Think of the Children!
by JoyI quoted something Coturnix said in his reply to PZ's rant over at Pharyngula in another thread. I think it needs contextualizing so that his last sentence - the one I quoted - can be examined. The comment link is here so you can read the entire thing. I'll add a few paragraphs for context:
None of this is relevant to the politics of the day. Congress and the President need to do something yesterday to start stopping global warming. And to open up stem-cell research. They will never do that unless they are under pressure. They will be under pressure if the public pressures them. If the issue polls high.
How do you get majority of Americans to put pressure on politicians to do something? By getting them to think that they have a steak in this - a personal reason to see such bills written into law.
Teaching them evolution won't work - they just give you an angry look. Moving the discussion over to the religion vs. atheism playing field is counterproductive to say the least.
That is why others, including liberal theists we disagree with on religion, need to do that kind of persuasion. They speak their language. They have their trust. They can produce results fast.
In the meantime, we'll try to work on their kids so in 20 years this entire discussion becomes unnecessary.
[Emphasis mine] First, I have no "steak" [sic] in this. I'm a vegetarian. Second, if science wants to dictate political policy, they need to learn how to play politics. You don't get absolute political power by whining, or by macho posturing, or by throwing juvenile hissy-fits about how much smarter you are than anybody else. You get it by glad-handing, raising money, gaining supporters and winning the popular vote. No one running for office in this country gets elected by insulting the public or claiming they have no right to vote their conscience. Never happen.
Third, what in the world does human contribution to global warming have to do with evolution? There are already laws on the books that aren't being enforced - policy, not recognition of the issue - and the Kyoto Protocols our government should be made to accept (because it requires them to enforce the laws already on the books). This is solved by "regime change," not by dueling metaphysics. It's about greed, not religion.
Thus I'm not worried about PZ Myers suddenly getting gifted with absolute political power. I'm not worried that the more moderate EAs are going to get it either, since they're too busy deflecting insults from their own club. In fact, it looks to me like the EA quest for absolute political power is doomed to failure from the git-go, and none of us need concern ourselves about their futile attempts to be threaty.
What DOES concern me is the bolded statement Coturnix finished his post with. It speaks to something that's been ongoing for at least 40 years already (since it's been that long since I took the evolutionary portion of biology in high school), and the American public still isn't buying Neodarwinist pablum as any kind of sufficient explanation for who and what we are, where we came from.
These people seem completely ignorant of why individuals might choose to believe something other than "science = atheism" in spite of their exclusive access to other people's children for the exercise in indoctrination in public schools. We have PZ and gang insisting that Ph.D. candidates, medical students, etc. be denied degrees if they don't swear eternal faith in atheism, and that candidates for tenure be denied on the same basis.
At what point can we expect public school science teachers to apply this same litmus test to teenagers, failing them for the course even if they pass the tests? Isn't that the logical next step, given that 40 years' worth of indoctrination of other people's children hasn't worked to create the atheist utopia they envision?
If I were a legal eagle, or a lot more tech-savvy than I am, I'd be looking into this. Looking at various associations of public science teachers, organizations that claim science advocacy on this issue, and any behind-the-official-scenes communications (blogs, mailing lists, obscure websites, etc.) that discuss strategy and tactics toward these goals.
My children passed their high school evolution courses long ago. My grandchildren are old enough now that they passed 'em too. I quite enjoyed the course myself, and never thought it was anything but what it actually is - current scientific theory as to the evolution of life. That was never a threat to my belief system, and it wasn't a threat to my progeny's beliefs. If it were, I'd have opted them out.
But if the science teachers who teach the course were really out to make atheists of their students (and that could be demonstrated by evidence), I'd have filed suit against the entire enterprise as a blatant violation of Amendment #1 of the US Constitution.
Anyway, that's my take on this whole "We're After Your Children" bit of impotent threatiness. Bring it on, jerks! See how far you get before finding yourselves driving ski shuttles and tending bar for a living!
April 15th, 2007 at 6:12 pm
For those who may not have seen this, Eugenie Scott (executive director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE)) offered her advice to science teachers a couple of years ago on the Berkeley site to actually include theology in science classes.
Scott:
Is this the kind of framing (spin) that is being advocate by some scientists?
So then after framing the issue around a limited subset of theologians she has the gall to say, shut it down:
Sounds like deliberate spin to me.
Comment by Steve Petermann — April 15, 2007 @ 6:12 pm
April 15th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Steve quotes Eugenie:
This might work in an elective course, but in one every student must take it certainly opens the door to those who DON'T believe evolution is compatible with their faith. Then she'd cut off discussion because science teachers aren't theology teachers.
What garbage! They either are or they aren't. Science teachers have been teaching anti-theology for decades (textbooks are now changing to omit those arguments). You can't dictate anyone's religious beliefs by simple authoritarian imposition from the state-as-science-teacher, then tell the kids to shut up and accept it.
Well, they could try it, I suppose. Can't wait to see how that works out for them! §;o)
Comment by Joy — April 15, 2007 @ 6:42 pm
April 15th, 2007 at 11:11 pm
"In the meantime, we'll try to work on their kids so in 20 years this entire discussion becomes unnecessary."
Bring it on, Paul, bring it on.
Comment by kornbelt888 — April 15, 2007 @ 11:11 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 12:35 am
Heh - this quote reminds me of another:
Comment by Wonders For Oyarsa — April 16, 2007 @ 12:35 am
April 16th, 2007 at 10:24 am
kornbelt888:
Myers doesn't get 'em until they're enfranchised adults, when university exposure to the 'intellectual elite' and their various odd ideas is par for the course for producing critically thinking college graduates. I doubt he has much luck converting his students to his metaphysics. He did mention once that he doesn't get the students of faith - they take some other biology teacher's courses.
They're pinning their hopes on teenagers, as they always have. This is because most of the hardest core evangelical atheists proudly proclaim that they came to their sure knowledge of the non-existence of God when they were 13 years old. Part of that teenage rebellion thing, which is part of the struggle for independence from family and culture. Which explains a lot about why EA criticisms and stereotypes are so childish. Their understandings of what they rebelled against forever remain those of a rebellious child no matter how old they get.
The plan hasn't worked very well over the past ~40 years' worth of implementation because teenagers aren't paying much attention. They're usually way too busy contemplating who they'll be having sex with after school to care about anything more than passing the test. That's mere factoids, not real understanding.
WFO:
Hitler didn't have all that much luck with this plan either, if history is any judge (and it is)… §;o)
Comment by Joy — April 16, 2007 @ 10:24 am
April 16th, 2007 at 1:08 pm
Joy wrote:
I think that's very true—in part. Wanting to control one's own life often does involve instinctive rebellion against parental control, and Authority of the Other in general, which would obviously include God and any who claim to speak for God, such as churches.
On the other hand, sometimes parents and other would-be authority figures, including many religious ones, are dumb as hell. It can often have the effect of making God appear as dumb as hell too, and obviously a dumb God is necessarily a nonexistent one.
So many young aspiring atheists reason as follows:
"If God existed, he wouldn't have placed these dumb people in charge of me….; If God existed, I wouldn't have to spend my Sunday mornings listening to this idiot….; If God existed, he wouldn't have given me these raging hormones and tell me they were bad….; If God existed, he wouldn't have created all these bad and annoying people…." Et cetera.
These are mostly forms of the general Argument from How I'd Have Done Things Differently If I Were the Creator.
Which is, of course, the type of argument that also motivates a great deal of the opposition to ID. "If God existed, he wouldn't have created life-forms using evolutionary mechanisms…..; If God existed, he wouldn't have taken so long to create intelligent life…..; If God existed, there wouldn't be predation….." Etc, etc.
Of course, nobody to my knowledge has ever shown how to get intelligent life while altering the parameters of physical laws even slightly. So my challenge is always to ask for a complete specification of the science of a complete alternative physical universe, plus a demonstration that its total natural consequences would be better overall than those of the actual universe. It's never forthcoming.
And I was reminded of this last night when re-reading some bits of Brian Greene's fine book, The Fabric of the Cosmos. Very, very slight changes to physics are incompatible with the emergence of complex physical life. The problem is the mathematical structure of fundamental physics and the mathematical structure of complex physical life. The relationship between these two structures is, of mathematical necessity, very finely-tuned. And not a lot of young atheists, let alone people in general, really understand that.
Very few young people are exposed to sophisticated philosophical theism or to sophisticated theology. And of course, a great many are at the same time exposed systematically and purposely to gradually increasing levels of sophisticated natural sciences. Since they associate the concept of God with the mostly unsophisticated theology to be found in churches, it would be almost startling if many of those who excel academically didn't become atheists, at least on a practical level.
Government money in Western societies, of course, is heavily invested in scientific and technological education. It's not so much invested in educating young people about philosophical theism or in giving them a sophisticated theological education in general. In Islamic countries, there is, I venture, nothing like that degree of imbalance in the use of public monies.
So, by all means let's think of the children. But above all, let's think.
Comment by stunney — April 16, 2007 @ 1:08 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 2:23 pm
Hi stunney,
Historically it has regularly been the case that theology lags behind culture (including science). Michael Horace Barnes in his book Stages of Thought documents well how religious sentiment evolved following cultural evolution. There are stages of culture that show clear effects on religious sentiment such as the development of agriculture, the forming of cities, the advent of trade routes, the formation of goverments, etc. It is particularly evident that theology has changed dramatically since the advent of modern science. I don't view this in a negative sense at all. If the focus of theology is on ultimates and ultimate reality then it will obviously need to embrace whatever is discovered about the world and use symbols and metaphors that carry power in that particular context.
However, I would argue that there are, at present, few if any really sophisticated theistic theologies out there at least in the West. Now there are certainly theologies by prominent theologians that could be called sophisticated because of their complexity and attempt to be systematic. However, in my view, to be truely sophisticated they must fully embrace the best that science has to offer and do honor to the fundamental tenets of theism i.e a personal active God. Most fall short on one or the other of these. What we are seeing in many cases is a tendency to what I call a neo-deism. God becomes a sort of superintendent in an apartment building, just keeping the heat on and the water flowing but not really participating in the nuts and bolts of life.
There are some nascent Western theologies developing that attempt this balance like panentheism but most cling too closely to the traditions to go as far as they need to.
In the East, however, there are some theologies that are theistic and sophisticated. They fit extremely well with our current scientific explorations, yet still maintain belief in a personal, active God. The ones I see great promise for stem from a qualified monism asserted by Ramanuja and more recently Sri Aurobindo. These are both monistic and theistic so they avoid the natural/supernatural (god of the gaps) problems of classic theism. Certainly, at the grass routes level of these Hindu approaches there is a great deal of superstition and strange formulations. However, the core principals are very sophisticated in the sense I mention. In my view they must be purged of their inherent world rejection but the basic ontology, it seems to me, offers something that, in particular, the science minded could find reasonable.
With regard to the kids, I think it is unfortunate that the school systems at least in the US do not avail themselves to give the children a broad understanding of religion. I don't think that classes in comparative religion should be mandatory but if they were offered then they could be presented by professionals able to do the topic justice. I have a friend who teaches philosophy at a local high school. This is, of course, a rareity at this level but according to her the kids just eat it up. When we teach kids basic math and science at the lower levels they have the opportunity to develop sophisticated powers of reasoning and exploration. If they aren't offered similar opportunities in philosophy and religion we shouldn't expect them to have the foundations to later become sophisticated in these areas as well.
Comment by Steve Petermann — April 16, 2007 @ 2:23 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
That's a good analogy. Atheists have reached puberty and reject the fantasies of childhood that theists are still stuck in. One day humankind will truly grow up and look back on the days of childish fantasies with a sentimental smile and a sense of relief.
That's hardly surprising, since we don't even know yet how to get intelligent life without altering the parameters. Please tell me, how do you know there ever was an opportunity to tamper with the parameters? How do you know there's not a physical model waiting to be discovered, in which those parameters are emerging properties? We certainly know the current models aren't the final word since they are inconsistent. It's always amusing to see the schizophrenic attitude of believers towards science. On the one hand, scientific results that seem to contradict their beliefs are dismissed and ridiculed. On the other hand, believers are so eager to embrace the scientific speculations that they think confirm their religious views.
I think you got it backwards. If it requires such ingenious twisting and turning to make a convincing case for God (in essence defining God away), then young people are quite right to be skeptical.
Comment by Raevmo — April 16, 2007 @ 2:40 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 2:46 pm
Keep on dreaming.
What about those who come to Christianity or some other organized religion, or some belief in a personal God later in life?
Comment by Doug — April 16, 2007 @ 2:46 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 2:49 pm
Assuming that the global warming predictions are true, I wonder if anyone besides me thinks it worth pointing out that applied science is the cause and that government is relatively powerless to fix it? I can recall when nuclear power was the solution to all our energy needs. Hmm, that didn't pan out. I wonder what amazing benefits stem cell research will offer and if it will produce the first technology with no trade-offs?
Comment by WedgeHead — April 16, 2007 @ 2:49 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
Hi, stunney. I'll respond better to this later, as right now we're experiencing collapsing buildings and flying trees, a nephew at VaTech we haven't yet heard from, a sister just out of surgery for lung cancer. Watta spring. §:o(
Comment by Joy — April 16, 2007 @ 2:52 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Granted, they exist. But aren't they often people struck by some sort of personal misfortune or tragedy, like loss of a loved one, disease or addiction (GW Bush comes to mind)? Rather than by weighing the evidence and exercise of reason?
Comment by Raevmo — April 16, 2007 @ 2:56 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
raevmo wrote:
Atheists have this childish need to control things, in particular their toys, and whether they should be able to have dessert rather than eat their peas. This gets fixated in a teenage form and it then becomes difficult to grow out of. Anything that's bigger, higher, wiser, or more awesome than them is threaty, in an existential sense. This includes Nature, which they then seek to control and tame and harness and bend to their will—their will-to-childish power and domination.
Since God, other minds in general, and things like objective morality, are not subject to that immature will-to-power and domination, they are suspect and threaty to the typical atheist.
This leads to denial of God's existence, denial of objective morality, denial of the irreducibility of minds to controllable material objects and processes, and so on.
Atheism is the logical and often the psychological result of an immature desire/need for security identified as control, and this requires self-deification, which in turn requires dethroning all other gods.
As the French (and Freud) say, "Il faut tuer le pere".
Comment by stunney — April 16, 2007 @ 3:04 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 3:13 pm
raevmo wrote:
Theists don't need to posit multiverses, sunshine. Or infinite branes, or whatever the theoretical physics du jour happens to be, which hardly anybody is capable of understanding anyway.
As for twisting and turning, the evolutionary naturalist's account of mind, morality, meaning, not to mention the mathematical reasoning that goes into theorizing multiverses and branes cannot be beaten in that respect. Why? Because it's obviously incoherent.
Comment by stunney — April 16, 2007 @ 3:13 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
I shouldn't be enjoying this… but I am…
Comment by Wonders For Oyarsa — April 16, 2007 @ 3:19 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
Freud should know, he was an atheist, wasn't he? Et les femmes, ils faut tuer la mere?
Comment by Raevmo — April 16, 2007 @ 3:19 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Is it now? More twisting and turning than extrapolating inconsistent mathematical models to make-believe universes with different parameters? I grant you though that the evolutionary naturalist's account of mind and morality is in its infancy. But not incoherent. Let's give those boys and girls in the labs and the armchairs some time to figure it out, shall we? But no, the theist demands instant certainty.
Comment by Raevmo — April 16, 2007 @ 3:29 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 3:56 pm
How ironic, you make atheists sound just like the God of the OT. But nevertheless you might be on to something. The quest for scientific knowledge is more than just satisfying one's curiosity and showing how clever one is, it is also a quest to dominate Nature - and ultimately to defeat mortality. Because that's what atheists and theists have in common: they fear death. The theists try to make it go away by simply denying death, the atheist scientists try to actually prevent death. And it is my belief that one day they will. Too bad, as far as I'm concerned, that we won't be alive when that day comes.
Comment by Raevmo — April 16, 2007 @ 3:56 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 4:04 pm
raevmo wrote:
Huh? Which theist does that?
My reply to the Argument from How I Would Have Done Things Differently If I Were the Creator is simply to ask the atheist deployer of that argument to publish the math and science and detailed calculations of the alternative universe s/he, the atheist hypothesizes is both possible and superior. Show me the design. Specify it. Don't just rely on your unfounded modal intuition that a better world is possible. No, actually design the thing! Come on, it can't be that hard for 'brights' now, can it?
I don't have to prove that this is the only possible physics. I don't have to prove that other universes are feasible or better. Why? Because I'm not the one giving the Argument from How I Would Have Done It Differently If Were the Creator, which in one form or another the atheist uses to argue for atheism. I simply don't know how to design a universe. I've no idea what the possibilities are. As a moral judgement, I believe only that one should only design universes that are valuable in net terms, and in which free agents, if any exist in a given universe, are capable of realizing net value by their actions. Beyond that, I really don't know.
It's the atheist who's claiming that s/he wouldn't have designed it this way. So, okay, what's the way you'd have designed it? That strikes me as a simple enough request in response to the atheist. Just don't forget to rule out the possibility that by the design of the actual universe, billions of planets inhabited by trillions of deliriously happy beings exist, the Earth being a sad exception to the rule in this respect. Because if you fail to ascertain that fact, it would screw up your calculations as to whether your alternative universe was really better than this one after all.
This is what is known in the trade as a faith-based statement. Polkinghorne dubs it 'promissory materialism'.
The atheist demands complete certainty now that whatever discovery is made in the future, it will be perfectly explainable by natural science. Especially if the atheist happens to be good at natural science.
Thus if the atheist should ever have a vision of the risen Christ, the atheist already knows with scientific certainty that this will be the purely natural result of a brain malfunction or illusion of some sort. Nothing can be allowed to be threaty to gospel of scientific materialism. Nor the atheist's need for control.
Comment by stunney — April 16, 2007 @ 4:04 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 4:24 pm
raevmo wrote:
Atheists should beware of making the following argument:
1. If a God as literally depicted by the OT doesn't exist, then theism is false.
2. There are good reasons for thinking that no God so depicted exists.
Therefore, theism is false.
This is a really bad argument.
In practice, it's the operative argument that many atheists actually rely on to justify their atheism.
Its more general form argues that if all specific religions are false, then theism is false. This of course is also a bad argument.
Another form goes like this: if all religious claims can be shown to have evolved over time in very substantive ways, then theism is false. A similar argument could be formed to show that science is false. Both would of course be bad arguments.
Atheists are surprisingly friendly toward bad arguments. Another goes like this:
I don't understand how a transcendent spiritual being could have created the physical world. Therefore, that didn't happen.
This is reminiscent of this one:
I don't understand how natural evolution could have given rise to the human eye. Therefore, that didn't happen.
Those are both bad, though most atheists think only the second one is.
Comment by stunney — April 16, 2007 @ 4:24 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 4:36 pm
Me:
stunney:
You do. You brought up the "fine-tuning" argument in this thread, remember?
I have never claimed I would not have designed it this way. In fact, I'm quite happy with the way things are.
Me:
stunney:
Flashback to 1666: you claim the plague is God's punishment, I claim a cure will be found some day.
I have never had a vision of the risen Christ as far as I remember. What does the risen Christ look like anyway? Any man could be the risen Christ. What makes a person look "risen" Do you perhaps mean a vision of a beautiful bearded young white man with bloody wounds and thorns in his hair? If such a vision occured to me in a dream I probably would attribute it to a flasback to Mel Gibson's movie. If awake during daylight, I would question my sanity rather than start believing in Jezus. On the other hand, if this visionary Jezus would make a prediction about some spectacular event that would happen the next day, and it came true, then I would be ready to bow to him and shed my misguided atheism. Did something like that happen to you?
Comment by Raevmo — April 16, 2007 @ 4:36 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 4:50 pm
Yes they would. But you neglect to mention an importance difference between theism and science: scientists don't claim that their theories are true. Their theories are always tentative, and ready to be discarded when the evidence contradicts them. In fact, it's every scientist's dream to overthrow a major theory and replace it with a better one - that's the stuff careers of great scientists are made of. I don't see that kind of progress in religious belief. I will say that the scientific theories of 500 years ago are false. Will you say the same about religious belief of 500 years ago?
Comment by Raevmo — April 16, 2007 @ 4:50 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
I too would (in many cases) identify fundamentalist religious belief with childhood, and atheism as the adolescent phase of development — a time when you (think you) know everything, are convinced that your parents (or religious predecessors) are morons who don't know anything, and there is total absorption with self-centered beliefs.
It's interesting that you embraced the adolescent identity so readily. . .
Fortunately, there are phases of psychological development beyond adolescence, and beyond atheism. . .
Comment by mcromer — April 16, 2007 @ 5:07 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 5:14 pm
Hi Stunney,
I whole heartedly-agree. THINK.
And more than that THINK FOR YOURSELF
Don't presume anyone or any book is correct. Ask. Challenge. Provoke.
Teach the children to do likewise.
Provoking Thought
P.S.
Joy, your post is a good example of effective persuasive speaking.
It has generated a lot of interesting comments.
Comment by Thought Provoker — April 16, 2007 @ 5:14 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 5:16 pm
Just to butt in if I may ..
Raevmo :
I think what stunney is saying is that a solution to the fine tuning problem favoured by many atheists is the existence of many real universes with different parameters .
"On the other hand, if this visionary Jezus would make a prediction about some spectacular event that would happen the next day, and it came true, then I would be ready to bow to him and shed my misguided atheism."
This raises an interesting point . Some people do claim to have had just such an experience . Even allowing for the fact that the fulfillment of the prophecy may be a coincidence , does that person have a legitimate reason to become a Christian ?
Comment by Spacepenguin — April 16, 2007 @ 5:16 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 5:29 pm
Perhaps you are right, maybe stunney is saying that. But I am not aware of any poll suggesting that many atheists do believe in a multiverse reality. As far as I know, a handful of cosmologists has brought up this kind of entertaining speculation. Good fun, but to imply that this is the standard atheist point of view is simply misleading.
I think so. If I would have had that kind of vision yesterday and the visionary Jezus would have predicted today's massacre at this Virginia school, I would be a convert. It depends on the quality of the prediction.
Comment by Raevmo — April 16, 2007 @ 5:29 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
Raevmo :
"Perhaps you are right, maybe stunney is saying that. But I am not aware of any poll suggesting that many atheists do believe in a multiverse reality. As far as I know, a handful of cosmologists has brought up this kind of entertaining speculation. Good fun, but to imply that this is the standard atheist point of view is simply misleading."
It's implied by eternal inflation , which is the most popular theory in cosmology at the moment , and the landscape of string theory . It's a lot more than entertaining speculation in good fun . I'm not saying most atheists buy the multiverse idea , just that it is the most popular atheist counter to the fine tuning argument .
"I think so. If I would have had that kind of vision yesterday and the visionary Jezus would have predicted today's massacre at this Virginia school, I would be a convert. It depends on the quality of the prediction."
What level of quality would be required ? Say you had a premonition , accompanied by a vision of Jesus , that someone you knew was going to die in a car crash that day , you prevented them from driving and lo and behold there was a car crash on the route they normally drove on . Would this be sufficient ? Such things are reported all the time in tabloid magazines , I don't think the people in those articles are lying as such , should I then become a Christian based on that ?
How do you quantify the quality of the prediction ? Isn't it an essentially subjective measure ?
Comment by Spacepenguin — April 16, 2007 @ 5:49 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
I don't believe so. It certainly wasn't the case with me. Because of the early passing of a loved one I became deeply atheistic. I wanted certainties, not a fantasy to tell myself that I ultimately would not be able to come to terms with while I was struggling to sleep at night.
My situation (which I'm going to assume is not terribly different from others) was a catalyst that put me on a search for some truth; it wasn't something that made me settle for a happy tale to humor myself with because reality seemed so bleak.
When you go through a situation like that do you think that willfully lying to yourself would actually give any comfort?
Comment by Doug — April 16, 2007 @ 5:49 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
Raevmo,
Just curious. Why do you type "Jezus" opposed to "Jesus"
Is it like how some insist on typing "Xtian" opposed to "Christian"
Comment by Doug — April 16, 2007 @ 5:55 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 6:05 pm
Spacepenguin:
Yes, I believe it is. There is a very good quantitative theory on how to modify one's believes in the face of new evidence - it's called Bayesian statistics (I strongly recommend Jaynes' "Probability theory - the logic of science", it's for free on the web. You can Google it). But in practice we usually lack good enough models to quantify evidence. So it makes sense for people to draw different conclusions from the same evidence - they use different intuitive models. But only up to a point…
Comment by Raevmo — April 16, 2007 @ 6:05 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
Sorry, that's the spelling in my native language.
Comment by Raevmo — April 16, 2007 @ 6:06 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
No, of course not. I can see that religious belief is quite genuine, and I would never say that religious people are willfully lying to themselves.
Comment by Raevmo — April 16, 2007 @ 6:11 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
raevmo wrote:
It starts with, or rather doesn't determine, one's prior assumptions or beliefs about how probable a given proposition is.
If one starts with the belief that it's 99.9999% probable that there's no such thing as experiencing, in this life, a person who is literally risen from the dead, it will take a lot to shift that belief-state.
I think Christianity is a case in point. St Paul never expected to experience in this life Jesus of Nazareth, literally risen from the dead.
But he did.
Comment by stunney — April 16, 2007 @ 6:42 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Raevmo :
Thanks for the link . I suppose there is a parallel with the cogito argument , I can prove to myself that I exist , but not to anyone else .
As a side note I would say this is also the case with NDE's , the subject is , in most cases , clearly convinced that they left their bodies and frequently have no fear of death after the experience , but that doesn't count as a reason , in itself , to believe in an afterlife . Though it may count as a reason to investigate further into the possibility .
Comment by Spacepenguin — April 16, 2007 @ 6:44 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Comment by stunney — April 16, 2007 @ 6:59 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
raevmo wrote:
Jeepers. You're one confused little sunbeam on a rainy day, arentcha?
Let me do it slowly:
raevmo—philosophical theism twists and turns
stunney–it don't get more twisty and turny than multiverses, baby.
hint: multiverses are the preferred solution of atheistic naturalists, not theists, to the fine-tuning data.
raevmo–hey, there you go introducing twisty and turny ideas like multiverses
stunney—wtf? it's yer atheistic naturalist buddies like Susskind, Sir Martin Rees, and Co. that decided that one can evade an ID conclusion from cosmo fine-tuning by just introducing an implausibly vast number of additional universes. (It seems raevmo's not familiar with this stuff.) Oh look, there's Uncle Billy Ockham! I love it when he says in that gravelly voice, 'Now remember, kids—don't you be multiplying no darn entities beyond necessity!'. (raevmo always gets confused by the 'beyond necessity' bit. raevmo thinks it's the same as 'fewest is the winner'; when of course it's 'fewest necessary is the winner'. silly raevmo! he always forgets the 'necessary' part. teeheehee!
Comment by stunney — April 16, 2007 @ 7:09 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Thought Provoker wrote:
Right.
And above all, teach them not to take their cue from Richard Dawkins or Frank Harris.
Comment by stunney — April 16, 2007 @ 7:26 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
stunney, are you suffering from some kind of Stockholm syndrome? Feeling intellectually hostage and then calling me sunshine and baby? Just asking.
So fine-tuning speculation has risen to the level of data now, has it? What makes you think that multiverses are the *preferred* solution? Please share the data. I don't speak for other atheists and I have hinted at my preferred solution above:
You didn't answer these questions, did you? My point was that the current inconsistent models are not the final answer, and while it might be tempting to extrapolate from them and fancy make-believe universes in which life as we know it would be impossible, that doesn't rise above the level of fancyful speculation. I predict that a better model will be found which has many of the "tunable" parameters as emergent properties. When this "gap" has been filled, what will they come up with next?
Comment by Raevmo — April 16, 2007 @ 7:27 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 7:31 pm
raevmo
Yes.
Comment by stunney — April 16, 2007 @ 7:31 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
So you're linking to a site stating there are problems with quantum field theories. A bizar way to solve the problems is to postulate a multiverse. And that's data? Why don't you answer these questions:
And now I'm afraid I have to go to sleep. Back to the lab in about 5 hours. Looking foward to those answers.
Comment by Raevmo — April 16, 2007 @ 7:44 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
raevmo wrote:
This is what is known in the trade as a faith-based statement. Aka 'promissory materialism'.
'Emergent'. Now there's a word that some people might prefer to think of as magic in disguise.
Comment by stunney — April 16, 2007 @ 7:49 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
stunney wrote:
Who's Frank Harris?
Comment by keiths — April 16, 2007 @ 8:29 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 8:43 pm
You thought he was one to beat around the bush?
Comment by Wonders For Oyarsa — April 16, 2007 @ 8:43 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
"Sex is the gateway to life."—Frank Harris (1856-1931, Irish-American author)
Not to be confused with Sam.
Comment by stunney — April 16, 2007 @ 8:57 pm
April 16th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
raevmo wrote:
Surely you mean, "I would only convert if the visionary Jesus continued to accurately predict the future in controlled, double-blind, replicated experimental conditions, which I have complete control over"
Not that atheists are control-freaks, or anything…
Comment by stunney — April 16, 2007 @ 9:57 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 5:47 pm
Stunney,
Did you hear that Francis Beckwith recently reverted back to Roman Catholicism? He posted on his re-version at his blog Right Reason.
Comment by Doug — May 10, 2007 @ 5:47 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Doug,
This is interesting. Has Beckwith written about his reasons for his initial conversion to Protestantism, and if so, could you point me to a reference?
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 6:20 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Hi Keiths,
He sure did:
http://rightreason.ektopos.com...
It's kind of cool for me. I reverted back in 2004. I heard Stunney mention that he was Catholic, so I thought that he might find this interesting.
Comment by Doug — May 10, 2007 @ 6:26 pm
May 10th, 2007 at 6:43 pm
Hi Doug,
I think you misunderstood my question. I was asking if he had written about why he had left Catholicism for Protestantism in the first place.
It would be interesting to compare his reasons for converting to Protestantism with his reasons for converting back to Catholicism.
Comment by keiths — May 10, 2007 @ 6:43 pm
May 11th, 2007 at 8:49 am
Sorry about mis-reading your intial request (when I saw "to" I read "from").
I'll see if I can find something from him directly.
Comment by Doug — May 11, 2007 @ 8:49 am
May 11th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Thanks, Doug.
Comment by keiths — May 11, 2007 @ 12:06 pm
May 12th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Looks like Qualiatative might be starting his page back up again!!
Good news. I really enjoyed it the 1st time around.
But it looks like he's flying solo, no Skeptical Dualist.
Comment by Doug — May 12, 2007 @ 8:23 pm
June 15th, 2007 at 3:58 pm
Sorry Keiths,
I haven't been able to find a much on his reasons for leaving Catholicism to begin with. Just mentions here and there of "I use to be Catholic".
Oh, and Rob Koons (one of Beckwith's co-contributors over at Right Reason) also recently converted to Catholicism.
At 1st I thought it was a joke, but I guess not.
Comment by Doug — June 15, 2007 @ 3:58 pm