a background in the social sciences: it's no coincidence that Atran, Boyer, and King are all anthropologists, nor that while Dawkins and Dennett &tc. certainly do engage with their work, that the two groups tend to line up on different sides of some of this silliness. (at least Atran and King, dunno about Boyer). Probably cognitive persons also tend to clump here.
Posted by: Dan S. | March 15, 2008 9:41 AM
I think razib gives a good gloss and extension of Chris' argument and his own ideas (re: the 'respect' post) here.
Posted by: Dan S. | March 15, 2008 9:53 AM
"do you believe that there are moral truths?"
Depends on what you mean. I certainly don't think that morals exist as abstractions out in the either, but rather are ways of allowing us to work together as social animals.
"What about aesthetic truths?"
As other commenters have pointed out, it is hard to understand what you even mean by that.
Posted by: J. J. Ramsey | March 15, 2008 10:07 AM
Example of an aesthetic truth: "My six-year-old could have painted that."
Posted by: Chris Schoen | March 15, 2008 10:14 AM
Decrepit, I think you are misconstruing me here. If you read my original comment, in response to Richard, I was using a holodeck as an example of a "rational" explanation for deeply weird phenomena, so that one need not resort to supernatural ones. The point being, what sort of evidence could we suggest that might undermine one's confidence in atheism? Most seemingly supernatural data could be easily attributed to more natural causes--"an undigested bit of beef."
Having said all that, I have serious doubts that a convincingly realistic holodeck could be developed, for reasons that are too involved to go into here.
Posted by: Chris Schoen | March 15, 2008 10:56 AM
OK I see what you're getting at - the clarification of 'undigested beef' helps.
My own bias toward naturalism (that eventually led me to atheism) is admittedly anecdotal. That is, not once have I ever seen a violation of natural law. The few weird things I've seen did turn out to have naturalistic explanations and were, in principle, reproducible. So my own threshold for evidence of the supernatural is extremely high.
I also find it curious that the bible is stuffed full of supernatural events, suggesting that the frequency of such events dropped off drastically around the time of the enlightenment.
In that frame I'd have to say there are no sensory experiences that would lead me to believe in the supernatural, because convincing perceptual delusions are, in principle, reproducible and many people have them. Religion had its chance to convince me, and didn't.
I am, however, open to suggestions as to what sort of evidence would outweigh every single thing I have ever seen and known.
Posted by: decrepitoldfool | March 15, 2008 11:17 AM
Windy wrote:
Windy, I didn't mean people can't change their minds. Obviously they can and do. I'm trying to establish that the complexity of mind-changing is more than suggested by the hypothesis-evidence model, which was never intended to apply to frames of mind.
Cognitively, one's world-view precedes the hypothesis-making process, which is then (ideally) evaluated according to evidence. In other words, hypotheses are re-arrangements of existing concepts, both conscious and unconscious. Evidence can validate or invalidate those rearrangements, but not the underlying concepts (for one thing, if those concepts were evaluable by evidence, we would run into a regress).
The question that arises is, why do people change their minds about things based on something other than evidence? Why do people cross the atheism-theism divide, and back again? It's a good question, and I don't have a well developed answer, but it's probably instructive to look at the way we change our minds about what music and books we like, who our friends are, what our ideals and politics are, and the like. Observation and factual data play a role, to be sure, but we don't embark on new tastes, preferences, and opinions based on the hypothesis that they have evidentiary support.
The case of Morton is interesting. He has developed the term "Morton's Demon" (a play on Maxwell's Demon) to describe the mentality that enabled him to maintain his YEC worldview for so long. In a crude way, he is describing metaphysics, except that this mechanism is not actually a demon one can exorcise; rather it's a necessary function of symbolic understanding. Data must be filtered and interpreted to be useful. It should be obvious that that same data cannot inform the filtering and interpreting processes, which precede its integration into our thinking!
Posted by: Chris Schoen | March 15, 2008 11:35 AM
decrepitoldfool: Above I gave an example of what would give any but the most stupid atheist pause. If gross undeniable miracles happened regularly any reasonable person would become a non-naturalist. The problem for the theism is that such things don't happen. Ever.
Careful. Some people come off as saying no evidence can convince them their atheism is wrong. If that's the case, then you might as well be a Creationist and we are as different as you think you are from the Creationist.
As mentioned above, multiple people came back from the dead, independently giving similar messages about an afterlife, it was reported by all the major news outlets, I met dead relatives, etc etc and I had every reason to think I wasn't dreaming or deluded, I would be stupid to not seriously reconsider naturalism. You could say "I might be dreaming or delusional": fine, you could say that now, but you have reason to think it isn't true. There are ways you could check that. That's a philosophers' quibble, not a good point.
I am a naturalist because the evidence suggests that's what I should be. If the evidence changed, I would happily concede I was wrong.
Posted by: Eric Thomson | March 15, 2008 1:32 PM
Third para of previous should say if multiple people came back from the dead etc...
Posted by: Eric Thomson | March 15, 2008 1:33 PM
I'm probably one of them, when what I really mean is not that there's no conceivable evidence that would change my mind, but that I have difficulty conceiving what it might be. The consistency of the natural world has been absolute so far, so if I suddenly started seeing multiple instances of dead people coming back, it would be simpler for me to think that I'd lost my mind than to think that absolutely everything had changed. That one man's brain suddenly went haywire violates none of the consistency I've observed in the past.
It does come down to what one might accept as evidence; theists I know accept everything around them and everything they've ever experienced as evidence of not only god, but their God. The difference as I understand it is that my standards of evidence are transferable: I can in principle describe experiments to reproduce it. I don't know how to transfer feelings, gut instincts, and interpretations.
Posted by: decrepitoldfool | March 15, 2008 3:44 PM
Dan S wrote
"Truth" is getting a workout here, too, with at least three different senses going.Chris wrote
I suspect (but have not thought it all the way through) that Chris just established that "truth" is idiosyncratic to individuals, with no universals or shared basis for agreement among those individuals; that evidence is irrelevant to evaluating basic assumptions (what Chris calls "underlying concepts"); and that no learning associated with those "underlying concepts" is possible. In other words, I think the last sentence in that quotation is pure pomo bullshit.Posted by: RBH | March 15, 2008 3:58 PM
Windy, oops, sorry, the second link should be to Whitehead's Science and the Modern World.
Dan, check the comments to my last post on religious cognition, which is here, and you'll find just such comments. And if you go back to any of my posts on the topic in the last year or so, you'll find more.
Moral truth: harming innocent human beings is wrong. I know "innocent" and even "harm" and "human being" are contentious concepts, but you get the point.
By aesthetic truth, I mean a truth disclosed through art. If you want an example, read a poem or look at a sculpture. We can debate over whether aesthetic truths are specifically aesthetic, but if a poem can disclose a truth, then science is not the only truth-giver.
But, for those of you who doubt that we're dealing with people who are, deep down, scientistic, just read the comments questioning what possible sort of truth can't be discovered by science. Those are the people I'm talking about.
Posted by: Chris | March 15, 2008 4:04 PM
decrepit: there are two issues. Let's say you the scenario I describe did in fact happen. Would that make you doubt your atheism? If not, then you are no more intellectually respectable than a fundamentalist who clings to his little seven day creation despite all the evidence to the contrary.
Now, the previous paragraph is different from the question of whether, if it actually happened, you would trust yourself to believe the data. Of course most atheists at first would think they were dreaming, that they were hallucinating or something. Over time, multiple days, as you checked the internet and realized everything else was working just fine, and especially as many independent people corroborated your perceptions, psychiatrists, other skeptics, people you respect sa