A different kind of thing
From this week, astrologers, palm-readers, mediums and the like must display a kind of rationalist health warning. Wherever they sell their services, new consumer protection regulations require that they declare “for entertainment only”, because not “experimentally proven”…[I]t is tempting to raise a scientistic cheer. At last the quacks have been foiled, their bluff called! Until, that is, one asks what else in the marketplace of goods and services could pass a similar test.
Well nothing could, because ‘proven’ is the wrong word, which is not Mark Vernon’s fault if that’s really what the regulations themselves say and not just some journalist’s sloppy paraphrase. But the things that astrologers and mediums do or rather claim to do are not backed up by evidence, and there’s really nothing particularly silly about expecting people who sell services for money to provide evidence for claims they make about those services, and if they can’t, to warn consumers that they’re not actually, literally, offering the services – they’re just pretending to by way of entertainment.
And Mark Vernon is, perhaps, pretending to think that lots of things are on the same kind of footing as astrology and mediuming.
Consider a housing development that bills itself as a provider of “beautiful homes”?…Science has developed no Geiger counter for aesthetic measurements, a device whose clicks become a purr as it draws close to good taste…So it is actually quite tough, and often impossible, experimentally to verify many of the things that we take for granted in life.
Yes yes yes, but claiming these houses are beautiful is a different kind of thing from claiming to be able to talk to a consumer’s dead child. Thinking or assuming or pretending to think or assume that everyone thinks a particular kind of house is beautiful is a different kind of thing from thinking a medium can talk to dead people. The first is not all that outlandish, especially since tastes in beauty are largely social and manufactured, so what developers say helps to shape taste in houses over the years. The second is very outlandish indeed. So…Vernon’s comparison is just kind of…beside the point.
I was hoping you’d comment on Mark Vernon’s rather thin little piece. It’s bizarre! Imagine comparing mediums with real estate agents! At least you can go and see a house — or a beach, if what you’re in the market for is holidays.
But the unkindest cut of all was using Hume to (try to) make his point. Hume wouldn’t have had any trouble saying that going to play backgammon with your friends is a fine, relaxing way for a philosopher to spend his evenings, especially after having his head twisted around with so many whirling thoughts! But to use Hume’s distinction between deduction and induction as a basis for giving mediums as much credence as estate agents is a bit of a stretch! How can people get it so wrong? Doesn’t this man claim to be an atheist? How did he get there?
I just got your “Dictionary of Fashionable Knowledge” in the mail today, and looking forward a bit of fun myself!
If people bought houses without seeing them first, and had to just take the realtors word for it that they were beautiful, it would be perfectly reasonable for the law to regulate such claims (supposing beauty is an objective quality, and not merely “in the eye of the beholder” — and if it is not, then no factual claim, analogous to “I can speak to dead people” is being made).
Vernon’s expression “rationalist health warning” reveals his real attitude: that the law is a case of big, bad rationalists picking on people’s ‘spiritual’ beliefs. Utter rubbish.
No, Vernon claims to be a former atheist, now an agnostic. Funny how belligerent he is about it – he’s an agnostic, and terribly certain that atheists are dead wrong to be so certain that they see no reason to believe in god.
If people bought houses that no one ever actually saw, much less lived in, and the only contact the buyers ever had with the house was on visits to the real estate agent, at which the buyers would be allowed to watch the agent talking to something that she said was the house…well then.
I’m not at all sure I understand what the agnostic thinks he gains over the atheist. Does he really think that God prefers the waffling, ‘I’m not sure,’ to the decisive, ‘I’m sure not’? In any event, if Vernon went from being a Christian to being an atheist, and he’s reached the point where mediums are as believable as estate agents, then it won’t be long before he’s a Christian again. Don’t forget: you read it here first!
“So it is actually quite tough, and often impossible, experimentally to verify many of the things that we take for granted in life”
Yes, it is quite tough. And science provides the tools to perform that verification.
But the Blue Smartie example is rather bizarre. Blue is a name for a phenomena – of the reflection of a certain wavelength off a surface. Is Vern denying this?
As for the sun rising tomorrow… can you get more trite?
All in all even as a contrarian piece it’s dull and witless.
It is dull and witless, and it’s wrong!
Of course, it might be that the author had nothing to say on the issue, but had a vague interest in exploiting the current media meme of ‘rational vs irrational faith’ to get a cheque for an 800 word article.
Memes! hahaha!
Though, you are right re: the spondoolies .
Mark Vernon again? I am now convinced that the man has nothing worthwhile to say on any subject whatsoever. But I was convinced about that before, so I’m not getting much value added out of this. Please put his name in the first line or headline of posts referring to his writing so I know to stop reading. That way I can treat posts about his editorials the same way I treat his byline – by moving right along, thanks.
Eric, my understanding is that the atheist is making a positive statement that there is no god(s). This he cannot prove. An agnostic says that there is insufficient evidence for him to believe in a god, but as there is also no evidence against, then he will abstain from making a call on the existence of a god.
You’re right though, it does seem that that view wouldn’t win any brownie points with a god.
I’m not sure that an agnostic holds beliefs in order to hedge bets against a vengeful and jealous god.
Just one view: perhaps agnosticism is merely a reaction to the force of belief that surrounds religion. In that, there’s something powerful there so I in order to sort out my brain, well, I’ll provide some cognitive concessions.
Ahh, nup. I take that back. It’s all Bollocks
Beautiful homes.
Right.
This is a bad comparison. Mediums do not claim to create an aesthetic effect, they claim to actually contact the dead and to receive information from them. This is a testable claim given that the information will either be correct or incorrect.
A good comparison, therefore, is with testable claims about houses. Such as that they have been built properly and won’t fall down, and that the materials used to make them “beautiful” are safe and of reasonable quality.
I have some coastal property Mark Vernon may be interested in…
“my understanding is that the atheist is making a positive statement that there is no god(s). This he cannot prove. An agnostic says that there is insufficient evidence for him to believe in a god, but as there is also no evidence against”
While widely promulgated – I think this definition of ‘agnostic’ is profoundly wrong and simply special pleading for religion. The true definition of an agnostic has to be someone who thinks the evidence for and against the existence of some god is roughly in equipoise such that they cannot reach a decision.
If an ‘agnostic’ were to be defined as ‘someone who cannot _prove_ that there is no god’ then we would be agnostic about almost everything and have no positive beliefs in practically anything.
I don’t know why ‘proof’ gets such a special place in questions of religion, while the rest of us muddle about the world relying on mere ‘evidence’. Perhaps agnostics are post-Bayesian creatures of pure deductive logic?
Eugh, just read it now – yep, the man makes an utterly fatuous analogy that doesn’t stand up to even a cursory consideration. By invoking Hume and induction he _must_ be saying that we should just reject clinical trials of drugs, seatbelts, environmental protection, all science, anything that isn’t formal logic (and it doesn’t take much to extend the argument to that too).
The correct argument is the hypocrisy of the get-out for formal religious groups. If the pope can collect money from the Catholic flock in return for his direct line to God, why shouldn’t an equally deluded medium get paid to contact the dead?
“I’m not at all sure I understand what the agnostic thinks he gains over the atheist.”
In certain circles, being woolly-headed and refusing to think clearly about an issue is regarded as the height of “open-mindedness”. So you can parade your aggressively ignorant self around as the only real seeker of truth.