We all know that The New York Times shows an unconscionable love of religion (viz., its giving Tanya Luhrmann a regular column), but Greg Mayer steered me to a piece that is not only soft on religion, but for reasons that are completely opaque. In fact, unless I’ve lost my mind, the article is unreadable. I’m not sure why it’s in the Times.
The piece is called “Swimming against the rising tide: secular climate-change activists can learn from evangelical Christians,” and it’s by Kristen Dombek, described as “a columnist for n+1.”
I’ve read it twice and still don’t get the point. It decries global warming, mentions some of the advantages of religion (Dombek says she’s an unbeliever), but I’ll be damned if I can see what lessons we’re supposed to learn from evangelical Christians that will help us deal with or reverse climate change. It’s full of faitheist purple prose like the following, but where is the lesson?
In Indiana, where I’m from, ocean beaches are a faraway thing, so as a child I learned to swim in a Y.M.C.A. pool. Later in life, it is easy to forget just how hard it is to figure out that you can trust the water. You must be calm and attentive exactly when you are most scared. This is why, when adults teach you to swim, they trick you. They say, “Swim to me, I’m right here” and then back up, so you learn with your body what is possible, despite what your mind is telling you. You have to trust things outside of yourself more than you trust your instincts: your parents, the floor, chairs, bicycles, water. God, and science.
Which one of those last things is not like the others? All but the penultimate item EARN your trust by behaving in ways that give you confidence in their existence.
I think the following is supposed to be the meat of the article: our “lesson” from Christianity:
It took many more years to start believing in evolution. I had to make a study of it, look at the finches myself, learn with my mind what I had felt in the water. Even when I knew the facts, it took a leap of faith to glimpse — only ever in moments — the interconnectedness of all life on an unfathomable scale.
It is hard to understand that the ways of the universe are not human ways. But it is hard, too, to face this ocean, so changed by us, without hiding in either fear or denial. To stay awake, active, useful, is a matter of feeling as much as knowing. You have to trust that your individual life is linked to something bigger: that you belong, body and soul, to a larger story for which you are responsible. In this, those of us who believe the science might take a lesson from the faithful. And the rhetoric that would pit faith against reason ignores the millions — all of us, perhaps — who live on both.
It is summer, whether or not I go to the beach. But soon I’ll take a train to stand on the edge of the Atlantic, walk into the ocean I fear, and trust it to hold me up. I hope it will be a small kind of prayer for the future, less mystical than pragmatic, to feel in my body what is so hard to fathom: This vast and humbling contingency that’s made the waters rise is also what makes my life matter, because other creatures — human and otherwise — will live in my wake. What threatens us is also our only comfort: It matters what we do. To swim in the ocean now is to swim into the future and know that we have made it.
Sounds pretty, no? But where is the substance? Now I’m just a scientist, not an English major, so perhaps some kind reader can look at the short article and tell me what the point is. I’d appreciate it. As far as I can see, what the religious lesson is is this:
1. Religion teaches us that our lives are part of a bigger scheme.
2. To work against global warming, you have to feel that you are part of a larger scheme.
What I don’t get about this is the repeated documentation (e.g., here) that religious people are the biggest denialists of global warming, and that the religiously unaffiliated are most likely to accept anthropogenic climate change. This is not to mention that, of course, #2 doesn’t follow from #1.
Has The New York Times really fallen this low?
Honestly I don’t think this article has as much to do with environmental concerns as it does address a post-Christian spiritual nostalgia. Many people would find that these sentiments resonate with their own experience. Think of it as a sad goodbye to an old faith..
This is about what I would expect from an eighth grader. Did the editor take the day off? Overly emotional in places, and some of the sentences are a grammatical train wreck (for example: “Later in life, it is easy to forget just how hard it is to figure out that you can trust the water.” – what is this mess??).
I ain’t defending the article as such, but that sentence is not very difficult for me to understand. Of course, I might be wrong about what I think she was trying to say there!
It’s not that it’s difficult to understand so much as it’s just a fluff-filled run-on. She got so enamored of the metaphor that she let it go all over the place and lost the substance.
It’s like what happens in Junior High when your English teacher gives you an assignment with a minimum word or page count and you’ve already made your point. You just start piling on extra words in order to meet the arbitrary goal. It’s basically the literary equivalent of French fries- it might help fill you up more but it adds nothing nutritionally.
Junior high school English class is exactly what I was thinking, but in the context of sentence diagrams. I understand the sentence, but wouldn’t have the first clue about how to unravel it! I guess the sentence is not grammatically incorrect, but it is awkward in its length and how different phrases have been so strangely cobbled together.
Yes, exactly. It’s a writing style that indicates the author knows the words, but isn’t skilled at putting them together in a manner that easily flows.
Many years ago – and many years after graduating – I received a letter from my college class president. Upon reading it, one thing became painfully clear: our president had written the note with a pen in one hand, and a thesaurus in the other. If you don’t know how to use an obscure word properly, DON’T! It will be obvious to people who DO know how to use it, and make you look like a poser. It’s like makeup – if you put on too much, it’s obvious that you’re wearing it.
Yes, it does seem that she got distracted by the metaphor and the words themselves. She probably could have made a pretty decent argument if she hadn’t.
It seems to say that we need to connect with the religious in order to get them to accept climate change. We have to do this by emphasizing that we are all part of something bigger than ourselves because science & religion both get this.
I find the prose lovely, but the point isn’t as obvious as it should be because it’s been lost within all those lovely prose.
That’s right, I think. There are quite a few people active on the evidence-supported side of the climate wars who think that it is important to crack the right-wing identification with climate denial by bringing evengalicals to their side. Hence the faitheist spin.
Yes. At least on the first part. It reads like an accommodationist attempt to persuade believers that believing ACG is compatible with their faith, and it is okay to work with others against it. She is basically saying, “hey fundies, deep down I’m just like you, not really, but I have faith too. And here, let me fix your concept of faith for you so it is less unreasonable.”
I am not feeling the same thing regarding the prose though. For me it sounds like somebody trying to imitate a Romantic master and failing miserably. Makes me feel the same as when a truly awful dancer auditions for So You Think You Can Dance and they are shocked when the judges are not impressed. “Really?, Nobody has ever told you before?” But I may be biased.
I read amateur fiction on occasion and I see this all the time. The person adds tons of flourishing words to their piece because they think it makes them sound more sophisticated but fail to realize that it simply makes it cluttered and kills the flow.
I think she should be looking at systems science instead of religion for connection to the biosphere and beyond.
But what are secularists learning from religious climate change deniers in that interpretation?
Probably the only thing they could be learning is how they think and therefore how to influence them. The title misrepresents the article and was probably just to get you to read.
Yes, I suppose the title might not even be hers.
I think it is a soft soap message directed towards believers to get out of their scared shell and trust reality as it presents itself/
ie trust that they belong in the world and are made fit for it.
Are there really people so alienated from themselves and the natural world -that have burrowed so deeply into believing that only g(G)od is meaningful that this kind of message might get thru to them?
Oh my.
“Are there really people so alienated from themselves and the natural world…”
Definitely! Almost everyone I know from my childhood fits this description.
After embracing disembodied mind as something obvious, so that ghosts, souls, and Gods seem reasonable to them, the key trait of much religion is human-centric myopia, the complete inability to perceive a world outside of short term human concerns, primarialy their own.
The Bible is the perfect example of the mindset. Even though in Genesis there is the briefest nod to creation as a whole, for most of the Bible there is a profound lack of even curiosity about things like stars, the moon, animals in the natural world, volcanoes, oceans, and so on. In the Bible, the entire universe is like a hastily painted backdrop, whose active purpose is precisely not to be noticed. The whole universe is an invisible backdrop for a play about basic soap opera concerns of who loves or hates who, sibling rivalry, court intrigue, and so on. The Bible is, in many senses, a kind of anti-science. Not in that it’s opposed to science, but that it has a total blind spot for everything that science might be concerned with. There are two realms in the Bible, human concerns, and God’s concerns, and a tremendous number of people accept that ontology.
In this sense, just getting a religious person to notice the universe, the galaxies, the creatures living deep in the ocean living out lives invisible and unconnected to us, etc., can be pretty unsettling for them.
Pfft. So many errors I see after posting.
Gluonspring:
Excellent description. On the dot.
That is the whole difference between the worldview of the ancient Hebrews and that of the ancient Greeks.
You didn’t even mention lack of interest in thinking, philosophy, language, art, music, theater, and sports that were so important in ancient Greek life, and that has no role in any Biblical book.
Our modern world is the direct descendant of those ancient Greeks. And it was a tragic accident of Western history that the Hebrew/Christian view of the Bible came to dominate the West in about the 5th and 6th c. It took a good thousand years to begin to get out of the Judeo/Christian outlook and re-establish a dominant interest in nature and science.
The things you add are spot on too. Some have characterized Christianity has having a contempt for thinking, philosophy, language, art, music, theater, sports, nature, and science. I’m sure that is sometimes true. More often, though, I think it is just a profound blind spot… these things just are not even noticed. Life is a moral play, and everything else is just lighting for the play.
Unfortunately America is sliding back to mysticism rather than protecting its Greco-Roman past.
A perfect example of this is Bush (a “proud” religionist) total disregard for history when he recognize the former Yugoslav republic as Macedonia — “coincidentally” when after they agree to send troops to Iraq for his coalition of the willing for non-existent WMDs (actions that has directly lead to the current religious mess in Iraq)
What’s ironic is the far right constantly complains about Islamic religious mumbo jumbo — then don’t think twice to look at their own primitive beliefs.
Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, et al are right. We shouldn’t ban religion (freedom and all that) but we should take a more critical public tone towards religion (especially in public life). Can you imagine how Bush would react if someone knocked on his door on Sunday telling him to believe in Leiprichauns? He’d call them kooks.
Its insane we have elected officials (with access to nukes) that are looking forward to Armageddon.
Which of these things is not like the others?
Love it. The Sesame Street takedown.
Sesame Street takedown. 🙂 I’ll have to remember that one.
And when it comes to “trust(ing) things outside of yourself more than you trust your instincts,” how does this relate to chairs/floor/bicycles? Who has ever thought…my instincts tell me the floor or chair is solid, but I have to step outside myself and trust that it is before walking or sitting. Seriously, who’s ever had that thought? I never thought about “trusting” a bicycle either (and I assume she is referring to one’s first bicycle). I just wanted to ride the damn thing without training wheels. I knew I’d probably fall, get hurt and maybe even cry, but never once did I think of my first bike as something I had to trust more than I trusted my instincts. Pseudo-philosophical bullshit.
And what does “trusting God” actually entail? I ride a bicycle and trust that the wheels won’t come off. I walk on a floor and trust that it won’t collapse under my weight. How do I trust God? It means nothing. I think it was Thomas Paine who said that theology was “the study of nothing”.
Riding bicycles? Dombek needs to learn how to ride a motorcycle. You want trusting your instincts or counter intuitive, learn counter-steering.
I think the article is a nice attempt to try to persuade Jesus freaks to care about the future instead of waiting around to be saved and not taking any responsibilities for their actions.
I am a big fan of JC (Jerry Coyne, that is). But if you read whyevolutionistrue you are already a member of the choir to which JC preaches. This ain’t so bad, of course but it remains bewildering, if not stunning and preposterous that so much ignorance carries the day with crazed Evangelicals and other fundamentalists who in their frenzy, provide empirical evidence against their gods. Damn and, indeed WTF.
Well, I can’t help it about the choir stuff, but could you be clear about what you’re trying to say? I don’t understand.
JC: See Diane, below. My original post was a play on your “JC” initials as against the other JC guy and an effort to underscore your WTF reaction which I wholeheartedly embrace.
lolz
I also read Answers in Genesis.
Does that make me a member of the choir there as well?
How does the reading of any website automatically make you a member of the “choir” of that website?
I would guess that 99% of the folks exchanging views on this blog are athiest oriented and enjoy the fruit of Jerry Coyne’s incredible production, wit and report on the general state of evolution. If you seriously accept the propositions of Genesis, then welcome aboard for some enlightenment. Remember Tyson’s observation that the good thing about science is it’s true whether or not you believe in it.
I’m not a member of Jerry’s choir. I’m a Christian who likes to know what the other half are thinking. I am not a “crazed evangelical”, nor am I in a state of “frenzy”. I’m not sure that reading a website automatically makes one a follower or adherent of the opinions expressed on that website.
OK, OK, I should have said “probably” a member of the choir. Bless you if you find enlightenment herein.
Perhaps the comment is a bit like his WordPress website when you click on his name…..
Hmmm. I read porkut’s post as just saying that here on WEIT, where we’re all pretty much on board with evolutionary principles and science in general, it can be mind-boggling (or depressing or infuriating) when you remember all the irrational loonies out there.
Precisely so, Diane. Thank you.
Wow, it’s almost incoherent. That same style of writing, were it about astrology or crystal healing, would have been written off by the NYT as mindless babble. However, since it’s about religion, it’s taken for a deep, reflective and thoughtful meditation on modern religion.
‘This is why, when adults teach you to swim, they trick you. They say, “Swim to me, I’m right here” and then back up, so you learn with your body what is possible, despite what your mind is telling you.’
This is Faitheism in a nutshell. Sure, religion isn’t true, but it’s a good lie to get the childlike among us to do what’s best for them.
There’s been too much lying from Global Warming deniers. The science of it, and the realistic evalutation of what to do about it, depends on truth, and requires everyone to grow up and face the realities. There is no pretty lie that will serve us better than the truth, IMHO.
It was so incoherent, that I noted such stuff too:
What a perfectly sadistic way to approach swimming! Such a tricked and scared kid child will have trust issues, including with water, I’ll bet.
And if Dombek used to be a believer, perfectly apposite to the kind of ‘love’ offered by her invisible ‘parents’.
I was taught to swim thusly. When I was 3 or 4 I was walked to the end of a diving board at a hotel pool, a float was thrown in the water, I was tossed in after it, but the toss was off target. I don’t recall being aware of anyone coming after me, but my perspective was that I was left to fend for myself. I made it to the side of the pool in “flight or fight” mode.
Didn’t damage me as far as I can tell, but then I was pretty ornery as a child. But I always thought that was pretty screwed up. I would never consider doing something like that to anyone else.
My kids learned to swim underwater at about 6 months old, with me right next to them, and they were never afraid of water thereafter, and are both great swimmers. Don’t remember how I learned, but do remember diving under waves and being dragged back into shore.
I don’t recall ever knowing a kid that was afraid of the water (I know there are plenty), but I have known many parents that seemed to work awfully hard at making them afraid of it.
My learning experience did not leave me afraid of the water, luckily enough. At 8 years old I could beat the next fastest swimmers in my age group by 25 meters in a 100 meter freestyle race. When they were short a person the adult medley team would use me as a replacement. 8 years old, those were the glory days.
I saw so many kids afraid to put their heads in the water that I started to think the parents were causing it. Sure enough lots of parents freak out when their child goes under and scare the kid. As a new parent I started encouraging my 18 month old to jump in to me. I’d catch her and let her go under a bit at a time. I stayed calm and so did she. She started swimming like a fish by 3 or so.
She’s not nearly as fast as you were, but she likes swim team (I think she’s built more like a runner than a swimmer should be!).
The part about staying calm is so funny, and so true. At early ages when kids have an accident often the first thing they do is to look at the parents face to get a cue about how to react.
My wife and I made a deal when our twins were born that we would not react dramatically when our kids had “incidents” in an attempt to not bias them. It was really difficult at times! Once or twice I had to turn my back for a moment.
I thought that too! The child would never trust you.
My mother once told me that when she was a kid, her older brother taught her to swim by tossing her out of a boat in the middle of a lake. She said that she knew a lot of people who were taught that way and they said that it always worked. I said, “That’s because if it didn’t work, they weren’t around to say so.”
She sounds like a “New-Ager” who’s had one too many lattes. Drink enough caffeine, and you can go on and on about ANYTHING!
A lot of writers have used alcohol for the same effect. Fueled by alcohol, you can become any of the great writers of the 20th c., from James Joyce to Jack London, to Ernest Hemingway, to Eugene O’Neill, to Tennessee Williams, to William Faulkner.
Caffeine gets you only to the NY Times.
And she does a complete disservice to the real fact and complexity of evolution by seeming to put it on par with belief and faith here. It took her a long time to “believe” in evolution. And it was a “leap of faith” she needed, even after knowing the facts, to glimpse the interconnectedness of all life. Shudder. How lame that faith and belief are once again put up on a pedestal, even as she writes as a nonbeliever writing about evolution. Blah. So am I to learn from evangelicals that what I understand factually about evolution is best dipped in belief and faith in order to really experience it fully? Blah again. Do evangelicals and the religious have the corner of the how-to-properly-do-awe market or something?
You said that very well.
And if she doesn’t really feel about faith and belief as she wrote here, which is common with accommodationists, what does that say about her?
Yes, well said, I was going to make the same points. Understanding evolution and climate change is not a leap of faith, it’s quite the opposite, it’s no longer accepting baseless assumptions but rather seeing what the evidence shows.
Getting religious conservatives to understand science is not a process of shifting their beliefs from one set of random ideas to another, it’s getting them to accept the evidence. It’s their faith that prevents them from doing that.
Exactly.
“Has The New York Times really fallen this low?”
It has been falling for 40+ years. So, yep.
One of the reasons, probably the biggest one, why I’m canceling my NYT sub.
Written in the style called d*g’s breakfast.
The d*g here gets better than that. (I’m visiting friends.)
The d*g chez moi as well;-)
sub
Luhrmann is clearly aiming to appeal to emotions, so I can’t fault the writing in that regard. She made her appeal, but she somehow manages to come to a conclusion which is exactly opposite of the point she should be making (and actually starts to make).
Science did not tell us that we are the center of the Universe. Science did not tell us that not very far above the ground, angels push the heavenly bodies back and forth for our pleasure here on Earth. Science did not underestimate the number of stars in the known Universe by a factor of 10^20 or more and the age of the Earth by a factor of 10^6. Yet, religion did all of this and so much more to make us think that the whole of creation is made specially for us. In fact, we’re so special, that we should “live in the world, not of it.” Somehow we’re here, but we’re not part of the system. Somehow we’re the only species that can harness massive amounts of natural resources for our own benefit, yet we supposedly can’t affect nature (unless you count praying for droughts to end or Hurricanes to change course).
I think rationalism and science needs emotional writing like this to continue making an impact and appeal to more people. That’s why science promoters like Neil deGrasse Tyson are so valuable; they manage to appeal to emotions and show why science works. It’s too bad Luhrmann didn’t go in this direction, and demonstrate how science has shifted the focus from us to the wonder that surrounds us. Maybe she could’ve had a decent article.
Luhrman didn’t write the article being discussed.
Woops, yes I glanced back at the top when I was typing the comment and saw Luhrmann. Of course, I meant Dombek. The rest of my comment stands. 🙂
Forget the NYT.
Vice News is where it’s at.
Vice is excellent, especially their video channel on Youtube. For some reason The Mexican-Mormon Drug War popped up on my recommendations on YT and I have been hooked ever since. Mitt Romney’s Mexican cousins seem like nice people.
I can appeal to emotions too: Flooded subway tunnels and a city under water alarm and upset me. Empty canals that were once streets. It’s like the stuff of a sci-fi novel, but it’s actually a city I used to live in. Going with the flow and saying a prayer for the future isn’t helpful.
A female Deepster!!
L
I’m not sure what the point is, but it does show that YMCA swim classes don’t cover rip tides or undertows.
A jumbled mess of an article but not an uncommon point of view, in my personal experience. This is why I hate using ‘evolution’ and ‘climate change’ as litmus test issues. So many self-proclaimed enlightened people are just as mystical as the religious nuts when it comes to ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ in science. Science is not about faith. Being an atheist or being pro-science does not automatically imply that one is rational.
You mean it’s not just another religious sect? Like, I used to be Baptist but then I converted to Science? 😉
I shudder to think it, but I’m sure that it is true that for some that it’s just a different religious tribe to join.
My first thought about the title is that actually it is the other way around. Evangelical Christians can learn a lot from secular climate change activists.
That’s the sort of evidence-based thinking that will get you your own personal bonfire.
Or at least would have a few hundred years ago. Now, not so much in the Christian world. But … (insert your favorite religion-dominated society here) … .
“Now” being the operative word in that clause ; I wouldn’t put it past them for a second, once they thought they’d got the upper hand.
Kristen Dombek, you have a pedestrian understanding of swimming, and for that matter, probably all athletic activities. Come to my pool, I will teach you how to swim and trust will mean something very different than you understand.
Let’s uncover the other absolute of your diatribe: so what has your religion done for me lately? Every time we listen to people like you we hear the familiar: take away everything and what do you have–religion (or God). It’s what gives us purpose. Really? No one of your ilk ever describes how religion is useful, epistemologically or ethically.
The twenty-first century will be known as the century where ontological arguments went from Pascal to Pee-wee Herman.
Ha ha another utilitarian approach to religion. I wonder if people are really so consistent?
pedestrian understanding of swimming…she’s probably been walking along the bottom of the pool while attempting to walk on water.
And hopefully the 21st century will also be known as the century where Argument from Design went from Dempski to the Piltdown Man.
Ha ha! Did you purposely juxtapose, “pedestrian” with “swimming” to give it a double meaning?
Jerry asks the question, “Has The New York Times really fallen this low?” The answer, of course, is yes. As an anthropologist for more than forty years I find Tanya Luhrmann’s columns unctuous at best. It is, as I have frequently pointed out, the reason that no one takes anthropologists seriously, and they are virtually never consulted on little things like the Middle East, or the continuing chaos in Africa, or the reasons for the recent influx of young people from Central America. The postmodern virus has stricken the discipline and destroyed its credibility. So why does the NY Times pick one of the more fatuous disciples for regular commentary?
Jerry has a stronger stomach in his brain than I do because I was unable to gag past Kristen Dombek’s first paragraph. Why the editorial page editor has taken a fancy to people who might better be writing feel-good books for the masses who continually keep such books on the best seller lists. Well . . . maybe that’s why. I don’t know. When you think about all the interesting people who might be writing, and you see what we get, it is very disappointing. Give someone like Jerry Coyne or Stephen Fry an 800 word shot at it.
Her prose contains repetition lulling the reader into a receptive state. The abundance of personal pronouns–you, I, me, it–encourages intimacy and trust.
Her style is the message: chill out, go with the flow, time heals, we all are one. Did I leave out any other ‘philosophical’ clichés?
Her piece is more akin to a sermon than anything else.
I am going to throw some cold water on my face to wake up. 🙂
Yes it is lulling.
Exactly.
The style is totally emotional, and in that vein, it is pretty, lovely, the sentences flow away, like wavelets.
The goal is incantation, to hypnotize the reader. It should be read with incense burning.
There’s no thinking in it, that is no reflective thinking. Any hard thinking would destroy the effect.Same action as cold water on your face.
You forgot “it’s all good” and “it is what it is”.
I hate it when people say “it is what it is”. Yeah no kidding, is it what it isn’t? Don’t point out the obvious to get out of expressing your real opinion!
I guess it can also kinda mean “Whatcha gonna do?”, which can on occasion, be appropriate🐸
I agree with Jerry and the other commentators that the point is easy to miss, being wrapped up in such vague wannabe arty prose, but then I also wonder if part of that difficulty is due to what Steinbeck called the technician’s “terror and contempt for contemplation.”
Be that as it may, I think everyone is missing her point. Her point, I think, is that the lesson to be learned from religion is that religion knows that to get someone to commit to something one must convince not only their intellectual mind – their reason – but also their emotional mind. Religion knows that we aren’t fully rational beings and that the irrational, unreasoning mind is a powerful thing that needs to be dealt with. Science has not yet learned that lesson, though it is beginning to. I may “know” rationally that I will be able to swim through the water, but until I “know” it emotionally I will still be hesitant to jump in the water. That is her well-disguised point.
If her point is that if you want people to jump into the water of climate change, you must convince not only people’s reason, but also their emotion, then I think she has a valid point. It is, I think, a hard lesson for “technicians” to hear, because “technicians” are going to hear that as meaning “have faith” in the religious sense. But it does not. It means recognize that people are humans, not vulcan logic machines, and recognized that we are not, and never will be fully rational.
She goes on to say that religion gets this emotional commitment by building an emotional bridge between individuals and the bigger scheme of things, and calls that bridge God. She suggests that to get people to commit to a belief in global warming, some sort of emotional bridge to the bigger picture must be built. A rational list of facts and figures will not suffice.
This sounds like a reasonable take on what she was trying to say. I was sort of getting something like that out of reading it, but I couldn’t quite summarize it.
“She suggests that to get people to commit to a belief in global warming, some sort of emotional bridge to the bigger picture must be built.”
This is a tough nut to crack, I think.
Perhaps that is what Tyson/Druyan were getting at with the Halls of Extinction imagery? I wonder if it worked at all?
Ah, the “little people” argument. “They” won’t accept scientific findings without a side order of “emotional” appeal to go along with it.
I strongly disagree with this view. If this were about something other than what people take as true, then of course such emotional tact is paramount. But applying it to beliefs and facts is sooner or later going to be patronizing and dishonest, because that stance forces itself to compromise, fabricate, and misunderstand things when its claims to reconciliation are shown to be on thin ice.
It is thinking that humans have these emotional needs when it comes to facts that is the root of nearly everything wrong with the accommodationist movement. For instance, just look at the example Dombek gives on evolution. Her notion that she needed a “leap of faith” before accepting a theory that is one of science’s strongest, which was confirmed by honest scientific work and progress, is not just preposterous verbiage. It is as good as an open admission that she doesn’t have a clue what the issues are surrounding evolution’s acceptance among the public, not least of all public misconceptions about how we know what we know, reason, and faith.
It’s not treating people like vulcan logic machines to expect “them” to behave sensibly, rationally, and maturely when discussing facts, or at least to hold “them” to this intellectual standard. “They” shouldn’t be catered to, as if their feelings will get hurt by the phylogeny of humans and other apes, because that merely covers a symptom rather than a cause. If “they” can’t handle the heat, by all means lead “them” out of the kitchen to recover, and bring them back later (or take them to another kitchen), but don’t turn down the heat. If we turn down the heat, nothing gets cooked. We can’t lie about human evolution just because people find Genesis more emotionally attractive, and we can’t make human evolution prettier in an attempt to attract “them” like moths to a flame. We’re supposed to be persuading people about facts and fiction, not leading herds to the correct pens.
As a result of accommodationism, you get what Jerry’s been pointing out on this website: accommodationist institutions that spend more time coddling beliefs than actually educating about the science, while those stating the truth and defending it get results, however slowly.
Scientists cottoned on, over time, that when it comes to facts – and more importantly, the methods and principles you adopt to acquire those facts – you can’t wish them away or feel them away or argue that you’re a better or worse person for believing certain things, and it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference how you feel about what you know. Science doesn’t “need” to catch up with our “humans are emotional and irrational” schtick because it’s already pinning down the cognitive biases and other diversions in a thorough level of detail. If anything, humanity as a whole needs to catch up to its intellectual principles.
If public understanding of science depends on whose bauble is the shiniest, how can it be called science? Romantic, faith-based nonsense like religion and New Age movements have got to go.
Meant to +1 this earlier, but got distracted.
You may be right that that’s what she was trying to say, though if so she failed miserably trying to say it.
But even the more reasonable-sounding thesis you attributed to her is still poorly thought-out if you look closely. Why think that
In one sense this is true but trivially so: to get any person to voluntarily do anything at all you need to provide him with a motivation to act; that is to convince his “emotion”, as you put it. But we all know that, and have no need to learn from religion.
In another sense the claim is more interesting. Perhaps it’s something like “Religious people (perhaps even non-religious people) are emotionally pre-disposed to deny climate change, and we have something to learn from religion about how to overcome that emotional barrier.” Problem is, this is plainly not true in the sense she wants it to be. I see no evidence of the alleged barrier in non-religious people. As for the religious, if anything their religion is what erects and sustains the barrier in the first place. It (religion) is itself part of what is to be overcome. We have things to learn from religion only in the sense that we have things to learn (probably much more) from hurricanes.
“Why think that ‘if you want people to jump into the water of climate change, you must convince not only people’s reason, but also their emotion.'” Because most people will not spend the time to study the piles of details to come to the rational conclusion. You can call that statement condescending, or write contemptuous remarks like reasonshark’s above ( a perfect example of the contempt of which Steinbeck spoke) but you would be hard pressed to offer evidence that it is incorrect. Outside the close knit community of experts, people don’t spend the time it takes to become an expert. That is not calling emotions “stupid,” or emotional people “inferior,” or “lazy,” or anything of the sort, as shark seems to think I’m doing. It is merely recognizing that busy people do not have the time to spend researching the last 150 years of research that has gone into today’s understanding. You are not going to reach most people with the facts, and most people are not going to accept “trust me, I’m an expert.”
Look at the historical record: Once the experts figured out that the Earth was round, it took them somewhere around 2,000 years to convince the majority; reasoned, rational arguments have in 150 years convinced about 10% of the American people that evolution is correct, a conclusion the experts came to within a few years of Darwin’s publications. The percentages may be a little better outside the USA, but not much. At that rate using their traditional tools the scientists may win over a majority to evolution by, maybe, the start of the next millennium. By contrast, the Godites convinced a majority of Europeans that their Jesus myths were true in a little over 200 years, and have maintained the fiction for almost 2,000 years. Now I’m not saying that to win over the majority that science should start slinging BS. But I think the author of this article very inexpertly said that religion knows better than science how to win over people, and that religion does this by appealing to people’s less rational side (which all people, including scientists have – this isn’t an us vs them argument), and that scientific communicators could learn a lesson from religious methodologies. Carl Sagan’s Cosmos show did it; so did Neil deGrasse Tyson’s. They present the facts in an emotionally appealing way. That is the lesson.
“Because most people will not spend the time to study the piles of details to come to the rational conclusion… and most people are not going to accept ‘trust me, I’m an expert.'”
You’re confusing two different issues: the issue of condensing information for the sake of a non-specialist audience – which, in any case, is also a valid concern for interdisciplinary sciences – and the issue of using emotional appeal to increase conversion rates. It’s perfectly legitimate to refer to experts on the matter, summarize, and so on, rather than try to capture 150 years of research in exquisite detail. That’s a fair practical problem, but it isn’t linked to making subjects easier to digest by playing on emotions.
Also, at what point does engaging the emotions of your students cross over into manipulating them emotionally into accepting certain things? To me, it’s not merely when they start doctoring the truth to make it fit, but when it starts eclipsing the reasons why science – and more broadly, reason – is the superior fact-finding tool to begin with. And if they’re unaware of the methods, what’s going to happen when someone comes along who’s much better at that style of “persuasion”, like a religious proselytizer?
You can call that statement condescending, or write contemptuous remarks like reasonshark’s above ( a perfect example of the contempt of which Steinbeck spoke) but you would be hard pressed to offer evidence that it is incorrect. Outside the close knit community of experts, people don’t spend the time it takes to become an expert. That is not calling emotions “stupid,” or emotional people “inferior,” or “lazy,” or anything of the sort, as shark seems to think I’m doing.
If you’re not going to reply to my comment directly, please refrain from talking about my comment in such a dismissive and unfair manner. It comes across as far more condescending than anything I’ve said.
Also, if I was contemptuous of anything, it was the “emotional palatability” aspect of the argument, for reasons I’ll explain below. Framing it as though I was denying that people can practically “study piles of details to come to the rational conclusion” is borderline lying, and I do not appreciate having my points twisted beyond recognition.
While I’ll grant my tone was not exactly warm to your proposal, I did not at any point say that you thought emotions were stupid and emotional people inferior or lazy. To the extent that the “Little People” argument is condescending, it’s usually unintentionally so, in any case. From what I could tell, you didn’t see anything wrong with it and thought it was fair-minded and reasonable, hence my criticisms pointing out what I thought was wrong with it and with thinking this way. I apologise if I conveyed the point poorly before. Hopefully, this should remove any further misconceptions, as there was a bit more to my comment than a contemptuous dismissal.
My point was that trying to make facts emotionally palatable for people bypasses the usual scruples of persuasion and rational argument and standards, (which is why it comes across as questioning the rationality of the “Little People”), but it also raises the question of why one would do it. If it’s just to get people to accept certain things as true, then it’s going to hit problems when, as I said, “someone comes along who’s much better at it.”
Your example comparing “round earth” theory with Christianity’s spread is precisely what I was warning against when I talked about Dombek’s “conversion” to evolution: that this isn’t just about winning converts to a particular position, but about not sacrificing intellectual scruples when doing so, otherwise you “win the battle by losing the war”.
“Carl Sagan’s Cosmos show did it; so did Neil deGrasse Tyson’s. They present the facts in an emotionally appealing way. That is the lesson.”
I confess I find this the hardest point to criticize, since I recognize the idea behind it. An apt comparison would be to a storyteller, who doesn’t just report fictional events as though they were real, but tries to use the medium of storytelling to immerse the audience and gain their enthusiasm. This is equally applicable to science-based stories, through the various kinds of science fiction, to historians of science trying to convey what things were like at the times, to presenting scientific facts in an engaging narrative – say, a story of progress, as in Cosmos. And I’m not exactly going to complain if science programs are more interesting for it.
All the same, these are tools available to bad science, pseudoscience, and all manner of quackery and hocus pocus. To me, I think it only really works if you’re already on-board with scientific methodology, or else it’s just being treated as a set of arbitrary facts to convey, with the reasoning behind it being obscured. An example is Sagan’s pushing of the triune theory of the brain, if not in the program, then at least in the book. It’s not just that this has been debunked, but that there was little supporting it above other brain theories to begin with. But Sagan puts it in an engaging morality tale about how our reptilian hindbrains need to be thwarted by mammalian love from the forebrain, and that means many people will take it seriously. There are hundreds of other misconceptions and outright falsehoods floating around, sometimes precisely because they’re too interesting to ignore or forget.
If I could summarize my concern, it would be that emotional appeal, however understandable, should still be a secondary concern to keeping to the scientific and intellectual principles. Moreover, using it as a tool of conversion strikes me as some combination of missing the point, compromising the science and reasons behind the claims, and making it vulnerable to backfire when a better rival exploits it.
“Framing it as though I was denying that people can practically “study piles of details to come to the rational conclusion” is borderline lying…”
Oops. Error here. Put a “not” after “can” to get:
“Framing it as though I was denying that people can NOT practically “study piles of details to come to the rational conclusion” is borderline lying…”
Reasonshark,
You misread. My comments were not directed at you, other than to state that I found your comments contemptuous. I was not making any claim about what you were saying at all – I did not reply to your post – beyond that I found it to be contempt filled. It was not my intent to ” . . . frame it as though [you – reasonshark] was denying . . . ” anything. I apologize that it came across sounding that way.
But this is a distraction. I wrote only to attempt to put a viable interpretation on the NYT piece, which I think I did, and to say that if I understand the author’s intent right, then she has a valid point: convincing people through emotional appeal, as the religious do, often works and can be a useful tool. See my comment below re high school calculus for a small example. That’s not to say the appeal to emotions can’t be abused. It most certainly can, and it frequently is in the most despicable ways. But it can be a valid tool.
I’m experiencing another WTF moment.
“I’m experiencing another WTF moment.”
I know, right? 😉
Religion doesn’t “know” how to win over people any more than doughnuts “know” how to be more tempting than broccoli (for most people). The point of choosing broccoli over doughnuts is to eat healthily. If broccoli were to “learn the lesson” of attracting people with fat and sugar it would undo the whole point.
Religion is simply people assuming that their wishful thinking is true; this is why it’s emotionally appealing and satisfying. How, then, should science implement this strategy? It’s the one strategy that’s not open to science. The point of getting people to look at evidence, or summaries of evidence, and form their beliefs accordingly would be undone by capitulating to wishful thinking.
This, and the fact that religion’s “knowledge about how to win people over” has a pathetic history running from endless schisms to conversion by brute force, aka ISIS today in Iraq. None of this has any utility for advancing reason or science.
I agree that the emotional methods of religion are not available to science. These include manipulation, threats and incorporating a culture of fear to shut down opposition, to name the top ones that come to my head.
But, I do think science can be successfully promoted with other types of emotional appeals. What got you excited about science and reason? What turned you away from religion? Surely, at a minimum there was some emotional appeal to find the truth, something exciting about learning about reality as it actually is, rather than as religion tries to make it.
If we’re not excluding excitement and passion to gain knowledge as valid emotions, there’s no reason why people, particularly kids, can’t have their natural curiosity enhanced by emotional appeals. I find it very emotionally fulfilling that reason and science are used to cure disease, improve our life expectancy (while also making life more comfortable), and the fact that they are responsible for everything we enjoy in the modern world. Showing a child how we can make accurate predictions and use science to control and improve the world around us is much more emotionally fulfilling than the emotional claims religion makes, claims which can never be demonstrated to have any value.
We don’t need to dismiss the full spectrum of emotion and say none of it can be used to successfully promote science, but I completely agree that none of the emotional appeals religion uses are useful in science. We should instead use these lessons as evidence of what happens if emotion supersedes reason, but learning how to improve the way science works by incorporating the means by which religion works? No way.
Yes. Correct. Exactly the point.
Sure.
But as gillsj pointed out, creating that kind of motivation (or understanding that people need motivation to act) is not something we have to learn from religion.
The one uniquely religious motivator, ie “all your wildest dreams will come true” is not a legal move (sensu chess) in the project of getting people to face facts.
The excitement of doing science is experienced by doing science and discussing things learned when doing science. Transmit it with the “doing and discussing”, not some kind of manufactured pseudo-religious tactics.
Frankly I don’t even understand what people are talking about when they advocate that “science needs to learn from religion”. There’s nothing to learn. You need good teachers, in schools and in general public spaces (Bill Nye, Neil deGrasse Tyson, etc.) There’s nothing to be gained by aping Pat Robertson or Pope Frannie.
Yes, absolutely. There are many examples of many sources. I just think that the NYT author was trying (poorly) to make the point that emotion can be a valid tool. Religion was the example she used, and she might well have gotten a better response, at least on this blog, if she had used a different one.
And please don’t take this to mean that I think religion uses that tool properly, because I do not. Any tool can be misused, if the motives of the user are nefarious, and for the most part the motives of the religious are despicable.
Let me qualify that: when I say “. . . the motives of the religious are despicable.” I am referring to the motives of religious leaders who inculcate their stone age mythology into people for whatever reason, not the masses subjected to such treatment.
“Carl Sagan’s Cosmos show did it; so did Neil deGrasse Tyson’s. They present the facts in an emotionally appealing way. That is the lesson.”
That’s certainly not my recollection of Sagan. My recollection is that he spoke with clarity and logical reasoning; it got my attention, having previously had to bear up under the emotional acting-out of certain religiosos and relatives. Guess I’ll have to watch Sagan, again, to reconfirm the efficacy and accuracy of my perception of his presentation of “Cosmos.”
I’m reading Neil Shubin’s “Your Inner Fish” right now, having seen the PBS series a little while back (and found it wonderful) and been unable to find the book while it was on.
What strikes me – and I write to convince for a living, I’m a patent attorney – is how much Shubin’s writing not only conveys what the issue is, but conveys it in words that are appealing to read, as opposed to “just the facts, ma’am” legalistic, if you will, appeal to the intellect. Part of it is he is not just reciting the facts, he is adding a little personal “gloss” on them (such as how they came to his attention, how others saw them) that to me makes them worth paying attention to.
It’s not appeal to emotion per se, it’s perhaps appeal to interest.
That I can endorse.
Yes, he is very good. He frames them in stories (which humans call relate to) and he describes things very well. Still, he doesn’t leave out the technical terms so he is basically teaching the reader very well.
While you said lots of things I agree with, I don’t think you were addressing my point.
Your original claim was that science has something to learn from religion about how to appeal to people’s emotion. I said no, there is nothing to learn from religion. There are things to learn about religion—about how it manipulates emotions, so we can resist it more effectively. We may also benefit from learning from communication experts (about , say, how to deliver complicated facts to laypeople in an accurate and accessible form), but this is not something we need to learn from religion, let alone evangelical Christianity. And this doesn’t have much to do with emotion; it’s about cognition.
Now what did you say in defense of your original claim? You said that laypeople need a good summary of the relevant facts rather than all the excruciating details. True. But as I just said, for a good summary you need to turn to communication experts (or just a good science journalist). And the task is more about understanding and accommodating the limits of human cognition than appealing to people’s emotion. I don’t think religion has anything—let me be bold and say “anything”—to teach us about how to do good science journalism. (Btw, if you go back to the whoever-it-is’s article, this is last thing you would guess she was trying, however clumsily, to get across.)
Maybe you have changed your mind and given up your original claim. You seem to agree with everything chrisbuckley80 said below (anyway, I do), which includes this: “the emotional methods of religion are not available to science”. Well, if you agree with that, then all science can learn from religion about what to do with people’s emotions is just the extremely broad and totally useless truism that there is something that can and should be done. The way religion does it is of use or relevance to the way science should do it. This sounds like you are taking back your original claim; if so, I hope you would explicitly say that you are.
Oops, missed a crucial “no” towards the end:
“The way religion does it is of NO use or relevance to the way science should do it.”
gillsj,
I’ll have to go back and reread my original claim, but unless I misspoke, it was not “that science has something to learn from religion about how to appeal to people’s emotion.” My original claim was that the point of the NYT article’s author was science has something to learn from religion, and that “something” is that convincing people through emotional means is an effective tool. I was not endorsing the method and message of religion.
Here is the quote from my original: “Her point, I think, is that the lesson to be learned from religion is that religion knows that to get someone to commit to something one must convince not only their intellectual mind – their reason – but also their emotional mind. ”
I said only that the religious know that the appeal to the emotional mind is necessary. (I’ll concede that “necessary” may be too strong a word. Perhaps “useful or beneficial would be better.) I did not in any way shape manner or form endorse the strategies, tactics, or message of the religious nutcases. I’m sorry if the original post did not make that clear, but I see nothing whatsoever in it that implies I think the Godites are anything but a bunch of dishonest thugs. And I’m sorry that I did not respond to you earlier to clarify that – I let myself get distracted by other less pertinent comments.
In short, the lesson to be learned from religion is that emotional appeals can be a persuasive tool, and that in no way endorses the content of the religious. That lesson could be learned elsewhere, but religion was the example the NYT author used.
I hope that helps make my view more clear.
@aplinthjr: The argument doesn’t wash. “Convincing people through emotional” is not, in fact “convincing” at all. It is simply influencing.
This is the lowest possible technique for producing a good outcome. It is the technique of the demagogue. It may be a tool of influence but it is the worst kind of tool, often exploiting the fears and paranoid fantasies of people who are unwilling or unable to think things through.
It is not something that should be “in the tool kit” of science education.
GBJames,
I disagree. Curiosity is an emotion. If “convincing people through emotional” means should not be ‘in the tool kit’ of science education, then piquing a child’s curiosity is not allowable. Enthusiasm is an emotion. In high school I had a geology teacher who spurred his students enthusiasm – played deliberately on their emotions – by taking his top ten students each year on a two week summer rock hunting trip. I would hardly call that “the technique of the demagogue.” Wonder is an emotion. Tyson’s flashy graphics on the recent Cosmos series was an emotional attempt to inspire wonder and curiosity and enthusiasm in his viewers. He used it to get their attention, so that he could then present the facts. I’d hardly call that “the technique of the demagogue.”
You are absolutely right that abusing the tool, ” . . . exploiting the fears and paranoid fantasies of people . . . ” is wrong. But you are absolutely wrong if you think that is all that “emotional means” entails.
If your point is that good teaching involves enthusiasm, you’re crashing through an open door. Of course it does. If your point is that this is something to learned from religion, you are making a profound error. Enthusiasm for science is gained by doing science. Religion has nothing to teach us on this subject.
My point is that learning involves emotion – love, enthusiasm, curiosity, joy, surprise, many more. You stated “It [Convincing people through emotional means] is not something that should be ‘in the tool kit’ of science education.” I disagree and gave a few examples of why. That’s all.
Of course, trying to hoodwink people by ” . . . exploiting the fears and paranoid fantasies of people who are unwilling or unable to think things through . . .” is inappropriate, in science or anywhere else. But then never did I say or imply that it was appropriate.
@aplinthjr
(You seem have to hit the max depth of comments, so I can only reply here in the hope you will see it)
GBJames is right; to arouse curiosity is not to convince.
If curiosity (enthusiasm, etc) is all you want to talk about, you should have chosen a different verb. And my suspicion is that once you’ve done so, the trivial nature (or alternatively the falsehood) of your claim will be apparent. For example:
“Science has something to learn from religion about the importance of curiosity (enthusiasm etc) for a good learning outcome.”
False: science doesn’t need to learn that from religion. Or if it does, then only in some extremely weak (and by no means ordinary) sense.
gillsj,
“Necessary for what? ” At least, necessary (and as I said above, perhaps necessary is too strong a word – useful? beneficial? effective?) for convincing the person that the science is worth learning. Necessary for enticing the person into the activity of learning.
I agree your example “Science has something to learn from religion about the importance of curiosity (enthusiasm etc) for a good learning outcome.” is trivial. But the more apropos, non-trivial example is:
“Science has something to learn from religion about the importance of engaging the emotions (curiosity, enthusiasm, etc) for convincing people to participate in the process of science.” That is the lesson I have been talking about.
If “convince” bothers you, then I accept the amendment, “motivate,” although to my mind that amendment is a trivial quibble:
“Science has something to learn from religion about the importance of engaging the emotions (curiosity, enthusiasm, etc) for motivating people to participate in the process of science.”
This does not imply that religion is the ONLY place where science could learn that lesson, just A place. There are other places. I would rather see science learn it from, say, literature. And while some people think that science has already learned that lesson, I would say that some individual scientists have (Freeman Dyson, Richard Feynman, Neil Tyson, Al Bartlett, to name a few) but that the discipline as a whole has not.
“That is the lesson I have been talking about.” (Science needs to learn from religion.)
You keep saying this but it isn’t true. No good science communicator I know has learned his communication expertise by brushing up on his religious education. None.
They acquire their enthusiasm for science by doing science. They improve their communication skills by practicing them and observing other good science communicators.
aplinthjr, thanks for clarification.
I see how this claim is somewhat different from my paraphrase of it; sorry for being loose in paraphrasing. But I’d take issue with this claim too, and I think what I said in my original comment still stands: your claim is either trivial or very dubious.
Let me put it this way: what do you think people should be convinced of with the help of emotional means? Or take this:
Necessary for what? For convincing people of the truth of well-established scientific theories? Not that, I hope. I think we have all agreed that the legitimate role of emotional means in convincing people of scientific truths is at best very, very limited. E.g., maybe it’s OK to use a bit psychological maneuver to get people interested in the topic, but definitely not OK to use that kind of maneuver to influence their judgments.
(Digression: I don’t think it’s even true that the appeal to the emotional mind is necessary if the person to be convinced is not already brainwashed to oppose the truth. There are comments here saying that people growing up in other parts of the world never imagined that evolution is such a “controversy” in the US; that they just accepted it as another fact of biology. I’m one of those people and I can attest to that observation. Some of my friends are inclined toward wooish stuff and one of them has even converted to Christianity in her 20s, but none of them, as far as I know, had any emotional struggle with the biology textbook.)
Back to the main thread, what, then, do you think emotional means should be used to convince people of? I really can’t think of any.
Well maybe “convince” is not the right word for your purpose; I suspect it should be “motivate”. I can imagine someone saying, “People may ‘know’ in a cold way that climate is changing (and in that sense be convinced of climate change) but that’s not nearly enough; they should also be motivated to actually take actions, and it’s sometimes (often?) legitimate to employ emotional means for that purpose.” Is this what you were saying? If so, I don’t want to take issue with it here (except to say I think we’d be walking a fine line between legitimate persuasion and propaganda). But with respect to “science learning from religion”, the obvious objection to this line of argument is of course that only in the most trivial sense can you say that people-need-be-motivated-and-emotional-means-can-help is something science can or even should learn from religion; in that same sense science can also “learn” from religion that days follow night, that people tend to die if stoned, etc. It’s just one of those truths too plain to elude even the religious. To acknowledge that truth is not to learn from religion in any interesting sense. (I feel I’m repeating myself—hope you don’t mind. But since I think my original objection stands, what else should I do.)
gillsj,
our posts seem to be crossing in the mail, as it were. I’ll just summarize, because I think your final paragraph gets close to the point. While what you say, “People may ‘know’ in a cold way that climate is changing . . .” is part of it, there is an earlier part: no matter how much fact scientists put out there, if you don’t engage those people – if you don’t make them want to look at the facts – then you are not going to convince them. An example: I suspect that hurricane Sandy, which at best is only statistically related to climate change, did more to convince non-engaged people to look at the facts than the IPCC AR5 report last year.
Scientists must learn to make people want to get the facts, and emotional means can be useful in doing that. (N.B. That does not in any way imply ANY and ALL emotional means, no matter how dishonest, should be used. This is not an argument that ends-justify-means, lie if that’s what it takes. This only says that there are valid, honest emotional means to engage people.)
I think everyone on this thread is closer to being on the same page than it appears. My original thoughts were also along the lines that Dombek should’ve used the argument about appealing to emotion to promote science, not to say something about science learning from religion. Unfortunately, this does in fact appear to be what she is doing. No one should be defending this ridiculous position that the types of emotional appeals religion uses would be of any use to science.
Appealing to curiosity and our natural wonder about the Universe we find ourselves in is obviously a good appeal to emotion. Build excitement, and as GBJames points out, doing science and learning is in itself emotionally rewarding. It’s self-reinforcing in a way that the wishful thinking of religion never can be. Science doesn’t promise you everything, but it promises something and manages to deliver on it better than any tool we have. Religion promises everything and delivers nothing. Thus, asserting science can learn from religion is absurd.
With regard to climate change, I think another way the author could’ve made a valid point about emotional appeals is the need to appeal to our emotion about what happens if we don’t address climate change. Scientific facts about the world being a few degrees warmer is of no consequence unless it is tied to the effects it will have. This still doesn’t fall in the category of emotional appeals made by Christianity because, in the case of climate change, we have scientific evidence supporting it. We have emotional appeals about the destruction of our habitats, but these are also backed up by evidence. Emotion is involved, but it is only useful as a motivator to act on the evidence, not as the sole means of persuasion. Then again, if she’d gone this route with the story, there may not have been a story to write. Emotional appeals to the consequences of runaway warming seem to be more than amply covered by the media.
chrisbuckley89,
I concur. Thanks for your very clear, concise summary.
oops, sorry I misspelled your name, chrisbuckley80.
aplinthjr,
As another commentator said, there’s probably much less disagreement between us than the length of this thread seems to suggest. If your biggest point is that “Scientists must learn to make people want to get the facts, and emotional means can be useful in doing that”, I agree with that.
I myself (and GBJames, if I understand him correctly) still would not agree with your further claim that science has something to learn from religion about even that (i.e., that emotional means can help direct attention to where it’s deserved). At least not in any interesting sense of “learn”. You rightly acknowledged that religion is not the “unique” source science can learn that from, but the question is of course whether religion is in any way a special source deserving a special mention. I don’t think it is. It seems you do (though as far as I can tell, you haven’t given any reason for thinking that). But in any event this looks like a minor disagreement compared to our agreement, so I’m happy to leave it at that.
“If your biggest point is that “Scientists must learn to make people want to get the facts, and emotional means can be useful in doing that”, I agree with that.”
So, must someone (learn to) make scientists themselves want to get the facts” by employing “emotional (entertainment? infotainment?) means”?
Not sure what your point is. Presumably every scientist is interested in facts relevant to his own field, so no need to gild the lily here. But for facts he’d otherwise not be interested in, if those facts are important for the public to know, then yes, a scientist is just like an ordinary citizen and needs to be pushed to the facts, by any legitimate means if necessary.
I disagree with the idea that “technicians” (which I will refer to in this comment as “practical thinkers”) don’t understand the relationship between humans and their emotions.
Asking what the point of this article might be is still a valid criticism. She never plainly states the point you suggest she’s trying to make, and if she wants her article to have any effect don’t you think it’s a mistake to couch her point in a fog of poetry? Besides which, even if “you have to reach them at an emotional level” is the point, she never suggests how one might do this, which practical thinkers will rightly see as a shortcoming.
As a practical thinker, I have a problem with this kind of piece because it celebrates, and therefore encourages, the inflation of trivial observations into what people take as complete ways of addressing an issue. You see this everywhere. And I say: no. Having observed that humans often make decisions and form beliefs based on emotional input is the easy first step toward doing anything about this issue. I don’t think it’s an observation that, on its own, merits an entire article.
And this is aside from the problems I see in the article wrt faitheism/accomodationism. Accomodationism is not a winning long-term strategy for fighting problems rooted in religious faith. That’s the practical stance.
It’s sort of like teaching algebra through interpretive dance.
What’s wrong with that??? I even taught algebra doing the macarena and the can-can🐽
I’m not clear on this. Does can-can yield 0, or can^2 ?
But I will give a real life example of using emotions to teach math. My high school calculus teacher started out the year with differential calculus. He did derivatives the hard way. You know, the old limit of the change in Y over change in X as the change in X approaches zero. And he did it (actually made us do it) over and over and over and over and over again. He was playing on our emotions, waiting for someone in the class to get frustrated with the drudgery and declare “there has to be an easier way.” Only then did he help us to work out the general rules of differentiation. He thought – and I think he was right – that making the students get annoyed and demand a search for an easier way would teach us more than if he were to just do the hard way once, then move on with, “now there’s a trick . . .”
Clearly can-can=0, FYI, QED:-))
I think your calculus teacher was on to something: frustrating the hell out of you and then thrilling you with the ” easy way”.
I think he was. That calc. class of 6 students (a very small school) produced 3 engineers and 1 chemist.
You were lucky. So was I. My senior HS Math class had 7 students and a fantastic teacher named Archie Love ( a black, gay North Carolinian in an international school in Vienna, Austria.) We would all go up to the board and argue with each other – and with Mr. Love, whom we sometimes called Archie). That class completely reinforced the love I already had for Math. I ended up teaching it, after several educational and career detours, and am not quite sure about all of the other 6.
It would help them appreciate what Newton (and Liebniz) had to go through to come up with “the” calculus.
(Why do people say “the calculus”? We don’t say “the Algebra” or “the” geometry, eh? Just congenially, intellectually curious. 😉 )
Yeah, I’ve never gotten the the in the calculus, either. Sounds pretentious.
It’s funny you would say that. There is a lecturer in our math department who was talking to a committee consisting of one chemist (me), one biologist, one physicist, and herself. We were talking about courses “for the masses” and she was proudly describing a course she taughted that purported to teach nonmathematical people about “modern mathematics” without, as she put it, any “x’s”. The rest of us were puzzled and finally we collectively just asked her, “Why? What use is a course that is supposed to describe modern mathematics while entirely avoiding any abstraction?” I never thought to ask if she had tried interpretive dance.
I hope everyone realizes that I was kidding when I said that I HAD taught algebra using dance…
I wasn’t sure….
Lol- I suppose Steve Martin’s Egyptian dance might be useful for teaching translations in geometry, but in algebra, bot so much…
Ha ha! My friend pointed me to an app that is supposed to teach you algebra (it’s aimed at kids) conceptually. I found it frustrating but I am not very good at math.
Honestly, the way people need to teach math is to be clear about why something is the way it is. I experienced the opposite throughout school.
Beef,
You’re absolutely right, she never clearly says it. I’m taking her clumsy attempt at a literary piece and trying to come up with an interpretation better than Jerry’s, which boils down to “I can’t make heads or tails of it.” My interpretation may be all wrong, but at least it seems plausible. And if my interpretation is right, that that is what she intended, then the idea may not hold water.
Unlike Jerry, I don’t bind myself to reading an entire piece if the first couple of paragraphs don’t lead me on to the next.
And I found the first couple of what’s-her-name’s paragraphs unreadable.
“It took many more years to start believing in evolution”
How weird that sounds to people outside the USA, even to third world people like me. It is like reading “It took many more years to start believing in gravitation”.
Creationists in the US have been very successful in making people see Evolution not as an ordinary part of science, not an inconspicuous subject among the big flow of information you receive at school, not only one-more-subject like the Pythagorean Theorem or Photosynthesis. No! Even a “liberal unbeliever” as Dombek has to go through many years of studies and personal motivation to finally accept Evolution and still call it “belief”.
In the USA accepting Evolution is seen as a rebellious act against religion and conservatism. In other parts of the world (including the third world) is just doing your homework.
Well put, thanks for the perspective. I’m in the US, and it is embarrassing to be sure. And the religious fanatics have also successfully persuaded the masses of “good christians” that not only are evolution and climate change not true, it is somehow a sin to believe that they are true (especially anthropogenic CC). Yippee for us!
I’m going to resist ranting, but probably fail.
Speaking as someone whose working life is bound up in the problems inherent in working at sea, whose route to work frequently takes me across seas that will kill me in minutes if the impact doesn’t, who had a profoundly chilling involuntary swim in a loch filled with snow melt a couple of weeks ago, and who was deciding against crossing a flooded stream just above a 5m waterfall earlier this afternoon, where does this silly, dangerous conception that “you can trust the water” come from? That’s pure anthropomorphism, and it’s just flat-out dangerous.
Does she make the same argument that that the dinosaurs (non-avian ones, at least) would have been alright if they’d just reached out and trusted the Chixulub impactor more (with a side helping of faith in the Deccan Traps’ atmospheric mangling too)?
I feel the rant coming on because I’ve had a day of weather reports after last night’s quite impressive sturm und blitzen from the tail end of Hurricane Whatever batering the north side of the Alps. Time and again, the weather was described as “treacherous”.
Where, pray tell me, is the oath of fealty that this weather system in particular (or the weather in general), swore with the human population of the planet (or any sub-group) that the weather is going to be nice and cuddly? I’ve had the wife almost in tears for most of the day over the way that the weather is going to ruin our holiday, and I feel like finding the person who made those un-founded weather-based promises to her and applying the steel-toecap boot of indignation to them.
Nature and all it’s forces are blind and utterly indifferent to the fate of any individual person, group of people, or the entire planet. Not having a personality, those forces can’t be anything different. And people who do think that they have some … (I struggle for words) component which can be interceded with are simply going to make badly-informed decisions which will hurt (or worse) them and others. It’s a flat-out dangerous way of thinking, and it’s one that should be discouraged in any child old enough to reach onto the table and grab a sharp knife.
People like the writer of this article are treating their audience as being, literally, childish. Which I find actually insulting when people try it with me.
Grumble … off to try to resuscitate something from the holiday.
Nice rant. I enjoyed it. I am always surprised at how much people, even not especially religious people, see nature is something benign if not helpful. Even when someone is touting “natural food”, say, I find myself thinking, “Why would I trust natural food? Nature isn’t on my side. There’s every chance that it’s poison.”
On trusting the water, I think I have some idea what she means, though. When I was teaching my own daughter to swim I was having a very hard time putting into words what she needed to do different. The breakthrough came when I told her not to “fight the water”, that she has to “work with the water”, to think of the water “as her friend and not her enemy”. While absurd when taken at all literally, it did help her to transition from beating at the water with her arms and legs to actually relaxing and “trusting” that she wouldn’t sink like a rock. Only then could she execute some strokes and begin to actually swim instead of merely thrash.
There’s probably an element of applied psychology about the “trust” thing with water. But, by that age, they’re using cutlery, using clothes, using the water in the sink ; why not use the properties of water – including buoyancy.
(It’s probably obvious that I’m not a parent. [SHRUG])
I think she went on and on with the swimming metaphor to say something very simple, and indeed, trivial: try not to let fear keep you from doing what needs to be done.
If that was her point, she did a shitty job of making it.
Turn your back on the ocean at a beach and you’ll soon see that it wants to kill you! I always saw the ocean as a psychopathic trickster.
I can’t remember far enough back into my childhood to remember seeing the “trickster” part of it.
Not being exactly religious, I don’t do hymns much. But a chorus of “For those in peril / On the sea” still gets a lump in my throat.
OTOH, I’ve been known to stand on cliffs against an Atlantic storm and scream King Lear : “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!”
I believe Lear was ripping his clothes off when he said that. In a shitty copy of Lear, that I borrowed from a friend, is written in the margins: “Lear gets naked”. The copy had been shared by many and we all had written notes like that in it.
I wonder if anyone was leering at the freshly denuded Lear.
“But soon I’ll take a train to stand on the edge of the Atlantic, walk into the ocean I fear, and trust it to hold me up. I hope it will be a small kind of prayer for the future, less mystical than pragmatic, to feel in my body what is so hard to fathom: This vast and humbling contingency that’s made the waters rise is also what makes my life matter, because other creatures — human and otherwise — will live in my wake.”
With any luck, she’ll run into a shark.
What did the shark ever do to you?
😀
Bad luck for the shark. Indigestible gristle to chew on, and hysterical human responses to dodge.
I decided to pick up the mantle given that I used to be an English major and I taught literature, reading and composition at the high school level.
This is atrociously bad writing. I know newspapers have cut way back on staffing but, unless they’ve replaced their editors with Cyrus the dog, I have no idea how this column got into the paper. The reader can’t tell what the author’s point is because I honestly think that she thinks her point is something other than what it actually is. It should be immediately clear that Dombek is one of those writers who is supposedly an atheist, but one that is writing about atheism in a negative context and, in doing so, reveals that she has no idea what atheists are like and has no idea, for lack of any better term, how to “do” atheism. Dombek wants the comfort and security of her cocoon of faith, and is upset that
science is intruding on her comfortable space with facts. She speaks far more about a numinous, ephemeral connection to something larger than ourselves, but never defines it. She says she’s gonna pray while floating in the ocean and she called atheists arrogant at least twice. Her comparison of “arrogant” atheists and evangelical climate change deniers is uber-fatuous. It’s another iteration of the “atheism is is just another religion and we’re all it Opus Dei” canard. Dombek reveals her confused position with the following statement.
“Opinion pieces about global-warming deniers did not, though: Faith was trumping reason in America, they said. Belief in God would bring on the deluge. This didn’t help me know how to feel, living next to the rising ocean.”
Now, show me any atheist worth his or her salt whom won’t respond to that by saying “the tide is coming whether you want to admit it or not and the water does not give a shit about how you feel about it.”
I think her point was supposed to be something about atheists learning about messaging from evangelicals, what came out was “your facts about climate change are scary so I’m going to choose not to think about them.” This column is particularly poorly written atheist butter excreta. It should be summarily flushed like the rhetorical effluvia it is.
This was in the NYT? Deepity and appeals to ignorance to deal with our ignorance. What an extraordinarily vapid article.
sub. Hope I can get through this . . . so much to read . . . so little time.
I subscribe to the NYTimes (and I’m an Australian). This is very disappointing and their regular columnists must be dismayed by this recent stablemate.
I wonder if the NYTimes is being pressured, so they are throwing in some religious fluff to pretend they are giving…..choke…..some balance…..
truth + lies = balance…
Agreed Merilee – that’s why I put ‘choke’…
A curious trend I have noticed is the early disavowal of faith in many articles. After which – your critical defences down – a soft on faith/weak on science message is slipped under the door. Beware of pseudo-atheists bearing messages.
Jerry: Yes it’s an essay, utilizing an extended metaphor: floating at ease in water is akin to feeling oneself part of something larger than oneself.
“Being part of something larger” is certainly an important element of religious life. The pleasure one feels in the “being part…” experience is nearly universal in humans. One should consider the likelihood that we feel it, enjoy it and seek it because it performed a useful function during our evolution, most probably because it acted as a social binder, strengthening group cohesion.
So I think her point is that environmentalists should utilize this very human experience to attract others to the cause and motivate them to act for the benefit of our species, our planet and all that lives on it.
The pleasure of feeling part of “something bigger” is a ubiquitous aspect of social life. We are all part of something bigger. This isn’t news in any significant way. And there’s no evidence that “environmentalists” are unaware of this.
What is in question is whether religion, specifically, has some special knowledge or understanding of this phenomenon that science (or environmentalists) need to learn. There is no evidence that this is the case. There are only assertions of this from religious people and various non-religious accomodationists.
There is nothing to learn from religion that isn’t learnable elsewhere, especially trivial observations like “people like to feel part of something larger than themselves”. What a waste of ink and dead trees, and otherwise useful electrons.
Social life usually leaves me feeling part of “something dumber.”
The problem with working in a place with smart people is that I know when I leave it, the rest of the population as a whole is dumber than average.
😀
That’s definitely the problem with frequenting WEIT!
Google “illusory superiority” for a personal game changer (at least the central idea was for me)
I love the statistic that 93% of drivers think they are better than average. In my experience, most of them are terrible. If it weren’t for my superior abilities, I’d have been in many more accidents. 😉
Funny, I’ve heard that 90% of people think they are more intelligent than average. I would ask: average what?
Smarter than your average bear maybe?
For the most part, I’m and “under-rater.” (Probably because I hang out at WEIT where there are SO many superior intellects. 🙂 )
On the whole, I’d guess that illusory superiority is adaptive, if such a hypothesis could ever be tested.
I do experience i.s. sometimes, though– say, when I take a field trip to Wal-Mart…
WalMart will do it:-(
@Diane G – underrating yourself is Dunning-Kruger’s as well. People who are competent tend to underrate their abilities while people who are incompetent do the opposite. I saw this play out so often in the work place!
I’ve seen it play out too at work too. The most overconfident guy I ever managed was the only person I ever had to “manage out.” He couldn’t see subtle criticism if you hit him over the head with it.
As for WalMart, I can’t enter the place without having an anxiety attack.
@ Diana
“@Diane G – underrating yourself is Dunning-Kruger’s as well.”
I did not know that.
I suppose you’re the Goldilocks of self-rating, too?
😀
No, but I’m trying to get better. 🙂