…and this is a 
Blithering spiritualists
Category: Godlessness
Posted on: April 13, 2006 5:57 PM, by PZ Myers
Palazzo has put me in a pissy mood, now. He's mentioned those pompous god-botherers at the Templeton Foundation, who awarded 1.4 million dollars to that credulous gasbag, John Barrow.
When Selfish Gene author Richard Dawkins challenged physicist John Barrow on his formulation of the constants of nature at last summer's Templeton-Cambridge Journalism Fellowship lectures, Barrow laughed and said, "You have a problem with these ideas, Richard, because you're not really a scientist. You're a biologist."
For Barrow, biology is little more than a branch of natural history. "Biologists have a limited, intuitive understanding of complexity. They're stuck with an inherited conflict from the 19th century, and are only interested in outcomes, in what wins out over others," he adds. "But outcomes tell you almost nothing about the laws that govern the universe." For physicists it is the laws of nature themselves that capture and structure the universe--and put brakes on it as well.
Yeah, and some physicists are little more than glorified numerologists.
Barrow's schtick is to go on and on about how fine-tuned the universe is, with every constant dead on exactly what it must be for life as we know it to exist. For this vacuous nonsense, the Templeton Foundation drops a million bucks on him. I think the Templeton should have just given all their money to Douglas Adams, for his elegant refutation of whole simple-minded game.
…imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'
That idea was worth a prize, and it was expressed far more clearly than the fuzzy excuses for superstition offered by a pretentious physicist.
Similarly aggravating are the babblings of progressive, left-wing Rabbi Michael Lerner. He's trying to understand why some on the left are hostile to religion; he speculates that it's a reaction to the use of religion to justify oppression (but rejects that because there are totalitarian regimes that do not support religion), or personal experience with oppressive religious communities (but also rejects that because, as we know, many progressive leaders were also religious). By an inadequate process of elimination, he comes to his conclusion.
So I am led to the conclusion that the main reason that underlies the left's deep skepticism about religion is its members' strong faith in a different kind of belief system. Even though many people on the left think of themselves as merely trying to hold on to a rational consciousness and resist the emotionalism that can contribute to fascistic movements, it's not true that the left is without belief. The left is captivated by a belief that has been called scientism.
Umm, no…what a lack of imagination. He's so steeped in his faith that he is unable to comprehend that people might lack it, so he invents one, and claims we're believers in it. It's pathetic.
Here's a simpler explanation: many of us find his ancient tribal superstitions foolish, contradictory, irrelevant, and, well, stupid. We aren't rejecting them because we have leapt onto some other bandwagon for the credulous, but because we don't find him, or Jerry Falwell, or JZ Knight, or LDS President Thomas Monson, or Elizabeth Clare Prophet, or any of the endless chain of religious charlatans who have claimed divine insight, to be at all credible.
Scientism thus extends far beyond an understanding and appreciation of the role of science in society. It has become the religion of the secular consciousness. Why do I say it's a religion? Because it is a belief system that has no more scientific foundation than any other belief system. The view that that which is real and knowable is that which can be empirically verified or measured is a view that itself cannot be empirically measured or verified and thus by its own criterion is unreal or unknowable. It is a religious belief system with powerful adherents. Spiritual progressives therefore insist on the importance of distinguishing between our strong support for science and our opposition to scientism.
Look. If I let go of a bowling ball, it falls down. If I pick it up and let go again, it falls down. It's not a matter of "belief", it's an empirical matter that we can repeat over and over and we find that we get the same result. It's purely pragmatic. I don't have to possess any kind of belief in much of anything to find that F=G•m1•m2/d2 nicely describes the force between two masses, and science is accepted as a matter of testable utility (and if a scientific claim fails to be useful, it gets abandoned relatively readily). We get used to the fact that science is specific and testable and accomplishes things, and we get spoiled.
So when religion makes claims, such as that chopping bits of a baby's penis off marks them as 'special' to god, or that there is one deity who is actually three and one part of him got killed but came back to life, you have to recognize that those kinds of things just don't meet our standards anymore. It's not a matter of having adopted silly new dogmas that displace the old ones…it's that those ideas are absurd. They're untestable. They have no point. And when religious people say inane things like this,
As a scientist, Barrow has some useful advice for religious believers: "Don't be cowed because religious images are often naive or simple. They are merely a shadow of something far more sophisticated. And, as in science, as more knowledge accumulates, old ideas often turn out to be part of the deeper truth that eventually emerges."
We see right through them. There's nothing sophisticated about theology, except in the sense that they've managed to make astounding elaborate contortions in the struggle to rationalize the irrational.
Lerner goes on, and what he attempts to do is to make this an argument about meaning.
The secular left consistently disarms itself of what could be its most powerful weapon: a spiritual vision of the world. I've used the word "spiritual" as a label to identify a meaning-oriented approach to politics. Its focus is on the yearning of human beings for a world of love and caring, for genuine connection and mutual recognition, for kindness and generosity, for connection to the common good, to the sacred and to a transcendent purpose for our lives. Understand human history and contemporary society and individual psychology from the standpoint of these needs and the ways they have been frustrated, and then develop a strategy that addresses those needs, and we will be able to build a movement and a political party that will be in a position to bring about all the good things liberals and progressives have fought for with such limited success over the past 100 years.
No, no, no. The godless life does not mean we have a meaningless life, and is not the abandonment of purpose. We do not need religion or a belief in the unseen and unknowable and intangible and mystical to find value in the world and our lives. What kind of blind fool is this Lerner fellow to think that love and caring and connection and recognition and kindness and generosity are properties that require a belief in magic? Atheists embrace all of those virtues fully.
We are working for meaning in what actually exists. What we reject is meaning found in the lies of the religious—we are striving for truths, rather than affirmation of goofy superstitions.
If you want a solid progressive movement, build it on honesty and a steady willingness to test ideas against the real world. Don't build it on false dogma and the hokum of the religious. I don't care how well meaning or sensitive or kind to puppy dogs Lerner might be—he's asking that our futures be built on the rotten framework of his personal delusions. No, thank you. Keep your spooks and cosmic boogeymen out of real world politics.
Email this entry to a friend
View the Technorati Link Cosmos for this entry
Comments
Fantastic use of Douglas Adams. What a loss he was.
My favorite chapter of THHGG is where the janitor figures out the secret to the Infinite Improbability Drive and then gets beaten up by physicists when he accepts his Nobel Prize "because they realized that the one thing they couldn't stand was a smartass."
Posted by: Jeremy | April 13, 2006 6:11 PM
What a bunch of crap! Reminds me of Judge Hand's ruling (for which Mark Russel called him "Sleight of Hand") that secular humanism represented "an atheistic religion". Atheism is a religious belief, in that it answers religious questions. It is not a religion. There are no priests, sacred texts, sacred beliefs, etc. It's as much another religion as baldness is another type of haircut.
Posted by: Leon | April 13, 2006 6:18 PM
Things which have no empirical content aren't real. That's what the word 'real' indicates. If I say that the Easter Bunny has no affect on anything in an even theoretical way, and then say that the Easter Bunny is not real, I quickly discover that there are no implications of the first statement that are not also implications of the second, and vice versa. They're just different ways of stating the same thing. That's not a "belief system" in any intelligible sense.
As for this:
So he wants us to produce a scientific foundation for rationality, which is itself the foundation for science? Gee, that's not the slightest bit circular.I blame all of the medieval "logic" Jewish theologians are exposed to in Torah studies.
Posted by: Caledonian | April 13, 2006 6:18 PM
Speaking of "outcomes that tell you almost nothing about the laws that govern the universe" , I was just noting how similar the fractal branching pattern in rangomorphs is to the branching patterns in crystals. Since I have noticed this and am interested in it, am I no longer a biologist?
Posted by: Pattanowski | April 13, 2006 6:24 PM
May I quote Bertrand Russell, one of the best known atheist philosophers :
"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have driven my life : the search for knowledge, the longing for love and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind".
Doesn't sound purposeless to me.
Posted by: suezboo | April 13, 2006 6:31 PM
"You have a problem with these ideas, Richard, because you're not really a scientist. You're a biologist."
Okay- after hearing yesterday (from my relative) that medicine and biology were NOT real sciences, I have to wonder why this idea is out there in any way shape or form. If biology is not a science, what is it??? A philosophy? Not so much- because most of medicine and biology are couched in questions like- if you do this to this part what will happen to the next part??? Am I, a layperson of the lowest order, completely on another planet?? Do they only list biology as a science in high school because they have no other category for it? AAARGH!!!
Posted by: impatientpatient | April 13, 2006 6:48 PM
Creationists often insist that evolution is "just another religious belief" but I've never heard an evolutionary biologist suggest that creationism is "just another science." From this I conclude that, abstract protestations aside, in practice most everyone agrees that science is a superior basis for belief than faith.
Posted by: PaulC | April 13, 2006 6:49 PM
Dismissing a major discipline of the sciences wholesale like that is a sure sign that Barrow is a crank. What he said about biology was just so wrong, so ignorant, so plain stupid. We do measurements and experiments on real phenomena, we assemble testable hypotheses, we carry out legitimate experiments that are more clearly in the domain of the scientific method than, say, string theory work (I am not implying that string theory is not a science, either).
We also work on stuff that is far more complex than anything physicists do.
Posted by: PZ Myers | April 13, 2006 7:03 PM
Yes, but you ignore that complexity to generate high-level principles that can be used for predictive purposes. This is not a bad thing -- it's like coming up with the Ideal Gas Law instead of trying to solve the wavefunctions of billions of gas molecules.
The study of string theory is scientific, but string theory itself is not.
Posted by: Caledonian | April 13, 2006 7:17 PM
he speculates that it's a reaction to the use of religion to justify oppression (but rejects that because there are totalitarian regimes that do not support religion),
This is an extraordinary piece of bad reasoning. He is arguing that unless religion causes all oppression it cannot cause any.
Posted by: ben | April 13, 2006 7:22 PM
'You're not a scientist, you're a biologist.'
Once bitten by Darwin..
Posted by: Peter McGrath | April 13, 2006 7:25 PM
Yes, but you ignore that complexity to generate high-level principles that can be used for predictive purposes.
Ignore isn't the right word; perhaps 'temporarily set aside'. The way I see it, we take a system that's a black box, and try to figure out how the inputs connect to the outputs, breaking it into many smaller black boxes. As we continue to experiment, and as technology improves, we can break the boxes down into ever-smaller parts, until eventually we can actually open them and see what's inside.
Posted by: Henry | April 13, 2006 7:34 PM
Lerner says:
Main problem with that, as far as his thesis goes, is that the religious don't actually want those things. They say they do, but they use their religion as a club, to keep "us" in and "them" out, and extend those wonderful things only to "us".
Religion was a good way to make "us" bigger than the few we're related to by blood, or could recognize face to face, but it's in the way now. We have to junk it and move on to something that makes us all value everyone, regardless of whether they know the secret handshake.
Posted by: Karen | April 13, 2006 7:34 PM
"...you're not really a scientist. You're a biologist."
"...the universe's fine-tuned nature, with every constant dead on exactly what it must be for life as we know it to exist, is vacuous nonsense..."
Both comments are equally nonsensical, IMHO!
I suspect, however, that Barrow's comment was more of a pithy, British-style joke than an actual accusation; he laces his books with similiar pithy quotes...
Interestingly, one could turn Barrow's ideas about phyiscs' superiority over biology, on its head: all these ideas about anthropic principles only exist because LIFE exists!
Anthropic principles are necessarily vacuous? The universe IS fine-tuned! If it weren't, none of us would be here to argue the point one way or the other! That's neither vacuous nor nonsense - it's a fact! It's s FACT that the masses of the proton and the electron, the strengths of the 'constants of nature' (or whatever you wish to call them) are very limited if life and consciousness are to evolve.
People interpret this stuff differently: some say "I knew it! God designed it all for us!" Very few scientists would be happy with that. Another response is to say "So what? If it wasn't like that, we wouldn't be here to make these silly arguments. Would a puddle think it's amazing that it fits its hole 'exactly'? I don't care if you think it's amazing. Why not just accept it as brute fact?" A third POV is to invoke the "many-worlds" idea, used by some interpretations of quantum theory: "What if there are zillions of universes, all budding off from each other from a "multiverse" or "brane world", and this is one of the few ones that have just the right conditions for life and consciousness to evolve? After all, we obviously inhabit the 'best' planet in our solar system, so what if we could apply that logic to this?"
But Barrow's big mistake is to believe that this somehow constitutes evidence for design. It's just the old Argument From Design, albeit pushed into particle physics, where it thinks it's immune from Darwinian attack!
Also interstingly, it's ironic that physics is now being used to bolster 'design arguments', while the life sciences have abolished it altogether. A lot of biologists used to believe life was created, and are now hardcore materialists, like 19th century physicists were. Some physicists, meanwhile, have been drifting away from materialism and claiming to have evidence for design. It's as if the two disciplines were on fast-moving trains, going in opposite directions, and not noticing what's going on across the tracks.
Posted by: Pete K | April 13, 2006 7:36 PM
Lerner says:
Main problem with that, as far as his thesis goes, is that the religious don't actually want those things. They say they do, but they use their religion as a club, to keep "us" in and "them" out, and extend those wonderful things only to "us".
Religion was a good way to make "us" bigger than the few we're related to by blood, or could recognize face to face, but it's in the way now. We have to junk it and move on to something that makes us all value everyone, regardless of whether they know the secret handshake.
Posted by: Karen | April 13, 2006 7:36 PM
So for those of us doing biophysics, if we're not scientists or numerologists, what are we? I definitely know what John Barrow is though: an idiot.
Posted by: PhilipJ | April 13, 2006 7:38 PM
If you take Barrow's distinction between biology and physics seriously, it's not biology that isn't science. It's physics.
A lot of physics-worshippers think that Physics is the queen of the sciences, and that things are scientific to the extent that they resemble physics.
Physics is unique among the sciences in that it studies the absolutely simplest, dumbest, most numerous and redundant things that exist. That is why it is "successful" in showing that things conform to very simple equations, to within many digits of precision---if they don't, you don't call it physics.
The defining characteristic of physics is that if you can't describe it that way, it isn't physics---it's chemistry, or meteorology, or geology, or or biology or something.
If it isn't incredibly simple, its not physics.
No other science can take this approach; only physics can. It's staked out the high ground. Or the low ground, with the lowest-hanging fruit.
A huge part of the obvious success of physics comes from gerrymandering disciplinary boundaries and making the hard, messy problems somebody else's problem.
I don't say this to demean physics or physicists. Even the excruciatingly simple things physicists study generate a whole lot of complexity in a hurry, and are often mind-bendingly counterintuitive and difficult to analyze. Another huge part of the success of physics is that it has attracted a lot of very smart people, and a substantial number of undeniably absolutely brilliant ones. No getting around that.
But the idea that physics is science and biology isn't is just ludicrous. The only way that distinction can be maintained is if nothing but physics counts as science.
If there's a single good exemplar of science in general, I'd have to say it's biology, not physics. Physics is the anomaly, and biology is the central exemplar.
Biology is the most successful science that fundamentally resembles other sciences, in ways that physics simply does not and cannot. And it is tremendously successful. Other sciences should aspire to the condition of biology, not physics. Aping physics is a recipe for bad science. (And I've seen the results over and over again in several sciences, including my own. Not pretty.)
When Darwin was in college, his friends advised him to give up on biology, which would never be much more than the "stamp collecting" of curiosities, without the kind of satisfying "deep" theory you get in physics. Physics was where the action was, they said.
But Darwin proved them wrong, and gave the best example of a scientific theory ever. Better than Newton's, even, because he wasn't gerrymandering away the incredible complexity of the natural world and focusing on the easiest problems. *(Deeper, too.)
Posted by: Paul W. | April 13, 2006 7:45 PM
Well medicine as such isn't really science. It's more of a black art at the GP level, with some skilled technician / engineer types and some craftsman / artisan surgeons. However, in order to work properly, modern medicine relies very heavily on real sciences - and biology is one of them (or several of them, since it is now much sub-divided through successful growth)! John Barrow would have to be stuck looking back at the stamp-collecting era of biology not to have noticed it's a science. Physics is too - but apparently not the way JB does it if he really believes in the magic numbers version of it.
I had thought perhaps it was largely an accident the IDiots chose to give John Barrow a prize. But his own comments are far more damning of his lack of understanding than merely receiving the Templeton prize itself was. It's the sort of thing a competent, honest and sane person ought to be profoundly embarrassed to have won.
Posted by: SEF | April 13, 2006 7:45 PM
For a rational response to Lerner's perspective I'd hoped to find more assistance in Peter Singer's A DARWINIAN LEFT (2000):
http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/darwinc/datlse1.htm
http://cogweb.ucla.edu/Debate/SingerPM.html
-but didn't. It's a decent effort but far from Singer's usual standard. He does mention the broader uses of evolutionary game theory, and I think this and Brian Skyrm's more sophisticated game-theory analyses of cooperation and justice have potential. Any other obvious candidates?
At least Singer's little book did provoke a hornet's nest of negative reviews from the usual religious/right suspects.
Posted by: thwaite | April 13, 2006 7:47 PM
PeteK wrote:
"The universe IS fine-tuned! If it weren't, none of us would be here to argue the point one way or the other! That's neither vacuous nor nonsense - it's a fact! It's s FACT that the masses of the proton and the electron, the strengths of the 'constants of nature' (or whatever you wish to call them) are very limited if life and consciousness are to evolve."
No, no, no! You've got it backwards. We are fine-tuned to the universe, not the other way around. It's true that human life couldn't exist if the universe were built differently, but that is not at all the same as saying that life and conciousness couldn't exist at all. If protons and electrons all held together differently, everything would (of necessity) look so vastly different we probably can't imagine it. But that doesn't mean that the creation of concious life under such circumstances would be impossible -- merely that life which looks like us would be.
Posted by: JBL | April 13, 2006 7:48 PM
Physics is the "queen of sciences" because it studies the most basic aspects of existence. Everything else can (in theory, at least) be derived from physics.
I think *someone* has physics envy. Certain principles hold true on every level of reality, Paul W. Claiming superiority because you study one level over another is just silly.
Posted by: Caledonian | April 13, 2006 7:50 PM
JBL: One could look at it either way, I guess. But the thing is, no-one even knows exactly what life IS yet, how to define it. Earthlife is the only unambiguous example of it we have right now, after all...
Posted by: Pete K | April 13, 2006 8:01 PM
Of course we [biologists] do -- by definition -- physics is, as my physics professor defined it, "thinking very hard about the simplest things". The problem is as the subject of study increases in complexity from physics to chemistry to biology to social science, the level of understanding decreases. Now, I don't doubt that Barrow's religion has something to do with his arrogance, (and certainly his dotty obsession with the anthrophic principle is), but his basic disdain for biology is something that even atheist physicists have (of course they are learning to hold their tongues as physics funding dries up and more and more of them are trying to reinvent themselves as "bioinformaticians" to get juicy bio grants)
Posted by: Jonathan Badger | April 13, 2006 8:05 PM
Atheists embrace all of (these) virtues fully. . .love and caring and connection and recognition and kindness and generosity are properties that require a belief in magic?
Wonderful. And where exactly do these virtues emanate from? Scientifically now, what is their source? They had to have sprung from something, somewhere? What is that thing, please?
Posted by: compass | April 13, 2006 8:06 PM
Of course, physicists have mathematics envy.
Nyah Nyah.
Posted by: idlemind | April 13, 2006 8:07 PM
Then there is the curious fact that the Templeton Prize must be invalid in that they gave it to Darrow.
Gasbag?
Ah yes, that atheist "kindness", "love", "caring" and "generosity" showing itself again. How silly of me to forget.
Mightn't "jealousy" fit better here?
Posted by: compass | April 13, 2006 8:10 PM
Posted by: idlemind | April 13, 2006 8:15 PM
. . . because there are totalitarian regimes that do not support religion
Quel?
I am going out on a limb and speculate that the regimes the rabbi had in mind were Socialist / Communist?
Excuse Me? Where did he think the idea of the 'Divine right of Kings' came from? Not to mention that if he took a look at the Frence Revolution, he would notice the that anybody above the level of priest was up for the chop along with the rest of the aristo's for a reason.
Plus there are plenty of people here in the Good Ol' US of A just chomping at the bits to install a regime that recognizes religion, theirs.
Posted by: linnen | April 13, 2006 8:20 PM
Ah. Imagination. Of course. Awareness of "the predicament of humanity."
Fine.
Exactly where does the "survival of the fittest" morph into awareness of the predicament of a greater humanity? How does that happen again? When does "root, hog or die" suddenly change into "love thy neighbor."
No, wait! Sudden mutation, right?
Posted by: compass | April 13, 2006 8:22 PM
Physics is the "queen of sciences"
Funny, William Durante called Philosophy the "Queen of the Sciences", and was probabably more accurate (after all, it encompasses all of the "sciences" under "natural philosophy", plus things like logic, semiotics, etc.)
As for what physics is:
-If it's green or it wiggles, it's biology
-If it smells bad or blows up, it's chemistry
-If it doesn't work, it's physics.
Posted by: Graculus | April 13, 2006 8:28 PM
Hmmm... Just guessing here, but it sounds like Swiftee has morphed into "compass". Manage to get yourself banned again?
Many years ago, I had a conversation with a good friend, a practicing Catholic, about atheism. He said that without his faith in the hereafter, he would probably off himself, given he had nothing better to live for. I countered that, if you don't believe in an afterlife, then it makes this life all the more valuable. For me, it simply made sense that if everyone treated each other decently, my life would certainly be a lot better. Ever heard of enlightened self-interest?
Posted by: CrispyShot | April 13, 2006 8:32 PM
1) The constants of nature aren't "fine tuned" they're unexplained. This is just the usual "God of the gaps" argument.
2) Biology has achieved explanations that go all the way down to chemistry and physics. I don't see what sense it makes to say that biology is more "general." Biology is on a continuum with chemistry and physics. Barrow is an idiot.
Posted by: poke | April 13, 2006 8:39 PM
That's only true in a profoundly boring sense of "in theory."
For example, the concepts of "metabolism" or "parasitism" or "love" or "money" don't depend on the particular details of the underlying physics.
(For example, they don't even depend on whether the underlying physics is fundamentally digital or analog, or whether space is Euclidean, much less which kinds of atoms can get plugged together to make which particular molecules, etc.)
Most interesting phenomena are all about higher-level relations among patterns. What's at the bottom is relatively unimportant, so long as it supports the higher-level relations.
For the most part, the underlying physics constrains; it doesn't explain.
Sure, physics is "fundamental" in the sense of being "at the bottom" in a certain sense. It's not fundamental in the sense of providing the philosophical keys to everything else, as many people think.
(For example, my computer CPU is made mostly out of impure silicon, and some aluminum. Some of the impurities provide extra electrons. Others provide holes for electrons. What does all that tell me about what programs I'm running? Not much.)
Precisely my point.
Posted by: Paul W. | April 13, 2006 8:42 PM
Actually I find compass's implication that all these virtues must come from God to be sort of amusing . . . i.e. without God, we would all be slavering bundles of pure id, sort of like larger versions of the creature from that old horror movie "It's Alive". Azathoth and Yog-sothoth dwelling within all of us, awaiting only the breaking of the soul-seal . . . .
Posted by: Jake | April 13, 2006 8:46 PM
Lerner:
What utter horseshit. Lerner needs to re-read his Torah, Bible, Q'uran.
The ultimate focus of most all religions, especially the tiresome western ones, is to properly worship God/Jehovah/Allah.
All that business about being kind and generous blah blah blah is nice but ultimately not necessary according to pretty much any religion I've read of.
God is a pretty selfish fellow and according to Jewish/Christian/Muslim myths, he's pretty blunt about that.
Posted by: renato | April 13, 2006 8:51 PM
How does (for example) "God is love" morph into eternal hellfire? I find such absurdities a lot harder to imagine than I do the evolution of consciousness. And given consciousness and the capacity for self-reflection, the evolution (yes, there's that word again) of systems of morality seems to be a reasonable outcome -- as does the evolution of using such systems to extend ones control over others. The latter is something I might suggest has had a hand in how you view morality and the fear you appear to have of a non-theistic basis for it.
Posted by: idlemind | April 13, 2006 8:54 PM
Wonderful. And where exactly do these virtues emanate from? Scientifically now, what is their source? They had to have sprung from something, somewhere? What is that thing, please?
Are you trying to argue that the source of ethics is religion and/or spiritual belief?
bah. I would be very willing to debate that there is virtually no correlation between one's professed religion and one's ethics (or lack thereof).
In fact I could point to quite a few avowedly religious folk who have a demonstrated lack of ethics and morality.
Starting with Führer Bush.
Posted by: renato | April 13, 2006 8:56 PM
I am inclined to agree that all sciences are related. All sciences study the exact same thing: the natural world. The different sciences merely study different levels of the same system: physics with its forces and elementary particles, chemistry with its elementary particles and molecules, biology with its molecules and organisms, and ecology and the social sciences with their organisms and their subsequent interactions. I would hesitate to call one more complex than the other, as they all tend to use theories that temporarily gloss over the tricky parts.
This infighting seems somewhat common to me and I would blame it on the fact that most scientists are hit with the arrogant stick during their schooling.
I personally try and look over the obvious fact that chemists are the best and take comfort in the fact that so many fellow human beings are as enamored with the natural world as I.
Posted by: BL | April 13, 2006 9:10 PM
I was going to comment about "fine tuning" but it's hard to top the Douglas Adams quote. I mean, fine tuning is a joke, right, everyone understands that the fine tuning "argument" is even sillier than "God planted the dinosaur bones" don't they?
Self-organization has been observed in wildly different complex systems, so if the universe had different laws, it's likely that it would exhibit many non-obvious structures analogous to ones we observe in our universe: the formation of galaxies, non-uniform distribution of elements, well-defined chemistries and so forth, though they might look very different from ours.
The reason I qualify the comment with "likely" is because some complex systems (e.g. some cellular automata) are so active that they might as well be uniform pseudorandom generators, and others are predictable and stabilize rapidly. But within a robust range of possible laws, a system as vast as the universe will exhibit well-defined structures that cannot be predicted easily by analyzing the laws and yet which recur throughout the system on a regular, reproducible basis. This might have been conjecture at one time, but now computers make it easy to demonstrate.
So the only possibly open issue in an abstract sense is whether the evolution of life and human-level intelligence and self-awareness are among the sort of self-organizing phenomena that we would expect to be ubiquitous over a robust class of massive complex systems. Unfortunately, it is infeasible to reproduce these phenonema in simulated systems. Fortunately, there is a preponderance of evidence that they happened in our universe. My working hypothesis is that they would happen elsewhere. I just don't see any a priori reason to assume that our own physical laws are special. If the laws were changed, of course life as we know it could not exist, but there is no reason to rule out something analogous.
For the sake of argument, let's imagine that the rules in our universe are special. If so, I cannot imagine how you'd prove it, but any argument based on the assumption that our physical laws are special is simply begging the question.
Shorter version of above: what Douglas Adams said.
Posted by: PaulC | April 13, 2006 9:11 PM
The morphing is part of the primate social syndrome which includes sophisticated empathy, frequent sympathy, justice via coalitions versus dominant individuals, and much cooperation. Humans have identifiable continuities with other primates here (we added language, facial expressions and eye sclera for gaze following), as Darwin noted, and primatologists such as Frans De Waal and Chris Boehm have amply documented and elaborated: GOOD NATURED; HIERARCHY IN THE FOREST. Prolonged infant care seems part of the primate syndrome.
Posted by: thwaite | April 13, 2006 9:13 PM
My experience from undergrad was that both the chemistry and physics professors looked down on the biology department as not real science. My org chem professor thought that biology was all just rote memorization, not real learning. I was always amused by that, considering I felt I really learned things in my bio classes and did nothing but rote memorization for org chem. To each what he enjoys more, I suppose.
I've noticed often that religious and spiritual people tend to look at science as just another facet of spiritualism. No wonder so many ID proponents fight so hard for access to school age kids; this is about the same time most people firm up what they actually believe in spiritually.
Of course, the other thing I remember from undergrad were the number of students who 'believed' in the science they were taught simply because it was what the professor told them; I saw very little critical thinking happening, even among fourth years. That bothered me a lot at the time, although it probably wasn't as bad as I remember. I still wish students would be required to take some sort of critical thinking class, at least in college.
And, though I hate to take troll bait, I'll point out that I got my sense of morals from my family and society around me. I've no doubt that there is a strong Judeao-Christian flavor to my morals because of this, but it doesn't mean I have to believe in the assorted trappings of a faith to be a good person.
Posted by: Jason W | April 13, 2006 9:20 PM
Have you ever noticed? Mass-murderers and sociopaths tend to not have lots of kids.
Funny, that.
(Too bad we can't say the same for the religious zealots of the world.)
Posted by: Frank | April 13, 2006 9:20 PM
After reading Darksyde on dailykos, I just realized that from the point of creationists, biologists keep digging themselves into a deeper hole. That is, given fossils A and B, and the postulated relationship that B is descended from A. Then there is at least one missing link. Now, suppose C is found, that is intermediate between B and A.
Biologist says - aha, see, transitional form.
Creationist says - nyah, nyah - now two missing links, one between A and C and the second between C and B.
Posted by: Arun Gupta![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/nav-commenters.gif)
|
April 13, 2006 9:29 PM
To be fair, all science is physics; everything else is just stamp collecting :p
I kid, I kid... I'm surprised an actually scientist used that seriously, as opposed to good-natured ribbing. Silly religious people.
Posted by: themann1086 | April 13, 2006 9:33 PM
Jason W:
I'm familiar with the snobbery of the "hard" sciences, but Barrow's comment is staggering in its ignorance. It is true that we're not likely to develop a concise mathematical theory of biology the way one seems in grasp for physics (that is not likely for chemistry either). The older I get the more I come to the view that this makes biology the most "real" science among the bunch. You can in principle still do Nobel-level physics using sheer mathematical virtuosity. You don't really need to have a grasp of the observable universe at all. You can start with a theory and make subtle and deep deductions from it using pure logic. If the theory described our universe than so will your deductions. Biology, by contrast, really does require empirical data. Somebody without a grasp of the scientific method and an ability to develop a sound experimental protocol is unlikely to do ground-breaking work in the life sciences even if that person possesses the mathematical intellect of a Newton.
Posted by: PaulC | April 13, 2006 9:39 PM
Well I believe that the laws of physics are fine tuned for my survival. That's why after I get hit by a bus I pick myself up, dust myself off and continue on my merry way.
I also have a knack for surviving pianos falling on my head.
Posted by: Ronald Brak | April 13, 2006 9:40 PM
Posted by: coturnix | April 13, 2006 9:41 PM
As a physics grad student, comments like Barrow's are really embarassing. I still can't understand how this anthropic nonsense caught on.
About the biology comment, statements like that aren't uncommon in jokes among physicists, but I didn't think anyone took them seriously. Regardless, I think the butts of our jokes have shifted towards certain sections of our own department in the past few years...
Posted by: Abe | April 13, 2006 9:47 PM
I would like to know what Dawkin's response was.
Posted by: paul | April 13, 2006 10:18 PM
Kind like the old commercial question, "How many licks to the center of a Tootsie Pop?"... I want to ask, "How many years from now till history looks back at organized religion as a big collective brainfart, 500, 1000, 10000?"
Posted by: Dad Of Cameron | April 13, 2006 10:34 PM
Anyone stopped to think how sick it would be if this world was the ultimate product of a benevolent creator?
I shudder to think through even the most obvious implications - for a start, he really hates most of the worlds population, especially the under-fives. What a bastard.
Posted by: Ian B Gibson | April 13, 2006 10:43 PM
Hmmm... Just guessing here, but it sounds like Swiftee has morphed into "compass". Manage to get yourself banned again?.
Um, no. Truly. Ask PZ. The odds against this Swiftee person having the same IP as me must be in the neighborhood of 1/3,000,000
Actually I find compass's implication that all these virtues must come from God to be sort of amusing . Fine. But you don't answer the question.
How does (for example) "God is love" morph into eternal hellfire? Strawman, changing the topic. And an incorrect one at that.
The morphing is part of the primate social syndrome which includes sophisticated empathy, frequent sympathy, justice via coalitions versus dominant individuals, and much cooperation. Now HERE we have a reasonable response. My question: Do these sophisticated responses go beyond the immediate family group? And even then, the presence of same potentially begs the question.
Are you trying to argue that the source of ethics is religion and/or spiritual belief? bah. I would be very willing to debate that there is virtually no correlation between one's professed religion and one's ethics (or lack thereof). In fact I could point to quite a few avowedly religious folk who have a demonstrated lack of ethics and morality.
Sigh. Back to strawmen. Just because humans foul up application of concepts that may well emanate from beyond does not indicate that the beyond doesn't exist/is flawed.
All it does is indicate that we don't execute things very well.
To be fair, all science is physics; everything else is just stamp collecting
Frankly, I agree with this.
Posted by: compass | April 13, 2006 10:44 PM
I shudder to think through even the most obvious implications - for a start, he really hates most of the worlds population, especially the under-fives. What a bastard.
FINALLY!! Someone who is applying at least real surface logic to the problem. The problem of evil!!
Well done, Ian. Go to the head of the class!
Posted by: compass | April 13, 2006 10:45 PM
Maybe its because I'm coming from CS--which everyone knows is a glorified means to convert caffeine and sugar into bits--but I always thought that science was a way of learning about stuff, a method, almost an algorithm. And what you apply it to is just a question of what KIND of geek you are, not whether you are in fact, a geek.
To earn my erstwhile troll status, I have to say that I do occasionally view scientists taking non-scientific positions about their particular subject. Some people get weird about overpopulation, others get weird about fine tuning.
But in any case, somewhere in talkorigins is an article that puts the likelihood of a stable matter universe (and, by extension, living things) as something like 50%. That is, a randomly generated universe is stable enough for life for a large range of values, therefore the universe is not particularly fine tuned, it just landed heads.
Posted by: Seth Manapio | April 13, 2006 10:56 PM
I think the most important common thread between Barrow and Lerner is their narrow-minded self-righteousness: No position but their own is acceptable, and anyone who disagrees has to be diagnosed with some mental pathology-- whether it's having no values or being a biologist. Or both.
Lerner's argument is a real howlder (he just assumes we all need some sort of religion and ignores the fact that there is a real difference between beliefs constrained by evidence and just making sh*t up-- it's familiar from common sense, and immensely more thorough and refined in science). And Barrow's jibe so cheaply smug-- good stuff in a public school dorm, but I thought the idea for the Templeton bunch was to honour truly exemplary people with an interest in religion and values...not just to find someone to grind their axe for them.
As for our smugly teasing troll(?)-- The real teleology that we apply to understanding ourselves and other persons is a by-product of the non-teleology of natural selection (as it worked on our lineage), which is sensitive only to success at survival and reproduction. There is no need to imagine the whole universe is mysteriously teleological in order to be committed to values and purposes of our own. Neither do we need to look to the universe as a whole to tell us what really matters. If you care about something, surely it doesn't matter whether the universe shares your goals or not.
Still, if you want to talk about evidence and you persist in personifying something that isn't a person, I'd have to say that the universe is more like Rhett Butler ("Frankly, my dear...") than the compassionate Buddha...
Posted by: Bryson Brown | April 13, 2006 10:57 PM
Physics is being abused, and not just by Paul W. You a biologist, Paul?
The whole anthropic principle espoused by Barrow and others to me, as a veteran physics teacher, seems to be a subtle variation on intelligent design. Both leave me cold. The anthropic principle is too human-centric. It implies that we as inhabitants of Earth hold some special place in the cosmos merely because we are here. Until we come across evidence of some other intelligent species (or any intelligent species -- the verdict is still out on us), the anthropic principle will be a barnacle on the ship of physics. It borders on metaphysics.
I will avoid enumerating all the New Age misappropriations of physics concepts and terms. We'll be here for hours.
So what constitutes a "science?" Is the exemplar of science one which concentrates on small, definible, quantifiable phenomena, which Paul W accuses physics of doing? (I would argue that quantum mechanics and relativity do not focus on the "absolutely simplest, dumbest, most numerous and redundant things that exist.") Or is the examplar of science one which concentrates on the larger scheme of things, in which conclusions must sometimes be inferred from lack of quantifiable, definible evidence? And here I would myself place biology, anthropology, cosmology and paleontology as examples.
Is this discussion devolving into "my science can beat up your science?"
Posted by: wheatdogg | April 13, 2006 10:57 PM
Thanks, compass. Since I'm now head of the class, why don't you go and stand in the corner?
By the way, it's not a 'problem' of evil - there can't be any problems, since god is perfect. Therefore, if evil exists, it's all part of the Plan.
Alternatively, what we perceive as 'evil' is in fact 'good' (see my above post).
Posted by: Ian B Gibson | April 13, 2006 11:01 PM
Sounds like a real winner. "Science is a belief in hard evidence"...no F***ing Sh**. I guess since we must merely *believe* that things are facts, nothing is every REALLY fact.
Talk about one hell of a viral idea that will send any civilization into a tailspin permanently...
Posted by: BlueIndependent | April 13, 2006 11:10 PM
"I would like to know what Dawkin's response was." I hope it was the same as mine: Oh, ho-hum. "Laws of nature," zzzzz. "Not a scientist," yawn, what a joke! It seems that now that Dawkins' seminal work has turned 30 years old, and that his "Root of All Evil?" is garnering praise in the UK (2 to 1 over the offended), and he's a public figure, all the little celebrity wannabees like Barrow and Dembski, ad nauseum, are clutching at a little fame (the kind that doesn't come from winning Templeton Foundation prizes or writing a crap ID blog) by attaching their names to attacks on Dawkins, and it's really a compliment to Dawkins. Barrow can wheeze his worst, but he's just an arrogant ding-dong who, like Dembski, goes through life pushing doors marked "Pull."
Posted by: Kristine | April 13, 2006 11:15 PM
I was using an old joke...
Posted by: themann1086 | April 13, 2006 11:23 PM
Look. If I let go of a bowling ball, it falls down. If I pick it up and let go again, it falls down. It's not a matter of "belief", it's an empirical matter that we can repeat over and over and we find that we get the same result.
Yes, but your statement that, "If I pick it up and let go again, it falls down." indicates that you have a belief that it falls down if you pick it up and let go again.
It's purely pragmatic.
So then you do have a religion - the religion of pragmatism. It is a religion because it is a belief system that has no more scientific foundation than any other belief system, because there is no scientific foundation for the belief that the only things that are real or can be known are those that can be empirically observed and measured. So there!
Posted by: 386sx | April 13, 2006 11:31 PM
Alternatively, what we perceive as 'evil' is in fact 'good' (see my above post).
Oops. Back to the back of the classroom, Ian. Idealism. Tsk tsk. "Evil doesn't exist." Um, that would seem to fly in the face of tremendous amounts of evidence against it.
So then you do have a religion - the religion of pragmatism. It is a religion because it is a belief system that has no more scientific foundation than any other belief system, because there is no scientific foundation for the belief that the only things that are real or can be known are those that can be empirically observed and measured. So there! save for one thing: This religion of pragmatism endures very well under the scrutiny of the third act of the mind; empiricism. And when you reduce all truths down to those empirically proven (in other words, set up the rules of playing the game so that you win), pragmatism looks very appealing.
As it does to most people in this place.
For what it is worth, 386, you're dead on. It IS a religion.
Posted by: compass | April 13, 2006 11:40 PM
I'd have to say that the universe is more like Rhett Butler ("Frankly, my dear...")
Ah, a deist in the house. Or maybe a pantheist, if God (or whatever) is in Life, the Universe and Everything.
The real teleology that we apply to understanding ourselves and other persons is a by-product of the non-teleology of natural selection (as it worked on our lineage), which is sensitive only to success at survival and reproduction.
So, voila!! An idea of something transcendant, shared by thousands of cultures, still came about in the end, from nothing (or mechanistically oriented urgings, through chance, just as close to nothing).
Pardon my skepticism. But I find sometimes the tyranny of the living over the Democracy of the Dead (Chesterton) to be a bit. . .well. . .tyrannical at times.
"Oh, you 10 billions who went before us, you were benighted. Deluded. Demented. Misled. We now have the true knowledge." Wonder where we've heard that sort of tune before?
And all this from a philosophy instructor (presumably). Disappointing.
Posted by: compass | April 13, 2006 11:50 PM
Darn it! Why didn't someone tell me Biology wasn't a real science more than five weeks before graduation? Pffft. There's four years down the tubes. Although, maybe this explains why the University of Colorado thinks Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology should be a BA instead of a BS.
Posted by: BrassyDel | April 13, 2006 11:50 PM
The postmodernists and the theists join forces!
compass - what evidence do you have to share with the rest of the class about the existence of 'evil'?
If a religious crusade results in tens of thousands of deaths, is this 'evil'? Why?
All you've got to base a definition of 'evil' on are your preferred extracts of your preferred holy book - the important passages of which change as time goes on (I don't know many Christians who still believe in burning witches).
How can your concept of 'evil' thus change over the years and yet still be considered absolute?
Is 'evil' whatever god says is evil, or is it independent of god (in which case, is god merely a referee in the matter of morality?)?
Posted by: Ian B Gibson | April 13, 2006 11:56 PM
compass,
we know the ball will fall down if we pick it up again based on our pr