Endemic Confusion
PZ Myers has an excellent post on – broadly speaking – the tension between religion and science. Narrowly speaking it’s on a non-excellent post by the widely over-rated Eugene Volokh (though I gather he’s less over-rated now, ever since that post on what a good thing it is to torture certain criminals to death in front of an enraged crowd). And he makes a point that I’ve made here more than once. It’s a very, very widespread mistake and confusion, even among people who – you would think – really ought to know the difference. It’s pretty ominous and disturbing that the confusion is so pervasive even among educated people like lawyers and journalists. Clearly everyone should be learning the difference in kindergarten and having it reinforced throughout their educations – possibly it ought to be the first thing anyone learns. It’s not really possible to think clearly without it.
Here’s the confusion:
What’s more, how exactly do scientists come to the conclusion that “God had no part in this process”? What’s their proof? That’s the sort of thing that can’t really be proved, it seems to me — which makes it sound as if scientists, despite their protestations of requiring proof rather than faith, make assertions about God that they can’t prove.
It seems to him – what, as if he’s the only one who thinks so? Of course it can’t be proved! And ‘scientists’ know that perfectly well, and they don’t make ‘protestations of requiring proof rather than faith’ – they ask for evidence. Not proof, evidence. There’s a difference – a big difference. It’s so basic, and yet so many people seem to have no clue. That’s alarming.
PZ commented on the confusion:
Scientists don’t talk about “proof”, period. We leave that to the mathematicians. This is something I yell at my freshman biology majors, by the way. I know it’s out of the purview of a scholar of constitutional law, but if he’s going to make claims about science, shouldn’t he know the bare basics of the discipline?
Yeah, he should, especially since the difference between evidence and proof is not just a basic of science, surely – it’s a pretty general basic of epistemology. It has to be – because it’s about the difference between certainty and non-certainty, doubt and no doubt, open questions and closed ones, how and when and if we know what we know. Susan Haack points out that scientific inquiry is continuous with other forms of inquiry, as opposed to being special in some way. Saying ‘there is evidence for X’ a very different thing from saying ‘it is proved that X’ in any empirical field you can think of.
It’s odd, and interesting, and somewhat exasperating, to realize that probably most woolly beliefs rest on exactly this stupid confusion. ‘You can’t prove that God doesn’t exist, or that there is no space ship behind the Hale-Bopp comet, or that extra-terrestrials haven’t been abducting and impregnating humans, or that I don’t have a parking angel or a laundry angel or any other kind of angel’ – therefore we might as well believe any of them we want to. That’s probably how the default position works (we’ve been talking about the default position lately – that belief is right and good and it’s non-belief that has to explain itself) – since you can’t prove the belief is nonsense, therefore there is no reason not to believe it. That ‘therefore’ is idiotic, but it’s everywhere.
Brian Leiter makes a similar comment.
What interests me in particular here is what this display tells us about the limited understanding of science and scientific methods even among educated people and scholars. If professional scholars in fields like law have so little understanding of the nature and structure of scientific inquiry, is it any surprise that in the population at large nonsense like creationism and its offshoots, like Intelligent Design, have considerable traction?
Exactly. Discouraging, isn’t it.
This confusion between “proof” and “evidence” is one of the things leading otherwise intelligent people to opine that “science is as much a matter of faith as religion,” or “atheism is a religion, too,” or other such nonsense.
The widespread failure to think clearly about the difference between proof and evidence reflects the tension between science and religion, and the common impulse to defend the latter from criticism. Which is funny, since such defense is really an unintended admission that science does a better job explaining the world. Why protect religion from science, either consciously or unconsciously, if religion can hold its own against it?
Phil
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. A Gallup poll tries to establish how many Americans think god had no part in evolution (i.e. doesn’t exist). Michael Shermer quotes the poll, including the information that the god-free version tallies with “the standard scientific theory.” Eugene Volokh uses this as the jumping-off point for a rant that implies that either Gallup or Shermer are willing to let the sufficiently simpleminded believe that there is such an animal as a scientific theory that not only mentions god, but specifically rejects his existence. PZ and OB restate the obvious (but apparently not enough) points about what differentiates evidence and proof and how such terms may be correctly applied.
OB sums up with “discouraging;” I continue to marvel at how much of our time gets wasted in countering silly arguments that can only be made because baseless assumptions were made and left unchallenged in the first place. God (and all other manifestations of religion – or vice-versa) is only one of an infinite number of possible explanations for phenomena that the scientific method shouldn’t have to bother rebutting, beyond the simple statement that the evidence for it is zero. I suppose that no amount of experience has succeeded in dispelling my naive assumption that even partial, gap-ridden evidence indicative of a certain reality ought to be more highly considered than a viewpoint based on no evidence whatsoever. Hence, hearing the question asked whether evolution is a threat to religious belief introduces in me what I suppose must be a kind of cognitive dissonance: I do (historically) but don’t (rationally) understand how the people armed with zero evidence even get started in competing with those who’ve actually bothered to collect some verifiable facts about the world.
OB,
On that same line of difference between proof and evidence, someone posted an explanation on how law, theory, and hypothesis differ from each other. Can you find that for us?
Here’s one explanation of hypothesis/theory/law I rather like:
http://pasadena.wr.usgs.gov/office/ganderson/es10/lectures/lecture01/lecture01.html
The key to this is still to be found in Ockham’s razor which as I understand it states that when evaluating competing hypotheses we should choose the simpler one at all times. Specifically we should always choose the explanation that does NOT require the introduction of new elements – e.g. angels, faireys, extra-terrestrials, gods etc unless and until there is some evidience to suggest these entities exist.
It was perfectly clear 700 years ago.
I think my generation – post war boomers – were so scared by the power we had unleashed through atomic science that we turned our backs on science and forgot to teach its basic principles.
Regards
John
‘This confusion between “proof” and “evidence” is one of the things leading otherwise intelligent people to opine that “science is as much a matter of faith as religion,”‘
Yeah, I think so. I think it plays a bigger part than I had realized. It’s like that ridiculous mantra that, for instance, the fans of John Mack and other UFOlogists love to repeat – ‘absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.’ Duh. No, of course it’s not, but that doesn’t mean one might as well believe in whatever it is there’s no evidence for, does it!
‘God (and all other manifestations of religion – or vice-versa) is only one of an infinite number of possible explanations for phenomena that the scientific method shouldn’t have to bother rebutting, beyond the simple statement that the evidence for it is zero.’
Exactly. The china teapot thing. There really is an infinite number of things that no one can prove are not true. ‘You can’t prove that you don’t disappear as soon as you’re out of my sight. You can’t prove the front of my house doesn’t disappear when I’m at the back of it. You can’t – ‘ etc. Very true, but that is not a reason to believe every possibility you can think of, nor is it a reason to pitch noisy fits because scientists don’t take into account every possibility you can think of.
Julio – you mean here, someone posted on that difference? Or somewhere else. There was a long discussion of it in the comments on PZ’s post, for one place.
Ockham’s razor, yes…trouble is, in one way the ‘God did it’ answer is much the simplest. In the same way answering all questions with the word ‘magic’ would be.
That’s one of the many reasons the goddy stuff is so irritating – it’s so anti-curiosity, so stultifying, so inimical to explanation and investigation and inquiry. ‘God did it’ or ‘magic’ is so the opposite of a real answer – yet ‘faith’ is not only socially approved, it’s near-mandatory in some places and jobs.
John,
On the generational question you raised, I can’t state that it’s untrue for any number of individuals and you may well have had encounters that led you to that idea. But a lot of issues are not resolved by it. No one can seriously claim that science in the US has stood still since mid-1945, nor is it easy to argue against the claim that the US first gained and continued to hold superpower status to a very large extent because of science (many, if not most, military strengths are achievements of science). And if this is so, one of the really interesting questions becomes why a nation so indebted to science votes in a leadership so keen on undermining it. It’s also worth asking whether that leadership (of that generation) is scared by the power of science or has other motives. What comes to mind when you mention that kind of reaction is more along the lines of the refusal to consider any idea that might seem to connect to Nazi science, as in racial theories.
OB,
We could, of course, keep things simpler than “infinite,” by, for example, putting things in only two categories: those for which there is any evidence at all and those for which there’s none. The first category could then be sub-divided according to the type or quantity of the evidence, while one could simply forget about the second category until, oh, I don’t know – till Jehovah’s Witnesses come knocking at the door or a Presidential candidate denies he’s lacking in faith.
inwit,
Thanks for the link.
OB,
Yes, sometime ago posted it here and you praised it. Don’t worry about it; inwit’s link does the job. Thanks.
OB: ” – yet ‘faith’ is not only socially approved, it’s near-mandatory in some places and jobs.”
I am puzzled by this statement OB. I am 100% with you on issues of whether religion should dictate anything in our society. But as someone who hangs with Christians and scientists still in church, I am flabbergasted at the idea that the US is so theocratic.
Here in Australia we are emphatically not a Christian country, my guess is only 25% would assert they have a belief and less than 10% go to church. Christians who want to proselytise have a collossal row to hoe as social DISapproval of pushing faith at other people is so strong.
Creationists sure exist here, Prof Ian Plimer lost his house in court costs by trying to sue them for fraud I believe.
Yet you tell me that in academia you know people who can’t get some jobs because they are not god-botherers? Pardon me but are we talking about jobs at religious counselling services or what?
Chris,
In academia? No, I’m not telling you that – I’m not an academic! Far from it.
No, the main job I’m talking about is politics – elective office. That’s strictly a US thing.
Ah!
So Democrat Senators such as Richard Durbin, who are free enough to call America the equivalent of Nazi Germany in public, cannot become Senators without a faith confession?
I suspect that guys like Zell Miller are senators not because of their faith (assuming that he is the kind of person you are talking about), but because of their public integrity.
There is nothing particularly strange that an electorate with a majority of believers may elect such a representative; being elected is not being chosen under rational criteria.
What I am trying to say is, while you are generally right about the validity of truth-claims, the emphasis you place on the compulsory and irrational aspects of Christianity is a touch over-estimated for modern society.
Oops, apologies for the academic assumption! I read ‘About Us’ straightaway, to set myself straight.
Quite all right – though to be sure, being taken for an academic is quite insulting.
snicker
As for the compulsory aspect – well, I have in mind for instance the endless nagging in media here – even putatively ‘liberal’ media – of Dean and Kerry to be more noisily religious. It’s not literally compulsory, of course, but it is decidedly figuratively compulsory, in terms of public opinion and relentless media pressure – and political pressure as well. It is decidedly the default assumption in US politics that good people have religion and people without religion are bad people and should not be elected.
Interesting! Of course I have seen these comments in the media over some time. That pattern must be REALLY irksome with your strong committment to rationality.
Did you not see John Kerry pretending to be a hunter and a military patriot? The whole performance smacked of the deepest hypocrisy. His performance in the faith stakes was about the same. Media expert advice, wasted!
Anyway, no-one should adopt a front of faith to succeed in politics (unless your life is at stake eg at the gates of Evin Prison, Tehran). But it would not be false to spend a bit of time in church-based social activism or poverty relief, becoming honestly associated with the good done by those institutions, demonstrating that despite being outside the faith you can work with those people and understand and in part share their concerns.
Here in Australia, I think a leader has to demonstrate that s/he is trustworthy DESPITE his/her faith in christianity.