Oh if only we could learn to doubt
More dopy mindless generalization about “New Atheism” at Comment is Free Belief, this batch courtesy of Ed Halliwell.
Almost two weeks on from the After New Atheism event at the RSA and the trail seems to have gone cold. It sounded so promising – the setup from a humanist writer professing his boredom with the stagnancy of debate…And yet it didn’t quite happen. As Mark Vernon reported, the evening itself was a bit of a damp squib, and normal service has been resumed on comment threads, with Caspar Melville – the aforementioned humanist – understandably crying foul at the pummelling he received for daring to call for more listening and less braying.
Yes, but as we know, Caspar Melville did more than just cry foul; he also invited me to write a dissenting article in reply to his profession of boredom, and then didn’t wait for the next issue of the New Humanist but posted the article online. He’s far from firmly in the “Let’s everybody hate New Atheists” camp, in fact he’s not really in that camp at all.
Now for the mindless generalizations.
[A] way through has been hinted at, including at the event itself. Marilynne Robinson pointed to it when she said that “New Atheism doesn’t acknowledge the centrality of consciousness“…
Oh really? All of “New Atheism” doesn’t do that? Including Dan Dennett? Including Sam Harris? And of course all other vocal atheists? And Marilynne Robinson knows that how, exactly?
Whether it’s fixation on belief in God or fixation on the absence of evidence for God, whenever we project our crystallised concepts onto the world and call them real, we are falling into a kind of theism – creating gods out of our own ideas and making ourselves “right”. We all do it, of course, and it usually ends in the kind of unproductive fight that has characterised the New Atheist debate in recent years.
Whereas…what – the old theist non-debate is quite productive and sensible and good? It’s unproductive for atheists to tell theists “you don’t know what you claim to know” but it’s productive for theists to go on forever claiming to know what they don’t know? In short, why single out “the New Atheist debate” as an example of projecting crystallized concepts onto the world?
So wouldn’t it be more interesting to reframe all this as a psychological rather than scientific or religious inquiry and practise becoming familiar with how our minds work before we try to work out what, if anything, created them? There is a cost – we’d have to let go of being “right”, and instead embrace a deep kind of doubt, one that accepts that the conceptual and perceptual tools we use to explore the world are limited and may be faulty.
But what the fuck makes this beezer think explicit atheists don’t do that? What else is all this about? Atheists are the ones who know we don’t have a special magic faculty that feeds us reliable knowledge about supernatural beings, so what’s he telling us to embrace doubt for?
And by encouraging humility through recognition of our fallibility, we could perhaps move beyond the theism of New Atheism in a way that allows us to be a bit kinder to those with whom we disagree. How about it?
How about what? How about agreeing with the unexamined assumption that “New Atheism” is especially unkind to those it disagrees with? How about blaming explicit atheists for everything while letting theists off any possible hook? No thanks.
Robinson’s idea seems to just be a fancy repackaging of the premature nihilator syndrome. Or am I missing something?
Maybe we should reframe the debate as psychological in nature. Why do smart people believe stupid things, even in the face of overwhelmng evidence? That seems like a psychological question to me.
My own best guess is that the believer fears himself. His free will is too free. It might pop out of nowhere and betray him. He must have protection, no matter the cost.
This is a bizarre bit of puffery. Unfortunately, he happened to come upon Marilynne Robinson’s remark about consciousness and thought it would be a good entree for some remarks about Buddhism, and not particularly literate ones at that. Of course, as usual, the point is completely missed, first, by stuffing the Old Guy with straw, and then trying to burn it. You wouldn’t think it’d be hard to burn a straw man, but Ed Halliwell can’t get the match lit. By the time we get to the end of the article we can watch the match fizzle and go out.
Really, if these people want to talk about the New Atheism, or any other variety, they should stop and learn something about it first. A little humility would go a long way. He thinks it’s such a poignant way to end his article, but he doesn’t give us even a glimpse of his own humility, just a lot of words which end up to a big ‘0’. What exactly did he want to say? It’s strange reading through an article and then realising that it doesn’t really mean anything. Like the clever ‘turn the eyeballs inwards’. How clever! Why did I never think of such a wonderfully graphic phrase for introspection? And doubt, he tells us, is creative, but forgets that he’s talking about people for whom doubt is a first principle.
The truth is that the so-called After New Atheism conference was a damp squib because it had pretty damp people there, very damp indeed, except for Roger Scruton, who actually sounded (from the little I heard of him) more like a New Atheist than the others. That’s mainly because Scruton is particularly bright, and finds it hard to say stupid things, even though you may disagree with him. But until they’ve understood the New Atheism, there can be no after, and until they’ve got some reasonable conception of god, there’s no way to make sense of religion either, and talking strato-cumulously about fuzzy boundaries won’t really help.
Where is the doubt and humility in “The Bible says it, I believe it, and that settles it“?
Individuals like Marilynne Robinson believe that transcendent experiences are communications with the supernatural. If we either don’t have these visions or don’t believe they are anything more than reactions occurring within our very natural, very material brains, then we aren’t fully human. One can use psychoactive drugs, starvation, meditation, etc. to experience visions -but the idea that one has contacted the gods is ancient and not at all sophisticated.
To put it bluntly, I don’t think I am deficient if I reject the idea of a disembodied mind thingy floating around in the ether – made up of God’s mind thingy and all of the mind thingies of every dead person – and every so often the embodied mind of a believer in the transcendent interacts with this disembodied mind thingy and experiences something wonderful that is definitely not sciency at all.
Awww…he wants us to be a bit kinder. Why is it I can’t feel kinder to all these people buggering children, suppressing freedoms and destroying lives the world over? There must be something wrong with me. Must…..get……more……humble…
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Skeptic South Africa, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: Oh if only we could learn to doubt http://dlvr.it/6mhsn […]
I love how these science/religion articles turn the whole CiF commentariat into bloody mind readers. Those comment sections are such a train wreck.
Notice that they only want ONE SIDE (that of atheists) to “let go of being “right”, and instead embrace a deep kind of doubt, one that accepts that the conceptual and perceptual tools we use to explore the world are limited and may be faulty”
The OTHER side gets to hang on to being right and continue embracing a deep kind of certainty and never accept any concepts or perceptions that don’t make them look infallible.
If these bozi (plural of bozo) could show any kind of consistency they might have a chance of being taken seriously. Of course, they don’t care what we think of them and their so-called arguments…
Well, I mean…when you phrase it like that…
That’s exactly the position some people take. “Productive,” in this construction, doesn’t mean more people believing things that are true. Rather, “productive” simply means that theists get to leave with their beliefs in tact, unmolested by things like facts, evidence, and objective reality.
I think so much of accommodationism and on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-handism stems from this truly bizarre assumption that people are not likely to have their minds changed as a result of direct engagement (i.e. being challenged) and/or debate. (This was one of the assumptions of Plait’s DBAD talk.) I tend to make the opposite assumption. There are a great many people, often well-educated, who literally have never heard their faith explicitly challenged on rational grounds. I’ve corresponded with people whose road to non-theism and skepticism began very decisively when someone, either in print or in person, dared to directly challenge their faith. It startled me at first, they say, but then I began to think about the questions that were being raised. The lie of Mooneyism—i.e., you’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar—is that changing someone’s mind is a matter of superficial seduction, sweet-smelling things. Not to be grandiose, but reason has a power all its own. Forcing someone to think rationally,and not allowing them to wriggle out or play the Faith Card, is a good thing. And I’ve yet to see any empirical evidence that it doesn’t work just as well as, well, whatever it is that Phil Plait does.
What, psychology suddenly stopped being a science?
Did anyone get the impression that he’s just asking us to smoke more dope?
Buford. You are in error. Bozo belongs to the 3rd declesion of Latin nouns, and so the plural is bozones.
Bozones? Hmmmmm.
Bozo can’t be 3d declension, can it? Don’t they all end in consonants? Fons, fontis; pons, pontis.
So, the familiar pattern is that NAs make some argument similar to the following:
“Science is the only reliable means yet discovered for acquiring and confirming knowledge about the world.”
This will usually be more glibly stated as something like “Science is the only source of knowledge there is”; my version’s a little more qualified than a lot of what gets thrown around by NAs in comment sections, but I think most would agree that they really mean something more like my version and that it’s simply tiresome to qualify everything one writes.
The answer is usually that most people don’t actually rely on scientific knowledge for day-to-day life. There are also objections mainly along the lines that science is another form of religion, etc, etc, which are a little harder to take seriously, but are tossed around frequently enough to bear mention.
One obvious problem is that it’s not clear at all what anyone means by “science,” “acquiring (or confirming or whatever),” “knowledge,” and so on. “Science” could conceivably mean “scientific knowledge,” “science as methodology,” “science as culture,” or “science as historical phenomenon.” Judging purely by the rhetoric, though, it would seem like the objection is predicated on interpreting science very rigidly as either a body of knowledge or as a very strict methodological philosophy. From either of these perspectives, criticisms of “scientism” have some teeth — the current body of scientific knowledge is subject to change with new evidence, it’s not all certainly true, and the methodologies currently and previously practiced in scientific culture will not necessarily figure out everything worth figuring out.
The first problem with this, though, is that it elides the problem of how much of our day-to-day knowledge is “reliable” as opposed to “good enough.” I think if anyone were to honestly evaluate the knowledge employed in day-to-day living, the results would be that:
1) Very little actual knowledge is employed by anyone unless it’s demanded by their job.
2) Most of knowledge employed in day-to-day life, while not necessarily originally acquired through the practice of science, has at the very least been confirmed with scientific knowledge, or is broadly compatible with it. Certainly the reliable stuff is.
3) The source of any particular person’s knowledge is probably not “science” per se, but other human beings (and not usually scientists). Fair enough. But how do we know knowledge passed on by other human beings is reliable? The two ways that pop out are a) independently confirm the knowledge passed by another human being or b) try to determine the reliability of the source by interviewing trusted sources who know this person, or by independently confirming other reports from the source to establish whether they are at least usually reliable.
Note that (a) is essentially scientific experimentation and (b) is roughly scientific peer review. I conjecture that no matter the original source of some bit of knowledge, any method we derive for confirming that knowledge or to make it more reliable is going to look like a short description of scientific methodology.
The second problem is that, based on the rhetoric, the critics of the NAs are using a different meaning of “science” from the NAs themselves. I’d suggest the NAs typically take a common-sense view of science as a historical and cultural phenomenon distinguished from other cultures by its preoccupation with intersubjective evaluations of physical theories relative to empirical facts; some might be thinking more along the lines of the broad-brush methodology for confirming knowledge that I outlined above.
Their critics, on the other hand, seem to be thinking of “science” either as the body of knowledge so-far confirmed by scientific culture, or even as its own separate metaphysical phenomenon in direct competition with God (as a metaphysical entity). The first usage is, of course, accepted in normal spoken English, but philosophically it’s rather misleading. NAs certainly don’t commit to current physical theories as the last word in truths about the universe — the whole point of scientific theories is that they’re always subject to revision in the light of new evidence. I think NAs find this fact so self-evident that they don’t bother to belabor it, but the rhetoric of their critics I think betrays that this is a common point of misunderstanding. And of course the view that science is some giant abstract ghostly thing that pours knowledge into our heads is a caricature of Christian thought, not a genuine description of NA thought.
To an NA (or at least to myself, NAs should feel free to say whether they disagree), no particular fact or methodology is fixed as a part of science, the content of science is subject to change. What’s constant about science is the reliance on skepticism, empiricism, and intersubjectivity — and I think when NAs champion science as our only reliable source of knowledge, this “loose” view of science is what they have in mind. What their critics mistake for certainty about a body of knowledge or certainty about a metaphysical claim is actually certainty about the efficacy of doubt — particularly self-doubt — in discovery. Of course, it’s hard to forcefully advocate for doubt without looking like a hypocrite (should one doubt one’s faith in doubt?). It’s a little like accusing someone of being angry until they angrily exclaim “I’m not angry!” “You’re too certain!” “I’m certainly not too certain!”
I guess the next question for those making accusations of “scientism,” assuming they’re actually trying to understand where NAs are coming from as opposed to merely getting a rhetorical edge on them, is whether they can come up with any method of confirming or disconfirming assertions of truths about the world that doesn’t look like a thumbnail sketch of scientific methodology. I seriously doubt any can.
So any truth claim is theism then. If I perceive that I just stubbed my toe and claim that I did in reality, that’s theism. Crazy.
As far as I am concerned, Psychology is a science, albeit slightly soft. And we already talk about theism in terms of psychology, more specifically as a delusion. What is the delusion that uber atheists have? It is suggested that we have some ‘fixed ideas’ in our heads, otherwise known as ideology. But I’m certainly unaware of any ideology or fixed ideas I have in my mind, but perhaps I do hold a few fixed opinions on what is right and what is wrong. Unless proven wrong, for example, when a priest rapes a child that is supposed to be in his care, I see that as wrong. When the Pope covers this up and allows such priests to continue raping children, then I still see that as wrong. Is that a fixed idea? No, I’m completely open to anyone proving that I am in fact completely wrong.
These tropes occur with such frequency you’d think they’ve all bought the ‘How to counter New Atheists in a few simple steps’ from braindead publishing inc. Or they’re copies of the one shit article, put through a word munger to make it look all brand spanking new (though it doesn’t work, maybe version 2.0 of word munger will work better) or they’re all written by the same guy and sold off to columnist for $.10 and a quicky in the confessional.
Sadly, if you throw enough mud it sticks as far as those too busy to delve deeper or too fixed in their views to find out the truth are concerned. We just have to keep shovelling the execra I guess.
I believe bozo is a defective 2nd declension noun.
Singular
Nominative: Bozo
Genitive: Bozi
Accusative: Bozum
Dative: Bozo
Ablative: Bozo
Vocative: Bozo
Plural
Nominative: Bozi
Genitive: Bozorum
Accusative :Bozos
Dative: Bozis
Ablative: Bozis
Vocative: Bozi
Hence:
Video bozos in agro – I see the bozos in the field.
Bozi puellae crustula dant – The bozos give the girls cookies.
Bozi saepe crapulae habent – Bozos often have hangovers.
I really need to get a life…..Vero debeo vitam obteneo.
In scientific terminology, the bozon is the elementary particle of inanity. It was recently discovered deep in the abyss of Ed Halliwell’s skull. However, the Nobel committee has announced that no prize will be awarded. Instead, the King of Sweden will give Halliwell a wedgie and a swirly in a private ceremony to be held in the palace latrine.
But why do the best ceremonies have to be private? Bloody nobility arrogating all the fun to themselves, while letting us serfs have boring white tie ceremonies.
Okay, first of all “Bozi puellae crustula dant” should mean “The bozos give the *girl* cookies,” not “girls,” which would be “puellis”. Secondly, there are indeed 3d nouns ending in “o” — like legio, legionis (“legion”) and — you’ll love this one — religio, religionis (“… [well, you know]”). So “bozones” (nom/acc pl.) sounds fine to me.
Certe ego atque vero debeo vitam obtenere [gotta use inf. here w/debeo].
Don’t worry Dave M, I noticed the mistake with obtenire but didn’t think it worth correcting. Missed the one about girl instead of girls. Sleep deprived brain. :)
It’s quite a spectacle, isn’t it, to see all these deep thinkers crawl out of their little holes lately just to go out of their way to show the world how stupid (i.e. wilfully ignorant) and condescending they can be. This Halliwell guy holds forth on “crude scientism” without apparently having read the first thing about epistemology and then grandly announces our observations to be “inevitably coloured by the subjective standpoint”. Well, no shit, Sherlock? How can he seriously believe that he beat science to this insight, when it was science in the first place that presented an objectifying, self-correcting process to level out the subjectivity? Why on earth is such a clueless and self-important piece of puff being published by the Guardian?
According to the Urban Dictionary:
Bozone (Noun)
The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
Hamilton – HA! There are a lot of good laughs on this thread, and that one was the biggest.
Oh yes; religio etc; my Latin, never strong, is now beyond rusty. Bozo, bozonis it is.
OB you pretty much pegged Marilyn Robinson in your piece. I’ve been seething since hearing her on Thinking Allowed. I’m trying to decide if she’s just thick or lying because she makes a rather big deal about how she’s read the Gnu Atheist books and then continues to say they somehow don’t say anything about consciousness which is perverse given Sam Harris and that chapter on Spirituality and the fact that Daniel Dennett is fricking Philosopher of Mind who has written umpteen bloody books on the subject!
Personally I’m going for thick because her contribution starts off with a shocker where she confuses Logical Positivism with Positivism and clearly can’t be bothered to actually find out that the problem with LP was that it put too much emphasis on project of creating a logic of natural language.
Frankly It’s like she can’t even open a book before making her assertions and I’m not even going to bother with the pretense of treating people like that as anything like serious contributors.
Montag, yes, I find Marilynne Robinson really irritating – she seems so pleased with herself and so convinced that she’s a Deep Thinker, but what she says is both false and utterly banal. It was infuriating that Jon Stewart was so nice to her when she was on The Daily Show. He needed to make fun of her!
http://www.math.ohio-state.edu/~econrad/lang/ln4.html
According to this (scroll down), bozo is 4th declension, though some 4th declension nouns seem to shift to second.
I agree about Jon Stewart and Robinson. I thought the same thing about self-proclaimed atheists on last night’s Real Time with Bill Maher. They accused Maher of being narrow-minded because he refused to say that his atheism could be changed by divine revelation. Really, that was S.E. Cupp’s definition of open-minded atheism.
Ha! I love the idea of Latin borrowing words through a time warp from English.
Marilynne Robinson says we fall into theism if we project our ideas into the world. Can she explain why that is a bad thing? Why is evidence-based “theism” bad if the alternative is an evidence-free one? Or is there a third non-theistic non-“theistic” option? So many questions…
While “the other side” wouldn’t.
Which means that…
What Montag observes is a now standard theist rhetorical move. If someone asks for evidence in an argument the response is:
1. This sounds a bit like logical positivism
2. Logical positivism is wrong (never mind the details)
Therefore I do not have to back up my assertions with evidence.
There is another that I am starting to wonder about. It goes like this:
I have a really sophisticated argument that proves the existence of god. No really I do. It will be along in a minute. Just you wait – it is really really sophisticated. Any moment now…(repeat ad infinitum). The bit I’m starting to wonder about is that entries on other blogs suggest I may have been mistaken on this one in that often the amazingly sophisticated argument was actually presented; it was just that the atheist reader did not recognise it as such when it arrived because it was actually an oft-refuted old argument that only theists take seriously. The theist is therefore already sitting back with satisfaction while the atheist is still waiting for the other shoe to drop… and it never does.
You mean I can stop waiting??
Montag,
I pretty much blacked out from the stupid after that line (“[they don’t] acknowledge the centrality of consciousness”). I mean, FFS, one of Dennett’s books is called Consciousness Explained! GAAAH
Yes, but if you think consciousness is the mysterious ineffable mushy spirit-y Cartesian thing that Dennett denies even exists, then what you will say is precisely that he, like other naturalists, “doesn’t acknowledge the centrality of consciousness” [i.e. so construed].