Pharyngula

Posted by: Scott from Oregon | July 16, 2009 10:06 AM

"I am confident that those who believe in belief are wrong. That is, we no more need to preserve the myth of God in order to preserve a just and stable society than we needed to cling to the Gold Standard to keep our currency sound."

Ummm, not to get sidetracked here from the point he's making (which I agree with- you don't need God to be moral- but given the collapsing monetary system around the world, and the massive militarization of the US fully enabled by a fiat monetary system (without an expanding money supply, Congress would have to tax Americans to pay for bombs), methinks the comparison to the gold standard is unfortunate and extremely inaccurate.

We got off the gold standard so we could kill more Vietnamese peasants and build more nukes and military bases around the world.

Funny thing about liberalism... it is a prime enabler of everything liberals say they are against.

The mind boggles...

Posted by: Lana | July 16, 2009 10:10 AM

They are both excellent readings - calm, logical and well, right. They are especially welcome after spending too much time recently with people who take it as a given that religious teachings are literally true. It's all so obvious! Why can't everyone see it?

Posted by: Lynna | July 16, 2009 10:18 AM

• This article was amended on Thursday 16 July 2009. Moon-landing sceptics were referred to as "loonies", contrary to the Guardian style guide. This has been corrected.

Heh. Dennett was censored.

Posted by: Fred the Hun | July 16, 2009 10:27 AM

why not just toss the whole ball of fluff out?

Tossing balls of fluff is an exercise in futility. They encounter too much hot air resistance when tossed and end up being blown right back in your face. Often they split up into multiple little dust bunnies and cause never ending grief to clean up the whole unholy mess.

What you need to do is stamp down hard on that shit and compress the all that crap in to the highly compacted ball of dung that it is and sling shoot it into oblivion at an escape velocity that guarantees it won't come back to haunt you! Make sure you aim away from any fans...

Posted by: Mumon | July 16, 2009 10:35 AM

Do all religions make such claims re: nature?

No.

Some do not even need the personal moral god.

Posted by: Victor | July 16, 2009 10:39 AM

why not just toss the whole ball of fluff out?

Posted by: James Sweet | July 16, 2009 10:41 AM

Haven't read the Dennett piece yet, but I am looking forward to it. Just one quick comment I wanted to make: While the case study of Denmark is interesting, it doesn't tell us a huge amount. AFAIK Denmark doesn't have the kind of massive poverty-triggered crime issues that might conceivably allow a positive role for religion as an agent for community unity. And anyway, it's a data point of one.

Disclaimer: I am not arguing that religion is socially useful -- for the record, I am undecided, and leaning against. Even the conceivable "positive role" that I posited above I think is pretty dubious, given religion's track record in regards to social change. Which is why I'm really looking forward to reading the Dennett piece, since this is an issue I am still contemplating!

Posted by: Sigmund | July 16, 2009 10:46 AM

The reasoning theistic evolutionists use to refute biblical creationism - Noahs Ark could not have been a true story because all the evidence we have from geology, biogeography, botany and ethography have provided us with real evidence of how nature functions and how it almost certainly functions in the past etc can just as easily be applied to other religious miracles - such as the virgin birth or the resurrection.
When this is pointed out to them they suddenly revert to creationist excuses - "it's a miracle, God does those occasionally!" Or perhaps the old favorite, "were you there?" We are frequently asked to disprove miracles ("find the the body of Jesus and I'll accept that the resurrection never happened" - to paraphrase an answer of Francis Collins to an awkward radio interview question about the basis of his beliefs.)

Posted by: Newfie | July 16, 2009 10:49 AM

If religion has no useful explanatory power, and if we don't need it to make our lives better and richer, why not just toss the whole ball of fluff out?

Need? No. Useful tool to take political and financial advantage of the stupid masses? Yes.

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | July 16, 2009 10:53 AM

Why is it so hard to accept that science is the only epistemology that has ever given solid, observable results? Carroll's article should be rated -1, obvious. The fact that he felt the need to post that entry, as well-written and entertaining as it is, is an indictment of the state of our culture.

I reckon that makes my post here -2, meta-obvious.

Posted by: Screechy Monkey | July 16, 2009 11:05 AM

The one part of the Dennett piece I didn't like was this:

If they were more confident and secure in their religious convictions, they probably wouldn't waste their time trying to discredit a few atheists. For instance, since they are confident that the moon landings really happened, they don't bother working to discredit the moon-landing sceptics who lurk on the internet, even though those people do pose something of a threat to public confidence in the veracity of the media and the government.

I hate the "you wouldn't be arguing against me unless I was onto something" tactic. It's fallacious: sometimes we choose to "waste" our time arguing against stupid people, for a variety of reasons (we fear their stupidity is harmful and/or may spread, it illustrates a larger point, or it's just plain fun).

And Dennett really should know better. How many times have we heard theists smirk and comment about how, if atheists really don't think there's a god, they wouldn't spend time writing books and arguing against his existence?

Posted by: DGKnipfer | July 16, 2009 11:09 AM

Because baby Jebus would cry.

Posted by: Bernard Bumner | July 16, 2009 11:12 AM

When a scientist gives up trying to understand something, they call it 'supernatural'... or maybe they believe that it's supernatural, so they give up understanding it.

Many scientists don't believe in the supernatural at all. Anything they cannot understand falls firmly into either of two categories; erroneous observations or things not yet ammenable to scientific study. "Supernatural" is meant to refer to something which is simultaneously real and beyond measurement (now, or ever). I think that many scientists would suggest that supernatural is simply a category of cognitive error (either in observation or comprehension).

How can you tell the difference between 'something we don't understand yet' and 'something we'll never understand'?

Don't forget that the first question should always be is there something to understand? (An explanation for a non-existent phenomenon is worse than useless.)

Posted by: Ranson | July 16, 2009 11:20 AM

@ nigel

Please don't feed the libertarian. Nothing good can come of it.

Posted by: nigelTheBold, Minister of Spankings | July 16, 2009 11:24 AM

#28 Ransom,

Yeah, I figured that as soon as I posted it. I regret doing so. I shall refrain from being baited like that in the future.

Honest.

Posted by: Ray Ingles | July 16, 2009 11:27 AM

Bernard - I was referring to scientists like in Tyson's essay. I probably should have qualified it as "some scientists" instead of just "scientists".

And I was trying to suggest that "supernatural is simply a category of cognitive error (either in observation or comprehension)." :->

Posted by: Bernard Bumner | July 16, 2009 11:31 AM

I probably should have qualified it as "some scientists" instead of just "scientists".

Fair enough.

Posted by: Kevin | July 16, 2009 11:40 AM

"By "natural" I simply mean the view in which everything that happens can be explained in terms of a physical world obeying unambiguous rules, never disturbed by whimsical supernatural interventions from outside nature itself. The preference for a natural explanation is not an a priori assumption made by science; it's a conclusion of the scientific method."

I feel I have to disagree with this assertion. The scientific method itself rests upon the assumption that the observations we are making are repeatable (because they obey unambiguous rules). If we started without the assumption that there was a naturalistic explanation for things, the scientific method would be useless.

Posted by: tsg | July 16, 2009 11:50 AM

I feel I have to disagree with this assertion. The scientific method itself rests upon the assumption that the observations we are making are repeatable (because they obey unambiguous rules). If we started without the assumption that there was a naturalistic explanation for things, the scientific method would be useless.

If the observations we are making were not repeatable (ie, something supernatural is interfering with them) then science wouldn't work, planes wouldn't fly, refrigerators wouldn't keep things cold, cars wouldn't drive, etc. But here we are. Beyond just simple understanding, that's what science is for: discovering how things work and make them work to our advantage.

Posted by: DGKnipfer | July 16, 2009 11:52 AM

Kevin,

I do not think that is correct. The scientific method only assumes that we can observe and that those observations will provide useful information. The model of the natural world is based on those observations. If those observations had supported a supernatural world most scientists would have a supernatural world view. As those observations support a natural world view most scientists support a natural world view.

Posted by: Matt Penfold | July 16, 2009 12:00 PM

I feel I have to disagree with this assertion. The scientific method itself rests upon the assumption that the observations we are making are repeatable (because they obey unambiguous rules). If we started without the assumption that there was a naturalistic explanation for things, the scientific method would be useless.

I look at it like this. Without the initial assumption regarding naturalistic explanations there would, as you say, be no point in doing science.

We have, of course, made that assumption and gone ahead and done science. The science we have done supports the initial assumption, the universe does indeed seem to follow rules.

Posted by: tsg | July 16, 2009 12:10 PM

There are some things which science has specifically excluded from its venue. Two examples are the last digit of pi, and the precise location and velocity of a sub atomic particle.

There is no last digit of pi to know.

Posted by: Logicel | July 16, 2009 12:16 PM

Screechy Monkey @ 22: And Dennett really should know better. How many times have we heard theists smirk and comment about how, if atheists really don't think there's a god, they wouldn't spend time writing books and arguing against his existence?
______

Agreed. I was not just disappointed by those words of Dennett, who I associate with an almost unfailing command of elegant reasoning and arguments, but shocked. I guess he is human after all.

The comments at the original article by Dennet contained several by theists who do not even understand the concept of belief in belief. They think that Dennet is admonishing believers. These theists apparently do not know that there atheists with no god belief whatsoever who think that belief in belief (even if the belief is wrong as these atheists think) is a good thing. Theists are believers--they do not believe in belief.

I am v pleased I found Cosmic Variance and Sean Carroll.

Posted by: Sanction | July 16, 2009 12:19 PM

@Ray Ingles #19: Thanks for the link to the Tyson article, which has this statement:

"And what comedian designer configured the region between our legs—an entertainment complex built around a sewage system?"

I'm going to use this description when my wife is next in the mood for romance. Hypothesis: nothing close to sex that night. Alternative hypothesis: discovery of a weird fetish.

Posted by: Sastra | July 16, 2009 12:20 PM

By "natural" I simply mean the view in which everything that happens can be explained in terms of a physical world obeying unambiguous rules, never disturbed by whimsical supernatural interventions from outside nature itself. The preference for a natural explanation is not an a priori assumption made by science; it's a conclusion of the scientific method.(Sean Carroll)

Note that this is the opposite of so-called "methodological naturalism." Nothing is ruled out a priori, in advance of investigation. Naturalism is a reasonable conclusion, a working theory with great support.

Those who claim that science requires methodological naturalism, however, don't want that result. Instead they say that the objective methods of science, by their very nature, can only discover truths about the natural world: the supernatural world, if any, would require different -- but effective -- methods of understanding, such as intuition, authority, mystical revelation, and so forth. Thus, science can't say anything about whether or not the supernatural exists. The fact that natural explanations have been so successful means nothing. God is safe.

There is no such thing as 'methodological naturalism.' The concept was invented as a dodge, a way of protecting supernatural claims from analysis, and keeping them apart from any need for consistency and coherency in one's picture of the world.

As for "supernaturalism," it doesn't just involve mystery, or resistance to scientific explanation, or "not being part of nature" (whatever the heck that means.) Otherwise, super strings might qualify. When you look at every example of what is considered supernatural -- whether it be religious, spiritual, or paranormal -- it always gives priority and power to Mind, or Mind Attributes like values or emotions, and it always makes human-like sentience (and our existence) the most important and significant freaking thing in the entire cosmos. The "super" modifier doesn't refer to being outside, so much as if refers to specialness, or hierarchy. The reality of the mental world existing above the physical one.

If something like "loving thoughts" alone could influence the outcome of experiments or even events, we'd live in a magical, god-like, spirit-infused universe. But they don't, and therefore it's a reasonable conclusion that we don't.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | July 16, 2009 12:23 PM

The scientific method itself rests upon the assumption that the observations we are making are repeatable (because they obey unambiguous rules).

I think not. That's another a posteriori judgment, one that took us a long time to be able to do, since events on earth in fact did not seem to be repeatable (due to complexity). The heavens were observed to repeat their activities over and over again (mostly due to the momentum of the earth, not because the heavens do not change irreversibly), and were thought to be a divine sphere in consequence.

It's true enough that science looks for reproducible results, but that's because many results were found to be reproducible by what we might call "pre-science." I mean, to a considerable extent, modern science began when Newton demonstrated that huge swaths of phenomena were ruled by consistent "laws," at which point we realized that we could tease out the consistencies from the inconsistencies.

Newton and scientists a while after him did not think that life was reproducible as a whole (we're not talking "reproduction" here, of course), and was due to a singular event, or several singular events, of creation. IDists like Paley weren't altogether wrong, however, to say that we might do something like science so long as the Creator were a good deal like us, making things according to rationality. Modern IDiots know that such evidence can't be found, which is why ID is so weird.

We might have done our "pre-science" and found that things on earth really are not reproducible. To be sure, "modern science" might not have been born, however it is always possible that instead of physics being "consistent," perhaps it was periodic, or perhaps it was consistent for time, then not. We only have to be able to find patterns and probabilities to do something like science, and we could make useful predictions if momentum were conserved only 90% in a billiard collision.

One has to be awfully careful about claiming that science rests on the belief that observations are repeatable where creationists/IDiots lurk. Of course I'm not sure what you mean by "observations are repeatable," because there's no question that anyone with the qualifications can study, say, Archaeopteryx, however it is extremely unlikely that we could ever observe Archaeopteryx evolving in the future.

I don't deny that observations of the basic causal mechanisms in evolution are reproducible, of course, just that many complex evolutionary events are in fact non-repeatable in their entirety. And science deals with this fact all of the time, including in physics. And even if the causal mechanisms in evolution are repeatable, they need not be, they could be probabilistic and we'd still be able to understand it to a degree.

Of course quantum physics is an issue, in that as far as we know single events are not reproducible in any law-like fashion at all. Probabilistically they are repeatable, yet science does not require absolute repeatability in the quantum sphere, or presumably anywhere else. It is fortunate for quantum physics that the classical realm is practically "deterministic," however, as that makes the probabilistic nature of quantum physics so much easier to study.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p

Posted by: Bernard Bumner | July 16, 2009 12:25 PM

There are some things which science has specifically excluded from its venue. Two examples are the last digit of pi, and the precise location and velocity of a sub atomic particle.

a) There is no "last digit of pi".

b) The Uncertainty Principle isn't only a statement of the ability of science to measure properties of a system. It is a fundamental property of quantum particles that no state exists where both properties are definite. (Don't image quantum particles as classical objects which are simply beyond the technical abilities of science to measure.)

- I see that both of these points have been made above, but I'm restating them because I'm one of the people who would make the broad claim that "all things can either be defined by the scientific method, or can be assumed to be someday explained by scientific tools".

Posted by: Knockgoats | July 16, 2009 12:27 PM

"If we started without the assumption that there was a naturalistic explanation for things, the scientific method would be useless." - Kevin

No, it wouldn't. We know this, because science did start without that assumption (e.g. early geologists assumed that the Noachian flood was real), but the method worked anyway - and led to the discovery that the Noachian flood was not real. Similarly, Alfred Russel Wallace believed that natural selection could not have produced the human brain, because "savages" would not need it, and concluded that "goddidit" - much to Darwin's chagrin. AFAIK, no "theistic evolutionists" make such a claim now - better understanding of sexual selection and the cognitive demands of "savage" life having made it untenable. Again, 19th and 20th century scientists investigated a host of wooist claims - from communication with the dead through telepathy and "remote viewing" to homeopathy - any of which would, if proved, undermine naturalism. Naturalism remains a falsifiable hypothesis. If it is ever falsified, whether the scientific method thereby becomes useless would depend on how it was falsified.

Posted by: Glen Davidson | July 16, 2009 12:35 PM

Well,

and we could make useful probabilistic predictions if momentum were conserved in only 90% of billiard collisions.

Sheesh, how do I miss something like that in a correction?

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/mxaa3p

Posted by: Matt Penfold | July 16, 2009 12:50 PM

Sastra,

Your point in #59 can be summed in the axiom "The universe does not lie".

Posted by: Jason Thibeault | July 16, 2009 12:53 PM

@54:

- I see that both of these points have been made above, but I'm restating them because I'm one of the people who would make the broad claim that "all things can either be defined by the scientific method, or can be assumed to be someday explained by scientific tools".

Funny. I and some compatriots just got into an argument with Nathan Myers on this exact point over at Greg Laden's blog: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2009/07/accommodationists_and_new_athe.php

It spiralled well out of control from the original post, and ended rather poorly when Nathan refused to back up his views that there are some things fundamentally unknowable about the universe, despite his apparently science-lovin' atheist nature, and resorted instead to claiming he had sex with one of the posters' girlfriend.

I agree 100% -- given infinite time to develop our tools, nothing in the universe is fundamentally unknowable. Whether we humans, our descendants, or some other life form in the universe, manages to discover and explain every aspect of this universe is a different story. But nothing is fundamentally mysterious or magical, given our track record of discovering a naturalistic explanation for every phenomenon thus far.

Posted by: Ray Ingles | July 16, 2009 12:54 PM

Galbinus_Caeli: I can't find anyone in this thread who's said that "all things can either be defined by the scientific method, or can be assumed to be someday explained by scientific tools", or words to that effect. Can you specify a comment number where someone actually said that?

If you misunderstood what I wrote in comment #19 (and I may be presuming here), let me clarify. There are two problems. First, you write: There are some things which science has specifically excluded from its venue. Two examples are the last digit of pi, and the precise location and velocity of a sub atomic particle.

The first is a mathematical conclusion, not properly a scientific one. And, of course, it's 'outside of the mathematical venue' because there is no 'last digit of pi'. As Bernard Bumner put it, "An explanation for a non-existent phenomenon is worse than useless."

And the second one is a scientific conclusion, but you've mischaracterized it in a similar way. It's not that we can't know "the precise location and velocity of a sub atomic particle" - it's that subatomic particles don't have a precise location or velocity. (As Feynman's supposed to have said, "You don't understand QM. You just get used to it.")

Finally, I didn't even claim that incomprehensible things don't exist. They might... but there's no way to ever tell. From our perspective, they look exactly like "things we don't understand yet". Either way... the only reasonable course is to try to understand things. As Asimov put it, "To surrender to ignorance and call it God has always been premature, and it remains premature today."

Posted by: MikeinJapan | July 16, 2009 12:55 PM

Required reading for tomorrow: Sense And Sensibility And Sea Monsters

http://io9.com/5315301/literary-mashups-meet-tentacles-has-all-of-western-literature-been-leading-up-to-this

Posted by: Peter R. | July 16, 2009 12:59 PM

Clarification: One can, of course conclude that the success of science means naturalism is true, as Carroll does. It is not, however, an _unavoidable_, undeniable conclusion.

Posted by: Knockgoats | July 16, 2009 1:03 PM

Oh dear, Dennett has offended the von Misesian faithful (SfO@2, MikeHell@39). He'd better watch out.

It's notable that countries recovered from the Great Depression pretty much in the order they abandoned the gold standard, while as others have pointed out, the existence of such a standard did not prevent the growth of credit-based boom and bust cycles. But of course, von Mises and his idiot followers such as Rothbard are at least consistent in refusing to take much notice of economic history - how capitalism has, in fact, developed - because that histroy doesn't fit their looneytarian fantasies.

Posted by: broxster | July 16, 2009 1:09 PM

Eeek - Ben Stein is in an advertisement in the right column!

Posted by: SC, OM | July 16, 2009 1:20 PM

Scienceblogs has made some change wrt the ads, apparently. Carlie and others mentioned mail-order bride ads [!] (which I haven't seen), Orac complained about (S)CAM ads (which I have), and now these other idiotic ads are appearing. Honestly, as they go, I didn't mind the previous - they were sometimes for books, sometimes for other science-related things,... I may even have clicked on one or two. These new ones frankly suck.

Posted by: Fred the Hun | July 16, 2009 1:34 PM

www.sustainableecotech.com

Scott from Oregon @ 2

We got off the gold standard so we could kill more Vietnamese peasants and build more nukes and military bases around the world.

Yep, that was good ole Tricky Dick! It warms the cockles of my heart to remember him...

I have the highest of respect for Daniel Dennett but he doesn't have much of a clue when it comes to our economic reality. The analogy to gold being a crutch fails spectacularly! It was a actually a sort regulator mechanism that kept the economy from spinning completely out of control. As it now has and we are left with picking up the pieces.

Chris Martenson sums it up quite nicely in this chapter of his crash course.

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse/chapter-9-brief-history-us-money

Posted by: Nerd of Redhead, OM | July 16, 2009 1:47 PM

You might be surprised by what you learn.

Posted by: noodles | July 16, 2009 1:52 PM

I agree 100% -- given infinite time to develop our tools, nothing in the universe is fundamentally unknowable... nothing is fundamentally mysterious or magical, given our track record of discovering a naturalistic explanation for every phenomenon thus far.

If a non-terrestrial intelligent entity exists and has the ability to influence physical events on earth (floods, earthquakes etc.) there should be a way of detecting and measuring both the mechanism of influence and the entity itself. Even if the creature appears immaterial there should still be a way to measure and understand what it is and how it functions. Borrowing from SciFi on possible immaterial natures:
* An entity of pure energy? If it is intelligent how does memory and decision-making work? What are the energy equivalent of synapses in the brain? Where in physical space does this energy creature reside? Are there different classes (or phylum) of energy creatures?
* A pan-dimensional entity? If the creature exists partially in this dimension but partially outside it; how does it manifest and cross dimensions? What is the physical nature of the creature when wholly in the alternate dimension? If there really is an intelligent entity that manipulates physical processes on Earth and communicates on some level with the inhabitants of Earth, at some point we should have the tools to measure, analyze, and understand the physical nature of this entity.

Posted by: Knockgoats | July 16, 2009 1:55 PM

The analogy to gold being a crutch fails spectacularly! It was a actually a sort regulator mechanism that kept the economy from spinning completely out of control. - Fred the Hun

Except that it didn't. The entire world was on the gold standard in the run up to the Great Crash of 1929, and countries recovered from the ensuing slump pretty much in the order they left that standard. Nor did gold currency prevent numerous booms and crashes from at least the 14th century onwards - so the fact that the most recent financial crash happened when there wasn't a gold standard does not imply that having a gold standard would have prevented one.

Posted by: Sastra | July 16, 2009 2:03 PM

Glen Davidson #69 wrote:

I don't know, surely one could do something like science if the universe actually did favor some people. That hinges, again (as noted in #41), on whether the claim is strong enough to test.

Hm, good point. Perhaps it comes down to the matter of testability -- and regularity.

For example, some of the proponents of alternative medicine are trying to deal with negative results on well-designed, controlled studies by insisting that energy healing or whatever 'can't be studied by science.' It's real, and it works often enough in personal experience to know that it's real and it works -- but every time someone tries to test it and pin it down objectively across a lot of people, it will fail. It doesn't work that often. And it reacts badly to exposure to doubt and skepticism.

I'm trying to think of what the world would be like if this sort of thing were true. Would science still be possible? Could we be sure we could figure out where these new rules apply, and where they don't?

The alties think that of course science is still possible: you do it when studying other, emotionally-neutral things, and then, when it comes to examining 'healing energy' or whatever bullshit they're pushing, you use a friendly version of science. It seeks not to test, but to reinforce, catalog, and testify. Of course, that's not science.

Posted by: truthspeaker | July 16, 2009 2:26 PM

Posted by: Michael | July 16, 2009 1:25 PM

Is it me, or did the censoring of Dennett's article of "loonies" to "skeptics" seem a bit weird.

Certainly the word 'skeptics' confers more respect than the word 'loonies', so it's not exactly a suitable substitute. Just like substituting "scientist" for "high-school dropout" would not be acceptable.

Secondly, putting the substitution note at the bottom of the article kind of undermines the substitution. A bit like saying in the article "I don't like him" and at the bottom saying the actual quote was "I think he is such a f*****g ***hole that I would rather die than be in the same room with." Not exactly censoring when the quote is still on the same page. Is this a libel issue?

I was wondering about that too. It is clearly a commentary, not a news article - it's in the "Comment is Free" section! Maybe they don't want to offend the mentally ill?

Posted by: Dipper | July 16, 2009 2:50 PM

Dennett is ignoring the fact that Danes, and Europeans in general, have a social support structure we lack in the US. To whom do the poor turn when their lives aren't going so well (due to no insurance or penury in general)? To religion, and the church, which does offer services for the destitute. So until we follow the Europeans in their socialism, we will not be able to follow them in their atheism.

Posted by: Platypus | July 16, 2009 2:53 PM

In re: Kevin

"The scientific method itself rests upon the assumption that the observations we are making are repeatable (because they obey unambiguous rules). If we started without the assumption that there was a naturalistic explanation for things, the scientific method would be useless."

Actually, I would say that you are describing two entirely separable ideas. The first is the materialist assumption -- namely, we are assuming that the world exists, and that it follows rules that we can deduce by manipulating the world to bring about predicted outcomes. It doesn't say what the source of those rules is, just that there are rules and we can learn them. If there really are divine forces working to push all those electrons around, they must be doing it in a way that we can detect, otherwise we must explicitly rule out their existence. To put it in pop-culture terms, we are explicitly assuming that we are not living inside a Matrix -- but that is subject to change the instant that Lawrence Fishburne shows up to offer us the choice between Nyquil and Dayquil.

The second idea is the naturalism hypothesis, which is a prediction that all phenomena we observe can be explained by the action of natural physical laws. This is the hypothesis that, when we are confronted with data that contradicts current theories, leads us to predict that our theories are incomplete and we should look to modify them to encompass the new data, rather than throw up our hands with a "goddiddit".

While materialism must be assumed, the naturalism hypothesis can be empirically tested, and has (so far) been validated by experiments. Special creation predicts that the branches of our phylogenetic trees should all be parallel lines; evolution predicts we should see groups within groups within groups. The latter is what we actually observe. Our scanning tunneling electron microscopes could have told us how many angels were dancing on the head of a pin. Well, actually they did -- the answer is zero, because we have no evidence whatsoever that angels actually exist.

Posted by: CW | July 16, 2009 3:07 PM

We got off the gold standard so we could kill more Vietnamese peasants and build more nukes and military bases around the world.

Posted by: MikeHell | July 16, 2009 3:21 PM

Of course you don't - like all looneytarians, you have complete contempt for evidence.

I'll say it again: Never confuse economics with science; most interpretations of pattern are passed through a very thick ideological filter. I could very easily present data that shows the exact opposite of what you claim, but so what? You'd just dismiss it as capitalist rantings and round and round we'd go.

Where it goes beyond truisms, it's crap

Another trick of the creationist and statist: Dismiss out of hand incontrovertible logic as so much trivial nothingness, and then proceed to deliberately misinterpret ancillary statements regarding how a principle may, or may not be, implemented or manifest in the real world. Go back and read that paragraph again. You got it wrong.

I already know you can't, from previous experience with looneytarians and their worship of the great god Market.

And again, when all else fails, resort to childish name-calling.

What a rude person you are. Good luck with your life.

Posted by: Rick R | July 16, 2009 3:32 PM

"What a rude person you are. Good luck with your life."

Mooney, is that you?

Posted by: David Wilford | July 16, 2009 3:38 PM

Erg, I'm brain dead today. The dollar didn't become the international reserve currency of choice until *after* 1971, not before as I mistakenly said in my previous post.

I shall take a nap now...

Posted by: Marcus Ranum | July 16, 2009 3:43 PM

When you press a theologian or occultist far enough, it always turns out that "supernatural" is a code word for "unknowable" or "incomprehensible". It means "something humans will never understand".

I love when they do that. Then I get to ask them "if it's unknowable or incomprehensible, what makes you think it exists at all?" Then they scramble around trying to explain that they can know something exists without knowing anything else about it. Uh, except that it is "love."

I'm actually quite OK with the definition that "supernatural == we can't know anything about it" because everything that we have to know with is in the natural world, and any means we could know anything about it are all in nature.

Anyone who believes in the woo-woo version of spiritualism or the unknowable refutes themself; they claim to know something unknowable exists and are revealed as liars.

Posted by: The Countess | July 16, 2009 3:47 PM

why not just toss the whole ball of fluff out?

The problem is that once you toss out one ball of fluff, another one pops up in its place. Before you know it, you are overrun with tribbles. And you know how that ended.

Posted by: Tulse | July 16, 2009 3:56 PM

Deism is homeopathic religion (i.e.: watered-down to the point where it does nothing) but it's still religion if its core tenet is belief in a god or gods.

I don't think that belief in gods (or more generally, supernatural beings) is sufficient to make something a religion. If I believe that some abstract Being created the universe, but that such being has had absolutely no impact on the universe since then, does not interact with human beings, and does not, for example, answer prayers or require rituals or govern morality or demand worship, then I'm not sure such a belief is actually a religion. It's supernatural, sure, but so is belief in ghosts or leprechauns.

Posted by: Geoff | July 16, 2009 4:04 PM

**Off topic**

Well if you're bored...

So has anyone gone to the imdb.com message board about Creation and see the creationists get bitch slapped?

Ha! It should be a new sport.

Loving it!

Posted by: Holbach | July 16, 2009 4:57 PM

Marcus Ranum @ 103

Not so much a useful crutch as a needed tool for despotism as you write, but still a crutch none the same for whatever purpose to beat the ignorant into submission and fear. How very saneful to be free of the need for crutches of the imaginary kind.

Posted by: Anton Mates | July 16, 2009 5:27 PM

Knockgoats,

No, it wouldn't. We know this, because science did start without that assumption (e.g. early geologists assumed that the Noachian flood was real), but the method worked anyway - and led to the discovery that the Noachian flood was not real. Similarly, Alfred Russel Wallace believed that natural selection could not have produced the human brain, because "savages" would not need it, and concluded that "goddidit" - much to Darwin's chagrin. AFAIK, no "theistic evolutionists" make such a claim now - better understanding of sexual selection and the cognitive demands of "savage" life having made it untenable.

Hmm. I don't think these are very effective examples of scientific testing of the supernatural.

The Noachian flood was (and still is, for Young-Earth Creationists) a naturalistic explanation. Various geological features were attributed to a very large amount of water appearing on the Earth's surface in a very short amount of time, and subsequently obeying the standard laws of physics. Sure, the flood itself was usually postulated to have a supernatural cause--the will of an angry deity--but no serious scientist suggested investigating that part empirically. The question simply became moot after it became clear that there was no evidence for such a flood.

And if evidence had turned up, we would have no warrant to conclude that the flood was the result of divine wrath. There would be any number of competing natural explanations, like the YECs' "vapor canopy", and Velikovsky's scenario of celestial catastrophes raining crap down on the Earth.

Wallace explicitly invoked the supernatural to explain the human brain/mind, sure, but that wasn't any more scientific than when Francis Collins does it. Freshman philosophizing is still freshman philosophizing even when it's done by a great scientist.

Suppose we had strong evidence that our high-powered brains were maladaptive; would it be scientific to conclude that they must have been produced in a miracle? Of course not. Again, any number of alternative explanations would present themselves: that our brainpower is a spandrel; that it's the result of dynamic mutations or mobile genetic elements, working against our own fitness; that Lamarck was right and we've granted ourselves heritably larger brains by thinking really hard; that there's some sort of progressive evolutionary force pushing us in directions that aren't always adaptive; that our ancestors were "uplifted" by aliens or time-travelers. All of these explanations would be scientifically preferable to "It was the will of God;" they're at least marginally more testable, and more parsimonious in that they don't require suspension of natural law.

Again, 19th and 20th century scientists investigated a host of wooist claims - from communication with the dead through telepathy and "remote viewing" to homeopathy - any of which would, if proved, undermine naturalism.

I don't think so. Communication with the dead, ESP, and homeopathy can all be viewed in a naturalist framework, and all of them have been so viewed by some of their supporters. Indeed, most homeopaths still think they're merely exploiting poorly-understood laws of nature.

Communication with the dead and ESP have been more completely relegated to the realm of the supernatural, but that's because scientists didn't find any evidence for them. The easiest way to deal with that unfortunate fact, while preserving your belief, is to claim that they don't follow consistent laws of nature. If parapsychology had been successful, on the other hand, we would now view those phenomena as weird-but-natural, like quantum theory; we'd be busting ghosts with particle beams and using telekinetics to assassinate foreign dictators.

Posted by: amphiox | July 16, 2009 5:28 PM

As several others have already noted, the scientific method most certainly does not require the a priori assumption that observations are repeatable. That is an a posteri discovery made when observations and experiments were repeated, and the same results were obtained.

Thus the scientific method can (and would very easily in fact) detect the supernatural. The results of repeated experiments conducted under identical conditions would turn out different.

But what the scientific method appears not to be able to do is go further from there. Once the supernatural phenomenon has been discovered, and its existence confirmed, the scientific method would not be able to provide any further insights into that phenomenon in particular. No hypotheses could be generated or tested and no predictions can be made, if the phenomenon is not repeatable.

Or, more accurately, the reliability of the scientific method would be limited in direct proportion to the degree of impact supernatural factors might have on any particular phenomenon. So if something obeys regular natural laws 99% of the time and is therefore repeatable 99% of the time, but 1% of the time is subject to supernatural factors that cause it to cease being repeatable, then scientific theories describing this phenomenon can never be more than 99% accurate.

A final thought. If all things are theoretically knowable and accessible to the scientific method, but some of these things are beyond the ability of the human mind to comprehend (in the same way your pet dog will never comprehend libertarian philosophy, for example), how would we, with our human minds, for practical purposes, ever know?

Posted by: bob koepp | July 16, 2009 5:33 PM

tsg - Yes, indeed, "There's a difference between claiming a process is self-justifying and actually being self-justifying." Some religionists and some scientists make such claims. Neither can provide a coherent explanation of how self-justification works in an epistemic context. That doesn't mean religion and science are equally justified -- just that appealing to self-justification won't help you to differentiate science from religion. Neither is self-justifying, and the whole idea of self-justification is twaddle.

Posted by: Anton Mates | July 16, 2009 5:54 PM

Just to add to my #115, this is precisely where I think Carroll's argument fails. He writes:

It’s not hard to imagine a similar hypothetical scenario playing itself out for the case of supernatural influences. Scientists do experiments that reveal anomalies that can’t be explained by current theories. (These could be subtle things at a microscopic level, or relatively blatant manifestations of angels with wings and flaming swords.) They struggle to come up with new theories that fit the data within the reigning naturalist paradigm, but they don’t succeed. Eventually, they agree that the most compelling and economical theory is one with two parts: a natural part, based on unyielding rules, with a certain well-defined range of applicability, and a supernatural one, for which no rules can be found.

But we're already there. Modern science already includes some phenomena governed by unyielding rules, and some for which no rules can be found. We can be absolutely certain that the spins of a suitably-entangled pair of particles sum to 0, but we have no way whatever of determining which particle ends up spin-up and which ends up spin-down. Do we call the latter phenomena "supernatural?" Of course not (although Ken Miller might). We simply admit our ignorance for the time being.

A theory "for which no rules can be found" is not a theory at all.

Posted by: Holbach | July 16, 2009 6:12 PM

Marcus Ranum @ 117

I assume you are referring to Gary Cziko and his excellent book "Withou Miracles"? Good stuff there!

Posted by: CJColucci | July 16, 2009 6:19 PM

Suppose we managed to have reliable persons (with video recorders) following young Mary around 24/7 from pre-puberty on. Suppose we can then establish that she had never been with a man or a turkey baster. Suppose she stopped menstruating and her belly began to fatten while a reliable gynecological examination showed an intact hymen. Suppose she then gave birth. This would be some evidence of a one-off violation of what we know from science about how human reproduction works. While we couldn't rule out some kind of very weird natural explanation, it would, at least, be somewhat reasonable to think we had a supernatural intervention of some kind. I don't see how we could get much farther than that, but we could accommodate the occasional miracle into a generally scientific world view without outright contradiction.

Posted by: Holbach | July 16, 2009 6:37 PM

Marcus Ranum @ 119

By all means recommend it to our Pharyngulites and other people of rational bent. I have not read it in three years, but at your mention will do so again this weekend. So true on his writing style (he is definitely no Carl Sagan), but as you said, he puts it all together. Another book of equal and related interest which sits right next to "Without Miracles" is "Within Reason: Rationality and Human Behavior" by Donald B. Calne. The chapter, page 173, "Reason Against Religion" is very good, and is subtitled by the quote, well known, "Men never do evil so completely as when they do it from religious conviction."
Well, will have to read that one again as well! What a comfort to know that we have these author's intelligence to delve into and be enthralled. Let's always recommend the cause and spread of reason!

Posted by: Feynmaniac | July 16, 2009 6:45 PM

The scientific method can be compatible with the supernatural. Let's say there was a universe just like ours except their was a supernatural being who regularly interfered in human affairs. There would be an abundance of evidence showing that the laws of physics were being broken and that an intelligent being was behind it. The people in that universe using science would conclude there was a supernatural being.

The thing is in our universe there isn't anything like that. Maybe someday that will change, but there's no reason to believe it. Assuming a supernatural being with all the evidence we got is unparsimonious.

Posted by: articulett | July 16, 2009 6:57 PM

The Y chromosome would be key... we'd have to examine it for it's source--divine or ordinary?

Posted by: j a higginbotham | July 16, 2009 7:04 PM

[can't find the schrock thread] [announcement]

Microsoft Makes Feynman Lectures Available Online

Microsoft Research, in collaboration with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, has launched a website that makes an acclaimed lecture series by iconic Caltech physicist Richard Feynman freely available to the public for the first time. The lectures, which Feynman originally delivered at Cornell University in 1964, have been hugely influential for many people, including Gates.

Gates privately purchased the rights to the seven lectures in the series, called The Character of Physical Law, to make them available to the public for free, "with the hope that they will help get kids excited about physics and science."

Feynman (1918–88), one of the most brilliant theoretical physicists and original thinkers of the 20th century, was beloved by the Caltech community as a friend and teacher. He won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, and in 1986 he became known to an even larger audience through his participation—and his famous ice-water experiment—on the Presidential Commission investigating the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger.

"No one was more adept at making science fun and interesting than Richard Feynman," said Gates. "More than 20 years after first seeing them, these are still some of the best science lectures I've heard."

Click here to access the historic lectures and related content. [requires silverlight]
http://research.microsoft.com/tuva

Posted by: Anton Mates | July 16, 2009 7:13 PM

The scientific method can be compatible with the supernatural. Let's say there was a universe just like ours except their was a supernatural being who regularly interfered in human affairs. There would be an abundance of evidence showing that the laws of physics were being broken and that an intelligent being was behind it. The people in that universe using science would conclude there was a supernatural being.

But if the laws of physics were regularly being broken, why would we conclude that they were laws at all? Personally, I would conclude that the being in question can exploit the laws of physics in ways we can't. It's a pretty good everyday law that solid objects can't pass through each other--but that doesn't make neutrinos and dark matter supernatural.

Posted by: Sastra | July 16, 2009 7:19 PM

Anton Mates #116 wrote:

Modern science already includes some phenomena governed by unyielding rules, and some for which no rules can be found. We can be absolutely certain that the spins of a suitably-entangled pair of particles sum to 0, but we have no way whatever of determining which particle ends up spin-up and which ends up spin-down. Do we call the latter phenomena "supernatural?" Of course not (although Ken Miller might). We simply admit our ignorance for the time being.

Quite right. So the definition of "supernatural" must involve something other than "something for which no rules can be found." Or "science can't study it."

Try a thought experiment. Take quantum entanglement, and turn it into a supernatural theory. What would it take?

We already know. Look at folks like Deepak Chopra and the New Agers, and their "quantum consciousness." They mangle quantum mechanics in order to demonstrate that Intelligence is innate in nature, and we create our own realities. "Spooky action at a distance" explains ESP, and the material world is only solidified through observation. The universe is a network of occult correspondences with all things connected through meaning, and consciousness is central.

Doesn't matter if they dither on about how this is all in the universe, or this is how nature works. It seems to me that they've taken a mysterious natural theory, shifted its focus onto us and our significance, and, by doing this, turned it supernatural.

Posted by: Piltdown Man | July 16, 2009 7:26 PM

Dan Dennett wrote:

Denmark, according to a recent study, is the sanest, healthiest, happiest, most crime-free nation in the world, and by and large the Danes simply ignore the God issue.

Assuming we can all agree on what constitutes sanity, health, happiness and crime (which seems unlikely), it is remarkable that an Old Earth Darwinist, of all people, should exhibit such temporal provincialism.

If the entire history of the human race is the merest infinitesimal blip when set against Deep Time, where does that leave the measly few decades since Denmark first decided to "ignore the God issue"? Isn't it a bit premature to be drawing conclusions after so short a time? "Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience he stands waiting, with exactness grinds he all."

We should certainly hope that those who believe in belief are wrong, because belief is waning fast, and the props are beginning to buckle.

Hope won't save you.

Posted by: Anton Mates | July 16, 2009 7:49 PM

Sastra,

Quite right. So the definition of "supernatural" must involve something other than "something for which no rules can be found." Or "science can't study it."

I'm not sure how that follows. The definition of "supernatural" must involve something else if you want the supernatural to be accessible to science, but that's exactly what its liberal supporters don't want. That's why, to Ken Miller, quantum indeterminacy is supernatural--as far as I can tell, the fact that science can't find hard-and-fast rules for quantum behavior is precisely what makes him believe that God may intervene at that point.

We already know. Look at folks like Deepak Chopra and the New Agers, and their "quantum consciousness." They mangle quantum mechanics in order to demonstrate that Intelligence is innate in nature, and we create our own realities. "Spooky action at a distance" explains ESP, and the material world is only solidified through observation. The universe is a network of occult correspondences with all things connected through meaning, and consciousness is central.

Mmm. I agree that the primacy of consciousness is certainly a major factor in many supernatural beliefs, but I'm not sure that's what makes them supernatural. As Piltdown says (never thought I'd be writing those words), there are some areas of science where consciousness is demonstrably a major factor, as when you study the behavior of humans or other smart animals. Conversely, there are (I think) supernatural beliefs that have little to do with consciousness, such as beliefs about a particular item or behavior being "lucky" or "unlucky."

Seems to me that most supernatural beliefs become supernatural because we find them intuitive and appealing, but science finds no evidence for them, so we rescue them by altering them into untestability. Many such beliefs are focused on "consciousness uber alles," so you find a lot of that in supernaturalism, but it's not a vital element.

If Chopra's ideas were testably correct, we'd have people blowing up cars with their minds, and saving cats from lethal poisoning by taking care to quantum-observe them in the right way. That would be a weird and comic-booky world, but I don't see it as inherently supernatural.

Even if the universe were, essentially, a giant mind with all things connected through meaning, so long as the workings of that mind were empirically discoverable, I'd say it was natural. We'd just be living in the Matrix, really.

Posted by: articulett | July 16, 2009 7:58 PM

I wish the loonies like piltdown man would do something to distinguish themselves and their wacky beliefs from those they find delusional. Why in the world should we take pilty's "woo" more seriously than he'd take Tom Cruise's woo or Osama Bin Laden's woo or Sylvia Browne's woo.

Do the "woo" ever give us a reason to treat them more seriously than they treat other "woo"? So many woo stories... but only one reality. Tsk.

Posted by: Qwerty | July 16, 2009 8:09 PM

If you can discern a supernatural being in the natural world, then it wouldn't be supernatural. Would it?

Well, PZ, I've done the assignment and may I say I enjoyed reading both articles.

Pilty, we can hope you go away. Patricia OM - I think Pilty needs to do an Act of Contrition in addition to the five Hail Marys.

Posted by: Holbach | July 16, 2009 8:37 PM

Piltdown Man @ 139

If your imaginary god was disembodied from your brain, would it still be imaginary, or is this a redundancy?

Posted by: MadScientist | July 16, 2009 8:58 PM

@Scott from Oregon: You're mistaken about the reasons we moved away from hording gold as a measure of the strength of currency. The problems with using any precious metal for the strength of a currency are myriad and they had been addressed over 90 years ago by a number of people including J.M.Keynes. It is largely Keynes' work which eventually convinced governments (long after Keynes died) to drop the system based on gold and to adopt a system based on commerce. All the gold mined on earth in the past 4000 years is not all that large when compared to world commerce - the metal is simply not all that easy to extract from the earth and there's not all that much of it; in addition to that, why should you horde it rather than use it. If you took all the gold mined in the past 4000 years and laid it down on a football field it would only be about 4 feet thick. At $935 per ounce that's about 3.5 trillion dollars. (I'm using estimates of gold produced that are about 15 years old; you can look up later data but it's only going to change the numbers a few % at best.)

Posted by: Sastra | July 16, 2009 9:08 PM

Anton Mates #136 wrote:

That's why, to Ken Miller, quantum indeterminacy is supernatural--as far as I can tell, the fact that science can't find hard-and-fast rules for quantum behavior is precisely what makes him believe that God may intervene at that point.

I'd say that Miller thinks that quantum indeterminacy indicates the supernatural, because an immaterial Conscious Agency is possibly manipulating matter through its scientifically unpredictable will-power. Take out the Mind, and it lacks that significant moral connection to humans. It's just weirdness.

Mmm. I agree that the primacy of consciousness is certainly a major factor in many supernatural beliefs, but I'm not sure that's what makes them supernatural.

I can't think of any examples where it's absent. If you look at how the usage of the word tracks, what seems to define the supernatural is the conception of Mind or its products as skyhooks -- irreducible, top-down phenomenon existing prior to and "above" the physical or material. By mind products or properties I mean human-centered values, emotions, and emotion-laden values -- like good, evil, love, justice, etc. A supernatural belief in "luck" has goodness as an actual force, acting on physical events.

Even if the universe were, essentially, a giant mind with all things connected through meaning, so long as the workings of that mind were empirically discoverable, I'd say it was natural.

And I would say that we've empirically discovered that the universe is fundamentally supernatural.

To an extent, this may be a matter of taste. But I think a universe such as you describe here would be so radically different from what naturalists believe -- and so confirming of what supernaturalists believe -- that calling it "natural" anyway sounds like a bit of a semantic dodge, as if we couldn't admit that we're wrong under any conceivable circumstances.

Posted by: Patricia, OM | July 16, 2009 9:32 PM

Really Pilty, now that I think of it, it's terribly bad form for you not to show up a second time. There were questions raised regarding Extraordinary Eucharistic Ministers in the Roman Catholic church.

I'm not going to stick up for you knowing as much about catholic dogma as heddle does about depravity if you are just here to flirt. No cracker for you.

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble | July 16, 2009 9:51 PM

Dear Brother Pilty,

Thank you for raising the tone of this thread with your apposite quote from Longfellow. I must admit, all this talk of slow grinding gives me quite a Godly erection, as I'm sure it does for you also. Don't we all, as Christians, look ahead with joy to the day when the atheists will be crushed in the godly mill, separated as chaff, and raped in hell by demons?

Between us, isn't it a shame that Longfellow and a few decent poets didn't get together and do over some of the more tedious bits of the Bible? Then at least more than one Christian in a thousand could say they'd read the whole thing.

My colleague Floyd Rubber was particularly impressed with your literary exactitude. Before he became a Christian one of his favorite pastimes was grinding his longfellow in a mill, or some similar sort of member-masher. Since being born again, that sort of cbt is one thing he's missed. The discovery that God is an advocate of grinding has him all steamed up and excited. In fact he's just nipped out to the garage to find that antique mangle I inherited from Mama Batzrubble.

Yours in anticipation of God's peine forte et dure

Smoggy

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble | July 16, 2009 11:14 PM

FATHER PADRAIC’S RECIPE FOR A HAPPY EUCHARIST

If you want Eucharist extraordinaire,
Sink a shot of Christ’s blood in your beer,
Place the consecrated cracker,
On the end of your whacker,
And insert an altar boy’s rear.

Posted by: Anonymous | July 17, 2009 3:30 AM

We should certainly hope that those who believe in belief are wrong, because belief is waning fast, and the props are beginning to buckle.

Believers marry earlier in life and have much more children. Secularist K's are going to be replaced by religious r's.

Prove me wrong... please.

Posted by: cd | July 17, 2009 3:44 AM

Believers marry earlier in life and have much more children. Secularist K's are going to be replaced by religious r's.

1. The difference in number of children is falling rapidly. 2. Because they marry younger, they wreck their families more. 3. Their children walk away from religion faster than they can be replaced. 4. The 'quiverful' sorts are too few to matter.

Just about every denomination is decreasing in numbers in the U.S. The megachurches are growing, true, but those are halfway houses on the way out.

The math just doesn't work for your wishful scenario.

Posted by: Piltdown Man | July 17, 2009 4:16 AM

Patricia @ 148:

Really Pilty, now that I think of it, it's terribly bad form for you not to show up a second time. There were questions raised regarding Extraordinary Eucharistic Ministers in the Roman Catholic church.

If there's a duller subject I can't think of it.

Posted by: Bronze Age Man | July 17, 2009 4:25 AM

Smoggy Batzrubble @ 153:

And insert IN an altar boy’s rear.

Smoggy, I can't help but notice from our recent exchanges that you seem to manifest an inordinate fascination for Urania. Surely you are aware that the Sin of Sodom is one of the Four Sins That Cry To Heaven For Vengeance, along with murder, exploiting the poor and defrauding the workingman of his just wages?

Posted by: Knockgoats | July 17, 2009 5:41 AM

Suppose a close friend, someone for whom you have a deep love and respect, someone you trust, tells you he has had an paranormal experience, something unambiguously out of the ordinary. He has nothing to gain by lying and shows no indication of being delusional. Do you dismiss his claims outright because they can't be verified in a laboratory? - Pilty

Yes, because (unlike you, I deduce), I know quite a bit about the unreliability of witness testimony, and the myriad ways perception and memory can fool us. That's why we need scientific method.

Your Velasquez/Jeff Koons parallel to the differences between varieties of woo is valid in general terms, but in fact doctrinally orthodox Christianity is infinitely more ridiculous than scientology, as it is logically impossible that Jesus was both "true God" and "true man". Daft though it is, I know of no such clear logical grounds for dismissing scientology.

Posted by: Bernard Bumner | July 17, 2009 6:36 AM

Suppose a close friend, someone for whom you have a deep love and respect, someone you trust, tells you he has had an paranormal experience, something unambiguously out of the ordinary. He has nothing to gain by lying and shows no indication of being delusional. Do you dismiss his claims outright because they can't be verified in a laboratory?

Dismiss? Probably not. I'd seek to explain the experience. I wouldn't necessarily doubt their experience, but I certainly would question their explanation of that experience. (Which I would whenever I hear of some supposedly extraordinary experience; my relationship to the person doesn't really matter.)

I'm not sure why you'd imagine that trust in someone would effect the reliability of their observations; my nearest and dearest can be a sincerely wrong as anybody else.

Posted by: Ray Ingles | July 17, 2009 7:21 AM

Marcus - I love when they do that. Then I get to ask them "if it's unknowable or incomprehensible, what makes you think it exists at all?"

I just ask, "Then how can you know anything at all about it?" If they're Christian, I ask, "What if God's exactly like a shepherd... down to the shearing and slaughter, too? I'm sure the sheep in the flock think very highly of their shepherd..."

Posted by: Stu | July 17, 2009 10:26 AM

Hey, David Mabus! Why aren't you over at the Intersection? Your presence is urgently needed!

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/intersection/2009/07/15/pz-myers-vs-unscientific-america-part-iii

Posted by: Anri | July 17, 2009 12:28 PM

Pilty sez:

"But if a hypothetical disembodied power were a rational intelligence (as opposed to a mere elemental force), it might choose not to allow itself to become a passive object of scientific scrutiny. Why assume a poltergeist would be willing to move objects to order or while the cameras are running?"

In other words, if an entity left no evidence for it's existence, what evidence would there be for it's existence?

Am I imagining that that's a self-answering question?

And:
"Very convenient, the sceptic will scoff. But is it always reasonable to dismiss everything that is not immediately susceptible to rigorous scientific analysis?"

It is, if what you're going for is a rigorous scientific analysis. And it's quite rational to doubt something that has not been subjuect to such an analysis if it flies in the face o things that have.

And:
"Suppose a close friend, someone for whom you have a deep love and respect, someone you trust, tells you he has had an paranormal experience, something unambiguously out of the ordinary. He has nothing to gain by lying and shows no indication of being delusional. Do you dismiss his claims outright because they can't be verified in a laboratory?"

I don't have to suppose, this has happened to me.
'Dismiss outright' is too strong a term. 'Assume they are incorrect until shown otherwise' is more accurate.

Think of it this way - Suppose a close friend, someone for whom you have a deep love and respect, someone you trust, tells you he has had *a vision of the Invisible Pink Unicorn*. He has nothing to gain by lying and shows no indication of being delusional. Do you dismiss his claims outright because they can't be verified in a laboratory?

Posted by: Sastra | July 17, 2009 1:18 PM

Anton Mates #159 wrote:

Here's our main point of disagreement. "Luck," as I see it, has nothing to do with goodness or any other human value--a "lucky" talisman will work for good people, bad people, and even inanimate objects.

But whether or not an event is "good" or "bad" is a subjective evaluation. In a universe with no sentience, no personhood, where nothing exists but rocks colliding with other rocks, good and evil have no meaning, and "luck" is a vacuous concept.

An "impersonal, mindless supernatural power" is still anchored in a mind-like attribute. It differs from an impersonal, mindless natural power by having aspects which we recognize as subjective, and full of meaning for us. Magic forces aren't persons themselves, and you don't relate to them like persons, true. But they're basically reifications of abstract human values. Love as a force. Good as a force. Justice as a force.

So you would consider a Matrix-verse to be supernatural?

I don't think so, but I'm afraid it's been years since I saw the movie. A brain-in-a-vat could be fed wrong information even in a materialist universe, with no mind/brain substance duality involved.

The ancient Greeks were certainly supernaturalists, but a universe that was fundamentally Mind would not at all fit with their beliefs (at least, prior to the rise of classical philosophy.) Even their gods developed from a fundamentally mindless and physical universe.

The universe itself need not be fundamentally mind-like. But gods are gods because, in some way, their thoughts have a direct power.

Posted by: Sastra | July 17, 2009 1:28 PM

Piltdown Man #157 wrote:

On the subject of psychokinesis, isn't the mere fact that we can consciously make our bodies act in certain ways an example of mind over matter? Or is mind merely a manifestation of matter, which moves itself under its own volition? (Universediddit.)

The intuition that our minds are moving our bodies through a kind of magic immaterial power is probably at the root of our belief in gods and ghosts. We feel as if our thoughts are uncaused causers, acting on the physical from some higher realm. Neurology put the quash on this.

The True Intellectual System of the Universe – Ralph Cudworth 1678: A systematic refutation of rigid mechanism and endorsement of the spiritual as part of the Great Chain of Being or Scale of Nature, Presided over by the Universal Mind.

An incorporeal Deity “Moves Matter not mechanically, but Vitally, and by Cogitation only. And that a Cogitative Being as such hath a Natura lIimperium over Matter and Power of Moving it without any Engines or Machines, is unquestionably certain, even from our own Souls, which move our Bodies and Command them every way, merely by Word and Thought."

We created a God whose relationship to the universe mirrors the way we thought our minds related to our bodies.

Posted by: Piltdown Man | July 18, 2009 2:58 PM

Knockgoats @ 162:

Do you dismiss his claims outright because they can't be verified in a laboratory? - Pilty
Yes, because (unlike you, I deduce), I know quite a bit about the unreliability of witness testimony, and the myriad ways perception and memory can fool us. That's why we need scientific method.

All the same, the criminal justice system leans heavily on witness testimony & couldn't function on scientific method alone.

Bernard Bumner @ 164:

Do you dismiss his claims outright because they can't be verified in a laboratory?

Dismiss? Probably not. I'd seek to explain the experience. I wouldn't necessarily doubt their experience, but I certainly would question their explanation of that experience. (Which I would whenever I hear of some supposedly extraordinary experience; my relationship to the person doesn't really matter.) I'm not sure why you'd imagine that trust in someone would effect the reliability of their observations; my nearest and dearest can be a sincerely wrong as anybody else.

My trust in someone would affect my assessment of the reliability of his observations to the extent that I would trust he was not deliberately deceiving me. And if I knew him to be a sober, level-headed individual, I would be less likely to assume he was deluded. If I told Knockgoats that I had experienced a paranormal phenomenon, he would respond with a derisive snort; if Sastra made the same claim, his response would probably be more cautious.

Anri @ 170:

Pilty sez: "But if a hypothetical disembodied power were a rational intelligence (as opposed to a mere elemental force), it might choose not to allow itself to become a passive object of scientific scrutiny. Why assume a poltergeist would be willing to move objects to order or while the cameras are running?"
In other words, if an entity left no evidence for it's existence, what evidence would there be for it's existence?
Am I imagining that that's a self-answering question?

That's not the question. The question is: is it ever reasonable to believe in something for which there is no scientific evidence?

And:
"Very convenient, the sceptic will scoff. But is it always reasonable to dismiss everything that is not immediately susceptible to rigorous scientific analysis?"
It is, if what you're going for is a rigorous scientific analysis. And it's quite rational to doubt something that has not been subjuect to such an analysis if it flies in the face o things that have.

Given the provisional nature of scientific truth, I'm not sure that is always the rational response.

"What did Sherlock Holmes always say? Once you eliminate the impossible, what remains must be true, however improbable."

"I reject that entirely. The impossible often has a kind of integrity about it which the merely improbable lacks. Have you ever been presented with an explanation for something which makes sense in every way, except that it is hopelessly improbable? Your first instinct is to say, "Yes, but he or she simply wouldn't do that." Take the wheelchair girl from today, for example: the idea that she is receiving this information through some psychic channel unknown to us is impossible, and therefore must be true, because the idea of her keeping up an elaborate hoax of no benefit to herself is hopelessly improbable. Impossible merely suggests that there is something we don't know about, and god knows there are enough of those. Improbable, however, runs contrary to something we do know about."

And:
"Suppose a close friend, someone for whom you have a deep love and respect, someone you trust, tells you he has had an paranormal experience, something unambiguously out of the ordinary. He has nothing to gain by lying and shows no indication of being delusional. Do you dismiss his claims outright because they can't be verified in a laboratory?"
I don't have to suppose, this has happened to me.
'Dismiss outright' is too strong a term. 'Assume they are incorrect until shown otherwise' is more accurate.
Think of it this way - Suppose a close friend, someone for whom you have a deep love and respect, someone you trust, tells you he has had *a vision of the Invisible Pink Unicorn*. He has nothing to gain by lying and shows no indication of being delusional. Do you dismiss his claims outright because they can't be verified in a laboratory?

Of course not. If I felt the individual in question was trustworthy, ie neither lying or mad, I would certainly be inclined to believe that he saw a vision of a pink unicorn. I would then be faced with the question of what caused that vision and what it signified.

Sastra @ 171:

But if a hypothetical disembodied power were a rational intelligence (as opposed to a mere elemental force), it might choose not to allow itself to become a passive object of scientific scrutiny. Why assume a poltergeist would be willing to move objects to order or while the cameras are running?

You asked what would falsify the working theory that 'there are no disembodied consciousnesses,' and I gave a list of ways. What if I can turn invisible -- but only when nobody (and no recording device) is looking? Such a claim seems more than a little self-serving, and ought to trip your b.s. detectors when I make it.

The difference between your hypothetical b.s. example and my hypothetical intelligent poltergeist is that the latter is quite capable of moving objects when a camera is running but might have very good reasons (depending on its motivation) for not doing so. A burglar would naturally prefer not to be filmed while commmitting burglary -- so he's going to make sure there are no CCTV cameras around before breaking and entering.

Suppose a close friend, someone for whom you have a deep love and respect, someone you trust, tells you he has had an paranormal experience, something unambiguously out of the ordinary. He has nothing to gain by lying and shows no indication of being delusional. Do you dismiss his claims outright because they can't be verified in a laboratory?

As Knockgoats and Bernard Bummer have pointed out, intelligent, cautious, reasonable people make mistakes, and can easily fool themselves in how they interpret, and what they remember. You over-estimate how much weight we should put on personal testimony when it comes to extraordinary claims. We have to be just as careful - even more careful -- when it comes to ourselves.
Before you can be sure about trusting God, you have to be sure about trusting Man.

I would say it's the other way round: "... for without me you can do nothing!"

As for "extraordinary claims", the vast majority of mankind has never seen anything extraordinary about the existence of spirits.

Sastra @ 174:

On the subject of psychokinesis, isn't the mere fact that we can consciously make our bodies act in certain ways an example of mind over matter? Or is mind merely a manifestation of matter, which moves itself under its own volition? (Universediddit.)

The intuition that our minds are moving our bodies through a kind of magic immaterial power is probably at the root of our belief in gods and ghosts. We feel as if our thoughts are uncaused causers, acting on the physical from some higher realm. Neurology put the quash on this.

You mean stuff like this?

Which sort of ties in with your comment here ...

Posted by: Smoggy Batzrubble | July 21, 2009 12:09 AM

Dear Brother Bronze Age Man @160,

Apologies for this tardy reply. It is true that as a born-again and spirit-filled Christian I am, like God, inordinately obsessed with anything to do with sex, and like God I think a lot about the anus (although I do try to pay attention to amputating foreskins also). Part of this no doubt stems from my experience of having my juvenile bottom used regularly by the Prayerful and Godly Christian Brothers, and later by the lascivious indignities inflicted on me in a US prison by my born-again felon friend Floyd Rubber.

What is your excuse?

Smoggy