East of the Border
José mentioned the resort to fuzzy and misleading analogies that sophisticated theists resort to. I’ve been thinking, and scribbling notes, about that for a day or two. It’s true. There are fuzzy misleading analogies that crop up over and over again. I’m short on time at the moment, so will just say a couple of things, and go on at more length tomorrow.
There is for instance another version of the ‘separate sphere’ argument. That ‘science’ (never explicitly defined, and always cited in such a way that it’s implicitly defined far too narrowly) is in one sphere and poetry, art, morality, meaning and similar (often including things like love) are in another, along with of course religion. But if one thinks about it, that’s an odd way to draw the map. I could just as easily draw a quite different map, or several different maps, with the borders in quite different places. With science and all other kinds of empirical inquiry in one sphere and perhaps art, poetry, meaning and religion in another. Or with empirical inquiry and secular activities such as art and poetry along with emotion in one, and religion and ‘meaning’ in another. Or with all the terms except religion on one side and religion all by itself on the other. It all depends on which criteria you use to decide who goes on which side, doesn’t it.
And that gets into the misleading analogy aspect. Poetry and literature are great favourites for this – but that is indeed a bad analogy. There is a reason fiction is called ‘fiction’ for instance. Because it’s fiction. Surely an enormously important difference between literature and religion is that literature does not claim to be true in the way that religion does. Nobody talks about having ‘faith’ in Anna Kareninina or Macbeth. Nobody reproaches presidential candidates for not mentioning Elizabeth Bennett or Don Quixote often enough. Nobody ends a campaign speech with ‘Hamlet bless you.’ It’s a very tendentious matter where that border should be drawn, as it so often is with borders. It’s a victory for the theist side if as many items as possible are included on their side – in short everything except laboratory science. But one could argue that none of the items really belong there – except possibly ‘meaning.’ I have some thoughts on that, but they’ll have to wait.
Ah, a couple cents here:
There are categorizations of convenience and categorizations of substance. For instance, I think of Popper’s solution of the demarcation problem between scientific statements and nonscientific statements as being a categorization of substance – although still containing no more meaning than the criterion used to make the division.
A categorization of convenience would be if we decide for the purposes of discussion that all pencils shorter than 4 inches are ‘stubs’ and longer than 4 inches are ‘full pencils’. The problem is if we start ascribing some substance to those two categories beyond the nominative definition we’ve given them.
I think a number of religious arguments rely on this kind of mistake. Immediately there’s the ‘there’s a missing link between apes and men, as nobody’s found a halfape halfman fossil, so evolution is wrong’ argument; I think this sort of thing is also going on in some arguments about the civil meaning of ‘marriage’. And also I believe that this ‘separate spheres’ problem is tied up with this issue.
Call it maybe ‘arguing from taxonomy’?
Opehlia, I think you’re right on for keeping this torch in the fire on this one. And the correct word for “seperate spheres” is “doublethink.”
If there is a spereate sphere, it’s that sphere were people place unanserable mysteries, or more often than not mysteries that we can’t even define for ourselves through lack of clarity, the smallness of our brainness, or sometimes even the lack of a real question. And rather than just admitting that a) we don’t know the answer, b) we don’t know the question, or even c) we’re just be vauge and fuzzy (which I think is normally what is going on) — being story-liking creatures we like to make up big world-view shaping beliefs that suit our feelings. If only we’d stick to writing poems, novels, music and art about those feelings! and damit its good to be critical of those as well.
One of my biggest problems with Stephen J. Gould’s “Rocks of Ages” is just the kind of demarcation issue you’re talking about. “Science tells us how the heavens go, religion tells us how to get to heaven.” Science is about testable, verifiable empirical matters, while religion is about ethics and meaning and art. Huh?
The premise is really pretty silly. First, what kind of morality are we talking about? If we’re talking about authoritarian models based on deeply ingrained social prejudices, I’d agree that these models often find themselves on the same side of the boundary as religious claims. But morality is more diverse than that. There are secular/rational/critical approaches to morality that involve THINKING about issues, and these approaches seem much closer to the spirit of scientific inquiry than the spirit of religious piety. It’s no accident that the development of ethical philosophy really took off at about the time that science and rationalism were gaining a foothold. Logically, the two processes are related, and they are also related historically – flowing from the same social changes. And while religious traditions may contain much that is worthwhile for a sound ethical thinker to consider, the ideas are good because they are good, not because they are religious in origin.
Another problem. The usual drawing of the boundaries actually encourages people to think unpleasant thoughts about science. If religion is the arena for meaning and morality, science must be, by default, the arena of meaninglessness and amorality. No wonder many of these same people leap to the false conclusion that religion and science are both necessary to have a meaningful life. They define religion AS meaning, claim we all need meaning in our lives, and then conclude we can’t live without religion.
Phil
Good stuff, all.
I especially like that last paragraph of Phil’s. Exactly. People often seem to have a very odd idea of what science is (cold, technical, hard-edged, yes or no, thus terribly limited). And it’s one of those feedback loops. Odd idea of science so —>these divisions between science and everything we like so —>an even odder, narrower idea of science so —>an even sharper division between science and everything else – and so on, ad infinitum.
That needs correcting, that does.
I find it strange why anyone should consider the fact that science is cold, technical, hard-edged etc. yes/no* as being a bad thing. It seems like critising a screwdriver for not being able to drive in a nail. For discovering knowledge, cold technical, hard edged and yes/no is exactly the tool for the job. Yes it is limiting; it is limited to finding out how the universe works. Emotions are nice for relationships, but not too good for discovering how the universe works.
* As well as yes/no, science is very good at “don’t-(yet?)-know”. A stance totally absent from religion as best I can gather.
“Emotions are nice for relationships, but not too good for discovering how the universe works.”
That’s an assertion that most average people would object to. Hundreds of popular books, from evangelical religionists to crystal healers and other assorted charlatans give them exactly the opposite message: that somehow using their emotions as a guide they can have access to truths that “cold, analytical science” will never be able to reach. Not only it is easier (as in not intellectually challenging) for many to buy into this way of thinking, but also, and most importantly, it provides them with a sense of belonging and invincibility. For them it’s a “no-brainer”. That’s why God is never going away. Even if the nonexistence of God could be proved with absolute certainty, religious institutions would still thrive.
I guess the only way to get rid of religion would be to biologically “engineer” it out of our life. And we are still very far from that, apart from the fact that making that kind of decision would invite all sorts of ethical questions and speculations.
All we can do for now is challenge the view that approaches based on “mystery” and emotions could help in making worthy factual statements about the universe. And maybe also point out that the “why” questions that religions claim to adress are usually meaningless.
Not enough disagreement here.
José’s penultimate paragraph is scary as hell to me.
We’re still far from that?
We’re still far from total self-destructive cataclysm too. Though maybe not far enough.
The arrogant, virtually autistic disregard for anything other than human will in that view is chilling, or would be if I didn’t run into it 5 times a day.
That’s the wrong direction bubba.
The “ethical” questions it raises are right up there with whether anything could ever be called right or wrong. Logic so flat and colorless it can be represented in full on a 2-dimensional graph.
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Without analysing it into non-existence, wolves are aesthetically pleasing to most people, in photographs or in “nature” movies or even out in “the wild”. That’s leaving out sick ones, and sheep ranchers watching money run off into the hills.
Those wolves have beauty because they were sculpted by a force larger than themselves, “necessity”‘s as good a name as any for it.
In humans it would be a kind of humility to submit to that necessity. We don’t. We’re getting uglier by the day.
Religion in its more egregious forms, and science in its more heedless and heartless forms, both come from that place.
These little camps with different flags, each smug in its own partial vision, and thick with self-reinforced delusion, it’s pathetic. Sad. Irritating. Wrong.
The idea that science can, by building step on step, ascend to any but a limited reach is hubris pure and simple, it was covered in religious metaphor under Babel, Tower of, and in logical metaphor under Xeno, Paradox of.
The idea that the universe itself, or a big enough chunk of it, might be capable of coherent dialog, seems ludicrous to the “hard” scientist, and blasphemous to the “firm” believer.
So that’s my position. At least for now. Here.
Ooooh, big bad scientific wolf is out to get ya…scary!!!
It seems like another textbook example of the yuck factor in action: “It’s wrong! “Why?” “…mm…well, because it is…”
“Disregard for anything but human will”
…I guess I am disregarding divine will, aren’t I? Or the will of nature? Or am I just advocating “playing God”?
Nobody is denying that the ethical questions this would raise would be extremely important and difficult, but only we can make those decisions. We can–with the use of reason- find out whether “engineering out” religion could be a bad or a good idea. Perhaps getting rid of it might bring more problems that it solves, perhaps not. But that does not mean that the whole topic is off-limits to us, lowly human beings.
Your arguments seem to be permeated by a sense of mystery, of a reverence for the sacred. I dislike those concepts per se, or at least I want to analyze and question their validity. It looks like you are advocating ignorance as a value. These will be serious problems that we’ll have to confront sooner or later, regardless of whether you are horrified at the sole mention of us tinkering with what Mama Nature so wisely created.
“In humans it would be a kind of humility to submit to that necessity. We don’t. We’re getting uglier by the day.”
Well, how do you submit to that necessity? Perhaps we should go back to hunting and gathering? Nature is wise, I guess, and only she knows how to shape that necessity in us, when she pleases. We are and should not be privy to her secrets.
You seem to forget that we have been modifying and molding our environment for thousands of years. What is artificial selection but primitive genetic engineering?
“These little camps with different flags, each smug in its own partial vision, and thick with self-reinforced delusion, it’s pathetic. Sad. Irritating. Wrong.”
As smug, pathetic, irritating and wrong as the vision of the radical skeptics that don’t want to get their hands dirty and throw a disdainful look at rationality from their lofty ivory towers.
“The idea that science can, by building step on step, ascend to any but a limited reach is hubris pure and simple, it was covered in religious metaphor under Babel, Tower of, and in logical metaphor under Xeno, Paradox of.”
That idea has been dead for quite a while and keeps being resuscitated only by those who like building straw men out of science advocates’ positions. It’s just ridiculous to deny that science is the most effective tool devised to examine the natural world and even worse, drawing an equivalence to religion.
Well José your comment deserves more than a glance, and more than a glancing response. But in the brief moment I have at present let me reply to one point in particular.
It’s illustrative I think that you claim to dislike reverence for the sacred. Maybe you forgot the ironic quotes or something. Obviously the truly sacred would deserve to be revered.
I’m advocating a recognition of our ignorance, and, of course, of mystery. Which is not an advocacy of remaining ignorant.
Can you look at the Pleiades and not feel the presence of mystery? Palpable, near, and so vast it threatens every proud moment you’ve ever known? I guess maybe you can.
I can’t. Whatever’s going on here is way bigger than me. And I’ve seen the piling up of the damaging side-effects of human arrogance all my life. Weak men triumph while every other living creature on the planet suffers to their benefit. Accent on weak.
The sad truth is, “Mother” Nature (your term) doesn’t love us any more, or less, than any other thing, animate or not.
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Some of the extensions of your logic would maybe not be as acceptable to you if you saw them whole.
Genetic engineering of agrarian seed selection carried to the extreme of GM patented alien life-forms.
Yeah so, hey, people die right? So kill old people, why not, they’re almost dead, anyway. Plus they’re in the way, and they’re not productive. And the infirm, the mentally deficient…
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Examining something is not the same as knowing it.
There are forms of autism we haven’t classified yet I think.
This just confirms my suspicion that you are making a straw man out of my position.
“Yeah so, hey, people die right? So kill old people, why not, they’re almost dead, anyway. Plus they’re in the way, and they’re not productive. And the infirm, the mentally deficient…”
It’s just funny that you seem to think I would advocate Social Darwinism or something equivalent to it, being that I am farther to the left than your typical American left-winger (guess it doesn’t show from my posts). I would never condone anything remotely close to the policies you have mentioned. But I don’t think recoiling in horror from science because it has sometimes been used with malevolent intentions is the solution either. It is a powerful tool that we can also use in our benefit, if we closely regulate it with the help of ethics.
“I’m advocating a recognition of our ignorance, and, of course, of mystery. Which is not an advocacy of remaining ignorant.”
This is pretty much a non-argument. A recognition of our ignorance is what drives modern scientific endeavors. A scientific worldview recognizes the mystery inherent in nature and tries to shed light on the unknown. The sense of wonder at the complexity and overwhelming beauty of our universe, in all its vastness and pitiless indifference is not just the province of poets and spurned lovers.
Who, as you rightly say, when gazing at the Pleiades doesn’t feel that mystery? We all feel that there is something bigger than us going on there…but while some of us are pretty content with just that feeling, some of us also want to probe deeper into these mysteries. That boundless curiosity is one of the best traits of human nature. I am not advocating human arrogance,but the use of our capacity for rational thinking for our benefit and the benefit of the rest of living things in our planet.
“Genetic engineering of agrarian seed selection carried to the extreme of GM patented alien life-forms.”
It’s a very well know truism that anything carried to the extreme becomes harmful. I am probably as concerned as you are for the environment, but I am not going to totally shun something that holds the potential to be very beneficial because of the harmful effects that might arise from its misuse. If anything, GM deserves to be evaluated for its own merits and a substantive debate should be carried out in order to address all its implications. It might very well have more negative than positive effects, and in that case it should definitely go to the trash heap of history, but not before having an intelligent and fair dicussion about it.
And yeah, I forgot the ironic quotes around “sacred”….
“…It’s just ridiculous to deny that science is the most effective tool devised to examine the natural world and even worse, drawing an equivalence to religion. …”
I love science. I always have.
Science fiction and science fact.
I came into it sideways, there was no science taught in my elementary school. But I loved it every time I saw it, from the exhibits at the openhouse at the local university, to chemistry sets and explanations of odd phenomenon from people who knew.
I have nothing but the deepest admiration for Carl Zimmer, whose love of science is so markedly present, and whose love of life is also very obvious.
It’s not science I’m arguing against here. Not the on-the-ground and digging-for-clues science, it’s the triumphalist attitude; science as opposition to superstition.
Science as a superior religion.
I understand the specifically delineated purpose of B&W, and I suppose to stay within bounds I need to insist that science in your argument is claiming truth it can’t prove, albeit without its overtly making those claims. Something along the lines of the Xeno bit above. Claiming the non-existence of wholistic reasoning, how’s that?
When I think art shows that whole-system knowing is absolutely possible, even necessary.
Can you see that advocating science from the position you take could easily become advocating for science as a moral determinant? Instinct has no place in cold logic. Love itself can be reduced to pheromones and gene-replication, and dispensed with as no more than an illusion.
Examining the world, or any part of it, is not the same as knowing it.
Nor, and more urgently, does it have anything to do with the application of the results of scientific examination. What we do with the results of that examining.
Too much of your argument sounds like Tang – a drink that supplied everything, in powder form, that was in an orange – when it first came out; everything, that is, that science had so far identified that you need.
My point is the real orange already worked, and there was more in there than science at the time knew. Tang was good, but the orange was great.
Religion has nothing to do with that directly.
My point is more that current religions, especially Judeo-Christianity, are hand-in-hand with myopic science, and they’re both leading us all off a cliff, while they argue with each other bitterly and viciously over who better deserves to lead.
Neither one in my book, or some joining of the two that hasn’t happened yet, and doesn’t look like it’s going to.
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The truth is out there.
Bigger than our instruments, and smaller; and more surprising than our complacent dogmatic expectations.
We’re cross-posting here.
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“the use of our capacity for rational thinking for our benefit and the benefit of the rest of living things in our planet”
Dude, that’s my point. There. That’s anthropocentric to the core. Control. Benevolent control is control first, then benevolent.
Which is what religion as presently constructed is about.
They’re both attitudes of human dominance. One in a universe of pitiless indifference, the other in a universe of paternal pattycake.
But they both end up with the same permission – people get to do what they want when they want. Because we’re in charge. Or our father is.
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I am certainly not content with gazing at the Pleiades.
I want to go through them and out the other side.
I’ve wanted to go since I was 9. Desperately, joyfully, with one of the deepest hungers I’ve ever known.
But if that means humanity as it is now gets to go too, I’m staying right here. For keeps. No discussion.
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I don’t believe the universe is flat and neutral.
Pitiless indifference is close but still not accurate.
More like the sun. Just so damn big.
But every bit of life you or I or anyone has ever experienced came right out of that big brilliant thing. And there’s bazillions of them out there.
I can’t beleive that all that energy is cold. Pitiless maybe ok. But not cold. Just as space isn’t really dark.
Another illusion.
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I need to do some other things for a bit. But you should know I enter these discussions, maybe a bit flippantly or seemingly antagonistically, certainly with a measure of arrogance, but because they interest me and there’s an indication I might at least be comprehended if not understood or agreed with.
And it makes me think, to be responded to with vigor.
I like to think.
Its a little hard to work out what you are actually railing against. Jose called you on a number of points. You then seem to have diluted your original apparently anti-science stance to the point where I at least cannot see what point you are actually making.
FWIW, your original objections only apply to a stereotype view of science, not science itself. AKA strawman.
Interesting. I missed a good conversation, being unelectric for so long yesterday.
I was just thinking – in thinking about what more I wanted to say on this overall subject at the moment – about mystery. About different ways of defining it and so on.
And especially this business of what science actually is and where it belongs and where it doesn’t. I think most of the demarcation that goes on – the ‘these are the realms where science is out of place’ demarcation – relies on this odd, impoverished notion of what science is. A straw man in fact.
Ophelia you’re always electric. But then I only see you when you’re on. (rimshot)
Then José concurs, so that particular strawman has clothes on and walks around.
What’s scary is the assumption of that path as inevitable. The arrogant assumption of centrality. It’s unquestioned that “we” will eventually be able to “engineer” religion out of “our” lives. If whatever that is we became can even be said to be alive. The perspective is murky but try this:
If you roll a proverbial snowball off the top of a mountain, and it gathers mass and momentum, by the time it hits the valley below what it is is nothing like what you rolled to start. And even the smallest difference in angle and direction of that first push will be increased proportionately.
Viola! Human evolution!
This attitude goes somewhere. And becomes something. And everything right now is huge with potential.
We are shaping the face of more than just what we are, now. The responsiblity is overwhelming. And I see and hear all this insect noise of inevitability.
This is not a defense of religion.
As I keep saying religion as presently constituted is hand in hand with autistic science.
We’ve lost the sense of what we were on the way here. Like kids who grow up thinking there’s always been pavement and cars. Confused by the solidity of what is mostly gloss and veneer.
“Science” is like a gun. In the hands of a fool or a madman it’s chaotically dangerous, in the hands of a coward it’s an “equalizer” that puts his genes back in the pool.
Both science and religion as now practiced and espoused by the majority of their adherents are rife with cowardice.
That was my position from the beginning. A knee-jerk assumption on the reader’s part is not my responsibility.
The binary template, the insistence on dualism and the consequent straw man tit-for-tat is precisely what I’m “railing” against, though my version of railing is a tad more vehement than anything here.
My robot editor left out the first point. The idea that a “relationship” with the “universe” or “life” or “that big thing we live inside of” is not only possible, but absolutely vital and necessary.
That emotionless science is an insect thing. That we are in danger of becoming insect-like. That this “science über alles” chauvinism is a form of highly functional autism. That the best gifts of the human, language, art, music, drama, are not pragmatism stripped bare. That that’s getting pushed out along with fundamentalist claptrap. etc.
But msg, that’s the point I’m working toward here. The fact that not all science is emotionless, for instance. Not in its motivation, inspiration, persistence, etc.
Are you using ‘autistic science’ as essentially one word? Are you saying that science (or science as currently practiced) is ‘autistic’? If so, I think that’s just another of the items that can do with examination and redefinition. One, not all science is like that, and two, there is a lot of overlap. There are large areas where science and other kinds of inquiry (hermeneutic and such) both have useful work to do.
In short, I do think you have a strawman on the hook there.
So glad to know I’m always electric though!
Msg ridiculously places science and the language,arts and drama in two oposite camps, creating a false antagonism and another oversimplification of the scientific endeavor.
Of course my opinions are anthropocentric, and I am not going to apologize for that. Anthropocentric in the sense that I can’t help but see everything in terms of the actions that we, humans, are going to take. Action is intrinsic to our nature: we want to solve, to put together and take apart. It’s what primates do.
That does not mean that we should not admit our responsibility for the problems that humankind has caused in our biosphere. On the contrary, responsability is a the most important concern. But, whether Msg likes it or not, in virtue of our characteristics, out of all sentient beings, we humans are in a unique position. Changes and policies will arise as our future situation unravels. We have to be sure that we use our best ethical judgment as new challenges appear. There is no way back from this.
I am really having a difficult time trying to figure out what Msg is advocating. Prudence maybe? Sure, why not? I myself said it clearly in my posts: we have to be careful and prudent and ethical. But apart form the jumble of bad metaphors and intrinsically clumsy language, I really can’t for the life of me understand what he is proposing. Does Msg really want us to go back to the time when were hunter-gatherers? What is it, seriously?
“As I keep saying religion as presently constituted is hand in hand with autistic science.”
From the straw man that he created, that idea of the mad and amoral scientist Msg wrongly concludes that science is a blind as fundamentalist religion. What Msg ignores(or plays down) is that in most good scientists there’s a humanistic vein that goes a long way towards avoiding that “autistic” behavior…
“I can’t beleive that all that energy is cold. Pitiless maybe ok. But not cold. Just as space isn’t really dark.”
Huh? Another empty metaphor, I believe. Now Msg is the one who is ascribing human characteristics to the universe and criticizes my “anthropocentric view”…Cold = non-emotional. It’s the wrong approach (apart from the fact that is just plain useless) to look at the universe and wish it to have anthropomorphic traits, Msg.
“The binary template, the insistence on dualism and the consequent straw man tit-for-tat is precisely what I’m “railing” against, though my version of railing is a tad more vehement than anything here.”
This gets even worse. From his overly simplistic caricature of science Msg concludes that there’s not really much difference between science and religion. Hell,I would agree with him too if science was what he is claiming.
But it’s not.
I rest my case…
“our biosphere”…Hopefully Msg will know that this is a typo. Consider “our” replaced by “the”…
I think msg is confusing science with technology. Technologies can benefit or hinder mankind. Science is the methodical pursuit of knowledge. The only “bad” science is science which is not methodical. Science discovered that some atoms are unstable. This is not good or bad. (Well it is good if you think adding to the sum total of human knowledge is good; which I do). If some engineers then use that knowledge to build a bomb, if you don’t like bombs, blame the engineers, not the scientists, and still less the SCIENCE. The science just tells you how things are (or probably are). If you don’t like it what it tells you, don’t shoot the messenger. Blame the universe for being set up that way.
On the fly, with no time for the respect due, until tomorrow.
“Autistic science” is precisely that, a pathological form of a larger thing. Not only emotionless but unaware of emotion as a possibly valid state. Or buying its own inhuman rationalizations. Mengele, Skinner, Milgram…
Obviously my opponents, all 10,000 of them, are not emotionless. But the idea that science, from here, can guide us forward with reason alone, is near the edge of that disengaged rationality.
No I’m not confusing “science” with technology, this thread itself finds the word slipping from broad to narrow category. Applied science, or the technological application of scientific discoveries, is closer to what I’m railing at maybe. But that’s also the source of a distinct arrogance that flaws the rationalist position.
At times. Here and there.
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Again – Carl Zimmer.
Bigtime science, full-on human.
The usurpation of all supra-rational forms of discourse and knowledge, by the blind and grubby ecclesiasts and their new-age progeny, has made it very difficult to argue from any but a polar position. Some of my seeming shift is your own expectation and prejudice. Some is my flighty self.
We may be in more agreement than it seems at present, if so I’m coming toward it from a different corner, obliquely.
But tomorrow will have to tell the tale. I must away.
Thanks for your, mostly, civil and cogent responses.
” “Autistic science” is precisely that, a pathological form of a larger thing. “
Analogies are supposed to illucidate, not obfuscate. I am not alone I gather in not understanding what your analogies pertain to. People often learn best by analogy, but only when the analogy is clear. Furthermore, whilst it is fine to illustrate by analogy, to reason by analogy is not OK.
msg: WTF?? I couldn’t understand a single thing you are saying.
Yup…what I was saying. Unclear writing, obscure and misleading metaphors…woolly thinking maybe?
Anyways, I don’t want to be accused of incivility. But he definitely needs to make himself more clear. And he’s also reasoning by analogy, what ChrisM mentioned…
“Are you using ‘autistic science’ as essentially one word? Are you saying that science (or science as currently practiced) is ‘autistic’?”
OB
“”Autistic science” is precisely that, a pathological form of a larger thing. Not only emotionless but unaware of emotion as a possibly valid state.”
msg
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Is that obfuscation?
Not intentionally. It seems clear to me. She asks if it’s one word. The essential question – am I attacking science as autistic, or something within science? Something within.
My quibbling with José about his
“…I guess the only way to get rid of religion would be to biologically “engineer” it out of our life. And we are still very far from that”
got bogged down in definitional murk.
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The original impetus was and is an effort to insist that opposition to theocracy’s claims to superior knowledge has to consist of more than rationalist scorn.
Too much smug self-righteousness.
And an over-reliance on the efficiency of rationalist methodology.
The “science” that permitted, and permits, the egregious barbarity of animal research, disguising it as morally permissible, when in point of fact it’s amorality pure and simple. Mengelian science is still science. Heartlessness rationalizing its void. “Autistic” seems a perfectly adequate description for that.
Being chastised by readers who avoid the obvious to maintain a superior position is a little irritating.
But hey.
Science is a discipline, or a method, or a category. It’s also, and sort of distinct from those, a philosophy.
What I’m fielding here, in devil’s advocacy, is the defense posturing of people who feel so clearly superior to what they see as superstitious nonsense they’re taken aback at anything like sincere criticisim from a non-polar position.
Science as practiced, with its dogma of rationalism triumphant; and religion as practiced, with its dogma of revelation triumphant, are virtually two faces of the same thing, at this point in time.
That may or may not be true ultimately, but I’m concerned about it now, and I’m sticking to my guns.
I’m trying to lift the argument.
There’s a rut of self-congratulatory condescension on the side of science/rationalism/secular-humanism/atheism/Brights/etc. which is an obstacle to resolution.
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AAB-
Your brilliant rebuttal notwithstanding, I’m unable to clarify anything for you. Sorry.
Can’t get into the post itself to stop the italics. My apologies.
Too much heat not enough fire.
Not only did I forget the close italics code, but that line:
“…that opposition to theocracy’s claims to superior knowledge have to be met with more than rationalist scorn…
should say something more like, “…has to consist of more than rationalist scorn.”
msg,
Hmm. “The essential question – am I attacking science as autistic, or something within science? Something within.”
Well that wasn’t exactly my question. I was asking whether you’re attacking all of science, or only some branches of it.
Rationalist scorn? Do you have any examples of that? I don’t think rationalist scorn fits.
Do you have any examples of smug self-righteousness?
The chastisement may be a little irritating, but surely you are being more unclear than you really have to be. Aren’t you doing that on purpose? Aren’t you doing it to provoke, a little?
Self-congratulatory condescension – again, any examples?
I don’t mean to chastise, but surely you realize all that is just rhetoric, don’t you? That’s a very common move in argument, to accuse people one disagrees with of things like smugness and condescension, merely because they don’t agree with you.
The trouble is – an elliptical style can be a fine thing in the right place, but it doesn’t work all that well for this discussion – because nobody is even sure what you’re saying!
To put it another way – a big part of what I’m talking about here is the need for clarity. Of thought and of language. So…indirectness is not the best approach in this particular discussion, at least I wouldn’t think so.
Ooooh, big bad scientific wolf is out to get ya…scary!!!
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But I’ll stop.
Rhetoric, I’m beginning to be unable to deny, is too often self-indulgent.
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What makes fiction true?
Underneath the veil of artifice, a life-like mask. Under the mask something vague and unclear that speaks in a whisper, or was it the wind?
The rhetorical version.
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Fiction is fiction because it isn’t documentary. But the best fiction is closer to reality than a photograph. So that categorically segregating fiction from the claims of religion doesn’t hold.
In a sense they both operate both above and beneath the purview of scientific inquiry.
Non-rhetorical version.
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Thanks for your tolerant and reasoned reply.
“…I guess the only way to get rid of religion would be to biologically “engineer” it out of our life. And we are still very far from that”
This is a factual statement. Trying to acknowledge that getting rid of religion would probably imply more than social conditioning and that the religious impulse might be genetically determined. Then I specifically said that this would bring an ethical conundrum.
“The original impetus was and is an effort to insist that opposition to theocracy’s claims to superior knowledge has to consist of more than rationalist scorn.’
I think four steady centuries of results (notice I’m not claiming that all results have been used with positive ends)stand solidly behind the unabashed “rationalism is better” attitude. So yes,there is more, much more than just ‘rationalist
scorn’.
“Too much smug self-righteousness.
And an over-reliance on the efficiency of rationalist methodology.”
Well, I guess that depends on where you want to draw the line between “over-reliance” and plain confidence in the fact that there must be something intrinsically more efficient about rationalistic approaches, given that they have been so successful in such a relatively short time.
“What I’m fielding here, in devil’s advocacy, is the defense posturing of people who feel so clearly superior to what they see as superstitious nonsense they’re taken aback at anything like sincere criticism from a non-polar position.”
This non-polar position of yours tends to unfairly equate the opposite sides of the debate. Science does not claim that their discoveries represent the absolute truth. It creates working models than are continually being replaced by other models that adjust better to observations. Asymptotically if you want, never reaching an immutable “truth”. This is a very important difference that you are not even acknowledging.
I can also easily claim that there is some smugness inherent to your position. And you would probably agree with me that it is easier to say what you are against than to define what you are advocating for.
“The “science” that permitted, and permits, the egregious barbarity of animal research, disguising it as morally permissible, when in point of fact it’s amorality pure and simple. Mengelian science is still science. Heartlessness rationalizing its void.”
I never claimed that science wasn’t amoral. It is clear (but I said it before) that moral judgments and rationality have to work hand in hand and inform each other. Constant feedback between what what we want and what we have, between what “is” and what “ought to be”. What is difficult to deny is that rationality has a part in the way morality changes through the ages. Relying mostly in emotion you clearly risk making the same mistakes and following your “yuck factor” too often. And you know what might come out of it: racism, sexism and all other sorts of isms and assorted evils. “Mengelian” science at its core was profoundly unscientific,relying on unsabstantiated prejudices. Surely believing that Jews are somewhat subhuman is not exactly too rational. The Nazis started with the conclusion and tried to find ways to justify it. Exactly the opposite approach from that championed by good science.
“There’s a rut of self-congratulatory condescension on the side of science/rationalism/secular-humanism/atheism/Brights/etc. which is an obstacle to resolution.”
My own particular view is that there is really nothing to resolve. This is not one of those situations where you reach a point midway between two opposite views. The condescension that you notice is probably the most civilized way to respond to the incendiary attacks of organized religions. That is arguably better than threats and repression, like the good ol’ Church used to do not so long ago. Or better than looking for ways to legally stop scientific research and subvert the teaching of science (like the American Evangelicals are currently doing).
“Ooooh, big bad scientific wolf is out to get ya…scary!!!”
Yeah, I acknowledge this is a scornful remark. But notice that what prompts this reaction is not what I would call well-reasoned opposition to my ideas but, in my opinion, the use of muddy metaphors and unnecessarily unclear language. But hey, I guess it’s my emotional side. I guess that remark was not what could be considered an example of civility. My apologies.
Just a little sample of unclear language:
“What makes fiction true?
Underneath the veil of artifice, a life-like mask. Under the mask something vague and unclear that speaks in a whisper, or was it the wind?
The rhetorical version.
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Fiction is fiction because it isn’t documentary. But the best fiction is closer to reality than a photograph. So that categorically segregating fiction from the claims of religion doesn’t hold.
In a sense they both operate both above and beneath the purview of scientific inquiry.
Non-rhetorical version.”
I take back my apologies. Bad poetry doesn’t belong in this kind of conversation. Nor in a poetry journal.
Can’t win for losin.
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José-
The “bad poetry” I thought was a very clearly marked-out example set of
a. rhetorical indulgence
contrasted with
b. an attempt at brevity and concision
That you seem unable to apprehend that when it’s placed directly and pointedly in front of you is one reason why I keep bringing words like “autism” into the discussion.
And at last there’s a concrete and simple instance of what seems to be more a protective dance than open-minded rational dialog in this thread. to wit:
You (collective, other side) want “religion” to answer and be accountable for its entirety, from metaphysical abstractions to the Inquisistion, fair enough, but you want “science” judged only by its premised ideals.
I’ll take the Inquisition, in my role as ecclesiastical devil’s advocate, but you’ll have to take Mengele and Milgram and Skinner. Or we can argue from premised ideals.
Choose.
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One of the principle arguments I’m making is that you can’t see what you can’t see.
Your faith is in your instruments. Which is an extension of faith in your self, primarily.
Mine – or the side’s I’m arguing from, which may not be the same thing – is on something outside, larger than, and, ultimately, beyond the self entirely.
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Your ability to judge the quality of any poetry is surely commensurate with your ability to craft prose.
No, I don’t think we do want religion to be answerable for its metaphysical ideals. On the contrary. I at least have defined religion for the purposes of this discussion as: religion as it is commonly understood, religion as it is used in articles such as the New Republic’s ‘Dean’s Religion Problem’. TNR was not saying Dean would do better to talk more of metaphysical abstractions, it was saying he would do better to mention God a lot, the way Lieberman and (sad to say) all the rest of them do.
And there is a lot of middle ground between Mengele and ‘ideals,’ too. Science is one thing, the way it is used is another. We can make that separation with religion too: I’m perfectly willing to do that. But the basic issue I’m getting at here – the cognitive issue, the rationality issue – is separate (I think) from questions about the uses of science or religion.
I exclaim in wonder.
I choke on my stew.
You say, nearly in as black and white terms as can be-
“…religion as it is used in articles such as…”
“…the way all the rest of them do…”
And most profoundly apposite to my purpose here:
“…Science is one thing, the way it is used is another…”
Religion, so.
Just so.
Premised ideal, pragmatic app.
Did I not say that?
My way back original point, restated at least umpteen-dozen times it feels like, is precisely that.
As practiced, both science and religion are closer to each other than to their ideals, and in that they do the same disservice to what they both purport to serve – us, humanity, the future of the race, our souls, our children, our possible selves at some far distant time, life et cetera.
That they are not two versions of the same thing, that their realms are not identical or overlapping, yes.
That they each encroach on the other’s turf, as they are practiced currently, to protect the practitioners’ world-view, is one of my main tangential points.
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I’ll suggest that, directly or indirectly, you (and you have no idea how much I myself) are suffering the assaults of the ignorant and delusional. It makes it harder to see what’s real, or what may be real.
Threat is not conducive to abstract philosophizing; but fine distinctions are crucial, especially now.
Sure, I know I said that. I did agree you had a fair point. I’m just saying that I don’t think the two are parallel. I think the general understanding of religion is the right one, or at least it’s the one I’m talking about here. That’s not so true of the general understanding of science – or at least that’s not the one I’m talking about here.
“As practiced, both science and religion are closer to each other than to their ideals”
Hmm. At the risk of seeming obstinate, I’m not convinced. I think their ‘ideals’ or basic principles are far too different for that to make sense. I suppose I know what you mean – irrational commitment on both sides – but I don’t think the similarity goes very far.
I agree about fine distinctions. I’m trying to make ’em.
OK so I’m the thing in the mirror that says what you say, only reversing the nouns.
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Not just irrational commitment, but the virtually identical motives of institutional and personal self-aggrandizement and preservation.
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Look at the Catholic Church, at the gold in the Vatican, at the gluttonous eunuchs who scuttle back and forth to Rome trying to preserve the integrity of the institution against this recent flood of negative publicity.
They mask their collective greed in dogmatic purpose. They prosper, individually and as an institution, but only to bring the faithful closer to God.
So I see these heartless droids in lab coats cutting into the skulls of living primates, playing genetic dice with our food supply, doing the bidding of PHD’s on the make.
Who mask their collective greed in dogmatic purpose.
They prosper, individually and as an institution, but only to bring the faithful closer to the common good.
‘You (collective, other side) want “religion” to answer and be accountable for its entirety, from metaphysical abstractions to the Inquisistion, fair enough, but you want “science” judged only by its premised ideals. ‘
Nope. I am willing to take Skinner, Mengele, etc. as bad examples of science. But you are too willing to just blur the distinctions. Science DOES NOT make claims of a moral order. It doesn’t pretend to be a way of life, an entirely self-contained and all encompassing philosophy that wisely provides all answers. That’s why I don’t think it is fair to place it in the same footing as religion. Religions pretend to tell us how to live, what is “right” or “wrong”. You are, I think, confusing science with a philosophical approach like ‘secular humanism’.
I don’t think that science encroaches in religion’s “turf” because I don’t view religion’s supposed field of expertise as legitimate. It really has no turf . It has never shed light
on any of the questions it pretends to answer.
“As practiced, both science and religion are closer to each other than to their ideals, and in that they do the same disservice to what they both purport to serve “
Sure they do. The same amount of disservice, the same kind. Making unsubstantiated claims for millennia and serving as an excuse and as a rationale for war is EXACTLY the same as a group of people misusing a powerful tool because of their own ethical shortcomings. So there’s the same level of irrationality to believing that science can have good effects than to assuming that religion is beneficial. I don’t buy it.
If anything, scientists should undergo some thorough ethical training, but who is objecting to that? How do you think science should be practiced?
“And at last there’s a concrete and simple instance of what seems to be more a protective dance than open-minded rational dialog in this thread.”
Don’t congratulate yourself yet. This condescension is, most of the times, product
of the frustration that some advocates of science feel when confronted with irrationality. It is not something widespread. No protective dance here. This does not constitute an admission of your charge. Just a reminder that emotionality is a common trait of human beings. Which does not mean that you should just let your emotions dictate scientific research.
“…a very clearly marked-out example set of
a. rhetorical indulgence
contrasted with
b. an attempt at brevity and concision”
uh-uh. No.
There was nothing concise and/or brief in your attempt. And I am not the only one having difficulty understanding your metaphors and tangential approaches, so I don’t think it has anything to do with my ability to understand poetry (you arguably made a comment about something you don’t really know about. I at least can properly state that your tendency to pepper your prose with excessive flights of fancy constitutes bad writing: I plainly see it.). My prose is pretty much OK (considering that I learned English as an adult). But that’s not the issue. I am asking you for clarity in your statements. Nothing less. And also to not skirt the issues being discussed and answer the different points some of us have been making here. Your refusal to let go of the straw man you have created just shows that you don’t really want to have a substantive conversation.
“Look at the Catholic Church, at the gold in the Vatican, at the gluttonous eunuchs who scuttle back and forth to Rome trying to preserve the integrity of the institution against this recent flood of negative publicity.
They mask their collective greed in dogmatic purpose. They prosper, individually and as an institution, but only to bring the faithful closer to God.
So I see these heartless droids in lab coats cutting into the skulls of living primates, playing genetic dice with our food supply, doing the bidding of PHD’s on the make.
Who mask their collective greed in dogmatic purpose.
They prosper, individually and as an institution, but only to bring the faithful closer to the common good.”
Cute analogy. Sorry is so wrong in so many levels. And so unconvincing.
I’m sorry José, but I’m not going to respond to your posts anymore. The minimal levels of polite discourse seem to be beyond your ability, at least some of the time.
I don’t mind debating someone whose use of english isn’t proficient, or whose logic isn’t particular linear or cohesive, but having to read your snotty attempts at riposte is more than I can force myself to do. It’s become a complete waste of time for me.
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It’s good you didn’t feel alone in this discussion, though I have to say this is the third or fourth time I’ve seen someone who had already stooped to insult when their arguments ran dry turn to an ‘us here’-versus-‘you over there’ statement for rhetorical force. As though that should be enough to warn me.
You’re not the only one who thinks my communication skills are sub-par José, but you are the only one I won’t reply to any longer.
What a good thing the month is almost over, especially in the UK where the database is. We can put all this behind us in only a few hours and start fresh.
But msg, really – José’s use of English is proficient, and frankly you’re not ideally placed to criticise his logic. You argue elliptically on purpose, don’t you? So you shouldn’t be too surprised if people get annoyed about it.
To take just one of your points: ‘playing genetic dice with our food supply’ – what if that ‘playing genetic dice’ prevents famine and food shortages that would otherwise occur? What if ‘our food supply’ would be a lot smaller than it is in the absence of that game of dice? Have a look at Tom DeGregori’s articles on the subject. He has quite a few facts and figures.
Funny I feel the same way. Snottyness is what I have detected in your posts all along. I did not complain about it, though. I guess your level of tolerance for opinions contrary to yours is not too high.
“The minimal levels of polite discourse seem to be beyond your ability”
I think you are accusing me of exactly the same behavior that you have consistently been showing in your posts. I certainly did not question your abilities (something I cannot do simply because I don’t know you). I criticized what I saw as your tendency to write unclearly. Referring to something as “beyond someone else’s ability” is deeply offensive. Talk about stooping to a low level of discourse.
Oh well, good luck. It’s strange, though. I feel all I did was accusing you of lack of clarity and bad writing. There is nothing snotty about that.
Frankly, I would vastly prefer other means of population control than disease and famine, thanks. I don’t need to use the word ‘evil’ to have that thought.
Just for instance, it’s pretty well-known, I think, that education of women (and other kinds of rights or decent treatment or equality of women) is the single most effective way of lowering birth rates. I think I’d rather try that than cheering on famines that I won’t have to experience myself.
The general idea being that intentional control wins out in the end.
Educating women, lowering the birth rate, combined with absolute dominance of the (social and “natural”) environment, means eventually, somewhere up there in the far distant future, we have a decent stable place in the world and a way of living that sustains itself.
A pipe dream, but a nice one.
We can’t shape our own destiny, we lack the vision for it, and we lack the implementation skills.
What we don’t lack is the desperate need for it.
We have to control, not just our behavior, but the behavior of everything around us. We can no longer adapt to things, we’ve lost the resilience. We have to change things to fit what we already are.
A low birth rate at this point doesn’t seem to be a solution. For one thing it’s based on the interchangeability of human individuals. Which I don’t think is anything more than wishful thinking.
I’m not cheering on famine and disease. Nor am I cheering on death. But there’s an interesting correspondence in english, between the words day and night, and life and death.
We have a day that lasts 24 hours, yet the opposite of day is night.
Just so we have life, and death. But death is an essential part of life.
We’ve made war on death, and we’ve won some major battles, but I don’t think we’ve won the war. It probably irritates you no end to hear that phrase, “Nature bats last.” But it’s true.
Too much of the damage modern men have done was justified because it fed some people or it saved some people’s lives. Those can often be very selfish justifications.
There was and is something higher, a more noble reason for doing things that isn’t necessarily religious and isn’t romantic or idealistic. It’s the difference between thinking of the living now, and thinking of the living a hundred years from now.
There will be a death rate in concert with your lowered birth rate, who should die?
What we’re presented with is a choice between haphazard selection, like the anti-darwinian harvest of traffic fatalities (car wrecks being the single largest cause of death in young Americans, and completely random in selection), and the intentional genetic engineering of social darwinism.
It is unthinkable to submit to anything resembling natural selection. You’ll find both current religion and current science in absolute agreement there.
And yet we owe our intelligence to exactly that.
We owe every quality we wish to preserve now to a process we are so terrified of we’re willing to destroy the earth to escape it.
The obvious rebuttal is to accuse me of some Rousseauian death-wish; but I think it may be possible to return to some kind of balance, with nature and ourselves, all our selves, past and to come.
I don’t think that’s as difficult as it’s been made out to be, by individuals for whom this way of living is more a necessity than a choice.
“It is unthinkable to submit to anything resembling natural selection. You’ll find both current religion and current science in absolute agreement there.”
Yes indeed, and a good thing too. Richard Dawkins always points out that he is emphatically not a Darwinian – that he is an anti-Darwinian and so was Darwin – about morality. Why the hell should we “submit” to natural selection? Submission is for worms. (There’s a bit of rhetoric for you.)
Even the worm wants to live.
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“Why the hell should we “submit” to natural selection? Submission is for worms.”
Because the choice is natural selection or human selection. What nobody seems to want to admit is that there will be selection of some kind, even if we ignore the whole thing.
And as I said, we have neither the vision nor the skills necessary to do the job right by ourselves.
I use the word submit because that’s the take from the other side. My own view is it’s about achieving balance, the same as we do socially, ideally.
I want this, you want that, we work toward a compromise that gives us both something. The higher form of the give-and-take that in its baser version is might-makes-right.
The real points, which in your brevity you don’t address, are:
“There will be a death rate in concert with your lowered birth rate, who should die?”
and
“…we owe our intelligence to exactly that[natural selection].”
If we aren’t going to allow something outside ourselves to shape our *continuing* evolution then we’ll have to do it. This gets side-stepped.
So we have heart-rending pictures of starving children and third-world AIDS victims. Euthanasia by neglect.
Where in your world-view is the acceptance of human selection? I don’t see it. What I see is childish refusal to accept any death at all. Lowering the birth rate, for all its difficulties and Papal bullshit obstruction, is a job for teenagers. But it’s presented as all that’s necessary.
That is not going to work.
Unless of course our friends in the gene labs discover the keys to cellular immortality.
Then what we have is a particular form of a species – us, now – having inherited the hard work of millions of years of natural selection, announcing itself as the reason for all that, and stopping the whole process cold.
That’s obscene to me.
Watching my child die of cholera is a truly horrifying thought. Watching the entire human race become something that was born in a research lab makes that look almost trivial in comparison.
I’m suggesting there’s another way through this.