Flowcharts for science and faith

That's a great diagram. I'll show it to some of my religious friends and see what they think of it. I wonder if they'll just decide that they they like the faith one better anyway, or try to claim some sort of misrepresentation.

I wouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of people who'd look at these two cartoons and even while understanding both, would decide that faith is the path for them.

...and then be insufferably proud of that decision, while holding everyone who doesn't make it -- and in fact, everyone who doesn't come up with the exact same idea -- in seething contempt.

That first one is so confusing, all those twists and turns - like a rat in a maze.

I hate to play devil's attorney for theists (it makes me feel so dirty), but it's clear they would cry 'foul' at this flow chart. In the True Believers' worldview, there would be a box above "Get an Idea" (In fact, proabably above "Start") representing their Imaginary Friend. It transcends human understanding, unless of course you have that F-word going for you ...

They left out "Does the new evidence fit the predictions of the existing theory?"

New evidence that doesn't fit existing theories is the most interesting kind, but not the only kind. Lots of new evidence *confirms* old theories without needing to modify them.

I'll take the flowchart that has "Revolution!" as a path, thanks.

They should have put that in the "faith" chart, too. Only they would have labeled it "Heresy!" and it would have led to a box that included stakes, hangings, and war. Maybe that could have led to a box labeled "we knew it all the time" and thence back to the "keep idea forever" box.

Faith solves the Halting Problem!

Amusing, and meaningful to the extent that one defines 'faith' as a rival series of explanations, I suppose. More simply, one could just have the one chart, and exclude untestable notions prior to 'perform experiment.'

Bravo! I love those chart and will be printing them and hanging them on my cube wall. But then, I work in a six person unit where > half of us are outright atheists, and the remaining half is questioning.

Ahh! So that's what people mean when the claim to be quoting Jesus:

"Straight is the way and narrow is the gate, and few there be that find it."

Stright on a flow chart. Nothing to do with a hypocritical religious leader caught doing drugs with a gay prostitute, then going into faith-based rehab for 2 weeks and declaring himself 100% heterosexual. "Straight is the way..."

Yeah, right.

Did Jesus use those old plastic flowchart templates? Or was the documentation added later...

Or was the documentation added later...

Speaking as a technical writer, I know enough about a project to tell that the documentation was definitely added later; it was done by overpaid consultants with personal agendas, and it's been a version or two behind since launch. Not only that, but their localization sucks rocks, since the versions are significantly different, and some contain more and less documentation covering different features...

There ought to be another box under 'keep idea forever' labeled 'fundamental argumement about minor detail - schism' with a loop back to the start box...

Which is why there are many 'ends' in religion; I guess we should add some more text to this box too saying 'all other ends are false'.

Aaw, they missed my favourite. In the 'science' flowchart, there should be a box labeled 'management directives' that refers only to itself.

- JS

Interesting that you should bring this up. On the Panda's Thumb Ian Musgrave showed how the process of blood clotting could have evolved, in contrast to Behe's claim that clotting is an example of Irreducible Complexity:

http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/02/behe_vs_sea_squ.html#more

http://tinyurl.com/2zyxvk

Overwhelming Evidence responded with the claim that Musgrave's explanation is just too complex, and that Occam's Razor excludes it by necessity since Behe's is just soooo much easier to grasp:

http://www.overwhelmingevidence.com/oe/blog/haeris/argument_by_technoba…

http://preview.tinyurl.com/29s4aj

HaEris writes

"One of the great things about Intelligent Design is that it simplifies things. Unlike the theory of evolution it passes the test of Occam's razor the universally true scentific axiom that given a choice between a complex theory and a simple one, the simple one has the greatest probability of being right. It's another way of saying that tall-tales and just-so stories are usually false. ID is so simple that even people who are un-trained in biological sciences can make great and astounding progress. What could be a greater indicator of it's truth than that?"

(Bold is mine.)

In other words, since actual science is hard, ID has to be true.

Scott Hatfield,

Amusing, and meaningful to the extent that one defines 'faith' as a rival series of explanations, I suppose.

How do you define "faith?"

Not to spoil the joke, but it's "strait" is the gate ...

One of the great things about Intelligent Design is that it simplifies things. Unlike the theory of evolution it passes the test of Occam's razor the universally true scentific axiom that given a choice between a complex theory and a simple one, the simple one has the greatest probability of being right.

This is why people ought to have to get a license in order to be able to appeal to Occam's razor. It is not "the simplest explanation is the best." That's for stupid people who neither understand nor care what the words "simple" and "explanation" mean.

It is "entities shall not be multiplied unnecessarily." Positing a supernatural force when a naturalistic explanation suffices is the very definition of unnecessarily multiplying entities. It is "all things being equal, the simplest explanation is the best," and even that is an irresponsible over-colloquialization of the lex parsimoniae. A better common phrasing for Occam's razor would be "don't make shit up as you go along."

Most people don't have the slightest clue how Occam's razor is actually supposed to be used, and most of those people think that the pat answer and the simple answer are the same thing. Saying "GODDIDIT" is easy, insofar as it's a willful and complete abandonment of anything even remotely resembling logical thought, but it's not simple. In fact, it's wildly, mind-bogglingly, irreducibly (heh) complex.

Jason: "Faith" to me is experiential rather than operational. If you have that orientation, you don't see the primary purpose/function of faith or ritual as an alternative to evidence-based explanation. It's qualitative, rather than quantitative, a 'how it feels' rather than a 'how it is'.

That doesn't let believers off the hook, of course. Claims that have testable consequences must be tested, and in those areas where science can comment, evidence is demanded, faith is operationally superfluous. Some of us who do science regard it as personally superfluous, as well. Some of us don't. I find that state of affairs satisfactory.

BTW, if you're the same Jason who gave Dembski hell recently in a debate with Micheal Shirmer, good on ya!

Scott Hatfield,

Jason: "Faith" to me is experiential rather than operational. If you have that orientation, you don't see the primary purpose/function of faith or ritual as an alternative to evidence-based explanation. It's qualitative, rather than quantitative, a 'how it feels' rather than a 'how it is'.

I'm still having a hard time figuring out what you mean by the word. Are you saying that faith is a type of subjective experience unrelated to beliefs about objective truth, that it's just a "feeling," akin to an emotion or an aesthetic preference? As conventionally used in a religious context, "faith" most definitely refers to a justification for beliefs about truth ("I believe through faith that Jesus is Lord," "I believe through faith that the Bible is the Word of God," and so on). That's why it's typically contrasted with evidence and reason, which are an alternative justification for belief.

I'm still having a hard time figuring out what you mean by the word.

Best to drop it, Jason. To save everybody the bother, just take it as read that he's posted his private email address (just for you!) and offered to buy you a beer the next time you're in Fresno.

"Straight is the way and narrow is the gate, and few there be that find it."

Huh? I always heard it as:
"The gate is straight, deep, and wide,
Break on through to the other side..."

You're probably right. I remember seeing the beer-in-Fresno thing in his exchanges with others in the past. I do wonder just why he is so vague and evasive about his "religious" beliefs, though (Okay--not really).

Charitably, he at least acts as if he knows it ought to bother him that his religious beliefs have fuckall to do with science, although it never stops him from protesting that his sciency virtues makes the side of him that clings to faith scientesque. It's the part of him his sciency side knows to ignore, but that he must share here. Again. and. again. and. again.

They should have put that in the "faith" chart, too. Only they would have labeled it "Heresy!" and it would have led to a box that included stakes, hangings, and war. Maybe that could have led to a box labeled "we knew it all the time" and thence back to the "keep idea forever" box.

I don't think you'd want to make the diagrams too complicated. Imagine if you had to add the whole social/political/financial element to the science one: the pharmaceutical companies, arms manufacturers, the celebrities and small children parading their afflictions, the lobbyists, the governmental grant agencies, the faculty dinners, the amateur philosphers of science who misrepresent the process of scientific inquiry as self-congratulatory polemic...

Ah, I love flow charts. They make the "complex and messy" parts of science so simple.

But religion is simpler. Hmm. That makes me suspicious. The devil must be at work with religion! Convenience, simplicity, and understanding are his hallmarks alright!

What I really like about these flowcharts is that the "faith" one so exactly describes the way most people here discuss religion.

There is a major flaw with the Faith diagram. The first step is written as "get an idea". Whats with that? With faith you don´t "get ideas" everything is already explained
by the allmighty (or allmighties, don´t think your hindus and buddhists and such don´t have the same shortcomings, including fundementalists, as everyone else)

The joke is great, but I wish the science side were slightly more accurate. You don't run an experiment without having a hypothesis first, so the "get an idea" box and the "theory created" box should be the same.

Okay, nitpicking done.

Jason, Ken: Actually, I post my email address publicly here all the time IF people want to discuss certain topics off-thread. I'll do so again:

epigene13@hotmail.com

Why do I do that? Because some people genuinely want to discuss things, and if so, I'll have that discussion. Why do I offer to buy a beer if anyone's in my neck of the woods? Well, shoot, Ken, I like to drink beer. And I like conversation with smart people. And I happen to think that Pharyngula is the wrong forum for certain topics, for a lot of reasons. If that makes me a object of derision in your eyes, so be it.

Now, Jason, back to your question. You wrote: "Are you saying that faith is a type of subjective experience unrelated to beliefs about objective truth, that it's just a "feeling," akin to an emotion or an aesthetic preference? "

That's pretty much the way I see it. People report a sense of conviction, and then they tend to map their cultural circumstance upon that sense of conviction.

Jason, you further wrote, with respect to faith, that "it's typically contrasted with evidence and reason, which are an alternative justification for belief."

Well, as I said, I recognize the subjective experience of belief, and I do hold certain things on faith as a personal matter, but I don't think that constitutes a *justification* of the belief per se. There is a link between one's personal experience and what one is inclined to believe, but that doesn't provide any independent, objective evidence for the truthiness of one's belief. I think the attempt of many believers to enlist some twisted version of science to justify their beliefs is vulgar and misguided.

With Kirkegaard, I don't think that I can reason my way to belief; with Dennett, I think evolution is a 'universal acid' that provides us with clues to investigate the heterophenomenology of things like religious belief. To that extent, I suppose, I hold out hope that science can naturalize the experience of faith. But that doesn't make my personal experience, or any beliefs held on the basis of that experience 'sciency'.

I'm sorry if that disappoint yous, Ken. I'm not a creationist, I'm not an apologist for religion. I'm genuinely interested in the interaction between science and faith, and I don't think any of our privately-held beliefs on those topics carries an ounce of weight in any scientific discussion. Cheers....SH

Dan: Indeed. The lesson of Bunge's The Myth of Simplicity is that simplicity isn't simple.

I might add to the flow charts that the "come up with an idea" has to be one that is compatible with most of the background knowlede, which is not depicted. Nor is the means to come up with the idea. Not surprising, since IMO these are the areas most incompletely understood - by scientists and by lay persons, as well as by philosophers who analyze the scientific process.

That said, I'm glad the chart didn't reinforce the naive empiricist view that science starts from observation.

Of course, biologists have one of their best pointing out that this is wrong, so ...

Scott Hatfield,

That's pretty much the way I see it. People report a sense of conviction, and then they tend to map their cultural circumstance upon that sense of conviction.

Sorry, but this statement does not claify your meaning at all. I asked you if you think faith is a type of experience "unrelated to beliefs about objective truth." Your first sentence above suggests that your answer is yes, but you then describe faith as a "sense of conviction." If it's a "sense of conviction" about a matter of objective truth (e.g., whether God exists or doesn't exist) how is it unrelated to beliefs about objective truth? Are you saying that faith, as you mean the word, refers ONLY to convictions (or "sense of conviction"s) about subjective mental states (e.g., "I prefer chocolate to strawberry," "I am sad," etc.), or do you also mean it to apply to convictions about objective truth, such as the existence of God or the nature of Jesus Christ?

You say you "hold certain things on faith as a personal matter." Please give us some examples. Assuming they include beliefs of objective truth, why do you think you are justified in holding these beliefs through faith? Why is your faith any more reliable a guide to the truth than someone else's faith? Why would your faith-based belief that, say, Jesus is the Son of God be more likely to be true than a Muslim's faith-based belief that Jesus is NOT the Son of God?

If you agree that faith is worthless as a guide to the truth, if it's no more reliable than a guess or a wish or a hope, why DO you "hold certain things on faith?"

Sam Harris has been asking this same basic question of Andrew Sullivan for several days now, and Sullivan has consistently evaded it. Perhaps you'll give us an answer.

Sam Harris has been asking this same basic question of Andrew Sullivan for several days now, and Sullivan has consistently evaded it. Perhaps you'll give us an answer.

He never has, why should he now? Why should he not also hold out faith that science will one day "naturalize the experience of faith" in Gilgamesh, or Narnia, or that Tyra Banks has the hots for him?" On what basis does he believe that his milkshake is better than yours?

Jason writes: "Sorry, but this statement does not clarify your meaning at all."

Well, what can I say, Jason? I'm not very good at explaining things, I guess. You ask if I "think faith is a type of experience "unrelated to beliefs about objective truth." Almost. I think that faith is a type of experience whose interpretation has no necessary relationship to what is objectively true.

People report such experiences, and then the vast majority of them seem to be in a hurry to impose some interpretation on it in order to make sense of it, and then to resist any attempt to challenge that interpretation. There's more going on here than someone saying "I prefer chocolate to strawberry." It's more along the lines of, "I prefer chocolate to the strawberries I know, but I feel convinced that there exist somewhere strawberries better than chocolate." And then, when reasonable people ask why they feel convinced, things tend to get ugly.

Jason writes: "You say you "hold certain things on faith as a personal matter." Please give us some examples."
Examples? You mention the deity of Jesus. I affirm that, but let's be clear: I'm just responding to your request, and I do so reluctantly, because I doubt that it will serve any purpose other than to irritate those who would rather not have others impose their beliefs on them. This blog is a haven for many who have suffered persecution and scorn at the hands of religion, and I don't want anything to do with that. It seems to me that any kind of extended theological discussion would be more appropriate off-forum.

J: "Assuming they include beliefs of objective truth, why do you think you are justified in holding these beliefs through faith?"

No. I think claims can be accepted on faith, but I don't think you can justify them by faith. I think justification requires evidence, and so faith-based claims are, strictly speaking, unjustified.

J: "Why is your faith any more reliable a guide to the truth than someone else's faith? Why would your faith-based belief that, say, Jesus is the Son of God be more likely to be true than a Muslim's faith-based belief that Jesus is NOT the Son of God?"

I'm sorry to disappoint you. I don't feel that my faith is necessarily more reliable a guide to the *pursuit* of truth than another's. From the standpoint of evidence, a belief in Christ's deity is not more likely than the denial of same. No argument here.
J: If you agree that faith is worthless as a guide to the truth, if it's no more reliable than a guess or a wish or a hope, why DO you "hold certain things on faith?"
Whoa, whoa, whoa. You've jumped from comparing my faith with another's to proclaiming faith worthless en toto. I'm not sure that follows at all, particularly if we can distinguish between the experience of faith (if you like, a subjective mental state) and the palimpsest of prior commitments or present insight we tend to impose upon it, our interpretation of that experience. I think I can agree with you that neither a Christian or Muslim's belief is necessarily more reliable than the other without jumping to the conclusion that faith is worthless.

For the sake of discussion, though, let's assume that this conclusion was demonstrated. So, again, you wrote: "...if it's no more reliable than a guess or a wish or a hope, why DO you "hold certain things on faith?""

Well, that's easy. Because I'm a human being, not a logical engine. We are not to regard our lives as worthless because we have not found a reliable algorithm to all objective truth. It is the pursuit of truth that gives our life meaning, not claiming (as so many religious do) that they have all the truth they will ever need. Guessing and wishing and hoping are some of the things that human beings do. I just happen to derive meaning, pleasure and purpose from within the framework of religion. Others don't, and that's fine, too.
J: "Sam Harris has been asking this same basic question of Andrew Sullivan for several days now, and Sullivan has consistently evaded it. Perhaps you'll give us an answer."

Sullivan, I can't speak for, but I would hope that he would acknowledge the distinctions I tried to make above. Emphasis on the 'tried': I'm concerned that we are still separated by a common tongue. It seems very strange to me, for example, that you would think that supernatural claims can be 'justified by faith.' Are you under the impression that the Christian who speaks of 'justification through faith' is referring to their creed? If so, that isn't the case; 'justification through faith' has to do with sanctification, not with epistemology. I'm also baffled by your brief "faith-based belief", because I'm accustomed to using the word 'belief' to mean a claim held on faith. To me, 'faith-based belief' seems redundant. For example, I don't *believe* in evolution, because that requires me to take it on faith. Rather, I know evolution occurs.

In closing, it seems strange to me that a passing remark about two flowcharts could lead to this extended conversation. I don't have the desire to impose my privately-held views on others, much less to 'justify' them. I regard that kind of project as vulgar, and I sadly conclude that the combativeness that I often encounter here from non-believers testifies not only to its vulgarity, but to the wickedness of so many who push those kinds of arguments....SH

Ken: At the risk of aggravating you, I have to point out that non-believers should welcome the prospect that religion should be naturalized. Are you telling me that you're a believer now? E.O. Wilson made the above claim a lot more eloquently than I did, about 32 years ago; by your logic, was he speaking out of 'faith' ?

Since I doubt that you would make either one of those claims, I have to ask: what gives?

Scott, I don't speak glossolalia.

If you have some bitchen E. O. Wilson quote that you think will support your argument, whip it out. I suspect it will sound no less barmy than whatever it was Chuck Colson read by C. S. Lewis that made him jump on the Jesus gravy train. It had bloody well better be what he said, and not who said it, or I'll have to drive to Fresno to slap you.

There are all sorts of things I'd like to make true by telling myself that telling myself will make them so. My desire for things to be the way I wanted them to be was trumped by my desire to understand the way things really are. That's why I don't understand somebody who says they think science is so groovy, so long as they don't have to give up beliving in wishing upon a star.

It's as if such a person has only ever been out in the Disneyland parking lot sipping a tall glass of kool-aid under the "Chip and Dale" sign while their friends send the occasional cel phone photo from inside a dark ride to them, so they can tell everybody they've been to Disneyland too, I bet. You're really only into science for the god-sized gaps, aren't you, in which god continues to shrink...

"faith is a type of experience whose interpretation has no necessary relationship to what is objectively true"

Don't make me drag out the hoary parable of Jerry Garcia's spacehelmet again...

Oh, and about "science":

"The only requirements of scientific method are honest observation and accurate logic."
-R. MacArthur

Period.

You know, Ken, my 'argument' (if you can call it that) cedes so much to a purely naturalistic viewpoint that I wonder why you would bother with impugning my motives.

For the record, I wasn't invoking E.O. Wilson as supporting the distinction I was trying to make above with Jason. It was a passing remark, and I didn't understand your quip until now. I now see that you may have gained the impression I was trying to enlist him to do my dirty work for me. Not at all. I was genuinely puzzled as to why you appeared to be complaining about the prospects for religion being naturalized, and cited Wilson. A good thumbnail sketch of his views can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Osborne_Wilson

As for the 'gaps'...? Please. As if. Like I care? Your straw man with the cell phone in the parking lot is a pathetic figure, one I would feel sorry for. With Ken Miller, I don't find God in the insufficiency of present scientific explanation. Nor am I troubled by the shrinking of any gaps; rather, I am elated by the prospect of scientific discovery. I am not in love with mystery, nor do I study the natural world in search of obscurantisms, redoubts for the supernatural.

The main usefulness of 'gaps' (not my favorite metaphor) is that they point the way not only toward areas of future investigation, but toward a reexamination of the means by which we propose to investigate the frontiers of knowledge.
Toward that end, a distinction between the experiential aspect of faith and the interpretation imposed upon it (the main point I was making above) seems prudent.

Now, if you'll forgive me, the Magic Kingdom (the natural world) awaits....SH

You mention the deity of Jesus. I affirm that, but let's be clear

and

It seems to me that any kind of extended theological discussion would be more appropriate off-forum

I disagree. I would very much like to read your thoughts on this issue as you always state ' As a Christian' on nearly every single one of your posts.

I think it would benefit the discussion. Why would it bother anyone? It's not like this is a safe zone as many people express many ideas here.

With Ken Miller, I don't find God in the insufficiency of present scientific explanation

He most certainly does. He finds God in morality as apparently he finds no reason to think it arrives naturally. His thinking is muddled to say the least and I think he is a good scientist.

Scott Hatfield,

You've jumped from comparing my faith with another's to proclaiming faith worthless en toto.

No, I haven't. I said that faith is worthless "as a guide to the truth," not "en toto." Do you agree or disagree with this statement? If you disagree, please explain why you think faith has merit as a guide to the truth.

I think I can agree with you that neither a Christian or Muslim's belief is necessarily more reliable than the other without jumping to the conclusion that faith is worthless.

Then why do you believe (or, as you put it, "accept") the claims of Christianity (e.g., "Jesus is divine") on faith rather the claims of Islam? Or any other faith-based claim? If none of them are any more likely to be true than any of the others, why are you justified in believing ("accepting") any of them? It's like believing though faith that you hold the winning lottery ticket when you agree that everyone else who has a lottery ticket is just as likely to possess the winning ticket as you are. It's completely irrational.

I think claims can be accepted on faith, but I don't think you can justify them by faith. I think justification requires evidence, and so faith-based claims are, strictly speaking, unjustified.

This just seems to be more doubletalk. If faith does not justify belief, why do you "accept" beliefs on faith? Why are you justified in accepting beliefs on faith? If you're not justified in accepting them on faith, why DO you accept them on faith? You say "Well, that's easy. Because I'm a human being, not a logical engine." But how does that response justify your irrational, faith-based beliefs any more than it justifies the irrational, faith-based beliefs of anyone else-- creationists, astrologers, Scientologists, or whatever? Yes, you're a human being, and as such you have the ability to rationally scrutinize claims of truth to evaluate their merits. You don't seem to have a problem doing that when the claims in question are those of, say, creationists, but when it comes to your own faith-based beliefs (e.g., "Jesus is divine"), you just abandon reason.

Scott Hatfield,

It seems very strange to me, for example, that you would think that supernatural claims can be 'justified by faith.' Are you under the impression that the Christian who speaks of 'justification through faith' is referring to their creed? If so, that isn't the case; 'justification through faith' has to do with sanctification, not with epistemology.

Yes, I understand that. I'm using the word "justify" here in the secular epistemological sense, not in the Christian religious sense that you mention above. I thought that was clear. I'm asking why you think faith justifies any beliefs about what is objectively true, not just specifically Christian ones.

I'm also baffled by your brief "faith-based belief", because I'm accustomed to using the word 'belief' to mean a claim held on faith.

I'm using it to refer to beliefs held through faith as opposed to beliefs held through reason and evidence. Again, I thought this was clear.

To me, 'faith-based belief' seems redundant. For example, I don't *believe* in evolution, because that requires me to take it on faith. Rather, I know evolution occurs.

Then it's hard to understand what you mean by "knowing" or "knowledge" at all. The standard epistemological definition of the term "knowledge" is "justified true belief." Even if you subscribe to some alternative definition of knowledge, it's hard to understand how it could meaningfully exclude belief. To "know" something is necessarily to believe it. What is it supposed to mean to "know" something without also believing it?

Scott Hatfield,

One more thing. I am not in the least offended by your attempts to describe more fully and to justify your religious beliefs. What does offend me is someone showing up in discussion after discussion relating to science, religion, reason and faith, referring to himself over and over again as a Christian and as someone who believes things on faith, but evading every request made to him to elaborate on and defend the religious beliefs he keeps publicly declaring that he holds. It's just silly and annoying.

He most certainly does. He finds God in morality as apparently he finds no reason to think it arrives naturally. His thinking is muddled to say the least and I think he is a good scientist.

You're thinking of Francis Collins. Ken Miller finds God in historical miracles such as the virgin birth, not in the evolution of morality.

Still God of the Gaps, but different gaps.

Jason: Language divides us still, and at this point I'm pretty sure I'm at fault for that. I'm not sure that what I describe as 'belief' counts as knowledge at all, for example. I doubt that anyone who says that they 'believe' in evolution has entirely gleaned that understanding from reason and evidence alone. To aver 'belief' is, I think, to affirm something in a non-provisional way. Which makes me wonder just how much my own views are actually beliefs, interestingly enough, since I'm keenly aware that I hold some provisionally.

Is science a reliable guide to truth? That depends, I suppose, on what you mean by truths. Sure, as a practical matter, you're right: we tend to treat evidence-based findings as *true* in the sense that we build models which have to account for the facts as we know them. For the purposes of building the models, we treat those facts as if we *believe* in them. Yet, the history of science is filled with supposed "facts" that were based on limited instrumentality which, when observations improved, were falsified.

This makes me less sanguine about the prospects of creatures such as our selves 'explaining' *everything* in terms of natural phenomena, in obtaining some sort of ultimate Truth with a capital 'T'. With Eddington, I suspect that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we *can* suppose.

So my view of science is based in part on limits: not the sort of limits that those who hold up a God of the Gaps like to talk about, as a redoubt for supernaturalism, but limits in the sense of, in order to obtain a certain amount of certainty *here*, we exclude the consideration of this other thing *there*. The other could be any non-falsifiable proposition, not just those that benefit supernaturalists.

I think this is a strength of science, not a weakness, but it is also a call to humility. I don't really think that ultimate Truth is available to us; I think science is useful as a means to pursue more accurate descriptions of natural phenomena, vastly more useful than faith, but do I *believe* that it will eventually provide us with a complete description that any being like us can understand? I'm skeptical.

It would be a mistake, though, to rush to the conclusion that I think faith any more potent. On a day to day basis, it is of very little practical use, which brings me to your questions about belief:

"But how does that response justify your irrational, faith-based beliefs any more than it justifies the irrational, faith-based beliefs of anyone else-- creationists, astrologers, Scientologists, or whatever? "

Well, Jason, in the sense that you seem to want *your* beliefs to be ratified by reason, it doesn't, I agree. And, to use your language, I have never tried to justify my beliefs as rational. We are in fundamental agreement, I think, as to the logical status of such claims. Where we differ is in our response to those claims.

The metaphor of a seamless garment is often adopted by those who urge that this or that notion or set of notions be elevated over all others, including many creationists. "I believe (there's that word again) the WHOLE Bible," they will say, and they will tie that garment into knots if they must in order to have that garment cover their whole frame, so many knots that they end up in a straightjacket. But their garment is seamless, they think, and that's what they care about.

A similar impasse seems to yawn before us. We don't, I think, share core assumptions about the ultimate goals and capacity of the scientific enterprise. I think science is the best thing we humans have got going for us, and so I talk it up, and I defend it from those who would tear it down. That's not the same thing, however, as saying that evidence and reason are sufficient for the human enterprise, or (to put it another way) that human beings can realize the full potential of science.

Perhaps you *believe* something like the following? That, in the fullness of time, our descendants will shed our present limitations, and truly wear a seamless garment of reason and evidence, unsullied by human weakness. Perhaps now most of us are insufficiently evolved to take up that garment yet, and so prefer a patchwork and threadbare quilt of various kinds of experience as part of being human, while an enlightened few such as yourself constitute the future of science, and of humanity.

Perhaps, but I don't have enough *faith* to embrace that vision just yet, Jason....SH

Scott Hatfield,

I am using the word "truth" in the ordinary sense of the term, the sense in which one may say that the belief "Jupiter is the smallest planet" is either true or false, or that the belief "Jesus is divine" is either true or false. You say you believe that Jesus is divine, and that you hold this belief through faith. I am asking you why you think you are justified in holding this faith-based belief. You admit the belief is not rational. So why is it any more justified than, say, the irrational belief that you hold the winning lottery ticket, or that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, or that there's a china teapot orbiting the Earth? Why is it any more likely to be correct than a guess or a wish or a hope?

I'm assuming, of course, that you want to believe what's true, and to not believe what's false. Perhaps I am mistaken even about that, though. Perhaps you just don't care whether your faith-based beliefs are true or false.

You don't seem to have a problem doing that when the claims in question are those of, say, creationists, but when it comes to your own faith-based beliefs (e.g., "Jesus is divine"), you just abandon reason.

That's our Scott in a nutshell!
OK, that's a perhaps unfair conclusion that he may or may not wish to contest.

Scott,
I was genuinely puzzled as to why you appeared to be complaining about the prospects for religion being naturalized, and cited Wilson. A good thumbnail sketch of his views can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Osborne_Wilson

I think you should have just left it at genuinely puzzled. You're introducing more undefined terms, while refusing to define all the others you've been asked about. It adds to my suspicion that you don't really have a vocabulary of your own about these ideas.

You threw out the phrase "naturalizing religion" and cited E. O. Wilson, and I asked for a quote, and you gave me the Wikipedia article, as helpfully as if I'd asked you what you meant by a spandrel and in response, gave me the Wikipedia entry on Gould. This is patronizing in your non-responsive, obfuscatory, yet relentlessly congenial manner, your standard mode in response to specific questions about why science should give faith a religious holiday.

In googling for the notion you raised in relation to Wilson, I found an article by Michael Shermer devoting a paragraph or so to each of several books on science and religion in his review, categorizing them as fitting into three different science/religion models (into the last of which categories he dumps Wilson):

1. CONFLICTING-WORLDS MODEL. This "warfare" model holds that science and religion are mutually exclusive ways of knowing, where one is right and the other is wrong. In this model, the findings of modern science are always a potential threat to one's faith and thus they must be carefully vetted against religious truths before acceptance; likewise, the tenets of religion are always a potential threat to science and thus they must be viewed skeptically.

2. SAME-WORLDS MODEL. More conciliatory in its nature, this position holds that science and religion are two ways of examining the same reality; as science progresses to a deeper understanding of the natural world it will reveal that many ancient religious tenets are true.

3. SEPARATE-WORLDS MODEL. On this tier science and religion are neither in conflict nor in agreement. Today it is the job of science to explain the natural world, making obsolete ancient religious sagas of origins and creation. Yet, religion thrives because it still serves a useful purpose as an institution for social cohesiveness and as a guide to finding personal meaning and spirituality.

Shermer's concluding paragraphs are simple and communicative enough that I hope they can form a basis for figuring out WTF everybody means when they talk here about faith and religion:

Darwin's Separate-Worlds approach to science and religion worked well for him, but it still leaves open the deeper question about whether one can logically believe in God and science. Belief in God depends on religious faith. Acceptance of science depends on empirical evidence. This is the fundamental difference between religion and science. If you attempt to reconcile religion and science on questions about nature and the universe, and if you push the science to its logical conclusion, you will end up naturalizing the deity; for any question about nature, if your answer is "God did it,"a scientist will ask: "How did God do it?, What forces did God use? What forms of matter and energy were employed in the creation process?" The end result of this inquiry can only be natural explanations for all natural phenomena. What place, then, for God?

The problem with attempts at blending science and religion may be found in a single principle: A is A. Or: Reality is real. To attempt to use nature to prove the supernatural is a violation of A is A. It is an attempt to make reality unreal. A cannot also be non-A. Nature cannot also be non-nature. Naturalism cannot also be supernaturalism. Believers can have both religion and science as long as there is no attempt to make A non-A, to make reality unreal, to turn naturalism into supernaturalism.

The Separate-Worlds Model is the only way to do this. Thus, the most logically coherent argument for theists is that God is outside of time and space; that is, God is beyond nature -- super nature, or supernatural -- and therefore cannot be explained by natural causes. This places the God question outside the realm of science.

So, where are you? If you mean to sound like a Separate-Worlds kind of guy like Shermer says Wilson is, you don't, at least not to me.

Scott,

By the way, I should add this. Most of your last post is devoted to a discussion of what you believe to be the limitations of science. That's all very interesting, but it is simply irrelevant to what I am asking you about. The issue in dispute here is not whether science is a complete or infallible guide to truth, but whether faith has any merit at all as a guide to truth. I say that it does not. You seem to believe that faith does have merit as a guide to the truth about at least some questions (such as whether or not Jesus is divine). It is this position I am asking you to defend.

Jason, you wrote: "I am asking you why you think you are justified in holding this faith-based belief."

I previously conceded the above point when I wrote that "I think justification requires evidence, and so faith-based claims are, strictly speaking, unjustified."

Jason, you also wrote: "So why is it any more justified than, say, the irrational belief that you hold the winning lottery ticket, or that the Earth is only 6,000 years old, or that there's a china teapot orbiting the Earth? Why is it any more likely to be correct than a guess or a wish or a hope?"

I thought I had previously addressed that, as well, when I wrote: " I don't feel that my faith is necessarily more reliable a guide to the *pursuit* of truth than another's. From the standpoint of evidence, a belief in Christ's deity is not more likely than the denial of same. No argument here."

Finally, in what seems to be a new line of reasoning, you wrote: "I'm assuming, of course, that you want to believe what's true, and to not believe what's false. Perhaps I am mistaken even about that, though. Perhaps you just don't care whether your faith-based beliefs are true or false."

Oh, I care about what's true, but only up to the point where truth claims become despotic. This occurs, I think, when one becomes too invested in the notion that this or that claim must be the Absolute Truth, to be defended at all costs. I try not to think that way...I absolutely do! :)

At any rate, to cut through the crap and the possibility of self-deception, I like the question proposed by Steve Dutch (geologist, Univ. of Wisconsin GB): "What evidence would it take to prove your beliefs wrong?"

In that spirit, in regarding the claims that Jesus is or isn't divine, I'm open to suggestions. What evidence, in your opinion, would it take for either one of us to change our minds regarding either of these claims?

Cordially...SH

Scott,

I previously conceded the above point when I wrote that "I think justification requires evidence, and so faith-based claims are, strictly speaking, unjustified."

So if you don't think you are justified in believing the claim "Jesus is divine" is true, why DO you believe it's true? Why do you believe that, but not any of the innumerable unjustified claims you do not believe are true ("The Earth is only 6,000 years old," "Volcanos erupt because we haven't sacrificed enough virgins to Prometheus," "There are china teapots orbiting Mars," "Mental illness is caused by demonic possession," etc., etc.)? Of all the unjustified beliefs you logically could hold through faith, how do you decide which ones to actually believe and which ones not?

What evidence, in your opinion, would it take for either one of us to change our minds regarding either of these claims?

I don't see how there could be any evidence that would persuade you that "Jesus is divine" is false. Since evidence seems to be irrelevant to your belief that that proposition is true, presumably the answer is "none." But that just brings us back to the question of why you believe it at all, given that you admit the belief is not justified.

As usually defined, the characteristic of "divinity" is not subject to proof or disproof through science and reason, so there could be no evidence that would persuade me that "Jesus is divine," so defined, is true.

(prodding) Dawkins has suggested something along the lines of getting Jesus's DNA and determining if he had a human father; if it could be shown that there was no evidence of parthenogenesis, would I be 'justified' in rejecting the claim of deity? Conversely, if evidence of parthenogenesis was discovered, would you be 'justified' in revising your claim, above?

Perhaps that is too crude? How about something less polar than 'justified' or 'not justified', along the lines of more or less confident? What do you think? Because while some claims are impossible to falsify, they do tend to lead to expected consequences which could be falsified. I realize that either of us could probably "ressurect" our previous position by positing some ad hoc condition, but don't you think it's at least possible that either of our confidences might be shaken?

BTW, if you can't tell, it's not all black-and-white with me. I don't claim that I have any evidence that points directly to Jesus's divinity. It can't be demonstrated rationally. I'm willing to abandon it, in my mind, if sufficient evidence can be brought to bear to the counter-claim. Establishing Jesus's lineage, though highly improbable, would be one such class of evidence.

Surely you could identify a circumstance that might cause you to rethink your position? Or do you want to be in the strange position of a skeptic who holds their views less provisionally than a self-described 'believer'? I'm not trying to be a smartass or an obscurantist. I just think that the nature of belief is poorly examined by all of us, and attempting to understand it purely through the filter of evidence-based reasoning misses the experiential quality of faith that so many believers find compelling.
I invite you to continue that discussion with me outside this forum, lest I be accused of evangelizing or some such crap. I have no agenda, only curiousity....SH

Dang. Another great discussion that I missed over the weekend. Scott, Jason & Ken, is it too late to get in on this?
Sigh, probably is since I don't have an hour and a half to read all the previous posts.

Well, maybe I will catch you all next time on another post.

z.

What I gather from the exchange between Scott and Jason is that in the absence of evidence regarding Jesus' divinity, Scott prefers to believe in His divinity until evidence disproves it, while Jason rejects His divinity until evidence proves it. It seems much more logical to require positive proof for a claim, but Scott's position makes sense in a Pascal's-wager kind of way. Or in a non-rational way.

j: I agree with your brief, in general. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and it is my claim, not Jason's, which is extraordinary.

I am open to the possibility of being wrong, however. It's not a matter of my having drawn a line that I will never cross. The flowcharts that began this conversation do seem to describe the behaviour of a lot of believers, but not mine. At least I don't think so!

In fact, Jason, you should know I've lost a little sleep over this, on the slippery slope between faith and non-belief. Despite that, it's been nice talking to you....SH

Scott,

I don't know what evidence there could be for a phenomenon (divinity) that is by definition outside the realm of science and reason.

You still haven't addressed the question of why you believe, through faith, that Jesus is divine. Why not believe instead, through faith, that Jesus is NOT divine? Why not believe, through faith, that there are two gods, or three, or many, rather than just one? Why not believe, through faith, that Tutankhamun is the Son of Osiris or that Volcanos erupt because Prometheus is angry? If faith is no more reliable a guide to the truth than guessing or tossing a coin, and if you want to believe what's true and to not believe what's false, why believe anything at all on faith?

J,

It seems much more logical to require positive proof for a claim, but Scott's position makes sense in a Pascal's-wager kind of way. Or in a non-rational way.

I don't know what "make sense in a non-rational way" is supposed to mean. The phrase sounds like an oxymoron to me.

Oh, Jason. We're just poles apart. Faith is EXPERIENTIAL. It's not objective. It can't be justified, the way you want. I don't even think your question is all that meaningful to me. With Kirkegaard, I don't think you can reason your way to faith. You must take what he called the "leap of faith", and that leap isn't rational. I think I've been upfront about that from the beginning.

So why do I take the plunge into irrationality, and you draw back from the cliff? Who knows? Perhaps one of us has a predisposition for self-deception. Alternatively, in matters which can not be objectively determined either way (which, according to you, includes Jesus's deity), I am willing to trust to my experience. For now, at least. I reserve the right to let it all go. I respect the rights of others to do the same. I have no desire to push any of my privately held beliefs on others and I stand with the rest of the scientific community in firmly excluding such from the practice of science.

At the end of the day, I would hope that was enough.

Sincerely...SH

Scott,

I don't understand how you think the statement "faith is experiential," or somesuch, even addresses, let alone provides a serious answer to, the question of why you believe one thing through faith rather than another, or why you believe anything through faith at all. It's not an answer, it's a handwave. Making a guess or choosing what to believe based on a coin toss would also be "experiential," and yet you seem to recognize that guessing and random choice are not a legitimate basis for beliefs about which claims are true and which false.

You seem to be saying, "Yes, I realize a belief held through faith is no more likely to be true than a guess or a hope, and I don't want to believe something if it's false, but I still believe it anyway." Given the utter irrationality of that position, I don't see how you think you're in a position to criticize the beliefs of creationists, fundamentalists, theocrats, astrologers, Heaven's Gate cultists or anyone else.

Scott,

So why do I take the plunge into irrationality, and you draw back from the cliff? Who knows?

It's not just a question of why you take the plunge, but why you choose to plunge in one direction (Christianity) rather than another (Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc., etc.). And there's a rather obvious answer to that question. You leap in the direction of Christianity because you were raised in and live in a culture in which the overwhelmingly dominant religion is Christianity. I don't know if you were indoctrinated in Christianity as a child, but statistically the chances are good that you were. And childhood indoctrination in a religion makes it even more likely that you will belong to that religion rather than a different religion as an adult. If you had been born and raised in, say, Saudi Arabia, you'd most likely be clinging just as tenaciously ("faith is experiential!") to the doctrines of Islam, which contradict Christianity on the divinity of Jesus Christ. Your "faith" is in reality a matter of upbringing and social conditioning, an accident of birth, which is another illustration of why you shouldn't trust it.

It looks like it's you and me again, Jason. I've got to hand it to you, though, you asked questions Scott felt compelled to punt, whereas he felt that it was most appropriate to ignore mine.

It sounds like you got a pretty solid admission from Scott that apostasy is just a shout away from his fideism. As I've written in one of these threads recently, I can no longer bring myself to respect fideism. Taking that big leap of faith, along with Kierkegaard, is something I can undertand when my five year old would rather believe Grandma's accounts of Santa than the countervailing evidence. Much older than that, and it just isn't cute anymore.

Why Jesus, and why not any of the other 2850 deities listed at http://godchecker.com, is most likely a result of simple socialization, as you suggested. To you or me Jason, there's nothing we can imagine we could use to choose among them other than literary criticism; de gustibus non disputandum. Whatever gets you through the night, and the night is large.

There's only one more point I need to address, and that's the notion of how his faith is so EXPERIENTIAL it breaks his caps lock key. Back when I was investing so many brain cycles to believing six impossible things before breakfast, while still being genuinely curious about the way things are, my experience never failed to confirm my worldview, and the experiences my worldview permitted me to entertain were certainly mine, and utterly believable and comforting. It didn't take a lot of counting the hits and ignoring the misses to keep the faith.

I went through a severe Spiritualist phase in my teens. There were a lot of little Spiritualist churches all over Orange County and up in LA, where sometimes we'd go Paramahansa Yogananda parles-vouz in the morning, and in the evening get our auras cleansed and a life reading after a token Christian ceremony. I learned how to do it myself; the less information I volunteered the lousier the reading I'd get from the medium. There were seances, and table tapping, even table tipping.

One time, after we had been guests at the home of somebody who could tell us all about our spirit guides, and who had assured us that not long ago, the massive oak table had chased them around their parlor, they brought out a card table to see if we couldn't all get some levitating going on. The table started banging like crazy. One by one, the other three nice folks got up, until it was just me, and the table was bumping up and down like crazy, pivoting on the two legs farthest from me and raising up in the air a foot on my end, and doing it again and again. Why, I'd know it was cheating if I had done it. Experientially, some big spirit was using me and that table to show everybody-- oh, that table tipping should make you believe that spirits liked to tip tables, I don't know. But it was an embarrasingly long time before I could even examine the possibility that once a rhythm had been established, I might have had more than a little to do with keeping it going.

Experientially? Chills, thrills, goosebumps. I had faith. I'd felt the power coursing through my mortal fingers. It took me a long time to learn that there was nobody in the world who was better at getting me to suspend my disbelief, at fooling me, than me. But I had a lot of learning to do before I could reach that understanding about myself. Nobody else could teach that to me, and it wasn't anything I was particularly eager to learn. I'll never get those brain-cycles back.

I still like fantasy, science fiction, and finding meaning in great works of art. I just don't need any of them to be really really true outside the context of the experience of appreciating them. I just no longer think calling experiences like that religious, or spiritual, or the apperception of the numinous as per the late great Carl Sagan does anybody any good these days. Respecting the right to believe? Of course. Respecting the belief? Not any more than I would any other delusion.

The next theist who tells me my position takes more faith than his will not be drinking beer on my tab, nor I on theirs.

Jason, Ken, a few comments, I'll try to be brief.

"You seem to be saying, "Yes, I realize a belief held through faith is no more likely to be true than a guess or a hope, and I don't want to believe something if it's false, but I still believe it anyway."'

If you add a penultimate cause along the lines of "yet, pending demonstration of its falsehood, I choose to believe" then this would be a pretty fair statement of my attitude.

"Given the utter irrationality of that position, I don't see how you think you're in a position to criticize the beliefs of creationists, fundamentalists, theocrats, astrologers, Heaven's Gate cultists or anyone else."

Hmm. That's easy: because I don't fault people for their privately-held beliefs, whether I share them or no. It's the public exercise of those beliefs in certain fora, the conduct that constrains my liberty or yours, that damages the scientific enterprise, that gets my ire. In my mind, this exchange of views here is certainly no attempt to criticize your beliefs. Do you feel differently?

"Your "faith" is in reality a matter of upbringing and social conditioning, an accident of birth, which is another illustration of why you shouldn't trust it."

I agree that if I was raised in a different context I might be grappling with a different set of interpretations as to the locus of the belief experience. You're laboring under a false impression, though, if you think that I 'trust' faith: that would be akin to saying one has faith in faith. Endless regress. Rather, I have an experience with faith, one that informs but does not impel my choices.

Speaking of experience, Ken, your personal experience with faith is fascinating; the transformation from believer to non-believer must have been powerful. Perhaps you feel that, in dissenting from your views on religion, I am treating YOUR experience with disrespect? It would certainly seem so, given your parting shot, which infers a cavalier attitude on my part that was never intended.

This grieves me, Ken. And this, Jason, is precisely why I am reluctant to have specific discussion of my private beliefs on fora such as this. You guys have asked tough questions which deserve an honest response, and I've tried my best to answer them honestly.

But, the mere act of responding can come across as disrespectful or threatening to others, especially those who have worked very hard to transform their beliefs. Having these kinds of conversations in a public forum intensifies those feelings, as far as I can see.

And that, Ken, is a very good reason to encourage others to meet you face-to-face, to break bread and share the cup. When we see each other as people, rather than as disembodied mouthpieces for this or that viewpoint, we are less likely to feel threatened or disrespected. We are much more likely to learn from each other, and that is my primary interest. I don't have to agree with everything you say right at this moment to get something out of the conversation, or to regard your experience with anything other than interest or respect. If I've given another impression, please believe me when I say that wasn't intended.

Regretfully...SH

Scott,

I still don't see an answer to my question. WHY do you "choose to believe" the things you believe through faith? Why are you "willing to trust" your "experience?" You admit your faith-beliefs are no more likely to be true than a guess or a hope. You admit that your "experience" (or is it now "interpretaions" of your experience?) is a matter of the contingencies of the time and culture into which you were born and raised. And yet you still believe anyway. It's completely irrational. You (presumably) wouldn't adopt a belief about the age of the Earth or whether there are teapots orbiting Mars on the basis of faith, guesses or hopes, so why do you believe through faith that Jesus is divine?

Scott,

By the way, Sam Harris's latest post in his debate with Andrew Sullivan is now up, and you really should read it. Harris says pretty much everything I want to say about faith, but so much more clearly and eloquently than I can express it. Sullivan's posts are an exercise in evasion, obscurantism, specious argument and irrelevant digression, the kind of smokescreen tactics I have long come to associate with religious moderates' attempts to defend their belief system.

Scott,

...pending demonstration of its falsehood, I choose to believe

How convenient that so many beliefs are unfalsifiable.

I don't fault people for their privately-held beliefs, whether I share them or no.

I do. One of the beliefs that I most harshly criticize is the notion that beliefs should not be criticized. The beliefs of racists, sexists, deniers of the Holocaust or HIV or science, any religiously held beliefs, whether or not they have anything to do with religion, whether privately or publically held, are among the primary reasons to fault anybody.

In my mind, this exchange of views here is certainly no attempt to criticize your beliefs.

Oh by all means, criticize away. I am here not just to criticize beliefs such as those you defend. This exchange is a continued demonstration that the only honest defense of such beliefs is adherence to a social contract that entitles everybody to respect for their right to believe whatever they like. Conflation of your right to believe with some imaginary right to respect for the belief is among the most dishonest, and most often used manipulations in the shell game of faith.

Perhaps you feel that, in dissenting from your views on religion, I am treating YOUR experience with disrespect?

Disrespect away if it blows your skirt up. The point of my sharing my experience is an apparently hopeless effort to get you to understand that your EXPERIENTIAL self-assurance in the veracity of your faith is its least reliable component; self-deception is one of the biggest traps anybody faces no matter what they're examining. The importance of guarding against self-deception is what you are treating with disrespect.

It would certainly seem so, given your parting shot, which infers a cavalier attitude on my part that was never intended.

For the most part, you are willing to discuss the extent to which the ideas expressed in our host's forum are worth criticizing, which I am not alone in respecting. However, you continually hold that some ideas are entitled to a religious holiday from critical examination, and I cannot respect that. As far as sharing a beer, that won't make bad ideas better. It'll only make good beer bad, and I can't countenance such a thing.

Jason: I will review the Harris/Sullivan correspondence. Were you interested in hearing my response to same? I won't bother you if you're not.

I don't see anything in your prior post that you haven't stated before, and which I apparently haven't miserably failed to address to your satisfaction. From your point of view, I can't fault you: it IS unsatisfying. When I think about all the little things that seem to coalesce into conviction, I don't find any of them particularly impressive individually: nature, art, music, prayer, worship, etc. And, when I try to convey how the sum of these is greater than the individual parts, I feel at a loss. Is this the best that I can do, offer vague, formless cliches? And yet, at present, the sum of all these experiences, particularly the reading of the Gospels, leads me to regard Jesus as divine.

I regret that such 'answers' aren't satisfying to you, but they are my personal 'answers', nor yours, nor are they 'answers' that I attempt to impose on others. They don't completely satisfy me, either: I don't think of them as 'answers' that carry all objective truth. I feel that I am letting you down, somehow, and I suspect this is due to the fact that we just don't share the same kind of assumptions about what reason unaided can accomplish.

Rather, I share John Wesley's conclusion, which is that reason by itself is powerless to impart faith, hope or love: a proposition distinct from the calumny, which I reject, that non-believers have no source of morality.

I recognize the energy and dedication you have brought to this exchange, and in the event you don't reply, please be assured that I have not dismissed, but am still considering, the challenge you have raised to faith. I hope you will not think your time wasted simply because I have not yet embraced your version of skepticism.

Appeciatively...SH

Ken: I see that in reviewing this correspondence I neglected to address your response re: Wilson. My goodness, what a lot of trouble could be saved if this exchange had occurred in a different context. Wilson describes himself as a 'provisional deist'. This is alluded to in the Wikipedia article. Wilson elaborates on this in an interview published in Psychology Today which is available on-line here:

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/neimark/eow.html

Wilson is one of my intellectual heroes and my views approach his own. I recognize my predicament in these excerpts from his book Consilience:

"For many the urge to believe in transcendental existence and immortality is overpowering. Transcendentalism, especially when reinforced by religious faith, is psychically full and rich; it feels somehow right. In comparison empiricism seems sterile and inadequate. That is why, even as empiricism is winning the mind, transcendentalism continues to win the heart. Science has always defeated religious dogma point by point when the two have conflicted. But to no avail. In the United States there are fifteen million Southern Baptists, the largest denomination favoring literal interpretation of the Christian Bible, but only five thousand members of the American Humanist Association, the leading organization devoted to secular and deistic humanism...
Science has taken us very far from the personal God who once presided over Western civilization. It has done little to satisfy our instinctual hunger...The essence of humanity's spiritual dilemma is that we evolved genetically to accept one truth and discovered another. Is there a way to erase the dilemma, to resolve the contradictions between the transcendentalist and empiricist world views?
No, unfortunately, there is not...For centuries the writ of empiricism has been spreading into the ancient domain of transcendentalist belief, slowly at the start but quickening in the scientific age. The spirits our ancestors knew intimately first fled the rocks and trees, then the distant mountains. Now they are in the stars, where their final extinction is possible. But we cannot live without them. People need a sacred narrative..."

Now, I didn't originally mention Wilson to reiterate my sorry plight, but as an example of a thinker who has written eloquently about how the humanities, the social sciences, religion itself are gradually being subsumed into the protocols of the natural sciences. But as I re-read his comments, I am struck by the way they dovetail my awareness of the issues involved.

It should be mentioned that Wilson believes that science can provide something like a sacred narrative, albeit one entirely naturalized. It is unclear to me if that is feasible.

Ken, it seem to me that your experience has been so powerful that you find it difficult to avoid reifying it in our correspondence. Let's consider a few examples:

"Conflation of your right to believe with some imaginary right to respect for the belief is among the most dishonest, and most often used manipulations in the shell game of faith."

Are you saying that I regard my beliefs as privileged? That's utterly untrue, either in this forum or anywhere else. All I was indicating was my regret if any disrespect was inferred where none was intended. Another quote:

"The importance of guarding against self-deception is what you are treating with disrespect."

How could this be true, when I have been very up-front about my own doubts and lack of certainty? The very fact that I have questions, that I have doubts about the certainty and status of my beliefs suggests that I am concerned that I do not deceive myself. Clearly, Ken, this was so important in your personal experience that if you do not receive assent, it pains you. Lack of assent to the interpretation of your experience does not imply a lack of respect either for your experience or your interpretation of same.

Similarly: "However, you continually hold that some ideas are entitled to a religious holiday from critical examination, and I cannot respect that. As far as sharing a beer, that won't make bad ideas better. It'll only make good beer bad, and I can't countenance such a thing."

As mentioned, I don't feel that any ideas, including mine, are exempt from critical examination. Since you know from intense personal experience what it is like to reevaluate your own beliefs, you should be able to empathize, if not agree, with a person like myself. I grant that sharing a good beer doesn't make a bad idea good, but it is a good way to build empathy, to put a human face on an exchange of views, and I happen to think that's a good thing, Ken.

Scott,

You know, I was going to bow out and let you have the last word, but since you keep going on and on, now with three more lengthy posts in which you offer nothing further to explain or justify or account for your religious beliefs, I have to say that I am increasingly convinced your "belief" that "Jesus is divine" is nothing more than a cipher, a set of words that don't really mean anything but that you cling to for emotional or nostalgic reasons. You've said nothing to explain this "belief" other than vague allusions to "experiences," which are apparently so abstract and indescribable that you can say nothing about how they lead you to "Jesus is divine" rather than, say, "Jesus is just a man" or "Anyone who thinks Jesus was divine will spend eternity in hell" (a teaching of the Koran, as I just learned from Harris). It's all just so utterly vacuous and worthless.

Well, that's your experience, I suppose. I warned you that we were poles apart on this and that we evidently didn't share core assumptions about science, about reason and about faith.

Sorry if I wasted your time, but I would hope you would remember I was reluctant to do anything that could be interpreted as pushing my faith on others. You're the one who repeatedly prodded me in a public forum to dissect my private sphere of faith, hope and doubt, so if you're disappointed, you only have yourself to blame.

On the other hand, perhaps you got what you wanted and this might be an occasion for self-congratulation. Who knows? I don't know you well enough to speculate, frankly.
For what it's worth, the conversation wasn't always comfortable, but it was stimulating. Peace....SH

Ken, it seem to me that your experience has been so powerful that you find it difficult to avoid reifying it in our correspondence.

Ditch the obfuscatory philosphesque.

Let's consider a few examples:

"Conflation of your right to believe with some imaginary right to respect for the belief is among the most dishonest, and most often used manipulations in the shell game of faith."

Are you saying that I regard my beliefs as privileged?

How could they be anything else? They are unfalsifiable, yet you say you'll believe them unless disproven. What could possibly warrant such a belief?

That's utterly untrue, either in this forum or anywhere else. All I was indicating was my regret if any disrespect was inferred where none was intended.

Then don't make such a big deal out of how you "don't fault people for their privately held beliefs." Why the hell don't you, unless you want me to stop faulting you for them! There are plenty of beliefs that are wrong to hold, especially beliefs that require such dizzying mental gymnastics just to pretend some don't conflict with others.

blah blah blah,

I am concerned that I do not deceive myself.

so I will run around furiously scaring up a load of apologetics from dead philosophers and people who do science but think humans need that old time religion. You can always find somebody who'll tell you what you want to hear, that what you want to be true is true.

Since you know from intense personal experience what it is like to reevaluate your own beliefs, you should be able to empathize.

It's easier than you think. One of the best things I can recommend is actually learning something about your religion, and the other religions whose body parts were dug up and stitched together for the dead and resurrected god schtick for the umpteenth time. How can you take the blitherings of a load of misogynistic bronze-age goatfu-- sheperds seriously? Ah, here comes the big answer:

...we evidently didn't share core assumptions about science, about reason and about faith.

I've suspected that since I first started reading your posts, but I was hoping for two, maybe one out of three. WTF ever. Get on with your knitting then, sorry to have wasted our time.