Pharyngula

Posted by: Sili | July 1, 2009 6:00 PM

So he couldn't even send you the book and tell you to your face, what he thinks?

I give up. For some reason I still had a little hope left for Mooney, but this ... he's no different from the marquis de Coiffure at all.

Shhhsssh

Posted by: Glen Davidson | July 1, 2009 6:03 PM

If the masses prefer their silly religion to science, well then, we shall give them a neutered science, a weak science, an inoffensive science that does not challenge anyone's beliefs.

On the other side they worry that it yields a neutered religion, while being oddly unconcerned about science.

And seriously, they're almost certainly right.

Probably they don't respect science as much as it deserves, but then they're unlikely to do so anyway, not really understanding it.

Say what you will, the compromise seems to undercut religion more than it does science.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 1, 2009 6:06 PM

That's pretty lame. He knows you are going to eventually find out / read about it he could at least have the decency to stand up and send you a copy so you'd be getting the info from the horse's mouth.

Posted by: That German Guy | July 1, 2009 6:08 PM

Well, he's right in one sense: I am not aware that science has refuted every single one of the multitude of diffuse deisms,stly because we don't know enough... *yet*.

You are however right in saying that no part of scienence in any way, shape or form supports any religious idea, whatever that idea may be.

Posted by: shyster | July 1, 2009 6:12 PM

Sorry, PZ, but the whole crackergate incident was like Ivory soap. I agree with you 99.94% of the time. This fell into the .06%.
I found crackergate a little offensive myself. It may be a silly, indefensible and illogical fairy tail (like the book and story it is based on) but it is their "rite" to believe it and revere the holy Ritz.
After a point I felt that you were being rude for the sole purpose of being rude. Raised in the South, I was taught better manners than that.

Posted by: Cameron | July 1, 2009 6:12 PM

Prediction: Mooney will say that he has no control over who gets review copies, thus explaining why Myers never received one.

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble | July 1, 2009 6:18 PM

Dear Professor Myers,

I'm sure Christopher Mooney didn't mean to snub you by not sending you his next book to review, or by dissing you in print without giving you chance to respond or defend yourself, rather I think he probably didn't want to hurt your feelings.

While I am myself a Christian, I can see that atheists would find his "New Atheist" semantics dishonest, naive and patronizing, but again, in his defense, I believe his frothing accommodationist stance is something both innate and fundamental.

Imagine if you had been named "Christopher Mooney"--so your first name meant "one who bears Christ within", while your second name sounds to the ear like a cult that associaties itself with "unification"—wouldn't you be driven to reconcile the profoundly unreconcilable?

In this regard Christopher Hitchens is much more fortunate, because his name allowed him to recognize from an early age that there was a 'hitch' in the whole religion thing.

So a plea to all you frothing hell-bound "New" Atheists on this blog, don't be too hard on ChristMooney, blame those who named him for his tendency to love the old and fear the new.

Yours in special pleading

Smoggy

Posted by: adobedragon | July 1, 2009 6:20 PM

Yuck. More whiny, "New Atheists mustn't hurt the god botherers' sensitive little fee-fees" bullshit.

You would think, from Mooney's comment, that the evil New Atheists are holding guns to the heads of believers, forcing them to read The God Delusion; threatening to behead cute little kittens if believers don't visit Pharyngula.

Truth is, most believers haven't even heard of "New Atheists" or Crackergate, for that matter. And if they have, it's because their pastor/priest preached on the subject, not through direct exposure to all those scary, godless ideas.

The only significant difference (and it is significant to the god botherers) between a New Atheist and...what?...an old atheist (?), is that New Atheists are more likely to own up to their lack of belief and sometimes gather with like-minded individuals on public forums to discuss the lunacy that is religion.

But for the most part, the vast majority of atheists (including P.Z., I suspect), still keep their mouths shut when faced with day-to-day of religiousity (at weddings, funerals, etc.) (In my case, I work for a Christian church.)

No one is forcing the poor little believers to give up their supernatural fantasies. If they can't bear to see their sacred cows slain, they should stay away from blogs like this one.

Posted by: Azkyroth | July 1, 2009 6:22 PM

...still?

Posted by: Lunacrous | July 1, 2009 6:23 PM

After a point I felt that you were being rude for the sole purpose of being rude.

Yup. The Great Jeez-it Desecration was in no way a response to the attempts to get a student expelled from his university for "stealing" a cracker, nor an excellent way of highlighting the insanity of those behind that campaign. It was just PZ being randomly rude for absolutely no reason at all.

Posted by: Kel | July 1, 2009 6:24 PM

Third time lucky...

People think that saying magic words turns a cracker into the flesh of God-incarnate

Posted by: QrazyQat | July 1, 2009 6:28 PM

So Mooney thinks I'm gonna agree with Catholics that it's not a cracker? When I see a Catholic approaching I'm gonna have to prepare myself by reminding myself over and over again: "It's not a cracker. It's not a cracker. It's not a cracker!"

Sorry Chris, the Segway is a scooter and the cracker is just a cracker. Any power the cracker has is just in peoples' minds. At least the Segway is a really nifty scooter; but the crackers is not someone's flesh, they're just crackers. And anyone who thinks they're not is a little crackers too.

Posted by: Jason A. | July 1, 2009 6:32 PM

#21:

There can be no fundamental problem with either of their approaches to science.

How can someone believe in miracles and not have a problem with their approach to science? Perhaps it doesn't manifest in their specific research, but that's just their compartmentalization.

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 1, 2009 6:34 PM

Sorry, PZ, but the whole crackergate incident was like Ivory soap. I agree with you 99.94% of the time. This fell into the .06%. I found crackergate a little offensive myself. It may be a silly, indefensible and illogical fairy tail (like the book and story it is based on) but it is their "rite" to believe it and revere the holy Ritz. After a point I felt that you were being rude for the sole purpose of being rude. Raised in the South, I was taught better manners than that.

Do you know the whole story?

Posted by: zaardvark | July 1, 2009 6:36 PM

The problem really does lie with theists wanting it both ways. They want to say "I'm a scientist, and I look at the world as it really is, and try to discover its laws" and "I'm religious, and I just know in my heart that the world was created by a loving god who watches over us, who will account for every injustice, who can read our minds, and who could alter anything at all about our universe with the flick of his nose."

No amount of hand-waving can reconcile those two sentiments.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 1, 2009 6:41 PM

I have to agree with Mooney, PZ, if only because he shows more tact. If your goal is to anger and insult people out of spite, continue desecrating their spiritual symbols; but if your goal is to bring an appreciation for the elegance of the physical universe and a deeper understanding of the scientific method to the public, I suggest you try altering your posture a bit. Science is a method for gathering certain types of facts, not a metaphysical belief system meant to pronounce upon all matters of human existence; it is not synonymous with atheism or materialism. I think it is disingenuous, or at least philosophically misinformed, to argue otherwise. You've been accused of scientism in a recent debate with Dennis Alexander, and while you admit the scientific method is not the best way to read poetry or make moral judgments, you still seem to imply that the only valid knowledge one can have of reality is that derived from empirical measurement. Empiricism and quantitative measure are wonderful tools, but they leave a great deal of reality untouched. Religion and spirituality (though I'd be the first to agree there are degenerative forms) are methods people use --and always will use-- to relate themselves and their communities to the larger cosmos in a meaningful way. Science can and should inform these methods, but it is in no way in conflict with such spiritual pursuits (unless you've confounded it with materialism).

Posted by: lose_the_woo | July 1, 2009 6:43 PM

Atheism is not the logically inevitable outcome of scientific reasoning...

Neither is atoothfairyism, or aleprechaunism, necessarily. What is logically inevitable is the realization that skepticism is the only rational default position to take when evaluating truth claims. If that was not the case, then there is no basis to question the truth of any claim. Anything anyone stated as fact, would be assumed to be fact. That is not how reality works, which is a truth claim can be shown. Faith is not to be extolled while be doubt derided. It's just the opposite that makes the scientific method so powerful at gaining and refining knowledge.

There are plenty of reasons to doubt the existence of toothfairies, leprechans, and deities. Not one reason to think they exist.

And regarding the thin-skinned hyper-defensive religionists who want their views held above criticism: no one has the right to not be offended. My personal view is that if you think deities are real, you're thinking like a child.

Posted by: lose_the_woo | July 1, 2009 6:47 PM

be doubt = doubt be

Posted by: Salamander | July 1, 2009 6:51 PM

Jason A.,

How can someone believe in miracles and not have a problem with their approach to science? Perhaps it doesn't manifest in their specific research, but that's just their compartmentalization.

You are confusing science with methodical naturalism. I would also add that if you read their accounts of theistic evolution it is entirely compatible with their own personal faith (how could it not be) and science. Conway Morris argues on the back of convergence (about which Dawkins backed him as opposed to Gould). For more on Miller (and he is scrupulous in not maintaining that each mutation is not a "miracle" etc.) see

http://www.millerandlevine.com/evolution/Coyne-Accommodation.htm.

CJO,

PZ called Conway Morris a garden variety creationist while going on to completely miss the point of an editorial he published and failing to distinguish between sarcasm and his actual position.

For those interested in how this position can be compatible (and many believe that it is) I suggest you have a look at some of these lectures by reputable scientists on the issue at the Faraday Institute (the director, in a recent debate, forced Myers into a hasty retreat as regards to accommodationism and it was actually quite embarrassing listening).

Lectures:
http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/Multimedia.php (under evolution heading)

Posted by: Thanny | July 1, 2009 6:58 PM

Those of you criticizing PZ for "Crackergate" really need to get a clue. A college kid was physically assaulted and threatened with expulsion for not immediately eating a cracker.

PZ did not randomly decide to throw a pierced wafer in the trash - he was making a statement about the insanity (I, too, mean that literally) displayed by the Catholics over the harmless actions of the student in question.

Posted by: Azkyroth | July 1, 2009 7:03 PM

I have to agree with Mooney, PZ, if only because he shows more tact.

Style over substance. Excellent lead-in to what borders on a courtier's reply.

If your goal is to anger and insult people out of spite, continue desecrating their spiritual symbols;

Out of spite?! Please summarize for us the events preceding the cracker desecration, if you're going to make that sort of claim, because right now you don't appear to be on speaking terms with reality.

but if your goal is to bring an appreciation for the elegance of the physical universe and a deeper understanding of the scientific method to the public, I suggest you try altering your posture a bit.

*yawn*

Science is a method for gathering certain types of facts, not a metaphysical belief system meant to pronounce upon all matters of human existence; it is not synonymous with atheism or materialism.

No one said otherwise; however, many of the facts science has gathered are difficult to reconcile with any even-sorta-vaguely-testable belief system other than atheistic materialism. And I think you know this.

I think it is disingenuous, or at least philosophically misinformed, to argue otherwise.

You mean like willfully distorting an opponent's position and lying by omission at length about the circumstances behind the actions you're criticizing?

You've been accused of scientism in a recent debate with Dennis Alexander,

What does that even mean?

and while you admit the scientific method is not the best way to read poetry or make moral judgments, you still seem to imply that the only valid knowledge one can have of reality is that derived from empirical measurement.

Why do you think this is inconsistent?

Empiricism and quantitative measure are wonderful tools, but they leave a great deal of reality untouched.

Examples?

Religion and spirituality (though I'd be the first to agree there are degenerative forms) are methods people use --and always will use--

That's a pretty big claim; any chance you'll defend it?

to relate themselves and their communities to the larger cosmos in a meaningful way.

Shouldn't more of the products of religion be "meaningful" then?

Science can and should inform these methods, but it is in no way in conflict with such spiritual pursuits (unless you've confounded it with materialism).

Except when it discovers facts that falsify the premises on which systems of spiritual "knowledge" are founded, but let's just ignore that inconvenience...

...can we please get some more creative concern trolls?

Posted by: Azkyroth | July 1, 2009 7:05 PM

I'm all for whatever it takes to teach our kids to rely on reason, logic and the scientific method in their interpretation of reality.

The people at the front lines of this effort, the people with the knowledge and experience as to the best strategies, are the people at NCSE. Since they advocate and utilize an accomodationist stance, I cannot help but disagree with PZ and the confrontational approach.

...fail.

Posted by: BJN | July 1, 2009 7:08 PM

"Ah, yes, the policy of cowardice. We are weak, and the loons are numerous and strong, and therefore we must avoid telling them the truth. If the masses prefer their silly religion to science, well then, we shall give them a neutered science, a weak science, an inoffensive science that does not challenge anyone's beliefs."

Are you rationalizing being inflammatory and obnoxious as practicing strong science? I missed the part about hostility and offensiveness being part of the scientific method.

Posted by: Naked Bunny with a Whip | July 1, 2009 7:11 PM

I can't help but see this entire debate in terms of who wears the collars and who holds the leashes. There always seem to be vastly more subs than doms.

Posted by: Sastra | July 1, 2009 7:15 PM

Matthew Segall #32 wrote:

Religion and spirituality (though I'd be the first to agree there are degenerative forms) are methods people use --and always will use-- to relate themselves and their communities to the larger cosmos in a meaningful way. Science can and should inform these methods, but it is in no way in conflict with such spiritual pursuits (unless you've confounded it with materialism).

What makes religion and spirituality different than poetry, community spirit, ethical imperatives, and aesthetic appreciation? The supernatural claims concerning some sort of deliberate, creative intelligence at the center or beginning of reality. That's not just important to the definition of religion -- it's important, period. And if a person's religion really matters to them, they ought to care whether it's true or not.

Yes, science is a method -- it's a method which attempts to weed out subjective, biased, human errors. If, then, one considers the existence of God (or spiritual realities) as a hypothesis, and examines and analyzes it seriously in light of modern discoveries concerning biology, neurology, cosmology, and human psychology, then the hypothesis fails.

I think that one ought to consider the question this way, if
1.) the person cares about what's true
and
2.) is concerned with avoiding personal errors which might be caused by biases

Are the accomodationists suggesting that religious people are not interested in those 2 goals? Or that they are not capable? Or that they are not ready? Or that they don't need them, because they're infallible?

All the alternatives seem disrespectful of the religious to me.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | July 1, 2009 7:18 PM

Category: Kooks

ouch

Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | July 1, 2009 7:22 PM

I missed the part about hostility and offensiveness being part of the scientific method.

It's not necessarily part of it. But sometimes it is necessary in defense of it.

Posted by: Rorschach | July 1, 2009 7:25 PM

@ 32,

I have to agree with Mooney, PZ, if only because he shows more tact

Take that Meyers !!
Yep, Im convinced now.

*eyesroll*

BJN @ 46 ,

Are you rationalizing being inflammatory and obnoxious as practicing strong science?

Are you posing strawmen arguments as loaded questions ?

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | July 1, 2009 7:27 PM

BJN #46

Are you rationalizing being inflammatory and obnoxious as practicing strong science? I missed the part about hostility and offensiveness being part of the scientific method.

The two are completely different things, asswipe. I'm not a scientist yet I can be offensive to fucktards like you. Likewise a scientist might not call you a dickhead.

The problem is the accomdationists just don't like the "New Atheists" (jayzus, I hate that name) rocking the goddists' boat. Mooney et al get the vapors if something's said that they think might be upsetting to goddists. "Oh my Aunt Bertha in Des Moines would be ever so flabbergasted and possibly even dismayed if she knew that PZ Myers thought that Ken Ham is a stupid idiot, so PZ should just shut up about Ham."

Posted by: Watchman | July 1, 2009 7:32 PM

America is a very religious nation, and if forced to choose between faith and science, vast numbers of Americans will select the former.

Yeah, it's a very religious nation for a first-world Western nation, but vast numbers of Americans won't be fooled into making the false "choice" that Mooney describes, for relatively few will feel that they are being "forced" to choose. No matter what goes on here in the culture war, most will engage in their weekly mainstream religious activities and believe their perfunctory, lukewarm beliefs, while accepting the validity of the sciences (note the plural) as normal part of their material world.

Posted by: Strider | July 1, 2009 7:32 PM

Holy Crap! I used to have grudging respect for him but now...What a douche!

Posted by: Rick | July 1, 2009 7:33 PM

PZ,

My viewpoint is this: I think that an individual's ability to choose is much more limited that many people believe. While you and I happen to have similar beliefs regarding the most likely nature of life, the universe, and everything, we cannot know with 100% certainty that we are correct and we should not mock others who have different beliefs.

By all means, we should defend and advocate our viewpoint, but ultimately, we should not be offensive about it. While there is absolute truth, you can't guarantee that you have it and your opponent does not. Instead, all are served better by a degree of tolerance and understanding and encourages honest inquiry.

Posted by: Josh | July 1, 2009 7:36 PM

thalarctos @55: well fucking said.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | July 1, 2009 7:38 PM

Folks,

Please don't feed the troll. He plays one note on his little tin horn and it's flat. If you ignore the troll, he'll find another bridge somewhere else.

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | July 1, 2009 7:42 PM

Did I miss something? Are scientists standing up in churches and demanding that sermons be changed to meet scientific findings?

I'm going to guess that we aren't. But we are seeing religious types dictating to scientists when reality is at odds with their antique superstitions. So why the hell should scientists bend over backwards to avoid hurting their feelings or threatening the security blanket that their inane belief provides?

It seems fairly simple to me. When science can show that God exists, then God can be included in discussions about science. Until then, God - and those who believe in him - should keep their beliefs to themselves.

Posted by: Global Warming Is A Scam | July 1, 2009 7:49 PM

Posted by: Pissed Herself | July 1, 2009 6:38 PM

Please don't feed the troll. He plays one note on his little tin horn and it's flat. If you ignore the troll, he'll find another bridge somewhere else.

PH's definition of "troll":

Anyone who does not fellate Herr Führer Hansen on command.

By the way, PH, I see you are still projecting. Please seek help for this mental disease.

Posted by: Global Warming Is A Scam | July 1, 2009 7:51 PM

Posted by: Pissed Herself | July 1, 2009 6:38 PM

Please don't feed the troll. He plays one note on his little tin horn and it's flat. If you ignore the troll, he'll find another bridge somewhere else.

PH's definition of "troll":

Anyone who does not fellate Herr Führer Hansen on command.

By the way, PH, I see you are still projecting. Please seek help for this mental disease.

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | July 1, 2009 7:55 PM

Can we not feed the troll, please? PZ will eventually remove all of its fecal matter.

Rick wrote:

Instead, all are served better by a degree of tolerance and understanding and encourages honest inquiry.

But religion isn't about honest inquiry. They've already got what they think is the answer - that God exists - and all they're doing is trying to deflect people away from pointing out that, based on absolutely everything we know about any field of science, there's no evidence whatsoever to support that.

If it were about 'honest inquiry', anyone religious would become agnostic until evidence for god appeared.

Posted by: ERV | July 1, 2009 7:58 PM

PZ-- The focus of his ire? Crackergate.
*giggle* That was SO last year. Whats Mooneys next book going to be about? The evolution of dance? What happens when you mix Diet Coke and Mentos? Maybe the most logical path up Candy Mountain?

lol internet faux pas, Mooney.

Posted by: Jim Wynne | July 1, 2009 7:59 PM

Methinks Salamander (@21 & 38)is our old pal Kwok.

Posted by: Fly | July 1, 2009 8:02 PM

Well, you posit a very good point, PZ. I'm amazed that certain (other) humans can't see the truth and dichotomy in their presumptions.

Posted by: Salamander | July 1, 2009 8:09 PM

Jim Wynne,

As my high-school physics teacher will tell you (Harvard graduate 87), I am not John Kwok ;)

Now give me a camera.

Posted by: Ron Sullivan | July 1, 2009 8:15 PM

Querty in #58 saved me a whole lot of typing. What you said, and YES!, and Thanks.

Plus, the oddest thing: You know when somebody remarks about an abusive parent, or a crazy family-of-origin, and says, "Man, that's nasty!" You know how heartening that is, even when you're an adult and well out of the situation and strong and independent have shaken the dust off your shoes and all that?

Well, Crackergate was like that. Someone who's been raised to be self-questioning (a good thing) and trusting of authority (not such a good thing) even over one's own perceptions (a very bad thing) can always use a dose of that, just by way of confirming that one's not really delusional.

I'd buy PZ another beer for that alone. I'd buy you one too, Querty. And you too, Thalarctos.

Posted by: Sastra | July 1, 2009 8:22 PM

Salamander #77 wrote:

These beliefs aren't merely a fad restricted to one era (e.g., homeopathy): most if not all societies have believed in a God. The vast majority of the world still does.

I think it would be more accurate to say that most cultures have believed in supernatural entities or forces. Asking whether these entities or forces really exist is not only reasonable, it's honest. And honest questions require an honest method -- one that may not give the answer that's wanted.

This is really one issue anti-science and only predomionately only in America.

I think that creationism is only the tip of the iceberg. Magical thinking -- and the happy belief that science can be jettisoned whenever it's inconvenient -- has lead to many forms of pseudoscience and irrationality. You mentioned homeopathy, so look at alternative medicine. Its advocates take full advantage of the protection given to religious beliefs, and claim truth status without the need for those pesky controlled studies.

The problem isn't that a few people have gotten carried away with faith. The problem is that faith itself has no limits, no checks, and no rules. If you cut it down in one area, it will pop up in another. Addressing each problem one by one, as if it sprung from nowhere, is a poor strategy.

I really don't see it as being detrimental to science and further I think the very real link that has been made between evolution and atheism is a non-starter in terms of persuading people of it's validity.

Are you sure? Philosopher Austin Dacy offers a possibility he calls the Dawkins hypothesis. "The presence of messages of science-religion conflict make messages of science-religion harmony better known and more palatable to religious believers."

Basically, he claims that the public has a tendency to think that the moderate, middle position is the most reasonable one. Intelligent Design proponents have traded on this, by framing their stance as the one between the extremes: young earth creationists on one side, and theistic evolutionists on the other side. Micro-evolution, not macro. Evolution, but miracles here and there. Not too much God, not too little God: just enough God. They think this strategy is effective at making their views seem comfortable.

Dacy suggests that the so-called new atheists, who turn scientific scrutiny on God, make up a new "extreme" -- and suddenly the theistic evolutionists are in the Happy Middle Ground. After reading Dawkins and Myers, they can escape to Collins and Miller. If all they read is Collins and Miller, they will escape to The Discovery Institute.

The accomodationists may need us for pragmatic reasons. We're not just the voice of conscience.

Is this right? I don't know. But it's plausible, and could be the case.

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | July 1, 2009 8:29 PM

But the fact we have not a complete answer does not mean the answer is god.

simbol hits the nail right on the head. The only involvement religion has in science is to insist there are things that we haven't found complete explanations for and demand we accept that that's where god must be.

Posted by: Dale | July 1, 2009 8:31 PM

Salamander wrote...

Your position,
that there is no God, is not spoken to by science. It is a philosophical position and it is utterly wrong to, as Coyne does, claim that evolution necessitates atheism. Surely you must see that this is wrong not only tactically but also technically.

I disagree. To say "there is no evidence for this proposition" is typical science, with the implied unsaid message of "this doesn't mean it isn't real".

However when science says "Of all the many, many claims made by the many, many religions we find no evidence, and everytime we investigate those claims we find better, alternative explanations" I think we are in a different category. One where science can say "there almost certainly is no god (so stop worrying about i and get on with your life :-)"

Posted by: SC, OM | July 1, 2009 8:33 PM

most if not all societies have believed in a God.

What a bullshit claim. Citation needed.

Posted by: Michael | July 1, 2009 8:36 PM

Looks like PZ got himself expelled again, this time from a book pre-screening.

Posted by: Kel | July 1, 2009 8:39 PM

It is a philosophical position and it is utterly wrong to, as Coyne does, claim that evolution necessitates atheism.

Posted by: Sastra | July 1, 2009 8:48 PM

Gwydion #93 wrote:

I just think we all need to be asking ourselves whether overtly aggressive gestures like Crackergate are going to teach true believers anything.

You have to understand the purpose of Crackergate in context. Imagine that someone burns an American flag -- to protest the passage of a Flag Burning Amendment. Imagine that magazines print and reprint the Mohammad cartoons -- to protest the riots which took place when the cartoons were first printed.

In both cases, people are deeply offended. But also, in both cases, the point of the offense was not to show that "America sucks" or "Mohammad is a false prophet." It was to show that it is okay to say those things. It is not a crime. And nobody is harmed. No symbol should be "sacred." Ideas need to be treated as ideas, not dogma.

Crackergate was not ultimately about religion. It was about freedom of speech. Unless you understand this as the -- excuse the expression, "frame" -- you won't be able to properly address the issue.

It sounds very much as if Mooney did not see or understand the issue as one of defending freedom, not advocating atheism. If he's really concerned with placating the reasonable religious people, he ought to emphasize the frame. Point it out to them. I think that a lot of people who would abhor someone burning a flag to protest an American policy could accept and understand the value of burning a flag, to protest an attempt to prevent flag burning.

I also suspect that many religious people would be more comfortable with Crackergate, if it were presented to them this way. It's odd that Mooney (whom I otherwise like and admire) is apparently trying to make the situation worse, when he could help smooth it over.

Posted by: Blake Stacey | July 1, 2009 8:58 PM

Sastra (#100):

It's odd that Mooney (whom I otherwise like and admire) is apparently trying to make the situation worse, when he could help smooth it over.

Almost as if he can't portray himself as the nice guy without trying to make somebody else look bad by comparison.

Posted by: SC, OM | July 1, 2009 9:01 PM

I couldn't believe this was the same guy who wrote American Fascists.

Uh, it isn't. :)

Posted by: Blake Stacey | July 1, 2009 9:06 PM

Y'know, when you think about the sheer volume of personal abuse which gets pumped through the Intertubes, it starts to look like the only difference between "Crackergate" and any other blog post is that this one pissed off somebody who has made a career out of being pissed off, and who has a ready-made audience of uneducated listeners who like to feel persecuted.

(Also, I'd like to apologize to the generation which lived through the Nixon administration for our devaluation of the "-gate" suffix. Yeah, making Bill Donohue mad and corrupting the entire goddamn federal government are real fuckin' comparable. Sometimes it seems like our language betrays our lack of perspective on scandal.)

Posted by: Mark | July 1, 2009 9:09 PM

Fuckem if they can't take the evidence

Posted by: Caine | July 1, 2009 9:13 PM

The apologists would happily apologise us back to medieval practices. Then we could all burn together because the church (pick one, doesn't matter) never had a problem burning their own.

Posted by: Darren Garrison | July 1, 2009 9:17 PM

The magical cannibal cookie reference brings to mind another bit of similar magical woo I learned for the first time today on running across someone who believes it: there are some Jews that believe that there is a magical, indestructible, immortal bone near the base of the skull from which they will be some day cloned. It strikes me how this claim is-- unlike so many religious claims-- perfectly disprovable. Simply burn or dissolve a corpse until there is nothing left. When there is nothing left, ipso fat toe, there was no magical indestructible bone there!

http://ohr.edu/ask/ask215.htm#Q3

Posted by: Carlie | July 1, 2009 9:22 PM

How much more effective might we be at furthering the cause of rational humanism if with patience and kindness we helped them disassemble that scaffolding, and repair the structure underneath it?

Not that much, since there are a lot of people on that scaffold who will kick you away from the scaffold and trample you underfoot. Since you're being so polite, you'll let them, and they'll be totally ok with that since you let them.
Please give me any example from history where being patient and kind worked to achieve social change.

Posted by: Josh | July 1, 2009 9:25 PM

Still. At. The. Office. 9:12 PM

Oh man, that sucks. I have a .doc open and am editing, so that's maybe a lame version of solidarity. But fuck it, I'm going to go pour a couple of fingers in your honor right now.

Posted by: Tongue of Groucho Marx | July 1, 2009 9:31 PM

My take on Crackergate:

As far as people being offended by it, I don't give a single shit about them. The religious do not need to be appeased; our political parties do that enough already.
However, the time you spent on desecrating a piece of bread could have been spent giving us interesting science information, or a well-constructed argument for atheism.

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | July 1, 2009 9:39 PM

The Tongue Of Groucho Marx does not work as well as it use to. Just an other smug dumbass who just has to complain that there is not enough science. The Tongue should go back top the grave. I would rather keep my found memories of Rufus T. Firefly.

Posted by: Rorschach | July 1, 2009 9:44 PM

121 and counting,going strong.....

Tonight I should be getting into some nice single malt scotch, but got a long day of work before that.

On the other hand, it's almost lunchtime now and I have the day off, it's tempting..:-)

Posted by: Rorschach | July 1, 2009 9:50 PM

How much more effective might we be at furthering the cause of rational humanism if with patience and kindness we helped them disassemble that scaffolding, and repair the structure underneath it?

This statement is suffering from the same weird idealism that seems to live in the Mooney's out there.
As if by being nice and patient and explaining to the zombies where their thinking took a wrong turn, anyone could unravel the voodoo and make them into rational beings.
I mean,it's a nice thought, but it doesnt work.
The history of science is testament to that, rational thinking makes the baby jebus cry,and introspection makes religionists deeply uncomfortable.They'd rather not.

Posted by: Geoff | July 1, 2009 10:00 PM

Whatever respect I had for Chris Mooney has now left the building.

Posted by: Patricia, OM | July 1, 2009 10:07 PM

I can take Mooney in a bare breasted oatmeal match.

Posted by: Owlmirror | July 1, 2009 10:11 PM

there are some Jews

And also Muslims.

that believe that there is a magical, indestructible, immortal bone near the base of the skull from which they will be some day cloned. It strikes me how this claim is-- unlike so many religious claims-- perfectly disprovable. Simply burn or dissolve a corpse until there is nothing left. When there is nothing left, ipso fat toe, there was no magical indestructible bone there!

But that would be desecration of a corpse!!!

Actually, I remembered hearing of this legend, except that it wasn't near the base of the skull, but at the base of the spine.

Some Google research showed me that both claims are made - some say that the luz is (or is part of) the coccyx; others say that the luz is (or is part of) the seventh cervical vertebra (C7). Who knows? Did anyone think to try testing this, in all the centuries that the legend has been around? Ha.

Lovely.

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | July 1, 2009 10:13 PM

Who said that? Take two.

Posted by: Gwydion | July 1, 2009 10:18 PM

I respectfully disagree with those who doubt the ability for a more kind and patient approach to be effective in de-converting believers. In fact, I would argue that kindness and patience and forebearance have been the ONLY effective means of achieving change throughout history; change is mostly a record of failure, until through repetition and persistence there is finally success.

Yes, there are people trying to kick me off the scaffolding... which is why I wear armor when I approach them and try to teach them the error of their thinking.

I respect those of you -- including PZ -- who take a more aggressive approach; I've just outgrown it myself.

Posted by: Andy Groves | July 1, 2009 10:19 PM

#103

Why does religion get special protection from being undermined by reality?

Here are some ideas:

1. Religion has been around for a very long time and is culturally embedded.

2. The propagation of that embedding starts at an early age.

3. As a result of (1) and (2), there are lots of religious people. They are consequently under less peer pressure to change their minds and abandon their faith.

4. People find religion comforting and are fine with being in denial if it makes them happy.

5. Denial is a universal human behavior and does not just apply to religion. It's just that the denial behavior is more organized in religions, and buttressed by the concept of faith.

Posted by: Rorschach | July 1, 2009 10:22 PM

I respect those of you -- including PZ -- who take a more aggressive approach; I've just outgrown it myself.

How very patronizing of you.
Arrogant jerk.

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | July 1, 2009 10:26 PM

And I’m sorry to be a troll, I didn’t realize PZ’s blog could only be commented on by those who applaud him.

You are a troll not because you do not throw rose petal on our overlord. You are a troll because you are long winded and tedious.

PZ Myers’ apparently saw this as an opportunity to get some attention for his cause, and so decided to insult Catholics for no other reason than out of spite.

If this were truly the case, that PZ just did it out of spite, he could do this sort of action at any time. He would not need the excuse of Webster Cook. Also, if it is just spite, it would seem it would be directed at the Lutheran Church, that is the faith he was brought up in.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 1, 2009 10:30 PM

@50 Sastra,

Religion/spirituality, like poetry, community spirit, morality, aesthetics, and science are all aspects of cultural life. But God, or the spiritual, the numinous, the awesome, etc., are not scientific hypotheses, at least as far as I am concerned. They are experiences, which I’d be willing to admit are subjective experiences. But I do not believe that all subjectivity is something to be “weeded out,” though of course bias and error should be kept as far from science as possible. I think we live in a universe that has both exteriors and interiors, and so shows both objective and subjective faces. Spirituality concerns the subjective side of reality, while science focus on the objective. We should not turn the scientific method into a metaphysical belief system by asserting that only the objective aspect of reality is real simply because that is all science can study empirically. Every scientist cares about what is true, and their spiritual leanings do not necessarily conflict with their laboratory investigations. Don’t forget that science itself began because very religious people (like Newton and Descartes) wanted to know and understand God’s creation.

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | July 1, 2009 10:33 PM

Matthew Segal, you wrote both this:

He wanted to annoy religious believers, plain and simple.

None of this is to say I in any way condone the death threats that Cook and Myers’ apparently received.

You don't see the two as somewhat contradictory?

A young man was assaulted, threatended with further physical violence, death and the end of his educational career for not adhering to the petty demands of the religious.

PZ spoke up about this and received similar threats.

In order to advertise this fact, and seize an opportunity to illustrate the ridiculous nature of Christian beliefs and the hypocrisy of the Christians holding those beliefs, he chose to act in an inflammatory way.

How can you possibly describe that complex series of events as 'wanting to annoy believers, plain and simple'?

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 1, 2009 10:35 PM

@140 Janine, OMnivore

Sorry to be long winded and tedious, but it always seemed to me that discussions concerned with the ultimate meaning of the universe deserve at least some attention to detail.

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble | July 1, 2009 10:40 PM

Dear Brother littlejohnson @ 123 wrote: "Smoggy, I think only you can be of assistance. I don't know why."

The reason only I can help, Brother Littlejohnson, is that as far as I am aware I am the only human with a direct, uninterrupted, unmediated connection with the Holy Trinity.

With regards to your problematic sobriety, I judged the appropriate member of the Trinity to consult would be the Holy Spirit.

"Spirit," I prayed. "What can we do about littlejohnson's troubling sobriety."

"That's easy, Smoggy," replied the Evanescent One. "All LJ needs to do is pray to me, and I will fill him."

"That sounds a little invasive, Oh Divine Essence," I responded in alarm.

"Only at first," replied the Ghostly Godbody. "But any Born Again Christian will tell you that being filled by the Holy Ghost produces the most wonderful sensation of euphoria. Just go to any Charismatic Fundy Church of an evening, and you'll find grown people writhing around screaming: "Yes! Yes! Oh...yes! Oh God! Oh Jesus...yes...Yes...YES! Come into my heart Holy Spirit!"

"Say what?" I said. "You come in people's hearts?"

"Only for my favored ones. The coming in the heart isn't a service I would ever offer to a fresh-off-the-boat believer. You need to be pretty experienced in the touch of Jesus and the potent eruption of the Holy Spirit in your life, to be able to handle it."

"Wow...I said. Being a Christian is...so...exciting! But what about littlejohnson. He's a hell-bound atheist. Can you offer him anything?"

"Drambuie. Three fingers. No ice. Straight down. Repeat as often as necessary. It's what God prefers."

"Hallelujah," I whispered. "Praise His Holy Single-Malted Name!"

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | July 1, 2009 10:41 PM

Sorry to be long winded and tedious, but it always seemed to me that discussions concerned with the ultimate meaning of the universe deserve at least some attention to detail.

That is, like, so huge and stuff. And here I thought you were here to complain that PZ is a big old meanie who just wants to insult your delicate sensibilities.

Posted by: SC, OM | July 1, 2009 10:43 PM

@Rorschach -- while I agree that the statement I made was arrogant (and apologize for it), I must also say that arrogance is precisely what PZ has been accused of as well.

So now "is" and "is accused of" are identical?

Religion/spirituality, like poetry, community spirit, morality, aesthetics, and science are all aspects of cultural life. But God, or the spiritual, the numinous, the awesome, etc., are not scientific hypotheses, at least as far as I am concerned. They are experiences, which I’d be willing to admit are subjective experiences. But I do not believe that all subjectivity is something to be “weeded out,” though of course bias and error should be kept as far from science as possible. I think we live in a universe that has both exteriors and interiors, and so shows both objective and subjective faces. Spirituality concerns the subjective side of reality, while science focus on the objective.Bleh. Garbage. If you claim your subjective experience as evidence of some objective reality, the onus is on you to provide evidence of it.

Posted by: Citizen Z | July 1, 2009 10:43 PM

I would defend PZ's right to do it again and again with every power I could bring to bear. I agree with the fundamental ideas -- that the idea of transubstation is insane and laughable -- behind it. I also think it provoked a terrific amount of healthy debate and awareness. It was also, however, overly in-your-face, confrontational, and abrasive.

It was a wafer in a trash can.

Posted by: articulett | July 1, 2009 10:46 PM

You can't lead people out their "demon haunted world" without obliterating their other invisible companions in the process. Science owes no more deference to god belief then it does to belief in demons. Such beliefs often go hand and hand and these imagined beings incite real suffering.

My heroes are those, like PZ, who won't defer to those who try to shame them for speaking the truth. I suspect PZ is responsible for a lot more critical thinking than his critics. I can't help but notice the much higher average intelligence and education level of respondents on PZ's blog as opposed to Mooney's. Surely, this is evidence against Mooney's assertion that the "new atheists" are partially responsible for scientific ignorance.

Plus, these "new atheists" seem to have a sense of humor that the accomodationist lack. In addition to being intellectually stimulating, the "new atheists" are much more fun to read! (What do I need to do to become recognized an official "new atheist"--prefably a "militant" one?)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H74ckoCYq3c

Posted by: Victor | July 1, 2009 10:48 PM

I find it strange that everyone forgets that crackergate was the reaction. Church members making death threats over some kid's stupid stunt was the start of it. Sure, it may have been a bit rude, but it was no where near the crazy violent reactions of the faithful.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 1, 2009 10:51 PM

@ 152,

"If you claim your subjective experience as evidence of some objective reality, the onus is on you to provide evidence of it."

I didn't claim this. I said there are subjective and objective aspects to reality and that spirituality concerns the subjective elements while science concerns the objective. I'm not a dualist, and so of course the line between the two is not ultimate. But nor am I a materialist; I think scientific findings are better interpreted by other metaphysical systems (ie, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_philosophy)

Posted by: Rorschach | July 1, 2009 10:52 PM

Don’t forget that science itself began because very religious people (like Newton and Descartes) wanted to know and understand God’s creation.

Science began when stone age hunters figured out how to glue sharp stones on the tip of the spears to kill animals more efficiently.Or take any other example that advanced survival chances.
Because even hunter-gatherers had figured out that their deities didnt deliver the food on plates, even when prayed upon heavily.

Posted by: Dust | July 1, 2009 10:53 PM

@ Andy Groves, your list could be rounded out with fear. Many believers are fearful-any challenge to religion they hear, or read or come across on a blog scares them. Not towing the religious line causes fear, so they are willing to give religion special protection. That is what I've observed and also felt (when I was religious.)

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble | July 1, 2009 10:55 PM

Dear Brother Baron Aaker @ 153,

According to God, you are not here to talk about stunts with crackers, but because you are seeking delivery from the "Demon of Spoonerism".

Jesus says that all you have to do is say " I love Myers' cunning stunt" twenty times quickly and you will be cured.

Praise the Lord!

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | July 1, 2009 10:57 PM

But nor am I a materialist; I think scientific findings are better interpreted by other metaphysical systems

Oh dear, sciences have to be held back by his own religious belief.

Posted by: gdlchmst | July 1, 2009 11:01 PM

He couldn't tell you to your face that the stunt with the cracker was a piece of obnoxious exhibitionism? I guess that's what I'm here for.

Wow, you are so important! Obnoxious git.

Posted by: truthspeaker | July 1, 2009 11:06 PM

He regards destroying a sacred symbol to be inflammatory and obnoxious

He almost makes that sound like a bad thing. Almost.

Psst. Typekey. When I check "keep me logged in on this computer", I really mean it.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 1, 2009 11:08 PM

@167,

If metaphysics is imaginary mental masturbation, then the epistemological justifications for the scientific method are made of sacred splooge. Science cannot exist without philosophy as the constant critic of its abstractions (but of course, philosophy is better off today then in antiquity because it can check its ideas with scientific data).

@168,

I wish to hold back no scientific discoveries. Metaphysics concerns how we interpret the data that science provides us with. Without fitting the facts into a larger general scheme of reality, they are meaningless. My only claim is that materialism as a larger scheme does not in anyway help us explain the features of our universe, such as the fact that it should exist at all, or the fact that it moves toward increasing complexity, that life has emerged, that intelligence has emerged, or that consciousness should exist at all. Darwinian selection could work perfectly well in the absence of conscious awareness. Why does it exist? In a materialistic universe ruled purely by blind mechanism, we would not expect any of what we see. "God" is obviously not a scientific hypothesis, and I have not claimed it to be. I am only arguing that it is just as deceitful for scientists to tell the public that materialism or atheism have somehow been proven as it is for preachers to tell their congregation that the theory of common descent is the devil's work.

Posted by: Brian X | July 1, 2009 11:10 PM

Janine:

I was an an argument with two posters over at RationalWiki earlier this week where both were arguing precisely that, specifically that God was immune to scientific inquiry. They were NOMA NOMAing so furiously you could have sung a Romanian pop tune to it.

Posted by: dinkum | July 1, 2009 11:13 PM

Is there such a thing as a Solipsism Troll?

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | July 1, 2009 11:16 PM

Aaron Baker wrote:

I think...

Oh, I doubt it.

...to be a concern troll, you have to pretend to be concerned for someone while you're doing something very different, like insulting him.

Wrong. Laughably so.

So if I simply say that you're a dolt who uses expressions he doesn't understand, that's not concern trolling

You would be correct in principle - but you're still wrong; I'm not a dolt, nor am I using an expression I don't understand. Unlike your ignorant self.

that's just a statement of fact.

Wrong.

Are you starting to get it?

What, that you're a vapid pissant clown shoe? Oh, I worked that out from your first comment. You didn't need to reinforce it.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 1, 2009 11:16 PM

@177

Metaphysical principle #1 is the law of identity, that A=A, which you are employing in your attempt to discredit metaphysics. No doubt metaphysical speculation is sticky, complex territory; but we cannot avoid it, especially if scientific investigation is to be grounded upon anything.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | July 1, 2009 11:21 PM

Whenever someone says metaphysics, I do two things. One, grab my wallet so it can't be picked. Two, don't believe anything the woomeister says. They have no logic and reason.

Posted by: Rorschach | July 1, 2009 11:23 PM

No doubt metaphysical speculation is sticky, complex territory

Condescending arrogance noted.

but we cannot avoid it, especially if scientific investigation is to be grounded upon anything.

You know,I just watched the Venter-Dawkins chat,and those 2 giants seem perfectly happy to just ground it on curiosity, the quest to better people's lifes, and survival of the species.
As far as I can tell,no need for metaphysical woo.

Aaron Baker,

a hint : it helps around here if you look up those big words before you use them,like, "statement of fact", or "concern troll" .
Makes you look slightly less of an idiot.
Too late now.

Posted by: bob | July 1, 2009 11:31 PM

I'm confused ... aren't us "New Atheist" types supposed to be the arrogant, condescending ones?

Posted by: gdlchmst | July 1, 2009 11:34 PM

They have no logic and reason.

But metaphysics is beyond logic and reason. Or maybe it plays twister with them... I forgot which. Perhaps Matthew Segall can clarify.

Posted by: Sheril R. Kirshenbaum | July 1, 2009 11:38 PM

Hi PZ,

Most of these comments are directed at Chris, but we co-wrote Unscientific America and I noticed your post tonight.

We're two weeks before the official publication date and most review copies are going out now. No one at ScienceBlogs has received it yet as far as we know. Be assured it's on the way and I hope you'll reserve judgment until you've read the book.

Best,
Sheril

Posted by: Sastra | July 1, 2009 11:39 PM

Matthew Segall #142 wrote:

But God, or the spiritual, the numinous, the awesome, etc., are not scientific hypotheses, at least as far as I am concerned. They are experiences, which I’d be willing to admit are subjective experiences.

God is an "experience?" Or you infer that God exists through an experience, or because of an experience?

If it's the first, then it seems as if you're using the term "God" as a sort of descriptive adjective. It's not a being, entity, force -- it's a way of feeling, an emotion, an expression of taste or preference. Any number of other words could be substituted, and used by an atheist-materialist with no contradiction.

If it's the second, then you're making an empirical claim. Teillard de Chardin's progressive evolution is an empirical claim, and open to scientific scrutiny. It could be true or false. We can predict consequences from its truth, and their absence would count against them.

How are you defining God? You seem to be trying to straddle some sort of line between God being a subjective internal state of feelings about God, and God being something separate from your feelings about God.

Posted by: Aaron Baker | July 1, 2009 11:41 PM

Wowblogger,

The site you linked to gives five definitions of "concern troll." I guess it was too much effort to work your way down to no. three: "person who lurks, then posts, on a site or blog, expressing concern for policies, comments, attitudes of others on the site. It is viewed as insincere, manipulative, condescending."

As for "vapid pissant clown shoe," I guess I'd be offended if I knew what the hell it meant. I prefer clarity of expression: e.g. You're an idiot.

Posted by: Sven DiMilo | July 1, 2009 11:44 PM

are you saying the posted quotes from Ophelia's blog are not accurate, or missing context?

and/or maybe she's saying that she wrote that part?...

Posted by: Patricia, OM | July 1, 2009 11:49 PM

#196 - Aaron Baker - To Wowbagger,OM - You're an idiot.

Hey Aaron, fuck you.

Posted by: Kel | July 1, 2009 11:55 PM

I really don't get why anyone is defending the desire to maintain sacred symbols over the right to freedom of speech/expression. Should we refrain from critising religious bigots because we should respect that their book calls homosexuality an abomination and therefore any discrimination against gays is okay?

It's so nice that we are so tolerant that we will side with those who are explicitly intolerant and have no desire to change. Game theory shows this is a losing strategy, why aren't we working towards reciprocal altruism?

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble | July 1, 2009 11:57 PM

Dear Brother Baron @ 196

I too am a lover of clarity of expression. And after reading your posts I feel I need to say (clearly) that you have your head so far up your ass you can see the pinot noir pouring down.

Of course, being a Christian, I'd never actually say such a thing. But my need is great.

Yours in Christian clarity,

Smoggy

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 2, 2009 12:02 AM

@183 John Morales wrote: "Matthew Segall apparently is one of those "new agers" to which Sastra has previously referred.

He's clearly not a materialist or a dualist; he's some sort of mystical ineffabilist. Woo-hoo!

Better than a religionist, I suppose... ;)"

Yeah, I suppose I'd have a hard time shaking that label. New Age I am, at least when in the company of all you sober scientists ; )

I actually share the sense I assume most regulars here have that evolutionary biology and contemporary cosmology have a more urgent message to convey to the public than institutionalized religion. The knowledge we currently have of the universe we live in and the processes that have produced us is absolutely astounding to anyone who understands it. This knowledge most definitely has public policy implications (ie, knowing about the actual nature of our universe implies possessing a certain moral perspective about it--more on the whole false "is" v. "ought" dichotomy below). I assume I share the sentiment with most of you that 13.7 billion years of creative emergence is far more elegant, and TRUE, an explanation for our existence than 6,000 years as the slaves of some immoral--no, monsterous amoral father in the sky. Really, if Darwin was right about anything, it was cultural evolution--his theory explains wonderfully why human beings would imagine a divine source as jealous, self-interested and vengeful as Yahweh.

Where we probably disagree is on the relationship between what we call "human imagination" and what you sober scientists like to call "objective" or "material" reality. This is where the "is" v. "ought" dichotomy becomes relevant... science is a cultural activity, embedded just as much as religion in day-to-day human socio-historical realities. The scientist cannot say to the public that the universe is "mindless" without making a value judgment. We can all agree that human imagination is a product of the universe--but would you also agree that the universe can't help but be human? Cosmologists call this the anthropic principle. It is basically a pantheistic interpretation of science, which I would certainly argue is just as reasonable an interpretation as materialism (actually, I'd argue it is more so--and not just because Einstein was sympathetic to it).

I think contemporary scientific knowledge of the universe (at least, to the best of my knowledge) has spiritual implications. Materialism is a cop out, an attempt to avoid the responsibility of --not only one's human-- but one's cosmic existence. Atheism is more interesting, because I believe it to be something every person experiences at some point. No theist could possibly understand the meaning of faith without also having experienced genuine doubt.

Another New Ager talking about atheism in the name of God: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE5M8743a1s

Posted by: John Morales | July 2, 2009 12:07 AM

Aaron:

As for "vapid pissant clown shoe," I guess I'd be offended if I knew what the hell it meant.

Prepare to be offended, O disingenous troll.

vapid: Lacking significance or liveliness or zest.
pissant: An insignificant person.
clown: A person who amuses others by ridiculous behaviour.
shoe: Footwear.
clown shoe: A type of shoe of exaggerated and impractical proportions, deliberately absurd in design and used by clowns.

In short, you're being called an insignificant object of derisive amusement. It is a well-earned and most appropriate sobriquet, IMO.

(BTW, the apparent redundancy is a mode of rhetorical emphasis, by the way.)

Posted by: littlejohn | July 2, 2009 12:14 AM

My darling Smoggy,

There is really no reason for you to go on with your cute "littlejohnson" pet name. At least not after your recent anal reconstruction surgery.

Everyone here is capable of spotting irony when... oh jebus, the unicorns! Who said they could fly?

My "doctor," Ok, my neighbor, said it wasn't acid. Jebus, the slugs! They can talk. They're telling me to go to bed.

So is my lover, Janine.

Goodnight, my lovelies! Oh god, the mammoths! My house is far too small. Stop that! Dammit!

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble | July 2, 2009 12:17 AM

I think LJ has found Jesus.

Posted by: Kel | July 2, 2009 12:20 AM

Actually, I’d argue quite the contrary, that the story science is telling us about the dynamics and development of our universe creates serious problems for any standard-brand materialism. The fine-tuning

Firstly, what would a non-finely tuned universe look like? What would we see in a universe that isn't finely tuned so that we know that this one is?

Secondly, how does this discredit materialism? Even if the laws of nature were finely tuned, how does that impact at all on materialism?

Thirdly, what finely-tuned the laws of physics? How does supersymmetry get broken? How did the laws of physics come to be as they are now? Can there be any other options for the laws of physics?

What I don't get about the fine-tuning argument is that the whole premise seems to be "we exist, therefore God" because if things were any different then we wouldn't be here, and since we are here then it's staggeringly improbable therefore God. This is nothing more than anthropic deism, somehow this 13,700,000,000 year old universe that is 93,000,000,000 light years wide was all made so one species of billions on one planet around one insignificant star in a universe where there are more stars than grains of sand on all the beaches of the world - we still need to satisfy our urge to say we are more significant than we are. Evolution should have put the issue to bed, but it seems the gap for God is at Plank time.

Posted by: John Morales | July 2, 2009 12:29 AM

Matthew @206, thanks for the response, I give you credit for engaging me substantially.

Good first two paragraphs, though rather than 'TRUE' I would say 'supportable' or 'sustainable' or 'justifiable' or the like.

Where we probably disagree is on the relationship between what we call "human imagination" and what you sober scientists like to call "objective" or "material" reality. This is where the "is" v. "ought" dichotomy becomes relevant... science is a cultural activity, embedded just as much as religion in day-to-day human socio-historical realities.

No, I agree that our apprehension of and narrative about reality is a construct of our imagination — but I do disagree that science is a cultural activity, or in any utilitarian sense comparable to religion.
Science is a self-correcting, bias-annulling and iterative process for acquiring knowledge about reality; religion is wishful thinking and empty 'explanations'.

The scientist cannot say to the public that the universe is "mindless" without making a value judgment.

Nor does the scientist say so; the scientist says 'there is no evidence of telos when examining the universe'. Note that to say something is a value judgement here is trite; any expression of a conclusion or judgement is de-facto a 'value judgement'.

We can all agree that human imagination is a product of the universe--but would you also agree that the universe can't help but be human? Cosmologists call this the anthropic principle.

What?
First, the universe is anything but 'human'. Rather than trying to interpret that, I instead encourage you to rephrase it so that it's meaningful.
Second, you'd better look up anthropic principle, for I suspect you don't understand it.

I think contemporary scientific knowledge of the universe (at least, to the best of my knowledge) has spiritual implications.

See my #201; what is this 'spirit' of which you speak?
(Remember, you claim not to be a dualist.)

Atheism is more interesting, because I believe it to be something every person experiences at some point.

It's not particularly interesting, anymore than non-stamp collecting or non-football fanaticism is. And yes, every person has experienced it — it is the tabula rasa, or normal state before religious indoctrination/imaginative wishful thinking occurs.

Atheism is, at base, non-atheism; i.e. no belief in deities (or deity, for monotheists).
There are different kinds of atheism, but this is the core meaning.

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | July 2, 2009 12:31 AM

Aaron Baker, vapid pissant clown shoe, in your post explaining what you thought a concern troll was, you wrote this:

I think to be a concern troll, you have to pretend to be concerned for someone while you're doing something very different, like insulting him.

While definition number 3 from the definitions is this:

person who lurks, then posts, on a site or blog, expressing concern for policies, comments, attitudes of others on the site. It is viewed as insincere, manipulative, condescending.

Is English not your first language? If not, then I understand. However, if it is then you've got some serious comprehension issues, as what you wrote does not even slightly resemble that definition.

You stated the the concern was for the person - 'concern for someone' was the exact phrase you used - and not the issue; you also believed that this was insulting - yet the definition does not include the word 'insult' or any of its variants.

Want to take another stab at it? Here's a hint: try looking for words you used that appear in the definition provided.

Sheesh.

As for "vapid pissant clown shoe," I guess I'd be offended if I knew what the hell it meant. I prefer clarity of expression: e.g. You're an idiot.

You want clarity of expression? How's this: fuck off, you ignorant, clueless dickhead. You're punching way above your weight and getting the shit kicked out of you.

Clear enough for ya?

As for the term 'clown shoe'; maybe it is a bit obscure but hey, it's not like it's rocket science; it's an insult. Get hold of a copy of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Kevin Smith may not be the brightest or deepest guy in the world but the fucker can do dialogue well, and insults better than most.

Posted by: Patricia, OM | July 2, 2009 12:37 AM

I am one of the Queens of gutter language, thank you. And I don't give a fiddler's fuck what you think of PZ or Wowbagger. They are right and you are the idiot. Do yourself a favor and piss off.

The only thing lower than a concern troll is a christian, wanna go two for two?

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 2, 2009 12:38 AM

@ 194 Sastra writes: “God is an "experience?" Or you infer that God exists through an experience, or because of an experience?”

I’m not a Catholic, but in this case I would say that God is three things: experience, that existing through experience, and that existing because of an experience. God could also be described temporally as the past (experience), the present (existing through), and the future (effects). God is everything, which I describe a bit more gently in my last response to John Morales. I’m also a panexperientialist, which is to say that I don’t believe there is anything real aside from experience. If you have at least some empiricist leanings, we might be able to agree on some version of this idea (that there is nothing real outside experience).

Teilhard’s law of complexity/consciousness is an empirical claim. It can be tested. The emergence of the internet seems awfully similar to what we would expect of a noosphere, don’t you think? But it is also a law meant to describe natural history. It can be tested like so many other evolutionary explanations, by retrospective correlation. I think that if you perform this experiment of remembering the universe as science tells us it has unfolded, you will see that the law holds.

Sastra writes: “How are you defining God? You seem to be trying to straddle some sort of line between God being a subjective internal state of feelings about God, and God being something separate from your feelings about God.”

As I said above, lump me in with the pantheists (at least unless you’re willing to even discuss pantheist-type metaphysics with me; if so I’ll try to convince you of panentheism). I do not think there is any ontological gap separating subject from object. We distinguish between the internal and external worlds based on conventions, not scientific fact. I’m influenced not only by Teilhard, but by Whitehead, who argued that the universe was in fact full of feelings. All is experience, which is to say that all is feeling. Our scientific knowledge of the universe is a complex organic feeling being experienced by the universe itself.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | July 2, 2009 12:39 AM

We can all agree that human imagination is a product of the universe--but would you also agree that the universe can't help but be human? Cosmologists call this the anthropic principle. It is basically a pantheistic interpretation of science, which I would certainly argue is just as reasonable an interpretation as materialism

oy. I don't even quite know how to handle this one... how does one anthropomorphize an entire universe...?

Posted by: MadScientist | July 2, 2009 12:48 AM

"if forced to choose between faith and science, vast numbers of Americans will select the former. The New Atheists err in insisting that such a choice needs to be made."

Two canards with one stone!

I am not aware of any atheists running up to religious people and saying: "you've got to be an atheist or else quit your work in science". Maybe I'm living in the wrong hick town.

Posted by: Rorschach | July 2, 2009 12:52 AM

I am not aware of any atheists running up to religious people and saying: "you've got to be an atheist or else quit your work in science".

No,it's usually the other way round, at least in the U.S., especially if you want to be elected into some official function.

But they tend to overlook that.

Posted by: John Morales | July 2, 2009 12:56 AM

Jadehawk,

how does one anthropomorphize an entire universe...?

Must be New Age stuff, very ineffable.

Clearly, the Universe is of the
Domain: Eukarya
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Hominidae
Subfamily: Homininae
Tribe: Hominini
Subtribe: Hominina.

Yup, that makes sense! </sarcasm>

(Seriously, I think it was a not well-thought out expression of a sentiment that works in his usual milieu — alas, this is Pharyngula and such gets called here.)

Posted by: Janine, OMnivore | July 2, 2009 12:57 AM

how does one anthropomorphize an entire universe...?

Jadehawk, here is one way of trying to do it.

Aaron Baker: Fuckity fuck fuck!

Posted by: Patricia, OM | July 2, 2009 1:03 AM

Dammit! Janine is twirling faster than me.

Posted by: Patricia, OM | July 2, 2009 1:10 AM

Aaron Baker - My real name is Patricia - so what.

So you don't like PZ's treatment of a cracker, you don't like it that Wowbagger points out that you are an idiot, and I use gutter language.

Too fucking bad.

Don't read this blog. Again, you are free to fuck off.

Posted by: Patricia, OM | July 2, 2009 1:18 AM

I don't lurk either.

Every chance I get, I peek!

Posted by: Kel | July 2, 2009 1:26 AM

A username is just a unique identifier. Just see how many "Mike"s or "Mark"s or "Eric"s there are on here and the case is made to pick a handle that is unique. Hell, I'm not the only Kel who posts (I'm unique by my blog link). Rorsharch and Wowbagger have been here for as long as I remember, they definitely aren't hiding behind a handle.

Complaining about anonymity on the internet is, well, redundant. The best you could do with a person's name is cyber stalk them, so it really doesn't matter too much.

Posted by: Tomecat | July 2, 2009 1:33 AM

America is a very religious nation, and if forced to choose between faith and science, vast numbers of Americans will select the former.

And?

Some Americans will choose the latter. While I am expected to respect religious values, I have yet to find a religious person who considers my views when demanding this choice.

Posted by: Wowbagger (and proud of it), OM | July 2, 2009 1:38 AM

I've never understood the criticism of people not using their 'real' names. What's a name but what someone else decided you should be called? I don't happen to like my name - it's boring and unrepresentative of me as a person - and for almost all my adult life I've gone by one or more nicknames.

Seems to me it's only ever a complaint by someone who's unable to come up with a substantive refutation of the nym-user's arguments.

Posted by: Azkyroth | July 2, 2009 1:46 AM

"Seven years old, so you'd think, watching him
Though GIWAS' mommy says he's a genius
God Big Oil on his side, and his head up his ass
Compensating for a tiny penis
And he sneered, and he whined, and he trolled, and he lied
And he never did learn a damn thing, but
This you must realize: a life spent spreading lies
Is 'a life that's well spent' to a wingnut."

(To the tune of "1916")

Posted by: Aaron Baker | July 2, 2009 1:50 AM

"And everyone knows pretty much exactly what the others stand for,because other than you,most people on this thread have been doing this for a long time."

I've been posting on this website for at least five years, Rorschach; I find your proprietary attitude very amusing.

As for the alleged badness of my arguments, we've mostly just been insulting one another (I don't have any exalted illusions about the activity). But if you want my actual reasons for disapproving of Myers's cracker caper, see #243 above.

Posted by: John Morales | July 2, 2009 2:00 AM

Aaron @243, this was well and truly thrashed out during 'crackergate'; you've missed the boat.

You make a good case regarding your status, though — you're not just a concern troll, you're a slow-witted and tardy concern troll. At least you're marginally amusing — I'll give you that.

And "As for "vapid pissant clown shoe," I guess I'd be offended if I knew what the hell it meant. I prefer clarity of expression: e.g. You're an idiot." is clearly either disingenous or outright obtuse.

You cannot have failed to know what it meant, if you had any wit; that is contra-indicated by the evidence*, hence you're disingenous.

Furthermore, to call you an idiot is nowhere near as pithy or expressive as the expression that was used is. It would not have done you justice; 'idiot' is commonplace, but you well and truly transcend such a simple description. 'Idiot' is too etiolated a term for such as you.

Now, Wowbagger, or whatever your name is [...]

Heh. Good shovel-work there, Aaron Baker or whatever your name is. ;)

PS Please, do show us how you can cause anguish. Try it on me, Patricia has retired for the night.
I am aquiver and adread with anticipation.

--
* That's a compliment, of a sort. We call it "faint praise".

Posted by: Rev. Bigdumbchimp | July 2, 2009 2:03 AM

Rev. Bigdumbchimp is my real name

Posted by: Aaron Baker | July 2, 2009 2:06 AM

Re #247: And you prove, Rorschach, that actually posting my argument was a complete waste of time, as you won't address it.

That's enough for one night. If you actually have something substantive to say, maybe you'll come up with it tomorrow . . . but I don't think I'll be there waiting.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 2, 2009 2:08 AM

@ 201 John Morales writes: “those assumptions (of science) are that there is an external reality, and that it is consistent, and that only the senses can convey information about that reality.”

You must have left out the other necessary assumption on accident? I mean, that there be in addition to external reality, an internal consciousness capable of consistently observing, measuring, and formalizing all that sensory data into meaningful scientific theories? I would never deny the existence of the external world, but I would argue there is absolutely no sense (reasonable or empirical) to be made of any supposed pre-given, objective material world. The external world is always already together with the internal. Consciousness wasn’t parachuted into a sterile, mindless universe as if from outside; it grew right out of the center of what is actually more of an organic universe still in the process of creating itself. Based on my understanding, our scientific knowledge of the universe not only doesn’t disprove, but actually supports the idea that it is a directed (not “designed,” but lured by recognizable laws, like entropy or Teilhard’s complexity/consciousness), experiential universe, which is all that I am arguing for here (not for the existence of “God”).

John Morales writes: “you claim not to be a dualist, yet you refer to "spirituality". Q: What is this 'spirit' concept (presumably you don't mean mind), and why do you apparently consider it is not amenable to scientific scrutiny?”

I don’t bring up spirit because I want to annul matter, nor because I think the two are irreconcilably enemies or ontologically distinct substances. To tell you the truth, I don’t think we need to talk about anything but matter—but I think matter is more than brute stuff devoid of self-enjoyment. I think all organized material bodies feel the rest of the universe in an increasingly intense way depending on their complexity (I didn’t add above that we also need to talk about time, which is where this “increasingly complex” business comes from). Hydrogen feels gravitational gradients, stars feel magnetic fields, bacteria feel nutrient gradients, human beings feel the need to understand the universe. I think these feelings are leading the universe somewhere: time’s influence on matter is not merely accidental; to argue that it is to contradict the plainly evident pattern of natural history. If we had to separate matter and spirit for the sake of metaphor, I’d say that “spirit” describes what we call “matter” is evolving toward. We might also swap “novelty” for spirit and “habit” for matter, so long as we see that the two are really part of a single process called the universe and that no actually existing thing/event is ever one or the other exclusively. The universe is creative process--it is not entirely determined by the past but has spontaneously emerged to higher states of order on multiple occasions. I can only assume it will continue to do so. Science cannot scrutinize the idea that ours is a reasonable, a purposeful universe. If it were not such a universe, the scientific enterprise would not be possible. Reason has emerged in our universe—this is a fact. I do not think mechanistic materialism can account for this, other than to say it is a complete fluke. This leads us to the anthropic principle.

@216 John Morales writes: “you'd better look up anthropic principle, for I suspect you don't understand it.”

Perhaps I don’t understand it. I’ve yet to hear it described by any two people exactly the same way. When I say that our universe can’t help but be human, I mean only that we necessarily exist in a universe whose processes were potentially, and are now actually intelligent.

John Morales writes: “the scientist says 'there is no evidence of telos when examining the universe'. Note that to say something is a value judgement here is trite; any expression of a conclusion or judgement is de-facto a 'value judgement'.”

As I said above, for the scientific enterprise (which I believe to be a cultural activity—I’m not sure where you’d begin arguing otherwise? More below) to be possible, human beings must be rational creatures in a universe which conforms to certain reasons (ie, purposes, causes, laws). Even Darwin’s theory of evolution invokes telos. Natural selection only does theoretical work if we take the analogy of human and natural selection quite literally. The scientist has every reason not to deny the universe is reasonable and purposeful. If he/she does, I don’t see how he/she can avoid erasing causality itself from the picture. It is only the materialist who argues based on any number of non-scientific motivations that the universe lacks all telos.

John Morales says: “Science is a self-correcting, bias-annulling and iterative process for acquiring knowledge about reality;”

Yes, science is that cultural institution which has proven itself to be the most progressive yet devised by the human spirit, at least in terms of technological advance. I don’t think this means civilization can thrive without other value spheres having a share of power, however. For instance, we have pressing moral decisions to make about how scientific knowledge ought to influence the way we relate to the rest of the non-human earth community. A materialist response to these moral issues (I think materialism is as much a moral, as a scientific stance) is usually either supportive of or indifferent to industrial growth capitalism, which is pushing us into the largest mass extinction since the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs according to E.O. Wilson. Science can and should help us make moral decisions about human-earth relations; a materialist wouldn’t seem to have a stake in the matter, because how can one argue that non-human nature has value independent of human desires if it is all just a blind mechanism? Economics becomes just another science concerned with objective facts with no ethical implications.

John Morales writes: “every person has experienced it (atheism)— it is the tabula rasa, or normal state before religious indoctrination/imaginative wishful thinking occurs.”

Actually, recent developmental psychology might show otherwise, that children are originally quite open to spirituality, and only as adults become self-described atheists: http://www.science-spirit.org/article_detail.php?article_id=128

I’ll admit this is open to debate, mostly for semantic reasons concerning how you prefer to use the word “atheist.” You say it means the lack of a belief in deities, but when a child says “God did it!,” I don’t think they mean the same thing that, say, Jerry Falwell did.

Posted by: Kel | July 2, 2009 2:31 AM

Actually, recent developmental psychology might show otherwise, that children are originally quite open to spirituality

Posted by: Aaron Baker | July 2, 2009 2:36 AM

Once more unto the breach . . . .

Wowbagger, I AM AN ATHEIST. I AM EVEN AN ATHEIST CONCERNED BY MYERS'S BEHAVIOR. THAT WASN'T A PLOY. I explained my reasons for disapproving of the cracker business on this site, back when it happened. I've repeated my reasons in #243 above. What else do you need?

As for definitions: yes, my first effort at a definition sucked. Are you happy now?

Apparently, some people here have decided that a bare statement of disagreement with P.Z. is an unacceptable provocation. I haven't noticed Myers to get too upset by this sort of thing; but I'll certainly keep it in mind in the future. I've only been posting here since 2004; I'm obviously a mere interloper who needs to watch himself with old hands like you. But I want to be very clear on this: I tend to repond to insults with, well, insults. Not admirable, maybe, but I think it is something beyond gall to attack me, completely groundlessly, as a concern troll, and then jump on me, a la Rorschach, for responding in kind.

Posted by: Rorschach | July 2, 2009 2:42 AM

Wowbagger, I AM AN ATHEIST.

Mate,dont you get it???
I have heard better arguments from Xtian fundies here over the years.
I personally dont give a shit if you are a mormon,xtian,jew,hindu or whatever,just for fuck's sake make an effort to put together a decent argument.
And then let's look at it and have a debate.
But not this shit.Srsly.

Posted by: Rorschach | July 2, 2009 2:47 AM

What exactly is the physiological mechanism responsible for turning chemical reactions into conscious existence? If you're curious, I solve the problem by never artificially separating mind and matter in the first place

Shorter Matthew S,

POOF

Thanks for playing.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 2, 2009 2:50 AM

Re: @ 258 Kel,

Perhaps you'd argue that evolution explains how the mind/brain came to be. I've argued elsewhere that based on a materialist ontology and a reductionistic Darwinian biology, there is no reason sentience ought ever to have emerged in the biosphere. The mechanism of differential survival/natural selection would work just as well if organisms were mere automatons without any interiority or mentality.

Posted by: articulett | July 2, 2009 2:55 AM

Most life forms on our planet are not sentient... sentience just developed in the species in which sentience provided a selective advantage.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 2, 2009 3:02 AM

@ 267 Kel,

I suppose you don't have to deal with the "hard problem," I just figured it might be relevant. In one sense I agree, there is nothing immaterial about mind (as I said above, mind and matter are aspects of a single process). In another sense, I think there is obviously something unobservable about the experience of observation itself. We cannot experience our own brains in action but by being those brains. We can have someone else look at our brain from the outside while we are experiencing the world and make all sorts of correlations between what I report seeing and what they measure. This in no way explains the "observering" aspect of the situation, the fact that a brain is both an object and a subject.

Obviously, brain and mind are deeply related. I dispute, however, that mind can somehow be reduced away to some entirely mechanical epiphenomenon.

Posted by: Rorschach | July 2, 2009 3:06 AM

We can have someone else look at our brain from the outside while we are experiencing the world and make all sorts of correlations between what I report seeing and what they measure. This in no way explains the "observering" aspect of the situation, the fact that a brain is both an object and a subject.

I thought Descartes had sorted that one out ca 1650 A.D.

Posted by: Kel | July 2, 2009 3:13 AM

We cannot experience our own brains in action but by being those brains.

Was watching the Daily Show from monday with Oliver Sacks on it, and they were showing his brain when he listened to both Bach and Beethoven. His pleasure centres were lighting up for Bach but not Beethoven. How is that not measuring is brain in action?

Posted by: Kagato | July 2, 2009 3:23 AM

Holy crap, more "metaphysical" "philosophical" gibberish.
A veritable wall of the stuff!

I'm quoting the whole damn thing here, so I can highlight all the bits that don't make any goddamn sense (yellow), and the plain stupid (pink).
In many cases the choice was arbitrary; I'll leave the specific reasoning as an exercise for the reader.

But for sanity's sake, I'll reduce the font size so as not to dominate the page with this crap too much.

@ 201 John Morales writes: “those assumptions (of science) are that there is an external reality, and that it is consistent, and that only the senses can convey information about that reality.”

You must have left out the other necessary assumption on accident? I mean, that there be in addition to external reality, an internal consciousness capable of consistently observing, measuring, and formalizing all that sensory data into meaningful scientific theories? I would never deny the existence of the external world, but I would argue there is absolutely no sense (reasonable or empirical) to be made of any supposed pre-given, objective material world. The external world is always already together with the internal. Consciousness wasn’t parachuted into a sterile, mindless universe as if from outside; it grew right out of the center of what is actually more of an organic universe still in the process of creating itself. Based on my understanding, our scientific knowledge of the universe not only doesn’t disprove, but actually supports the idea that it is a directed (not “designed,” but lured by recognizable laws, like entropy or Teilhard’s complexity/consciousness), experiential universe, which is all that I am arguing for here (not for the existence of “God”).

John Morales writes: “you claim not to be a dualist, yet you refer to "spirituality". Q: What is this 'spirit' concept (presumably you don't mean mind), and why do you apparently consider it is not amenable to scientific scrutiny?”

I don’t bring up spirit because I want to annul matter, nor because I think the two are irreconcilably enemies or ontologically distinct substances. To tell you the truth, I don’t think we need to talk about anything but matter—but I think matter is more than brute stuff devoid of self-enjoyment. I think all organized material bodies feel the rest of the universe in an increasingly intense way depending on their complexity (I didn’t add above that we also need to talk about time, which is where this “increasingly complex” business comes from). Hydrogen feels gravitational gradients, stars feel magnetic fields, bacteria feel nutrient gradients, human beings feel the need to understand the universe. I think these feelings are leading the universe somewhere: time’s influence on matter is not merely accidental; to argue that it is to contradict the plainly evident pattern of natural history. If we had to separate matter and spirit for the sake of metaphor, I’d say that “spirit” describes what we call “matter” is evolving toward.We might also swap “novelty” for spirit and “habit” for matter, so long as we see that the two are really part of a single process called the universe and that no actually existing thing/event is ever one or the other exclusively. The universe is creative process--it is not entirely determined by the past but has spontaneously emerged to higher states of order on multiple occasions. I can only assume it will continue to do so. Science cannot scrutinize the idea that ours is a reasonable, a purposeful universe. If it were not such a universe, the scientific enterprise would not be possible. Reason has emerged in our universe—this is a fact. I do not think mechanistic materialism can account for this, other than to say it is a complete fluke. This leads us to the anthropic principle.

@216 John Morales writes: “you'd better look up anthropic principle, for I suspect you don't understand it.”

Perhaps I don’t understand it. I’ve yet to hear it described by any two people exactly the same way. When I say that our universe can’t help but be human, I mean only that we necessarily exist in a universe whose processes were potentially, and are now actually intelligent.

John Morales writes: “the scientist says 'there is no evidence of telos when examining the universe'. Note that to say something is a value judgement here is trite; any expression of a conclusion or judgement is de-facto a 'value judgement'.”

As I said above, for the scientific enterprise (which I believe to be a cultural activity—I’m not sure where you’d begin arguing otherwise? More below) to be possible, human beings must be rational creatures in a universe which conforms to certain reasons (ie, purposes, causes, laws). Even Darwin’s theory of evolution invokes telos. Natural selection only does theoretical work if we take the analogy of human and natural selection quite literally. The scientist has every reason not to deny the universe is reasonable and purposeful. If he/she does, I don’t see how he/she can avoid erasing causality itself from the picture. It is only the materialist who argues based on any number of non-scientific motivations that the universe lacks all telos.

John Morales says: “Science is a self-correcting, bias-annulling and iterative process for acquiring knowledge about reality;”

Yes, science is that cultural institution which has proven itself to be the most progressive yet devised by the human spirit, at least in terms of technological advance. I don’t think this means civilization can thrive without other value spheres having a share of power, however. For instance, we have pressing moral decisions to make about how scientific knowledge ought to influence the way we relate to the rest of the non-human earth community. A materialist response to these moral issues (I think materialism is as much a moral, as a scientific stance) is usually either supportive of or indifferent to industrial growth capitalism, which is pushing us into the largest mass extinction since the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs according to E.O. Wilson. Science can and should help us make moral decisions about human-earth relations; a materialist wouldn’t seem to have a stake in the matter, because how can one argue that non-human nature has value independent of human desires if it is all just a blind mechanism? Economics becomes just another science concerned with objective facts with no ethical implications.

John Morales writes: “every person has experienced it (atheism)— it is the tabula rasa, or normal state before religious indoctrination/imaginative wishful thinking occurs.”

Actually, recent developmental psychology might show otherwise, that children are originally quite open to spirituality, and only as adults become self-described atheists: http://www.science-spirit.org/article_detail.php?article_id=128

I’ll admit this is open to debate, mostly for semantic reasons concerning how you prefer to use the word “atheist.” You say it means the lack of a belief in deities, but when a child says “God did it!,” I don’t think they mean the same thing that, say, Jerry Falwell did.

Posted by: Dan L. | July 2, 2009 4:14 AM

@Matthew Segall:

I tried to follow your link to the wikipedia page on process philosophy. It was broken because you included a ")". When I did a search again without that character, I found this prominently displayed across the top of the article:

This article needs additional citations for verification.

The same could be said about almost everything you've posted here.

Yes, obviously consciousness would be evolutionarily advantageous to any creature which developed it. But the question still stands, how did matter become experiential if it began as mere mindless stuff? We can evoke an adaptationist just-so story, but it hardly satisfies my scientific curiosity concerning the emergence of an entirely novel domain of reality. Consciousness isn't just another trait like a sharper beak or a longer claw, it throws a totally new ontological layer into nature.

You're begging the question here, especially with "novel domain of reality." You're assuming that experiences are real in the same sense that atoms are real. That simply isn't the case.

I've already written a lot tonight (elsewhere) about why materialism handles abstraction and complex behaviors just fine using the analogy of a computer. A computer bootstraps incredibly complex behaviors from quite conceptually simple material elements, and it does so without any mystery involved. The object oriented languages used to design applications do not operate in a "novel domain of reality," but are merely reducible to lower-level operations that can ultimately be reduced to hardware (and thus material) operations.

Likewise, the quite complex internal representations of the human mind could -- with perfect logical consistency -- be reduced to lower-level representations until we arrive at the level of perceptions themselves, or qualia if you prefer. These would essentially be the machine language or primitives upon which the higher-order behavior is predicated.

If the fact of electronic computers doesn't debunk materialism (and it doesn't), then the fact of biological computers doesn't either. In fact, the human brain is just about exactly the sort of computer I would expect evolution to "invent."

As for consciousness, I suspect neither you nor Chalmers can come up with any sort of satisfying definition of such a phenomenon. Philosophers of the mind have a major problem to overcome before they figure out how brains work -- they need to stop thinking like philosophers and start thinking like scientists.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | July 2, 2009 4:29 AM

since I seriously don't have the patience to deal with the woo point-by-point, I'll instead post a little theory of woo-ist thinking that came to me when remembering a conversation I had with a friend a few years back about sexiness.

The gist of the conversation was basically that men often find lingerie sexier than total nudity because the lingerie is a bit of a tease and a bit of a mystique, leaving things to the imagination, while complete nudity is... well, it just is, plain, unmysterious and normal.

So anyway, I figured that religionists (and New Age woo-ists too, apparently) like their reality the way they like their women: covered from head to toe, leaving as much as possible to the imagination; plain naked truth just isn't very "sexy" to them, so they prefer to veil it in sophistry and magical thinking.

Posted by: Jadehawk, OM | July 2, 2009 4:34 AM

Haruhiist, it's a ridiculously complicated and involved story, but it all started with a kid who wanted to show his non-Catholic friend, whom he invited to join him in church, a eucharist. so instead of eating it, he wanted to take it back to his pew. except that drama ensued immediately and the poor kid even got death-threats for not eating the damn cracker.

Posted by: Kel | July 2, 2009 4:37 AM

But the question still stands, how did matter become experiential if it began as mere mindless stuff?

If you are looking for me to answer why I'm conscious, I cannot give you one beyond talking about brain activity. But I'll echo the sentiments of Richard Feynman and say that I would prefer to know than to believe in what might be. I don't know what the feeling of consciousness is, but it doesn't change the fact that we have the material to work with. We have a material brain that works through electrical impulses firing through particular pathways that are crafted both by our genes and our experiences and it seems our consciousness is nothing more than brain patterns firing in patterns that otherwise have different functionality.

In short, I have nothing to suggest that the mind is not material and I find questioning reality on something that is so clearly a product of evolution where we humans have but qualitative differences as opposed to quantitative differences in terms of our sentience to other animals in the animal kingdom is nothing but using our personal incredulity to posit something fantastical. Consciousness is mysterious, but it doesn't necessitate throwing anthropic thinking when physics and biology show anthropic reasoning to be flawed and there are biological / psychological explanations for why anthropic thinking exists in the first place.

Plausibility before parsimony, and I don't think your explanation meets plausibility yet. How does your position solve the problem? Does it mean that rocks and water has this innate consciousness? If so, then why has our evolutionary path led to such a massive increase in brain-size? Before modern medicine, one in five (20%) of women would die giving birth. Consider how important a mother is in our species, so why would we have evolved a bigger brain if it weren't needed? And given how much our higher thinking plays in the survival of our species, surely we can see how such a process would be selected against...

But it goes further, just what part of consciousness cannot be explained by the hijacking of other parts of functionality to the brain? The perception of signals from the nerves, image and aural processing, language, chemical reactions, etc. Isn't it obvious that the effects of drugs on consciousness show that its material? Same goes for brain injury, again we can see how injury affects consciousness. And as I mentioned above, we can scan peoples brains and see different centres light up as certain stimuli and reactions take place. And with that we see brain effects before conscious awareness, suggesting that consciousness is a feedback loop rather than a driving force.

And this is all in the context that we have observed the fundamental building blocks of the universe. All matter is energy. There appears to be nothing of consciousness beyond life itself, and there's a distinct correlation between brain size / body size and mental skills. With everything we have observed in physics, in biology, in neorology, how can we discard all that and posit a whole new reality to solve a problem that only exists for a particular subset of one facet (life) of reality?

So forgive my bluntness when I say this, the mind being material is so well supported that although we don't know everything about the mind, we can extrapolate that there needs no higher explanation. Adding woo to the universe to solve the human condition makes no sense in light of physics or biology, and that psychology shows just why we would think otherwise. Until such time as there's established that there is an immaterial component, the concept is not plausible let alone parsimonious. It may turn out to be the case, but what is going to solve it is evidence. And that's what you should be chasing instead of using personal incredulity and ignorance to posit a whole new reality on top of this one.

Posted by: Kel | July 2, 2009 4:42 AM

Without any introducing texts, it seems like PZ is just trying to see what responses he would get if he did something he knew would anger catholics.

Of course it is easier to maintain outrage if one remains ignorant of the course of events. It looks far worse than what it was without context.

Posted by: Haruhiist | July 2, 2009 4:52 AM

Kel @288:
Thanks, this is what I was looking for :)
Looks like the situation was more complicated than that, as I expected (or perhaps hoped is the better word).

Posted by: raven | July 2, 2009 5:35 AM

matthew segall:

Perhaps you'd argue that evolution explains how the mind/brain came to be. I've argued elsewhere that based on a materialist ontology and a reductionistic Darwinian biology, there is no reason sentience ought ever to have emerged in the biosphere.

Completely irrelevant argument. This is just the common fallacy, Argumentium from ignorance and personal incredulity. "I can't see how my foot evolved, so goddidit." "I can't see how sentience evolved, therefore goddidit." Proves nothing, maybe you are just dumb.

In point of fact, we are the dominant species on the planet. No other species even comes close. Right now the nearest contenders are all human commensuals. They include the "dog", the "cat", the "cow", and the "maize". The evolutionary advantages of intelligence are overwhelming, 6.7 billion humans, about 1/2 of the planetary large animal biomass.

As Arthur C. Clark pointed out, it remains to be seen if tool using bipeds are a long term success. But evolution is blind, it doesn't care about the long term or the short term.

If you mean by "mind/brain" central nervous systems, these are ancient, Cambrian or earlier. CNS's would evolve for and by the same reason anything else does, RM + NS, evolution.

If you mean consciousness, we have little idea what that is right now. Available and recent data implies that consciousness is also ancient, arising in and being maintained and produced by the reptilian hindbrain. Rare humans are born missing all or most of their cerebral cortex. They aren't very bright. They do appear to be conscious.

Posted by: raven | July 2, 2009 5:48 AM

matthew segall:

Consciousness isn't just another trait like a sharper beak or a longer claw, it throws a totally new ontological layer into nature. .

I'm trying to be polite since you do not seem to be a deliberate troll. You are making it very hard. This is bullcrap.

This isn't so. You are making a bald assertion without any proof whatsoever. You can get away with this in philosophy, which is why it has become largely irrelevant in recent centuries and a joke for good reasons to the average person. No one cares what philosophers say because it simply doesn't impact the real world or people's lives. You can't get away with this in science.

Where is the proof of this assertion? It doesn't exist. If recent research is correct, my cat is conscious. So were our common ancestors a hundred million years ago.

It is at least believable. Anyone who has had pets notices sooner or later that they seem to be conscious, self aware individuals. It isn't human grade of course, but so what, things have to start somewhere.

Posted by: Rorschach | July 2, 2009 5:54 AM

Consciousness isn't just another trait like a sharper beak or a longer claw, it throws a totally new ontological layer into nature. .

Well,and even if that were true, it does not follow that the answer is "therefore god" ,or "therefore spirituality and metaphysics".

The burden of proof is still on the one making the extraordinary claim.

Posted by: raven | July 2, 2009 6:21 AM

aaron baker;

Without any introducing texts, it seems like PZ is just trying to see what responses he would get if he did something he knew would anger catholics. That seems a little different from what I've come to expect from PZ, so can someone enlighten me?.

Yes, sure, we can enlighen you. You are a moron and an idiot troll. But you already know that.

I was one who was opposed crackergate at first. Reasoning that going out of one's way to insult other people is pointless.

The reactions of the xians and catholics changed my mind. While PZ might have been violating social norms and morality, the xians were orders of magnitude worse about the same social norms and morality. Point to PZ and point made.

1. Besides the usual abuse and insults, the death threats, of which he got hundreds, were an eye opener. Equating a cracker with a nail through it as justifying putting a bullet through someone's head to kill them is just plain, blatantly wrong.

Not that religious people wouldn't do that. They do it every day somewhere in the world. Lesson 1, Xian morality is a myth.Without secular laws xians would kill in a heartbeat for no real reason. Alleged witches, heretics, other religions, doesn't matter. They, in fact, did this for centuries.

2. How much do the catholics and xians really believe of their bronze age kludgy fairy tales? Probably very little.

Supposedly, to RCC's the cracker is jesus. Well whatever. Jesus created a 13.7 billion year universe in 6 days. He killed all but 8 humans once because he was mildly annoyed for some reason, in a flood.

So why doesn god/jesus need defending by mere humans? He is all powerful and all seeing. If the cracker was god/JC, he could turn PZ into a frog in no time flat if he chose.

Let the supreme creator of the universe take care of himself. If he can't deal with a professor in Minnesota, is he really the source of everything and worth worshipping? I think most xians figured it out subconsciously one second after they were told the cracker was god. It is just a cracker anyway, no matter what anyone claims or pretends.
,

Posted by: MosesZD | July 2, 2009 6:42 AM

Posted by: Rick | July 1, 2009 7:33 PM

PZ,

My viewpoint is this: I think that an individual's ability to choose is much more limited that many people believe. While you and I happen to have similar beliefs regarding the most likely nature of life, the universe, and everything, we cannot know with 100% certainty that we are correct and we should not mock others who have different beliefs.

There are no leprechauns, fairies, zombies or any other supernatural creatures either. That the vast majority of us no longer believe in those superstitious beliefs, but still carry others (diminishing from generation to generation) only means some superstitious beliefs are stronger than others, not that they may be correct.

By all means, we should defend and advocate our viewpoint, but ultimately, we should not be offensive about it. While there is absolute truth, you can't guarantee that you have it and your opponent does not. Instead, all are served better by a degree of tolerance and understanding and encourages honest inquiry.

Bullshit. Social progress is not made by being a simpering accommodationist! As history has taught us all to well: you have to fight for your rights and beliefs.

You ever here of Cluadette Colvin? No, you haven't. But you have (probably) heard about Rosa Parks. Colvin, like Parks, refused to give up her seat on the bus in 1955. But no movement started behind her act of civil disobedience and so discrimination continued on, unabated and unchallenged for nine more months, until it coalesced behind Parks in December of that year.

You argue we should be Colvins. History says we should be like Parks.

Posted by: MosesZD | July 2, 2009 7:01 AM

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 1, 2009 10:15 PM

@42 Azkyroth,

Az writes: “Out of spite?! Please summarize for us the events preceding the cracker desecration, if you're going to make that sort of claim, because right now you don't appear to be on speaking terms with reality.”

It is my understanding that Webster Cook took the host from Mass in an attempt to protest the fact that the student government of UCF (a state school I also happen to have graduated from in 07) voted to fund the campus group responsible for organizing the event.

Major Fail.

Actually, he was a Catholic and wanted to show his friend the Eucharist. Which is NOT required to be eaten immediately and many Catholics, like my mother-in-law, do not immediately eat but take back to their seat and contemplate before eating.

Anyway, he was assaulted by at least one of the catholic staff who assisting with the pointless ritual for not immediately eating it. He then popped it in his mouth. He then went to his seat to show his friend, and more "hilarity" ensued with the staff.

At that point it became a War. The Catholics and their freak-show, death-threatening apologists vs one single student. PZ simply put counter-pressure on the kook brigade in order to keep Cook from being EXPELLED.

Posted by: Kel | July 2, 2009 7:13 AM

My viewpoint is this: I think that an individual's ability to choose is much more limited that many people believe. While you and I happen to have similar beliefs regarding the most likely nature of life, the universe, and everything, we cannot know with 100% certainty that we are correct and we should not mock others who have different beliefs.

Dawkins once said "Show me a cultural relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a hypocrite". I propose we change that to being on the internet. Because holding people to an impossible standard (absolute certainty) as the grounds by which to be vocal and derisive about the beliefs that exist in the memosphere is an absurdity. You know as well as any person possibly can that such a position is untenable.

Posted by: MosesZD | July 2, 2009 7:21 AM

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 1, 2009 10:45 PM

@ 144 Wowbagger, OM

It is my understanding that PZ got the death threat/s from some obviously misguided individual/s who were unaffiliated with the student organization or Catholic League AFTER he stuck a rusty nail through the wafer.

As for the "assault" on Cook, a church attended grabbed his hand to get the wafer. I probably wouldn't have appreciate it, but then again, I'm not the type to disturb religious rituals in protest of funding they received via perfectly legitimate means. As I said, there are more appropriate ways that Cook, being a member of student government himself, could have addressed the issue.

You still have a head full of fail. Cook was not there for any reason but to participate in his faith in a manner that many, many Catholics do... Take the Eucharist and eat it from his seat.

The reason he was taking the Eucharist back to his seat was to show a non-catholic friend what it looked like before he ate it. He did this in RESPECT of his faith so his non-catholic friend wouldn't take communion.

Do you understand? He was defending his faith by keeping a non-catholic from taking communion. That's one of the irony's here.

Then the powers-that-be went nutsy-fagen on his ass and it went downhill from there. Because of their massive over-reaction to a NORMAL Catholic practice.

Cook's attack on religious funding came LONG AFTER the catholic assault on Cook which included a physical assault, threats and intimidation, death threats, and an attempted expulsion followed by a Kangaroo Court that removed him from the student government.

Posted by: Rorschach | July 2, 2009 7:47 AM

PZ,you should move to Germany !

Much better timezone-wise for us Aussies !!

:-)

Posted by: Aaron Baker | July 2, 2009 8:33 AM

Wowbagger & Rorschach:

In the cold light of day, still twits. My arguments are bad (though again, nothing substantive is said about my actual position), and because I've responded to their insults with insults, I guess I'm a fucking clownshoe, because it's bad to be a troll, unless my name is Wowbagger or Rorschach . . . or something.

"Moral equivalence." Maybe I should have phrased what I said this way: "committing an evil in response to another evil." I said nothing about the two evils being equivalent.
Also, it's important to remember that in tossing out the host, Myers wasn't punishing whoever had made the threats in question; he was causing distress to any number of people who were completely innocent of threatening anybody.

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | July 2, 2009 8:50 AM

Aaron Baker, you have said nothing to convince me that PZ wasn't correct in doing what he did. Nobody should be required to respect other peoples irrational beliefs. The person should be respected, but the belief. That is why you are wrong.

Posted by: Sastra | July 2, 2009 9:07 AM

Matthew Segall #222 wrote:

I’m also a panexperientialist, which is to say that I don’t believe there is anything real aside from experience. If you have at least some empiricist leanings, we might be able to agree on some version of this idea (that there is nothing real outside experience).

You have said that you're not a dualist, but a monist. As I understand it, there are two basic forms of monism: one version claims that everything is patterns of matter and energy in motion; the other claims that everything is mind and consciousness. The first view has mind emerging from matter; the second view has matter emerging from mind. Materialism on one side: Idealism on the other.

Since these are "metaphysical" theories of everything, it's common to state that neither one is provable, and there's nothing to choose between them. Science would have nothing to say in support of either, or against either one.

But would the universe look exactly the same under both situations? No, I don't think so. Neither do you. If you really thought so, you would not be able to make your arguments against "materialism." I note that you're using science to do so. This means that we can bring in science to examine your assertion as well. We are not limited to the realm of philosophy.

Teilhard’s law of complexity/consciousness is an empirical claim. It can be tested. The emergence of the internet seems awfully similar to what we would expect of a noosphere, don’t you think? But it is also a law meant to describe natural history. It can be tested like so many other evolutionary explanations, by retrospective correlation. I think that if you perform this experiment of remembering the universe as science tells us it has unfolded, you will see that the law holds.

You misunderstand what a scientific "test" is; it's not retrofitting events into a narrative form to see if they can fit. They can and will, when you approach from that direction and with the intention to discover.

So let me put it this way: what would have to happen in order to falsify your theory?

I'm not asking what could have falsified your theory ("if human minds had not evolved, then Tielhard's law of complexity/consciousness would have been wrong"), but what sort of evidence would force you to admit you've been mistaken, and change your mind?

I'll give an example on my end. My working theory of (non-reductive) materialism would not be able to sufficiently explain strong evidence that mind and its capacities were separable from their physical substructure: ESP, OBEs, PK, and so forth. The existence of such phenomenon would instead point to a universe where consciousness is not simply the working of the material brain.

Your turn.

I do not think there is any ontological gap separating subject from object. We distinguish between the internal and external worlds based on conventions, not scientific fact. I’m influenced not only by Teilhard, but by Whitehead, who argued that the universe was in fact full of feelings. All is experience, which is to say that all is feeling. Our scientific knowledge of the universe is a complex organic feeling being experienced by the universe itself.

Researchers have discovered that, when mystics meditate, parts of the parietal lobe near the top and rear of their brains becomes less active. The distinction between self and other originates in this section. Thus, the felt sensation is that of a loss of boundary, a "feeling of oneness with the universe" -- and there is no sensed gap between self and other, inner and outer, subjective and objective. It will feel as if "everything is feeling."

This, however, is in error. And a materialist explanation can account for the error, and do so parsimoniously.

Saying that no, a plausible materialist explanation and mechanism for the sense of "oneness" is also predicted by the theory that everything really IS one is not parsimonious. Scientifically speaking, it makes the theory unfalsifiable, and rather meaningless.

Posted by: thalarctos | July 2, 2009 9:21 AM

Also, it's important to remember that in tossing out the host, Myers wasn't punishing whoever had made the threats in question; he was causing distress to any number of people who were completely innocent of threatening anybody.

Well, if you have any suggestions about responses PZ could have taken instead, that are 100% sensitive (teaching the abusers that they cannot get away with that behavior) and 100% specific (causing absolutely no distress to any innocent party), we'd be eager to hear it.

Posted by: Aaron Baker | July 2, 2009 9:49 AM

"What a wonderful excuse! Remember, when you say grace or bow your head in prayer for any reason, you are causing distress to any number of atheists who are completely innocent."

Are you distressed to anything like the degree that a religious person is when you spit on one of his symbols? I suspect not. And, once again, you've stated no benefit from your action that would make it worth the distress you caused.

And Thalarctos: of course you can't avoid distressing innocent parties. Of course you can't tailor actions so that they always and everywhere target only the culpable. So what? We're talking about an act that assaulted the sensibilities of a bunch of innocent people without, I'll say it once more, accomplishing anything of value.

Posted by: Carlie | July 2, 2009 9:56 AM

without, I'll say it once more, accomplishing anything of value.

That's entirely your opinion, not backed up with any facts whatsoever. How do you know how this action affected people? Maybe a lot of Catholics realized how bad it is to be a zealot for stupid things. Maybe some Christians were appalled at the death threats that came out of it and slid into a more moderate version of their faith. Maybe it inspired some atheists to come out to their families and stop lying about their lack of faith. You have no idea what may have resulted from Crackergate.

Posted by: thalarctos | July 2, 2009 10:01 AM

And Thalarctos: of course you can't avoid distressing innocent parties. Of course you can't tailor actions so that they always and everywhere target only the culpable. So what?

But isn't that exactly what you were just criticizing PZ for? You said:

Also, it's important to remember that in tossing out the host, Myers wasn't punishing whoever had made the threats in question; he was causing distress to any number of people who were completely innocent of threatening anybody.

If you can't tailor actions to avoid distressing innocent parties, then the only thing PZ could have done in response to the actions against Webster Cook that would be acceptable to you, it seems, is nothing.

We're talking about an act that assaulted the sensibilities of a bunch of innocent people without, I'll say it once more, accomplishing anything of value.

In your opinion of what constitutes value. In the opinion of many other people, standing up to abusive behavior *is*, per se, accomplishing something of a great deal of value.

Posted by: thomas | July 2, 2009 10:14 AM

"We're talking about an act that assaulted the sensibilities of a bunch of innocent people without, I'll say it once more, accomplishing anything of value."

Aaron Baker, maybe you're talking about something different to other people then.
I'd bet safely that most people are talking about an act that was motivated by absurd irrationality and hostility directed towards a student. This student did not do anything to deserve such a response.
It wasn't an act that "assaulted the sensibilities of a bunch of people..." that was completely unmotivated by preceding events. Get some perspective and context on the situation.

And how is it that you can actually venture your words as an argument? Suffering offence through ignorance is hardly meritous.

A child who throws a tantrum because his parents don't set an extra plate for his imaginary friend at dinner, or a child who throws a fit when others don't accord him the power of invisibility in his batman suit - is not deserving of any particular deference or respect (despite how "innocent" he is).

As the parent, you may well humour the child temporarily - until it grows up.

There is no obligation to keep humouring people who ought to have grown up long ago. We're not their parents and they're not six anymore. It really doesn't matter how much "distress" they suffer through completely innocuous acts. It's called the world. Live in it.

Posted by: Aaron Baker | July 2, 2009 10:46 AM

Re #325: He calmly and deliberately desecrated a host, and he advertised the fact far and wide while he was doing it. That's not what I've argued for at all.

Re #320: "That's entirely your opinion, not backed up with any facts whatsoever." Sorry, but the burden of proof is on you: show me one example of a person being swayed by this stunt.

Thalarctos, if you can't see the difference between an action that's targeted, as well as possible, against a culpable party, and an action that's meant to cause maximal offense to all and sundry, that's completely untargeted as far as culpability is concerned, then I don't know what else would convince you. It strikes me as a very strange sort of standing up to abusive behavior.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | July 2, 2009 11:02 AM

Thalarctos, if you can't see the difference between an action that's targeted, as well as possible, against a culpable party, and an action that's meant to cause maximal offense to all and sundry, that's completely untargeted as far as culpability is concerned, then I don't know what else would convince you. It strikes me as a very strange sort of standing up to abusive behavior.

Will you stop gabbling and tell us who these innocent people who were so offended are. Once you have taken out Catholics, and we must since no Catholic can lay claim to be innocent since it was their church that assaulted Cooke, who do we have left to be offended ?

Posted by: Matt Penfold | July 2, 2009 11:45 AM

Can I second Thalarctos here, Aaron Baker.

Your refusal to tell us who all these "innocent" people who were offended by PZ's actions are is offensive to me.

I therefore request you follow your own advice and shut the fuck up.

Posted by: Aaron Baker | July 2, 2009 11:56 AM

"Will you stop gabbling and tell us who these innocent people who were so offended are. Once you have taken out Catholics, and we must since no Catholic can lay claim to be innocent since it was their church that assaulted Cooke, who do we have left to be offended?"

This is a joke, right? You actually think all Catholics are culpable when other Catholics, or the Catholic Church, does something wrong? Do you think guilt is contagious, like the flu? With this primitive notion of responsibility, you should join a religion yourself.

And you want me to shut the fuck up? Not happening.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | July 2, 2009 12:11 PM

This is a joke, right? You actually think all Catholics are culpable when other Catholics, or the Catholic Church, does something wrong? Do you think guilt is contagious, like the flu? With this primitive notion of responsibility, you should join a religion yourself.

And you want me to shut the fuck up? Not happening.

Yes, if the Catholic Church does something wrong then all Catholics, unless they make it clear they dissent, do share culpability. The Catholic Church only has the power it does by virtue of the number of member's it claims to have.

Now we have made it plain to you that you are being offensive to us. You have made it clear that is not a reason for you to shut up. Can you not see you are being inconsistent here, in that you demand PZ shuts up because he causes offence ?

I note you still are not able to tell us just who all these "innocent" offended people are. I have asked you several times, so I will no assume you cannot answer the question and will take you refusal to do so as an implicit admission you were being dishonest.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 2, 2009 12:23 PM

@ 280 Dan,

Yes, I am assuming experience is just as real as atoms. That is pretty much what panexperientialism entails. There are no atoms outside of experience. The idea that there are such things independent of experience is just that, an abstract idea with no empirical grounding. I think part of being scientific is not inventing extra-experiential realms or objects -- what's real is what is concrete and experiential.

I claim experience to be a novel domain of reality only in relation to a materialist ontology, which posits that matter is inert stuff lacking all experience. Only in this case would I insist that experience is totally other than matter. As a panexperientialist, however, my conception of matter is that it is always and everywhere permeated by feelings, more complex depending on the degree of physical organization (ie, rocks possess almost no experience, while multicellular organisms possess quite a bit).

As for the computer/mind metaphor, I think it fails. Cognitive science and philosophy are moving away from considering consciousness or the brain to be about information-processing. Check out Hubert Dreyfus' books on the matter, or watch these videos: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99iTDUcBuRQ

Instead of a computer, cognitive scientists (like Evan Thompson in his new book "Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind") are tending toward a more embodied account of consciousness, one where the brain doesn't process abstract information, or symbolic representations, about a pre-given world but is always already embedded in a world that it is structurally coupled with (and so doesn't need to informationally represent). A lot of this work comes out of the phenomenology of Heidegger. His account of human experience makes it quite difficult and cumbersome to continue trying to reduce it to some sort of informational algorithm.

Scientists (as opposed to philosophers) can continue to think of the mind as a computer if they like, and while they may succeed in inventing some marvelous computing technologies, I don't think they will better understand the human brain aside from learning that it is not at all like a computer.

Regardless of its failure as a metaphor, even if the brain were like a computer, the software/hardware analogy still wouldn't account for experience, which again in a standard materialist ontology most definitely would be a novel domain of reality. You can only reduce experience to hardware by ignoring it.

As for the relationship between science and philosophy, I think philosophy's job is to be the critic of scientific abstractions. If science looses touch with philosophy and phenomenlogy, it looses touch with human experience and becomes meaningless but for the technologies it engineers.

Posted by: Aaron Baker | July 2, 2009 12:35 PM

I've never yet demanded that P.Z. "shut up," so there's no inconsistency whatsoever.

So the miasma of guilt spreads to everybody in a given body if they don't register a dissent to wrongdoing by that body (or to be more accurate, some members of that body). Does this principle apply to people who've never heard of the misdeed in question? Are you responsible for every misdeed of the U.S. government, unless you've particated in a demonstration on the subject? And what is it about your dissent that inoculates you against responsibility? Also, does this reasoning apply only to highly centralized and hierarchical organizations (over which ordinary members typically have NO control)?

Obviously, the innocent people I'm talking about are Catholics offended by P.Z.'s antics. My implication was obvious all along, and I stand by it.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 2, 2009 12:42 PM

@ 294 Raven,
@ 296 Rorschach,

I would think the notion that experience is quite different from specific body parts/physiological adaptations would be self-evident. Material things as we normally conceive of them are extended in space, whereas experience is not (though it is of course related to extended bodies, you won't be able to simply locate it like you can an organ).

Also keep in mind that I am nowhere arguing for the idea that "God did it." I am arguing that materialism is an inadequate ontology and that other perfectly rational metaphysical assumptions are warranted based on the scientific facts we already have. It would take a book length argument to fully justify this claim, and so all I can do at the moment is direct you to such a book: A. N. Whitehead's "Process and Reality."

Posted by: CJO | July 2, 2009 12:52 PM

a more embodied account of consciousness, one where the brain doesn't process abstract information, or symbolic representations, about a pre-given world but is always already embedded in a world that it is structurally coupled with (and so doesn't need to informationally represent).

Please explain "structural coupling" and how this strange process obviates the need for organisms with sufficiently complex nervous systems to represent their environments.

FWIW, I'm not hostile to "a more embodied account of consciousness," and I'm not sure either that the hardware/software analogy illuminates much, but I find the claim that the brain doesn't process information laughable.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | July 2, 2009 12:58 PM

Am I alone in thinking Segall is talking pretentious bollocks ?

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 2, 2009 1:09 PM

@ 342 CJO,

Re: structural coupling - it is a term developed in cybernetics and systems theory by neurologists Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela. From Encyclopedia Autopoietica:

"Structural coupling is the term for structure-determined (and structure- determining) engagement of a given unity with either its environment or another unity. The process of engagement which effects a "...history or recurrent interactions leading to the structural congruence between two (or more) systems" (Maturana & Varela, 1987, p. 75). It is ‘...a historical process leading to the spatio-temporal coincidence between the changes of state..’ (Maturana, 1975, p. 321) in the participants. As such, structural coupling has connotations of both coordination and co-evolution.

During the course of structural coupling, each participating system is, with respect to the other(s), a source (and a target) of perturbations. Phrased in a slightly different way, the participating systems reciprocally serve as sources of compensable perturbations for each other. These are ‘compensable’ in the senses that (a) there is a range of ‘compensation’ bounded by the limit beyond which each system ceases to be a functional whole and (b) each iteration of the reciprocal interaction is affected by the one(s) before. The structurally-coupled systems ‘will have an interlocked history of structural transformations, selecting each other’s trajectories.’ (varela, 1979, pp. 48-49)

Structural coupling, then, is the process through which structurally-determined transformations in each of two or more systemic unities induces (for each) a trajectory of reciprocally-triggered change. This makes structural coupling one of the most critical constructs in autopoietic theory. This is particularly true when approaching the phenomenological aspects of the theory. For example, structural coupling is the foundation for Maturana’s account of linguistic interaction as ‘languaging’ (Maturana, 1978)

The key reference points on the subject of structural coupling are: Maturana (1975, pp.322-326; 1981, pp. 23-29); Maturana & Varela (1980, pp. 78-82; pp. 98-99); 1987, pp. 75-80); and Varela (1979, pp. 32-33); p. 48ff.)."

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 2, 2009 1:14 PM

@ 343 a_ray_in_dilbert_space,

Experience is definitely deeply related to organized patterns of neural firing, but you cannot simply reduce the experiential aspect to the neural aspect. As I've said repeatedly, I'm not a dualist; but it is clear that "there is something it is like to be a brain," as Thomas Nagel might put it. The brain isn't simply an object, it is also a subject. The subjective aspect is not best described as extended in space, as the objective object might be.

Posted by: Stu | July 2, 2009 1:17 PM

Why couldn't I say that a materialist has an overactive parietal lobe, and so falsely assumes they are separate from the rest of the universe?

You could say that, yes. What do you have to back it up? Hell, what do you have to back up anything you say?

Yes Matt, I agree.

Oh, by the way, Matthew, something "loses", not "looses". Thanks.

Posted by: raven | July 2, 2009 1:26 PM

I would think the notion that experience is quite different from specific body parts/physiological adaptations would be self-evident.

It isn't in the least. Science says mind is a product of brain and dualism was dead a century or two ago. It is making a comeback mostly because Xians think the soul exists somewhere and science should find it for them.

A lot of philosophy is just riding a mental merry go round. You go in circles, it is amusing to some people, and in the end it isn't too terribly important.

Various "philosophers" have "proved" that I have no free will, no conscious mind, and it doesn't matter because there is no Real World. About that time, I turn off and ignore it because it seems like obvious bullcrap. My time is limited and valuable to me and there are a zillion better things to think about and do.

Posted by: Sastra | July 2, 2009 1:28 PM

Matthew Segall #345 wrote:

This is no less an assumption than the one I make about Teilhard's law. It is retrospective correlation.

No, the theory of evolution is not a sort of 'just so' story which goes back into the past and tries to find an explanation which ties it all together (assuming this is what you're saying.) It made predictions, and could have been (and can still be) falsified. Evolution is a very robust theory, one which ties together many disciplines, generating research in all of them, and changing as new information is incorporated. I don't think you can compare it to what you're calling 'Teilhard's law." I don't think that idea has gone anywhere, or lead to any new scientific discoveries. From what I can tell, it helps make people feel special. That's a different kind of useful.

I asked a very specific question in my post at #314. I asked:

what would have to happen in order to falsify your theory?

I am still interested in the answer.

I find it difficult to understand how one could claim that a feeling of oneness with the universe (it is a "universe" after all, isn't it?) is an error. Why couldn't I say that a materialist has an overactive parietal lobe, and so falsely assumes they are separate from the rest of the universe?

I wrote poorly. I should have made it clear that the feeling itself was not an error: a feeling is what it is. Drawing the conclusion that, because one feels as if one is joined with the entire universe, therefore one really is at one with the entire universe, which is conscious like we are, is not called for. The more parsimonious explanation, consistent with the rest of our data, is that this is not the case.

Posted by: Knockgoats | July 2, 2009 1:35 PM

And my only point was that any feelings are necessarily feelings of the universe. - Matthew Segall

That point is, depending on how one interprets it, either false or trivial.

it is clear that "there is something it is like to be a brain," as Thomas Nagel might put it.

No it isn't. Experience depends on the interaction of the brain with the rest of the body, and the external world. Nagel, BTW, is a champion obfuscater: we can actually say quite a lot about what it is like to be a bat. Tell me, Matthew, do you believe in the possibility of zimboes? (A zimbo is a hypothetical being that behaves just like a human being, says it is conscious, maybe philosophises about how experience is "a whole new ontological level", but is not actually conscious.)

Posted by: Blake Stacey | July 2, 2009 1:38 PM

Instead of a computer, cognitive scientists (like Evan Thompson in his new book "Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind") are tending toward a more embodied account of consciousness, one where the brain doesn't process abstract information, or symbolic representations, about a pre-given world but is always already embedded in a world that it is structurally coupled with (and so doesn't need to informationally represent).

All of which goes to show nothing except that these particular cognitive scientists have an overly restrictive definition of "computer" and "informational representation". It's like their definition of what a "computer" is stopped with von Neumann.

Posted by: Aaron Baker | July 2, 2009 1:50 PM

"Catholics are responsible for the actions carried out by the Catholic church. It is not [a] hard concept, but one that seems to be beyond your understanding." I understand the concept just fine; but I don't think it's true.

"Are you responsible for every misdeed of the U.S. government, unless you've partic[ip]ated in a demonstration on the subject?

Why would I be?"

If you're a citizen of the United States, why wouldn't you be, on your reasoning? If you're not a U.S. citizen, plug in the country you are a citizen of, and imagine it committing a misdeed. Why wouldn't you be responsible? It's a hierarchical organization (whether dictatorial or not), of which you can choose or not choose to be a member, and it derives some fraction of its strength (however minute) from your membership. And if you are responsible, why would a verbal repudiation of the misdeed, or a protest march, or what have you, absolve you of responsibility?

As for honesty, let's review what happened. I don't know whether this summary by Wikipedia is correct or not. If you know it isn't, let me know how it's wrong:

"controversy arose in July 2008 over a Pharyngula blog entry written by Myers expressing amazement at news reports of death threats issued to University of Central Florida Student Senator Webster Cook. On June 29, 2008, Cook attended a Catholic Mass being held in the student union at UCF by a Catholic student group that receives funding from the student government. Cook received the Catholic Eucharist host but did not consume it immediately. He said later that he wanted to take it back to his seat to show a friend, but when stopped he put it in his mouth until back at his seat, then a church leader made forcible attempts to take the host from him.[24][25] Cook stored the host at his home, then returned it one week later after receiving e-mail threats and pleas.[24][26] Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, described the student's actions as "beyond hate speech" and said that "All options should be on the table, including expulsion."[27]"

I would say: 1) Bill Donohue is not a member of the Catholic hierarchy; so he has no power (even on your reasoning) to make other Catholics responsible for his idiotic behavior. 2) The church leader who made forcible efforts to get the wafer back was within his rights to recover it. Suppose, however, for the purposes of discussion that in doing so he committed battery. The criminal complaint would properly have his name on it, not the Catholic Church.

As for threats of expulsion, well, if some of those came from actual Catholic officials rather than Donohoe, why is an organization not entitled to determine what conduct will disqualify one for membership? As for death threats, I doubt very much that any of those came from the Catholic hierarchy.

Now what were you saying about honesty?

Posted by: TomJoe | July 2, 2009 1:57 PM

I'll have to be brutal.

I'm sure they'll lose lots of sleep over this comment.

Posted by: Sastra | July 2, 2009 2:20 PM

Matthew #359 wrote:

Teilhard's law is descriptive. It is an attempt to offer a description of cosmological evolution, and posits some possible reasons it may have taken the shape that it has.

Do you think you could set it out for us in a sentence or two?

Teilhard also offers predictions, which can be falsified, though we may have to wait quit a while to see how the emergence of the noosphere continues to play out. Being that it is such a general and cosmic theory, there is no specific experiment we could perform right now which would falsify it.

I wasn't asking for a specific experiment; I wanted to know what sort of observation or discovery could, in theory, tell against it, and possibly count then in favor of 'materialism.'

If it's so general and cosmic that it can explain and include any possible set of circumstances, then I don't think it can be considered a theory. Perhaps it's a sort of poetic attitude, and it can't compete with or be included among actual theories with some substance to them.

I did not say the universe was conscious like we are. I said feeling and experience are a product of all matter, with varying degrees of intensity depending on physical complexity.

How would one measure, describe, or even determine the degree of intensity of feeling and experience in, say, a rock? If it's too small to be noticeable -- and has no brain or neurons -- why not just say it has none?

Posted by: Matt Penfold | July 2, 2009 2:21 PM

"If you're a citizen of the United States, why wouldn't you be, on your reasoning? "

Er, I am quite willing to to share the responsibility for the actions of MY government. I am not willing to do so for other governments.

Quite why you assumed I was American escapes me, other than you are not that bright and cannot comprehend the fact PZ gets readers from around the world. I must conclude a degree of xenophobia is at play.

"1) Bill Donohue is not a member of the Catholic hierarchy; so he has no power (even on your reasoning) to make other Catholics responsible for his idiotic behavior."

Correct. Donohue is a not a member of the Catholic hierarchy. However members of the Catholic hierarchy are on record as supporting his views, and not one has spoken out against his villification of PZ. However the Catholic Bishop who called accused Cooke of a hate crime most certainly is part of the hierarchy.

"2) The church leader who made forcible efforts to get the wafer back was within his rights to recover it. Suppose, however, for the purposes of discussion that in doing so he committed battery. The criminal complaint would properly have his name on it, not the Catholic Church."

Incorrect on two grounds. First if someone breaks the law acting within an official capacity then they are individually accountable for their actions. Also the organisation they represent are also liable.

Second, taking a host back to your seat is not an unknown practice amongst some Catholic congregations in the US. Nor once the host has been given to Cooke can it reasonably be considered church property. An obnoxious person just assaulted him without any legal grounds, and did so acting as an official of the church. Had the church immediatly distanced itself from the actions of the official, by either dismming her at least suspending her, then you would have a point with regards culpiblity of the church. They chose instead to endorse her actions.

Posted by: raven | July 2, 2009 2:32 PM

I find it difficult to understand how one could claim that a feeling of oneness with the universe (it is a "universe" after all, isn't it?) is an error.

It may not be an error but feelings aren't real useful for understanding the real world. We had a guy jump off a 5 story building while under the conviction he could fly. It took hours to clean up the mess. So much for his feelings.

Materialism is a philosophical system, and so if scientific facts are going to be given interpretations, I don't see how we can avoid doing philosophy. Science does not prove that mind is a product of brain: materialism argues this.

No. Got that wrong. And don't equate materialism with science. They aren't the same. Science uses methodological naturalism as a matter of practicality, reasoning that only things observable and measureable can be studied scienctificly.

Dualism is dead except for philosophers who want to draw errroneous conclusions from false premises. As far as we know, mind is a product of brain and there are mountains of data for this. Drink a 6 pack of beer and see what happens to your mind.

Dualism is an extraordinary claim, and it is up to anyone claiming this to prove it. It hasn't been done in centuries and most people now assume it false and pay no more attention to it than they do to the witchcraft theory of disease.

You are creating false premises to draw faulty conclusions. This is why most philosophy is a ride on a mental merrry go round and otherwise quite useless.

Posted by: Knockgoats | July 2, 2009 2:43 PM

Matthew Segall@361,
OK, thanks, that tells me a bit more about where you're not coming from. I'll go back and reread your comments to see if I can work out what viewpoint you are advancing. However, I must admit I'm pessimistic. What exposure I've had to Teilhard, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Maturana and Varela inclines me to think there are an awful lot of words there, saying very little.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 2, 2009 4:08 PM

By the way, to PZ and others who have called into question my account of the crackergate incident... I know only hearsay and so don't pretend to have the definitive story. As I said, I graduated from UCF and heard various accounts of what exactly was motivating Cook. I don't pretend to be able to read minds. I condemn any and all threats of violence to Cook or to PZ. I respect and would protect PZ's right to make fun of whatever religious symbols and traditions he pleases; my original post here was only trying to say I think his ultimate mission (or what I assume it to be at least, ie increasing the public understanding of science) would be better served by fostering a sense of awe concerning the universe and our current understanding of it, rather than constantly insinuating that all religious/spiritual people are necessarily dumb or confused. The latter approach will get him nowhere, and may in fact only succeed in increasing the fervent (and I'll agree sometimes irrational and dangerous) beliefs of fundamentalists. I am just as disturbed by attempts to teach the Bible as science in public classrooms, but I am also against teaching materialism. Materialism is not the only possible interpretation of scientific findings, and anyone who says it is is a fundamentalist ideologue no less dogmatic than those who deny common descent because of Biblical passages.

Posted by: Aquaria | July 2, 2009 4:24 PM

o the miasma of guilt spreads to everybody in a given body if they don't register a dissent to wrongdoing by that body (or to be more accurate, some members of that body).

Aaron seems to be under some delusion that being Catholic isn't a voluntary action, little more than belonging to a country club with some weird rules, while being a citizen by virtue of living on a particular chunk of geography, isn't quite so voluntary. Yeah, you can emigrate, but that's a lot more expensive and harrowing than leaving the Catholic church. At least if you leave Catholicism, there's a no man's land you can go to, and you don't have to meet a lot of rigid rules to go there. You just go. There isn't a piece of geography that doesn't "belong" to some nation-state, somewhere, with rules you have to obey to get in.

So if a Catholic keeps going to mass and keeps giving money to the Vatican skirts in the face of lies, scandals, and abuses, when he does it knowing full well he can leave, anytime he has the gumption to--yes, it's fair to say such a Catholic supports those things. If he doesn't support them, then why keep going to mass, and keep giving money to the people who are committing lies, scandals and abuses?

Posted by: cdx | July 2, 2009 4:37 PM

But to sum it up here, "This law simply states that there is an inherent compulsion in matter to arrange itself in more complex groupings, exhibiting higher levels of consciousness. The more complex the matter, the more conscious it is."

Vitalism lives!

And yes, you're bending off toward mysticism, really. Teilhard -> Henri Bergson, Henri Bergson -> Evelyn Underhill.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 2, 2009 5:00 PM

@ 376 cdx,

Just curious to know if you've read any of Bergson's work? He actually criticizes vitalism as much as he does mechanism in "Creative Evolution," unequivocally denying that there is any need for an immaterial cause of life or consciousness. His is a critique of the materialistic account of time as mere succession. He elaborates the notion of time as duration, which is where the creative impetus of evolutionary change is derived (not from an immaterial force).

Teilhard's position is similar to Bergson's, who influenced him greatly. Leveling the charge of "vitalist" on anyone who disagrees with materialist reductionism is all too easy, but I fear the philosophical issues at stake are more complicated.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 2, 2009 5:22 PM

@ 377 Sastra writes: "Neurologists and biologists have, I assume, various tests they make for measuring consciousness."

No such test has been invented to the best of my knowledge.

Sastra writes: "So saying that some things (such as materialist scientists) are conscious, and other things (such as stars and planets) are not conscious -- is dualism?"

I would describe consciousness as an advanced form of experience, which develops as material bodies complexify over evolutionary time. I'm arguing that a materialist who says matter begins as totally lacking experience and somehow acquires it, Poof!, because of the way it comes to be arranged (say, as a brain) is a covert dualist. Even if mind is described by a materialist as epiphenomenal, this is still a form of dualism. There is no reason any extra, entirely non-causally influential consciousness should exist atop matter at all. If matter is just brute stuff devoid of interiority, experience becomes an unexplained miracle (unless you know of some explanation for how neuronal networks create phenomenal experience ex nihilo?).

Sastra writes: "If you are going to claim that measurements of brain activity are not valid ways to measure all forms of consciousness, then I think you have to provide some good, clear examples of things which have no brain, and yet are conscious."

As I said above, consciousness is a very advanced form of experience that requires a structure equal in complexity to mammalian brains. I think there are gradients of experience, ranging from the rational consciousness of humans, to the emotionality of mammals, to the impulses of reptiles, to the primitive sentience of motile bacteria. So organisms without certain types of nervous tissue cannot be said to be conscious, but they do possess some form of experience, no matter how primitive. There is no way to empirically measure this; we have to infer it (just as you infer your friends and family are conscious) based on behavior (though I do think discoveries like "mirror neurons" mean these inferences are usually unconscious--we feel the sentience of other beings way before having to deduce it logically).

I am not an idealist nor a supernaturalist; I think everything that is real can be experienced (though not always empirically through the outward facing senses).

Sastra writes: "As regards Teilhard's Law, what other "spheres of human inquiry" here are you talking about -- and how does one use them to check that one is not deceiving themselves?"

I mean, for instance, that art and morality are just as valid as science when it comes to pronouncing upon reality, at least so far as human beings are able to experience and understand it. You mentioned that Teilhard's was a poetic view, and indeed it is. I don't see any reason, though, to compartmentalize one's aesthetic sense and one's scientific sense. I think they can and should inform one another. There are not many Nobel winning scientists who didn't praise the power of imagination and intuition in helping them devise their theories. We avoid deceiving ourselves not by decreeing from the beginning that reality is solely objective and external, but by bringing critical inquiry (though not so critical that we become trapped in skeptical solipsism) to our ongoing and open-ended exploration of human experience, in whatever sphere it be focused upon in any given instance (art, science, spirituality, etc). We must always be willing to grow in our understanding and never assume we've found a final truth.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | July 2, 2009 5:40 PM

Philosophy is certainly "a lot of words" as Knockgoats says at #370. But then so is science... anyone read PZ's post about Werner Arber's Molecular Darwinism theory yet?

But the molecular darwinism theory has the advantage of being interesting.

Posted by: Knockgoats | July 2, 2009 6:10 PM

I would describe consciousness as an advanced form of experience, which develops as material bodies complexify over evolutionary time. I'm arguing that a materialist who says matter begins as totally lacking experience and somehow acquires it, Poof!, because of the way it comes to be arranged (say, as a brain) is a covert dualist. Even if mind is described by a materialist as epiphenomenal, this is still a form of dualism. There is no reason any extra, entirely non-causally influential consciousness should exist atop matter at all. If matter is just brute stuff devoid of interiority, experience becomes an unexplained miracle (unless you know of some explanation for how neuronal networks create phenomenal experience ex nihilo?). - Matthew Segall

A necessary (and perhaps sufficient) condition for it to make sense to talk of an entity's experience is the existence of some form of representation of the external world, and of its own goals and goal-directed actions, within it. We can, then, sensibly talk about what it is like to be that entity. Most matter is not in forms that can support such representations. Of non-living matter we know of, only some machines might currently qualify. What you say about experience being an "unexplained miracle" would equally apply to such physical properties as solidity. In the moments after the big bang, there were no solid objects. Now there are, and they came into existence "ex nihilo" - that is, when there were no such things before.

I have to break off here, but if I get time over the next few days, I'll describe some work I've done on John Conway's "Game of Life" cellular automata that shows how fundamentally new properties can emerge in a deterministic, particulate "universe" far simpler than our own.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 2, 2009 9:29 PM

@ 383+384 Knockgoats writes: "My complaint was not about a lot of words, but a lot of words saying very little. Your quote from Maturana and Varela seemed (admittedly out of context) to be a good example of this."

That is my fault, I should have searched for a better description of the concept of structural coupling. A less technical description would be to say that organism and environment co-evolve, and so are and have always been dynamically coupled to one another. The idea is that, for instance, my brain does not need to "re-present" the ground internally, as it is already there for my body to engage directly. If the brain were actually a representational information-processor that needed to internally model every feature of a pre-given external reality, I think our moment-to-moment adaptive coping with the world would be a lot more cumbersome (sort of what you see in all attempts to get robots to navigate simple environments; there is just too much information that needs to be processed in too short a time for the sort of things we take for granted as biological agents, like playing catch with a variety of objects, to be possible).

Knockgoats writes: "I've studied philosophy of mind and epistemology at graduate level, and read a fair bit around "emergentism" more recently; and I've not seen any coherent alternative to materialism that is also compatible with scientific findings about mental phenomena..."

I earned my undergraduate degree in cognitive science and am currently in graduate school for philosophy and cosmology. I try to read in as many fields as possible, as I think cosmology and consciousness studies are about as interdisciplinary (if not trans-) as you can get. Granted, this may lead to knowing very little about a lot, but I try (and continue to try) to ground myself as well as possible in the basic sciences.

It would seem to me that some form of emergentism is a must for any attempted materialist account of conscious experience (or experience generally). That said, while I do think some sort of emergence is at play in the move from, say, molecular soup to a self-organizing cell, I don't think emergence can account for experience or consciousness if we're beginning with standard materialist assumptions (ie, that matter is inert stuff). For alternatives to materialist attempts to account for experience that take scientific findings into consideration, I suggest beginning with the following authors: Varela and Thompson (already mentioned), Alan Wallace, David Griffin, Olav Bryant Smith, Christian de Quincey (

Knockgoats writes: "So far as time is concerned, I'm not convinced philosophers have anything useful to say about it unless they thoroughly understand modern physics - which I don't myself, I hasten to add."

I also concede that I have only a non-mathematically inclined understanding of the basic principles of relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, chaos, and complexity theories. I think I understand the philosophical underpinnings of each well enough to speculate about the meaning of the results of these fields for biology and psychology, however. Of those philosophers and scientists listed above, I can assure you that Varela and especially Whitehead have a quite thorough understanding of post-Newtonian physics.

Knockgoats writes: "A necessary (and perhaps sufficient) condition for it to make sense to talk of an entity's experience is the existence of some form of representation of the external world, and of its own goals and goal-directed actions, within it."

As I explained above, I don't think the representational paradigm has much life left in it. I wouldn't haggle you too much if you wanted to describe cognitive systems in 3rd person terms as representational (ie, if you wanted to describe how cognition works from the outside), but when you consider 1st person phenomenology (which is, after all, what we're actually trying to understand), representationalism and the computer/mind metaphor begin to break down. I would agree that goal-directed action is a clear sign of experience in an organized material body. We see this in bacteria swimming up sucrose gradients, and I'd argue, in the attraction between hydrogen atoms that form stars. It was common sense in Newton's age to think of atoms as simple and inert billiard balls, but we now know they are in fact complex energetic events best described as self-organizing systems.

Knockgoats writes: "What you say about experience being an "unexplained miracle" would equally apply to such physical properties as solidity."

I think solidity is well accounted for by electromagnetic and chemical relationships between atoms and molecules, respectively. Experience refers to a domain of interiority that is entirely superfluous to the mechanical interaction of surfaces required in a materialist ontology. To account for it, a materialist can only say it "emerged" when brains evolved because... well, I don't know why. Do you?

Knockgoats writes: "In the moments after the big bang, there were no solid objects. Now there are, and they came into existence "ex nihilo" - that is, when there were no such things before."

I do think that our universe is creative, in the sense that it has repeatedly emerged to higher states of order (ie, quantum foam to sub-atomic particles, to atoms, to stars and galaxies, to solar systems, to simple life, to complex life, to intelligence, etc). Emergence helps us understand this. But I don't think experience can be explained this way, because as I said above, interiority is ontological distinct (though not necessarily separate) from extended properties like solidity or shape.

I'm familiar with Conway's game of life from Dennett's books, and look forward to reading about your work.

Posted by: Aaron Baker | July 2, 2009 9:42 PM

P.Z wrote:

"This conversation is over, then. There is no right not to be offended by something; we all do things that we regard as our privilege that other people will find offensive."

I never said anyone had a right not to be offended, P.Z. I argued that one should not intentionally offend others (particularly when the offense is likely to be extreme) 1) just for the sake of offending them; or 2) without some purpose that's likely to bring any actual benefit.

That's all. I know you've encountered self-righteous Christians who've gone out of their way to wound you (verbally). If the wounding's restricted to speech, you don't have the right to stop them; but I'm having a hard time seeing why you're so unconcerned about behaving in a similar way.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself | July 2, 2009 10:21 PM

Shorter Aaron Baker: You're being mean you big meanie. I don't want you to be mean to those poor, persecuted Catholics. Don't be mean again or I'll hold my breath until I turn blue. PS, did I say you were a meanie?

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | July 2, 2009 11:09 PM

Aaron Baker wrote:

Please don't argue law with a lawyer.

Good grief. With the lack of insight you've demonstrated in this topic I sincerely hope no-one is depending on your prowess for their liberty or financial well-being.

You think PZ is a big meanie, fine; that's how you feel. But you can't justify it beyond that and each time you attempt to do so - via weak, inappropriate analogy or substandard argument - you're just wasting your time and ours.

Posted by: windy | July 2, 2009 11:25 PM

It would seem to me that some form of emergentism is a must for any attempted materialist account of conscious experience (or experience generally). That said, while I do think some sort of emergence is at play in the move from, say, molecular soup to a self-organizing cell, I don't think emergence can account for experience or consciousness if we're beginning with standard materialist assumptions (ie, that matter is inert stuff).

I'm sorry, I don't really get this attitude: we have something that happened once that we know of, billions of years ago, versus a process that appears to take place over a hundred million times a year. We don't understand the details of either process very well, but you and many others are convinced that it's the second process that is more mysterious and can't be purely material. WTF?

Posted by: Wowbagger, OM | July 2, 2009 11:41 PM

I'm sure you appreciate it when others refrain from laughing at your obvious mental disability.

My, you're as dull and lacklustre with your insults as you are with your arguments - and, considering you've implied that you've been reading posts on this site for many years, it reiterates the point I made earlier regarding your inability to learn.

And how embarrassing it must be for you to keep being trounced by someone you claim has a mental disability!

Hmm, if lay church members actually have less control over their Church than do citizens in a democracy over their country, it's LESS justifiable to hold these laypersons responsible for what their church does than to do so of citizens in a democracy. If you want to make my points for me, that's fine; but these sudden shifts are a little dizzying to watch.

If I were making points for you, well, that'd make one of us.

But I'm not, despite your desperate attempt to make it seem so - though I can't imagine anyone (other than you) would interpret it as such. Level of control was never the issue.

If you don't like the government you have the power to act to change it. In the church you don't have the power to change it via democratic means - but you can leave the church. And if enough people do either of these, change will be effected. Hence, your analogy fails.

Do you get it now, or would you like me to try and dumb it down even further? I'm not much of an artist, though, so I can't promise to draw you any pictures.

Posted by: Matthew Segall | July 3, 2009 12:21 AM

@394 windy writes: "I'm sorry, I don't really get this attitude: we have something that happened once that we know of, billions of years ago, versus a process that appears to take place over a hundred million times a year. We don't understand the details of either process very well, but you and many others are convinced that it's the second process that is more mysterious and can't be purely material. WTF?"

The emergence of life is quite amazing, not a supernatural miracle, but am amazing fact about what matter is capable of doing. Human birth and development, which I assume is the second thing you're talking about, is no less amazing and no less natural. I see them as natural, but I think nature is almost self-evidently more than mere mindless, inert matter in motion. It is self-evident to me, at least--and I do think I have a reasonably good understanding of most significant scientific findings. I think the knowledge we have of the large scale evolution of our universe and of the emergence and development of life on our planet is as spiritual a set of discoveries/revelations as humanity has ever been received. And by spiritual, I don't mean anything supernatural, I mean the creative element underlying space-time and material/experiential development.