Book talk: Politics and Prose

May 28, 2015 • 3:59 pm

Jason Rosenhouse said he’d publish a report on his Evolution Blog about my talk last night at Politics and Prose in Washington, D. C. His report will surely be more objective than mine, but I thought I’d put up a few photographs of the event taken by reader Brian D. Engler, and a few thoughts.

Politics and Prose is a very famous independent bookstore on Connecticut Avenue in Washington, and has lots of book events, many with well-known authors (Ralph Nader spoke the night before I did, and apparently people are still chewing him out for taking away Democratic votes!). It’s a lovely store and they set up chairs and a lectern (and book-signing table) in the rear of the store.

I talked for half an hour without slides, speaking for about 15 minutes about how the book came about, what I discovered in my adventures in reading theology, and then gave a brief precis of what the book was about. You can see the setup below, showing about 30-40% of the audience. I was gratified that so many people were interested in the topic.  The bookstore moderators and workers were very gracious, and they know how to run an event (the woman in charge, whose name I’ve unfortunately forgotten, is sitting in the chair at the left background).

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I was quite exercised at times, though I hope not strident. The audience seemed attentive, and was more of a “choir” than the audience at my talk at Chicago’s University Club. But they were by no means all in favor of what I said. In the Q&A, several people wanted to talk at length, not so much to ask questions as to reprove me for my thesis. The rabbi I mentioned earlier said that he could still be a rabbi and not teach anything supernatural, but that he taught instead about morality and meaning. He added that if I understood Judaism better I would understand how to find spiritual truth. I wasn’t clear what, exactly, he was trying to say, but rather than battle with him, I just said that if he could help people without invoking divine beings then that was fine with me. He added, though that he could also discern religious “truths” through faith alone. I asked him to name one. He couldn’t really, and perhaps I should have said that he wasn’t really a supernaturalist but a secular humanist. At any rate, his long tirade (not a question; I must learn to tell people to ask questions rather than bloviate at length) seemed aimed at telling me that if I were a better Jew, I would learn that faith could bring truth. I could have engaged him further, but there were people in line (many of them) with real questions, and so I ended that discussion.

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One woman, a nurse, also wanted to speak at length without having a question. She said that she couldn’t go to work every day without having faith that she was helping people, and also that some people were sustained by faith in their time of need. Finally, she said that she knew that prayer and faith had cured several of her patients. My response (she was quite exercised) was that her “faith” was really “confidence based on experience in her own abilities and in medical care”; that yes, people’s faith could make them feel less anxious; but that studies had shown no value whatsoever in either faith healing or prayer in helping people get better. I told her to read about those studies in my book.

Several people seemed to conflate religious faith with other kinds of faith. One person asserted confidently that when he reads a science book, he has the same kind of faith in the scientist that he does when listening to a preacher or reading scripture. Ergo, he said science is based on faith. I told him that I discuss exactly this question in the book, and that the “faith” we have in popular science writers like Brian Greene, Richard Dawkins, Lisa Randall, Brian Cox, and so on is not the same as believers have in clerics: those scientists have attained renown because their work has been continually vetted by other scientists. It seems to be a common misconception that faith in what a scientist or doctor says is exactly the same kind of faith that believers have in their priest. The difference, of course, is that there is no way for the pronunciations of  a cleric to be checked and verified reliably by other clerics. (Or, if they were, they’re likely to be repudiated: imagine an imam pronouncing on the validity of what the Pope says!). I wrote an article in Slate on this very issue (part of which appears in my book), and I hope people can think harder about the different meanings of the word “faith.”

Perhaps one of the most common criticisms of science by believers, then, is that, like religion, it is based on faith. I interpret this to mean, “You are as bad as we are.”

I enjoyed chatting with many people at the book signing (about half said “Maru” and asked for a cat drawn in, so I know I have lots of readers whom I haven’t met). Many were also nonbelievers (i.e., the “choir”), and thanked me for the book or my website. One guy brought a laminated picture of his cats (he once had eleven) and gave it to me, which was sweet; and a woman gave me a CD she made which, I believe, contains music or art based on the fossil record. I spoke to several people as well who were “closet” atheists, groping to find a way to become more public.  I always tell them to take their time, that nobody will force them to declare their atheism. Several of them faced ostracism from friends and family if they declared their unbelief. I could see that they were very distressed about this, and I thanked Ceiling Cat that I never had to face that problem.

The book-signing:

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Someone told me the other day that the work that we’re doing as secularists may not bear fruit for decades in America, and I think that’s right. We won’t see an America anything like Sweden in our lifetimes. Speaking with another reader after the signing, I told him that sometimes I felt like a workman on a Gothic cathedral—someone who knows that the edifice on which he’s working will never be completed in his lifetime, that he’ll never see the final splendor of Chartres or Notre Dame. That is a bit depressing, because we won’t be around to see a wholly secular America, and we certainly won’t see it from Heaven! But I am convinced that one day it (I mean the secular America, not Heaven) will come.

260 thoughts on “Book talk: Politics and Prose”

      1. Are things still actually “taped”? I miss tape – really. As a kid, I remember listening to The Beatles and Jethro Tull on my uncle’s Teac reel to reel. Cassettes too.

        1. I have to assume some tape is still used however, most recordings now-a-days are recorded on SD cards or similar digital media. But, we still can call it “taped”. (The following program is “taped” before a live audience). The term “film” for digital video recording is likewise appropriate.
          I always think that when I “dial” a phone number I’m actually “tapping” it. But, no. We can still use the term, “dial”.
          An increasing number of film productions from Hollywood, for TV, and such, are actually recorded using digital cameras. Those that use actual film cameras are usually transferred to digital formats for post production and release.

          9. … and a broadcaster was the guy that tossed seeds around in the field. Then it was applied to a farm implement that did the same function…

        2. My uncle also had a reel-to-reel player. We listened to “Let it Be” over and over again. 🙂

      3. We could email them at booktv@c-span.org and request that they cover one of your events–maybe if they get enough requests they would cover it or, Jerry, call your publisher and request coverage through them

  2. It sounds like a most excellent event. I’ve seen Politics and Prose talks by miscellaneous authors featured on weekend CSPAN shows and often find them quite interesting. Was this one captured on video?

  3. This may seem like a rude idea, but people at book readings should be told that they have one minute — just ONE MINUTE! — to make a comment and ask a question. This bloviating that goes on, Jerry, happens at ALL book readings/signings, it seems. If these questioners can’t have their fifteen minutes of fame, well, by golly, they’ll try to get three minutes of fame, and three minutes is a LONG time to get your statement and question out!

    1. Well it happens pretty much to any talk. Even at science conferences on the most esoteric or pigeonhole subjects, I’ve seen people come up to the mic just so they can expound. As far as I know there’s not really any ideal social way to deal with it; you can make all the directive statements you want before the talk or Q&A session, and some people are still going to do it (and put the rest of us in the awkward position of having to cut them off or let them get away with a mild form of ‘social cheating.’)

      1. I agree/ Going to events like this with Q&A brings out the worst in some people. I have sometimes hissed at the “questioner/bloviator” with good results. It throws them off their train of thought.

      2. Have two lines: One for people who genuinely want to ask a question, which leads to a mike; another for people who want to comment at length; which leads to an exit … 

        /@

          1. Use the little red-haired girl from the IgNobels: “I’m bored…I’M BORED!”

          5. That show left such a cultural impression that I hear people describe something as a “gong show” without understanding that there was a real Ging Show!

          6. Apparently they also used a shepherd’s crook at the Apollo Theater back in the days of Billie Holiday, etc. Clearly Billie didn’t get dragged off. I read a New Yorker article about a guy who had the job of wielding the crook.

          7. I’m sure the “Ging Show” would have been lovely as well; at least my iPad seems to think so.

          8. You could also use the gong if you didn’t like the question or certain trigger words. “Were you there?” GONG! “Aristotle” GONG! “Scientism” GONG! “You should read ” GONG!

          10. Some people lie and give a long statement. Cut them off and demand a question not a statement hidden as a question either. You must be brusk if others are going to have a chance. It is the only way.

          12. Now I’ve thought about it, a bell would be good, such as the ones used during Catholic Masses.

            I’m also in favour of randomly selecting from a batch of written questions. Attendees would jot down a brief question and drop them into a basket that’s passed around. This would force people to be concise and stick to the question they have in mind.

      1. Bring along an orchestra to start playing if they go on too long, like they do at the Oscars.

      3. Or, if they wanted to be even shorter about it, just scream “Shutup!”

        1. Just allow for one question, not statements unless they are interesting. One can do that without being an a-hole.

    3. +1
      Everyone came to see what the advertised speaker has to say and they are cutting into that experience.

    4. Exactly.

      I loved George Hrab’s take on this topic, sung at the 2011 TAM and available on video here.

      In case the link doesn’t work or someone can’t watch it, here’s the lyrics:

      Make Sure That Your Question’s a Question
      By George Hrab

      There may be time at the end of a lecture for an audience question or two
      If you’ve got the desire to maybe inquire there’s just one thing that I ask of you:

      Make sure that your question’s a question,
      Not a story, a yarn, or a tale,
      It should have a point and be nice and concise
      Or else I’ll throw you in question jail.

      Make sure that your question’s a question
      Because I’m sure your view is unique
      But folks have paid big bucks to hear Phil Plait talk
      And not watch time run out while you speak.

      Make sure that your question’s a question
      Make sure it doesn’t run long
      And if it turns into a diatribe
      I will start singing this song.

      So make sure that your question’s a question
      Because brevity is what we need
      When figuring out what you’re going to say
      Think less “blog” and more “twitter-feed.”

      So I’m all for a well thought-out question
      It should be like a one sentence quiz
      The phrase that it absolutely can’t contain
      Starts with – quote –
      “My opinion is…”

      1. There’s also a lot to be said for written questions submitted on 3″ x 5″ cards, collected at the midpoint of the talk, and selected by the moderator during the second half of the talk. And a great way to “sell” the idea: many people with great questions to ask aren’t so good about speaking in public, so written questions levels the playing field.

        b&

        1. That method always leaves the impression that the questions have been screened in advance to get rid of the difficult ones.

          1. Hmm…I’ve never gotten that impression. Indeed, if the moderator is any good, all the easy ones will have been screened out….

            b&

          2. I certainly forces the submitter to write a brief question end the sentence with a question mark.

  4. “(about half said “Maru” and asked for a cat drawn in, so I know I have lots of readers whom I haven’t met).”

    What happens if someone says “Boko-maru”?

  6. I hope there is a NYC book event?! Unfortunately, I don’t have the optimistic outlook that American will become more secular. Despite encouraging polls, I see the influx of new immigrants as bringing a new, energized form of mysticism and superstition if not a total refutation of the enlightenment. I hope I’m wrong.

    1. Young Mexicans are steadily becoming more secular, especially in the cities. I don’t know the statistics for Guadalajara, where I live, but in Mexico City about 15% of people under 30 are atheists or agnostics. There’s a lot of belief in quackery of other sorts besides religion, but its slowly becoming unfashionable among the young, too. The change may be slower than it is in the US, but it’s certainly happening.

    2. Cheer up. I think there is an “internet effect” for immigrants as well as natives.

  7. I’m puzzled by the rabbi as I have always been told Judaism is primarily focused more on ethics than faith commitments. Traditional Judaism advocates monotheism and belief in the covenant, but it has nothing comparable to the Apostle’s Creed or Nicene Creed of Christianity. Faith, I understand, is not the pivotal peak virtue in Judaism the way it is in Protestant Christianity.

    I’m not Jewish, but I attended a public high school with a 75% Jewish population (900 out of 1200 students) and have taken two college level courses on Judaism (not to mention a few Jewish girl friends.)

      3. A fellow grad student’s stock pickup line was, “What’s a nice Jewish girl like you doing in a place like this?”

    2. Not too long ago, I was stuck in the jury waiting room (for almost a week!) with a bloviating rabbi. He would fold forth to all and sundry (where we liked or not; whether anyone had asked him a question or not) about how “all of life’s question have answers in the Torah,” or something very close to that.

      I felt like asking him what the Torah’s answer was to such questions as:

      Windows or Mac?
      What kind of car should I buy?
      Was slavery justified in the US south (or anywhere else)?
      Are there intelligent life forms elsewhere in the universe?
      Why does all life on earth use DNA/RNA as its genetic coding?

      If you were to look in a dictionary next to the word, smug, this guys picture would be printed there.

      I did my best to position myself as far away from him as humanly possible and bury myself in my book. (Now, I would bring my MP3 player too — they had some hard rules about electronics: No cell phones, no computers.)

      1. Or, “What is the estimated airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?”

        3. African or European?

          Happen to be making our way through a 7-hr Python special we got on DVD from the library called something like Lawyer’s Cut. IT’s got some great interviews with the lads.

      2. Actually, I don’t know about rabbis too much, but I suspect there would be a lot of Christian clergy who would claim that the answer to 3, 4 is in there.

        I’ve also seen it reported secondhand that some imams think (or at least say publically)they believe that *everything humanly understandable* is in the Koran. Talk about a redundant (data-compression sense) universe, then! 🙂

      3. “Was slavery justified in the US south (or anywhere else)?”

        Also, his justification for the treatment of the Midianites, Canaanites, Amalekites.

    3. I find it interesting that religious leaders who insist that they don’t promote supernatural beliefs are angry with what Jerry says. If they were really in favor of eliminating superstition, focusing on ethics, and becoming closer to the rational life philosophy of secular humanism, then I would think they’d applaud his views, saying that yes indeed, more religious people need to hear stuff like this.

      Instead, they’re pissed off. Kinda suggestive, that.

  8. Wow, that’s me looking back in the front row. Nice talk Dr. Coyne. As for the rabbi, when he said Judaism had never been intolerant, I wanted to scream Uriel Da Costa, the Jewish secularist of the 17th century who was flogged for being a secularist, trampled on by the congregation, and due to his ill treatment became suicidal. He killed himself shortly thereafter. Also, as for the Torah’s views on homosexuality (which the rabbi said was tolerant, and I admit modern judaism is by and large tolerant of homosexuals), methinks Leviticus is part of the Torah, and there it says, in 18:22 “You shall not lie with a man as with a woman; it is an abomination”, and again in 20:13 “If a man lies with a man as he lies with a woman, both have commited an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. “. Hardly tolerance. Of course all Bronze Age cults are homophobic (and violently so), and all religion has supressed dissent violently; indeed, Judaism has done it les than most. But it goes to show how pernicous faith is that the rabbi, who seemed to be a good person, would proudly join a faith tradition (as opposed to cultural) that holds those words as holy and oppressed fellow humans for their thought.

      1. No, of course not. People who were there should weigh in. I will have a different perspective than other people, both because I’m different but also because, as a speaker and answerer, I could not focus on more than my answer to a question and couldn’t, for example, dissect the psychology or behavior of someone who was asking a question. The more opinions/takes the merrier.

    2. They weren’t so tolerant of Spinoza either:

      “The Lords of the ma’amad, having long known of the evil opinions and acts of Baruch de Espinoza, have endeavoured by various means and promises, to turn him from his evil ways. But having failed to make him mend his wicked ways … they have decided, with their consent, that the said Espinoza should be excommunicated and expelled from the people of Israel. By the decree of the angels, and by the command of the holy men, we excommunicate, expel, curse and damn Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of God, Blessed be He, and with the consent of all the Holy Congregation, in front of these holy Scrolls with the six-hundred-and-thirteen precepts which are written therein, with the excommunication with which Joshua banned Jericho, with the curse with which Elisha cursed the boys, and with all the curses which are written in the Book of the Law. Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down, and cursed be he when he rises up; cursed be he when he goes out, and cursed be he when he comes in. The Lord will not spare him; the anger and wrath of the Lord will rage against this man, and bring upon him all the curses which are written in this book, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven, and the Lord will separate him to his injury from all the tribes of Israel with all the curses of the covenant …” etc, etc.

    3. Not to mention the cherem against Spinoza, who basically survived because he was lucky enough to be brilliant and hence get friends and helpers outside his community of birth. If he hadn’t been so lucky, an excommunication would have been close to a death sentence!

  9. The rabbi sounds like he exemplified the sophisticated theologian two-step.

    ST: “Religion isn’t about making knowledge-of-fact-claims!”

    Victim: “Okay”

    ST: “But now let me claim to know something by it.”

    V: “So it is partly about making fact claims?”

    ST: “No, it isn’t. You atheists never listen.”

    It sounds like your rabbi mastered doing the entire play in one 5-minute act. 🙂

  10. Jerry, do keep us apprised of your speaking schedule. I would love to see you in Madison!

    1. I’m figuring a stop in Milwaukee on the way to Madison would be just the ticket.

  11. That is a bit depressing, because we won’t be around to see a wholly secular America, and we certainly won’t see it from Heaven! But I am convinced that one day it (I mean the secular America, not Heaven) will come.

    I wouldn’t be too sure about that — the not living long enough to see the day part, that is.

    These sorts of things can have rapid tipping points, and I do believe we may well be approaching one.

    Consider, for example, how crazy you would have been in 2005 to suggest that gay marriage would be legal in all 50 states in 2015, as it now appears very likely it will be. At that time, conservatives didn’t push ahead with their plans for a Constitutional Amendment defining marriage as strictly heterosexual not because they didn’t want to, but because it was so obvious that DOMA was more than enough to keep fringe radical small jurisdictions in line. And look at the Irish vote!

    Now that the Pew survey is out showing the Nones are as big a demographic group as any of the mainline Christian denominations and much bigger than most and all minority religions and even any group of non-whites…well, right now is the inflection point. Things are going to happen, and fast — and the churches aren’t going to survive. Today, the Catholic Church can’t find anybody willing to be a nun; tomorrow, the megachurches will struggle to find people willing to put their asses in the pews.

    The churches won’t die out entirely, of course. But the last generation to be steeped in religion from the cradle already has grandchildren. Religion already is something that Millennials just simply don’t do…and, once they start taking the reigns, neither will anybody else ever again.

    b&

    1. Even if this century does not annihilate faith, its going down in history as the turning point. And that is something to be happy about: living during a time when you know the greatest part of our future lies in those who see the universe through science and not myth.

      1. I love that song…she also left the church. There is a deeper meaning here: she was never meant for the church. But the deepest meaning is: the church was never meant for humanity. Time to move on.

        1. Not to mention the hilarious scene in Analyze This (or was it That?) where De Niro, in order to be found loony and released from the slammer, sings Maria’s I Feel Pretty while dancing on the cafeteria tables…

    3. Ben, you are sounding like an optimist!! Are you sure you’re feeling OK? 🙂

      I think we saw the tipping on gay marriage (thank ceiling cat!) in the summer of 2012:

      A sitting president came out in favor of it (Obama, if he’s anything, is an astute politician; he knows how to read the wind direction).

      That fall, all state-wide ballot measures went FOR SSM (including a reversal of a previous referendum in Maine), after a many-years’ long string of them going the other way.

      It’s been nothing but victory, pretty much, since then. I see these recent “religious freedom” bills/laws as a last-ditch ploy by the religious right: They know they’re beaten.

      I think the move to a more secular USA will be more slow (well, when was Stonewall? — 1969 — that came slowly as well! About 50 years or so). But I will be very pleased if it goes as you indicated.

      I have to agree that all signals are pointing up these days.

      I think it is partially due to the “New Atheist” books. This caused a significant consciousness raising, as Richard Dawkins says, amongst the secular and many more “came out” as atheists. Which prompted more public figures to do so, especially in entertainment. It’s becoming more and more “OK” to be an atheist in the US. We have a long way to go.

      1. Thinking on it…comparing with the gay rights movement…Bill Mahr is a big-time cable TV comedy host. And if he were as gay as he is godless, he’d be the most outrageously flamboyant of drag queens.

        I’m not sure gay rights has even made it that far, though they’re certainly farther down other roads than us.

        But, here’s the thing. The surveys all say that the godless outnumber the gays, too.

        Once these demographic facts catch up with both the godless and mainstream thought, it’s going to hit like a ton of bricks. All the insulting caricatures, of immorality and hopelessness and being an agent of Satan and all the rest…all those will be as far off the table as accusing the Irish of being drunken fighters or Blacks of being lazy watermelon eaters, and saying you’d never let your daughter marrying an atheist will be as unacceptable as saying you’d never let her marry a slant-eyed Chink, and so on.

        That much would be a great start, of course…but once atheism is “no big deal,” it first makes it possible for all those who don’t really believe but who go through the motions to let go…and then it opens up those who remain to Loftus’s Outsider Test. And while that might not have much effect on the middle aged and older, it’ll be highly corrosive to young adults and pure acid to the young.

        Still plenty of “interesting times” ahead, to be sure…but, yes. I’m a lot less pessimistic than I was not that long ago.

        b&

        1. I’m with you, Ben.

          I am very pleased with the progress we’ve made on gay rights; but as you note, we still have a long way to go. But we’re getting there. I am hopeful about the SCOTUS decision this summer.

          I guess I’ve worked in work places which are welcoming (being gay is treated as a nothing — you are? cool, no worries) for so long; and I’ve lived amongst welcoming people (many various family members are gay; many friends and colleagues), that I probably have a very skewed (positive) view of how USians think about our gay neighbors, family, colleagues, and friends.

          Last year I attended the wedding of two gay friends. And it was, without a question, the most emotionally moving wedding I’ve ever attended (well, excluding my own!) (In Minnesota, a couple years ago, we passed a statue recognizing SSM. A proud day for MN.)

          I really look forward to the day when those social changes that you (so well) describe come to pass.

          I think we are all helping this to happen.

  12. You may not see the cathedral done in your lifetime, but at least you are doing the work of angels!

        1. I had to Google “buttress fly” to see whether or not you are putting me on – still not sure! Even though all results pertained to gothic structural engineering, not moscas.

    1. Except San Fran is full of woo woo. My aunt and cousins are perfect examples of everything that is wrong with the Left – they believe Suzanne Somers cured her cancer with her wacky hormone treatments, that big pharma is out to get us, that scientists are funded by big pharma so you can’t trust their work, and on and on.

      1. That’s too bad. It sounds familiar though. I’ve visited San Francisco only once and I remember a acupuncture center for pets. Do your aunt and cousins live in San Francisco? Surely they’re not Canadian?

          1. The MacPhersons live all around the globe! I can only imagine what stories are told at family reunions.

          4. I rented a little 2 BR bungalow in Palo Alto for $130/month in the 70s. Probably $13,000/month now.

          7. Better than my rants as I have more shouting and curse words in mine.

        2. I don’t think accupuncture for pain is always entirely woo. I had a physiotherapist do it on my knee when I had a strained IT band in my leg and it appeared to help.

          2. My dad’s been getting acupuncture for his really bad arthritis in his wrists. He says it helps significantly. I don’t argue with him, and I’m glad he feels better.

            I’ll never have it done, myself, and I don’t want it getting public funding…but it’s damned hard to tell somebody that they shouldn’t do something that they think is making them feel better — especially for cases where there’s nothing else to be done.

            b&

      2. It’s not all woo. I was born there, lived in the area through high school, and still have family there. My uncle taught computer science at SF State.

        If you want an area that’s really full of woo, try Sedona, Arizona. But it’s also stunningly gorgeous, and you can have a fantastic time there without ever even realizing you’re in one of the woo capitals of the West.

        b&

          1. Not sure about its history. I think it might have more to do with some guru detecting signs of magic vortices in the area, setting up shop, and others following.

            It’s worth noting that it is, again, spectacularly beautiful…and that dust devils are not uncommon.

            If you’re a snake oil salesman, you might as well pick somewhere gorgeous as your base of operations. And you’d be smart to pick a mystical phenomenon that said place is ground zero for that has some sort of readily observable natural counterpart.

          2. You just broke some of my brain cells: The Vortex! LOL I had forgotten about that! Yes, that BS likely attracted the flies. All the retired boomers I know hit Sedona and/or Santa Fe every winter, hence the connection in my mind. Once there’s a critical mass of art and wine the woo is just another commodity. They can have it!

          3. I totally agree. I used to live in nearby Flagstaff years ago (the outskirts of which are also lovely but with rather different natural scenery due to higher in elevation), and used to very much enjoy a weekend in Sedona. It is like Shangri-La with artists, restaurants, tourists, and palm readers.

        2. SF is not ALL woooo, and, Diana, btw, locals never call it San Fran (or Frisco);-), rather The City or San Francisco.

          1. In the late fifties when I was there, they called it Baghdad-by-the-Bay. I assume no more.

          4. My aunt is actually in Novato. She has enough woo to power all of California with woo.

            I never like people calling their city “the city”. It seems presumptuous and it is why I don’t join in with people calling Toronto “the city”; as if there is only one.

          5. There is only one “The City”. I need not even mention its name it is so clear. But I love San Francisco also.

          6. Ah, yes, Sioux City?
            Carson City?
            Hager City?
            Mason City?
            Oklahoma City?
            Rapid City?
            Salt Lake City?
            Kansas City?
            Atlantic City?
            Jersey City?
            Ocean City?
            Salt Lake City?
            Park City?
            Cedar City?
            Bear River City?
            Garden City?
            Oak City?
            Plain City?
            West Valley City?
            Dodge City?
            Daly City?
            Delaware City?
            Tuba City?
            Junction City?

          9. Yeah, but SF really is called The City by everyone within miles. And it’s somehow not pretentious like the vote in Toronto’s east end to call The Beaches The Beach:-)

          10. I think it’s just as obnoxious when people in The GTA call Toronto “the city”. Like there is only one in the whole world. This is how “centre of the universe” rumours get started.

          11. ‘I think it’s just as obnoxious when people in The GTA call Toronto “the city”.’

            I agere with your condemnation. Everyone knows the centre of the univrese is Poughkeepsie, NY.

          14. I’ll have to be careful of that. For some reason “San Fran” seems to slip off my tongue easily, and I’m going there on vacation in a couple of weeks.

            (I was reprimanded for using the term “San Fran” on a San Francisco foodie discussion site).

          15. Enjoy your time in The City, Vaal! I believe you’re a Torrona boy, eh? We were listening to a British commentator call a soccer game between Torrona and Manchester City last night and he kept saying this very clipped To-RON-to…

          16. Would the Abbreviation Police disapprove of “SF”?

            I wonder what the reaction would have been to “Saint Francis.”

          19. Years ago I read one of those “how did the detective know?” stories and the clue that the witness was lying was that he had told the detective that he was born and raised in ‘Frisco.’ Busted.

            I always view the claim that some one or some place is “not religious” with a skeptical eye, since what is counted as “religion” is often different from the atheist point of view. The most egregious faith-based supernatural bullshit world view you can imagine can and will be labeled “not religion” just because it’s not obviously part of a large, traditional, established, and well-recognized church.

          21. From context it was clear that he meant San Francisco, California — but nice try, detective.

          22. I’ve driven through Beautiful downtown Frisco, Colo., and its fairly close neighbor, Pallisade, which has these really cooly-numbered roads, like 38 3/8.

    2. Yes, this is true and a big part of the reason I loved living on the West Coast (and soon will again!)

      And a big part of the reason these places are the most gay-friendly places in the US.

  14. >I talked for half an hour without slides

    The only way to talk. Fine to have pictures to illustrate ideas…but bullet points, the worst.

  15. The tipping point is coming. Look how lonely and idiotic are the defenders of Josh Duggar. Mike Huckster will soon scrape the bottom of the barrel and the polls, too.

  17. a woman gave me a CD she made which, I believe, contains music or art based on the fossil record

    Neat, I am curious and wonder a great deal about the nexus of science and art in the future.

    about half said “Maru” and asked for a cat drawn in

    I think you’ve discovered a new vocation!

  18. “At any rate, his long tirade . . . .”

    Yep, another Exceptional Amuricun.

  20. She said that she couldn’t go to work every day without having faith that she was helping people, and also that some people were sustained by faith in their time of need. Finally, she said that she knew that prayer and faith had cured several of her patients.

    I do hope this nurse keeps her opinions to herself when she is treating her patients. She probably doesn’t realize how stressful and draining it is for a sick person to have to put up with people telling them “I will pray for you”, “everything happens for a reason”, “God only gives you as much as you can handle”, etc. It makes me violently angry.

    1. When Daniel Dennett was very ill and rushed to the hospital in 2006, some friends told him they were praying for him. He wrote that resisted the temptation to ask: “Thanks, I appreciate it, but did you also sacrifice a goat?”

      There are atheists in foxholes.

        1. I sentimentally and hypocritically try not to eat goat, because I love the little live critters. But eat lots of lamb and beef.

          2. For me, that seemed/seems to depend on the country where one was eating it.

            In some countries, all you ever got was knuckles (bones of various sorts). In other places, you got the meat. The correlation was definitely by country (not food type — if was a knuckles-country, you got beef bones, goats bones, chicken bones; and in meat countries you got beef meat, goat meat, etc.)

            We’d have our first meal in a knuckle country, and we knew: “knuckles for the next 6 weeks!” 🙂

    2. Before a recent surgery, I was visited by the ‘hospital chaplain,’ even though I had specified on one of the endless pieces of paper I had to read and sign that I was a ‘none.’ When he shambled into my room I was at first pissed. But when I saw the poor dude I redirected my distaste toward the hospital administration. He was, I guessed, a retired pastor, probably mainstream Protestant. He looked like he’d bought his clothes at the hospital’s thrift shop and just sort of hemmed and hawed around without saying anything meaningful or looking right at me. Then he left as quietly as he had arrived.

      He had nothing to do and knew it.

      2. My grandmother, ill with cancer, reportedly chased a chaplain from her hospital room.

      3. A few years ago, I had some minor surgery (but one that required a general anesthetic).

        On admission, they ask you you religion. I replied “none.” (I was a little taken aback — what does that have to do with my health situation?)

        The (very nice) admission clerk asked me again, “Buddhist, … anything?” “No.”

        She gave up on it before starting to annoy me.

        But it did make me wonder a little (just a tiny bit) about what was going to happen when I was “under”.

    3. It’s particularly worrisome when these little religious bromides is coming from a professional who is treating you — and upon whom you are dependent. Do they have any idea of the quiet panic the non-religious feel when we have to contemplate the possibility that mentioning our atheism — or even failing to join in with a prayer — could mean the difference between good care and bad care, comfort and discomfort, help and sorry-I-didn’t-hear-the-buzzer?

      Even spiritual believers who assure themselves and others that they’d NEVER treat atheists any different than they’d treat anybody else ( as they’d treat, say, someone who knows, loves, and trusts in God) are quite possibly fooling themselves. The temptations may be hidden, but they’re there. You never want to be a potential character in some health care worker’s story of how their faith was strengthened when they dealt one day with an atheist.

      1. In my late teens I had the experience of visiting a general practitioner for a checkup, knowing that he had been a missionary in Central America, but not thinking he would also give me a spiritual checkup and interrogation. I responded with bromides to get him off my back. I walked out miffed and feeling put upon, and of course never darkened his door again. I wish I had told him that I had no less a right to ask him such questions. I would like to have asked him if he ever lusted after any women other than his wife.

    4. I hate that stuff, too, and the angle Sastra mentions makes it all the more infuriating. I.e., the worry that if you protest or mention your atheism you might get sub-standard care.

      1. Yeah, I didn’t scrawl “atheist” on my surgery form and just left the religious stuff blank for fear that someone would kill me from some sort of subconscious slip. Yeah, it’s paranoid but who wants to take a chance and we all get more OCD when we’re under stress.

  21. Playing a bit of a devil’s advocate on this one: how exactly science is not based on faith?

    I’m not talking about the argument that non-scientists take scientific pronouncements from researchers
    on faith. What I mean is that, if we go deep enough. science is based on belief in ultimate intelligibility of the world, on faith that the axioms of logic we use to reason will give rise to sufficiently useful models of how the world around us works. This faith is somewhat justified ex post facto once we see how useful it indeed is (neatly encapsulated in the phrase “science works”). But it’s a faith, nonetheless. In a way, one can say it’s a “true faith” compared to faith in supernatural beings, and it’s “true” because it’s useful.

      1. How many times have we plowed this particular patch of earth just in the past year? In my mind, the words “faith” and “belief” are so weighed-down by the numinous I don’t even use them anymore – except to describe unsupported claims.

        Maybe I’m forfeiting the game to the godbotherers but if I’ve learned anything it’s that the game is dumb. I see what Eli is saying in re the semantics, but “I think” or “I hope” are more congruent and precise.

        Peter Boghossian points to the word “hope” as what we usually mean when we say we “believe,” ie, I “hope” the Dodgers won’t blow it again this year and what I “think” about their prospects will have no impact on the outcome – and let’s face it, the more and less overt expectation of “beliefs” is that they can make a difference. I don’t “gotta’ believe”!

    2. ….science is based on belief in ultimate intelligibility of the world, on faith that the axioms of logic we use to reason will give rise to sufficiently useful models of how the world around us works.

      I don’t think it is. Science uses a toolset (the scientific method) to understand the truth about the natural world. we know this method works because it produces successful results: planes fly, mini accelerators treat cancer, antibiotics kill certain strains of infection.

      1. The religious kind, not based on evidence. The other type of faith rely on empirical evidence, strong evidence or confidence based on evidence. Page 208.

        1. There’s still a problem since what evidence we get is inherently structured by our faith in the axioms we use to reason. To get evidence we need to do experiments and the kinds of questions we seek to answer with these experiments are defined by the structure of our theories. There’s no escape from faith in fundamental logic underlying the “scientific method”. It’s certainly more useful and practical to hold this faith compared to faith in supernatural being but we still have to take some thins on faith.

          1. Your simply sliding back and forth between different meanings of the word. Not helping.

          2. This may be characterized as a semantic argument but I would say that the difference between religious faith and faith in the axioms of reasoning is purely practical. One (the scientific method) is infinitely more useful as it’s realized than the other (religion).

          3. Eli, do you need faith to convince yourself you understand this question?

            If so, you’re not using a meaningful and useful definition of the word.

          4. “Epistemic humility—the recognition that we could be wrong—is a virtue in science as it is in daily life, but surely we have some reason for thinking, some four centuries after the start of the scientific revolution, that Aristotle was on the wrong track and that we are not, or at least not yet. Our reasons for thinking this are obvious and uncontroversial: mechanistic explanations and an abandonment of supernatural causality proved enormously fruitful in expanding our ability to predict and control the world around us. The fruits of the scientific revolution, though at odds with common sense, allow us to send probes to Mars and to understand why washing our hands prevents the spread of disease.”

            — Brian Leiter and Michael Weisberg, “Do You Only Have a Brain? On Thomas Nagel”, a review of Thomas Nagel’s _Mind and Cosmos : Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False_, _The Nation_

            By this point that “faith” in the axioms is “confidence” based on the method’s spectacular success. In fact, those axioms are sufficiently well validated that they can be taken as true for all practical purposes.

            The only reason not to do so is to assert one’s supposed philosophical superiority in an argument.

            /@

          5. “Aristotle was on the wrong track and that we are not, or at least not yet.”

            By the way, we’re still on the same track as Aristotle since we’re using the same axioms of logic. So if he was on the wrong track, then so are we, we just haven’t reached the end of it yet.

          6. Oh, you are so profoundly worng with that assertion.

            Aristotelian metaphysics is such primitive and profoundly disproven superstitious bullshit it hurts.

            Aristotle was the one who laid forth the demand for a Prime Mover to set everything in motion, who was certain that nothing at all moved unless you pushed on it. You literally can’t get more ronger!

            …it’s also worth noting that the Abrahamic religions are utterly dependent on Aristotle — and, indeed, they only make what little sense they do if you presuppose Aristotelian metaphysics. Souls, creation, afterlife, intelligent design…all that and so much more…it’s just bullshit, but it’s bullshit that Aristotle himself could have served up.

            b&

          7. @Ben Goren (for some reason your comment doesn’t have reply button under it)

            I may be wrong but three classical laws of thought expounded by Aristotle in Metaphysics are still widely accepted. I do know of course that logicians have come up with alternative systems (fuzzy logic etc).

          8. Even if you can find isolated fragments that haven’t been completely invalidated, that doesn’t begin to come close to demonstrating your point. At the heart of Aristotle’s Metaphysics is the inescapable necessity of a prime mover. No prime mover, and all of Metaphysics fall down go boom.

            And the prime mover fall down go boom centuries ago…and, indeed, the pre-Socratics had no need of one and their science was far in advance of Aristotle’s. Primitive, yes, but Aristotle really fucked things up royally. And we still haven’t recovered…just look at the discussions here on free will for examples of people who just can’t escape Aristotelian modes of thought, especially the reification of thought itself.

            b&

          9. Does the aeronautical engineer “have faith” that gravity will remain a reality several years hence when his design becomes a reality?

            What kind of “faith” does an airline passenger (who has absolutely no understanding of pressure differentials caused by air flow over surfaces of different curvature) have when (contemplating) boarding and flying in an aircraft?

      2. I read your Slate article. The part of it that deals with my argument resorts to appeal to practicality and usefulness (which I don’t disagree with):

        “The orderliness of nature—the set of so-called natural laws—is not an assumption but an observation… We take nature as we find it, and sometimes it behaves predictably.

        Reason is… a tool that’s been shown to work.”

        Now I am not arguing that science is based on faith in existence of natural laws, what I am arguing is that science is based on faith that these laws are intelligible to humans. It is an assumption that the human brain (a product of evolution that happened in very particular circumstances on a rocky planet in one planetary system in one galaxy), that this biological organ can build successful models of all phenomena in the universe. This assumption underlies science.

        Regarding reason, I believe philosophers differ on how much it is an a priori assumption. Certainly the famous Cartesian dictum “Cogito ergo sum” takes the act of reasoning as a premise from which existence is derived. IIRC, Kant argued that our notions of space and time are a priori concepts which are not empirical (i.e. not buttressed by evidence).

        While I understand that theists will jump on any admission that science is based on faith and will twist words to achieve a false equivalence, we shouldn’t put the scientific method unquestioningly on a pedestal and shun an honest appraisal of its foundations.

        1. “It is an assumption that the human brain (a product of evolution that happened in very particular circumstances on a rocky planet in one planetary system in one galaxy), that this biological organ can build successful models of all phenomena in the universe. This assumption underlies science.”

          I wouldn’t call that an assumption, I’d call it a goal, or at most an expectation. Scientific hypotheses can be disproved and data can point to an entirely unexpected explanation, or even further obfuscate the principle/explanation the experiment was designed to answer. But we’d make no progress at all without the scientific method. Ergo, we have faith…er, confidence in it.

        2. Well sure, our brains may hit practical limits of what we can understand but that doesn’t mean that science isn’t the right tool to use to try to understand things. And we can always create beings to think for us (as dangerous as that might be); we can use science to develop AI and AI can figure out what we are too dumb to understand. Or maybe we can develop technology to augment ourselves – all using science.

    4. This only works if you think in terms of the Muchhausen Dilemma: beliefs are arbitrary, or they’re supported only by other beliefs, or they’re believed because of other beliefs that are believed because of the original belief that is believed (et cetera!). But if you insist beliefs can only be justified by other beliefs, you end up like Achilles and the Tortoise, writing an infinite list of rules just to support basic logic. And that’s not a sign of intellectual rigour; it’s the inevitable fantasy of someone not letting reality enter the conversation.

      There is a limiting factor, or rather two of them, that means it isn’t based on “faith”. One is that beliefs aren’t castles in mid-air, but are usually either tethered or locked in.

      For instance, I don’t believe there’s a laptop in front of me right now. The thing’s just there. If I end up believing it’s there, it’s because I always respond somehow to things that are there. I also see illusions even though I know they’re illusions. I get that knowledge from memories of what I’ve read, and the memories themselves insist upon my consciousness. I certainly didn’t start out “believing” this stuff before encountering it, like a crazy monk who “decides” against all evidence that the world is a uniform shade of pink. It just happens. I could be a barely sentient nematode that couldn’t even dream of articulating any rational beliefs, and the phenomenon would still happen.

      The second limiting factor is sheer practicality. I don’t believe in a Matrix for the simple reason that nothing in reality says it’s anything but an idle speculation. In the meantime, I’ve got minutes passing me by and can’t spend all of them chasing after any old idea that trots along.

      2. Exactly, it’s just more practical to have faith in underpinnings of science than in existence of supernatural beings who intervene in the world. The first has created modern technology and science, the second has created job opportunities for theologians.

        1. No, you missed my point. You don’t have faith in something because it’s practical. The issue of practicality renders the very notion of faith completely useless.

          On the “underpinnings of science”, you don’t pick them arbitrarily or by invoking a circle or infinite regress of further underpinnings. That’s getting the whole enterprise backwards, as if humans cheerfully decide what the universe is going to be. People didn’t invent Boyle’s Law and the universe made liquids follow it as an afterthought. Reality forced the conclusion you come to, and that’s my point. Whether because of reason or because of practical issues, reality forces your hand. If you don’t pay attention, you wander straight into the realm of fantasy.

          That’s why faith leads to nonsense, and reason does not. And that is why faith leads to theology and reason+practicality leads to technology and science. If you think the latter is an iteration of faith, you’re twisting the word beyond recognition.

          1. People don’t decide what the universe will be. People do assume that a biological machine (known as human brain) will be able to create sufficiently useful models for how the universe behaves. The underpinnings of these models are assumed and then from these assumptions people have derived theories that more or less fit the universe we observe.

          2. Once again, I disagree with your pronouncement that all of this is “assumed.” I don’t think science assumes anything, at least until an accumulation of knowledge in a particular area leads to experience-based hypotheses, at which point the inquiry begins again.

          3. “People don’t decide what the universe will be.”

            And yet, you go right on to say:

            “The underpinnings of these models are assumed”

            So people decide what the universe will be! You can’t have it both ways! Either reality i.e. the universe we observe is the arbiter separating delusion from fact, or you really are saying there’s no difference between science and religion besides their “axiomatic assumptions”, which is tantamount to saying they’re both the same baseless things. You’re contradicting yourself.

            This is why you can’t then invoke observation and practicality, and call it “faith” as if it were the same thing as believing in Jesus. Every time you do, you twist the word beyond recognition.

            At best, I think you’re confused. Stop doing your darnedest to call science a “faith-based” enterprise. If you really see the chasm of difference between it and religion, then calling it “a kind of faith” gives the complete opposite impression.

          4. First, since we are products of the Universe, and quite intimately intertwined with it, and since the evolutionary survival of all organisms depends on working with it and not against it, it should come as no surprise that we can do a pretty decent job of figuring it out.

            Second, our models are intelligently designed in an evolutionary process intended to make them the most accurate models of the Universe possible. Models that aren’t a good match produce unsatisfactory results, prompting us to search for better models that we replace the old ones with. How could such an endeavor do anything other than produce better and better models of the Universe?

            And, lastly…it does produce better and better models of the Universe. Quantum and Relativistic Mechanics are far superior to Newtonian Mechanics, which was an huge leap forward over epicycles, which beat the pants off geocentricism, and so on. How it could even occur to somebody to suggest otherwise…beggars belief, frankly.

            b&

    5. Religious faith has a component of commitment which ordinary, secular versions of “faith” (ie pragmatic reliance) lack. In the former, changing your mind is considered a failure on your part, you lost the battle to believe. In science, changing your mind given new evidence is the standard of honesty.

      Try this: consider the distinction between having faith in your doctor — and having a specifically religious faith in your doctor, believing in her competence the way someone would believe in God.

      Now she could run through a hospital with a machine gun, flame thrower, and Manifesto of Evil and all you’d do is admit that you’re “struggling” to stand by your previous conviction.

      1. But how do you change your faith in ultimate intelligibility of the world that underpins science? If you do, then you basically reject your scientific vocation (if you were a scientist to begin with). What I mean is that the scientific method can not encompass its own rejection within itself.

        1. I’m not so sure that a belief in the “ultimate intelligibility of the world” underpins science at all. It is perfectly possible that when it comes to ultimate questions or situations there’s not a damn thing we can make sense of. We’re only human. Scientists are okay with saying “I don’t know.” All they ever aim at is improvement, not an Ultimate Perfection which allows us to break free of rational restrictions. For that, see religion.

          All that’s required for science to take place I think is that a limited part of reality needs to be intelligible enough to continue to allow us to find patterns, consistencies, and regularities from which we can make predictions and form explanations we can test. And it seems to me that discovering scientific limitations on our capacity to understand reality through the application of science would not be a grand failure of the method, but further evidence of its use.

          1. Scientists are not content to say “I don’t know” and then stop doing science. A scientist’s “I don’t know” is provisional. We can not discover the limitations on science through science. One can always say “well, we don’t know this but in 100 years people will figure it out”.

          2. “We can not discover the limitations on science through science.”

            How else would you do it?

          3. Kabbalah, of course! Or maybe you could ask the little baby Jesus. Or go find the answer in the Koran.

            There are all kinds of ways of finding the answer to questions like that.

          6. One can always say “well, we don’t know this but in 100 years people will figure it out”.

            Correction: Scientists can always say “we don’t know this but in 100 years (or 500 years or 1 or 2 thousand years) we MAY figure it out.”

            That’s not religious faith, with its moral mandate to continually hope and insist that God WILL provide, explain, and create a satisfying ending for life, the universe, and everything, one in which all loose ends are tied up and justice/destiny/eternal love are fulfilled. Admitting a possibility for something entails admitting a possibility against that something. Religion instead idolizes the Possible.

            Science may not be able to establish a limitation on itself beyond all doubt, but it could, in principle, put some shrewd limitations on the likelihood. What I see coming out of self-designated People of Faith is a belief that the slimmer a possibility, then the more tightly one needs to hold on. Doing so creates the dramatic tension in which faith-based beliefs thrive and triumph.

          7. So…what, exactly? We should just shut up and stop paying attention to that man behind the curtain?

            And what on Earth makes you think that we’re actually getting close to fundamental limitations on the scope of human knowledge? Have you not been paying attention to the news? The pace of discovery is accelerating, not tapering off….

            b&

        2. But how do you change your faith in ultimate intelligibility of the world that underpins science?

          Oh, that’s trivial. If the world ever stops being intelligible….

          And, indeed. We know from Gödel that there are horizons past which we simply won’t be able to see. More frustrating, the very nature of those horizons is such that we won’t even know if the reason we’re stumped is because we’re not smart enough to figure it out or because it’s something that just simply can’t be figured out, period.

          But we also know that there’s all kinds of stuff that we’ll be able to figure out without trouble once we build the tools we need to have a look. And, sure enough, we’re also busy building those tools….

          b&

          1. Well, exactly, how do you figure out we reached the boundaries of our understanding? You can always say “we’re just not smart enough but in 100 years people will figure it out”. Basically, the scientific method can not be used to falsify itself.

    6. “What I mean is that, if we go deep enough. science is based on belief in ultimate intelligibility of the world, on faith that the axioms of logic we use to reason will give rise to sufficiently useful models of how the world around us works.”

      You mean faith as in “confidence in an idea that has held up to increasingly thorough testing for half a millenium”? As opposed to faith as in “belief without evidence, or even in disregard of the evidence”?

      1. As I mentioned above, this “thorough testing for half a millenium” is predicated on our belief in the foundational axioms of scientific reasoning and the questions that flow from them. These questions are then answered through experiments, i.e. “testing”.

    7. Eli,

      What possible good can it do to equivocate
      with the word “Faith” as you are doing here?

      Take two positions on evolution and the age of the earth.

      1. The belief derived from the scientific method that the earth is approximately 4.54 Billion years old, and the believe in evolution via common descent.

      vs

      2. The faith belief of some Christians that the earth is 6,000 years old
      and all life forms were created instantaneously at that time.

      Method of belief justification number 1 is an inherently skeptical method, where the conclusion is derived from the rigorous application of reason/logic to observations, the conclusions of which scale with the evidence, and which alters it’s models on the evidence.

      Method of belief justification 2 eschews coherency, reason, logic and refuses to change in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

      Now, these are clearly vastly different methods of forming a belief – almost entirely opposed. Given they are not equivalent, what good do you think it would do to put the same level – “Faith” – on both?
      If they are not the same methods of holding a belief, WHY apply the same label which would suggest they are equivalent?

      But you go further to cast even the very act of REASONING as “Faith.” Again, what possible good can come of getting rid of any useful delineation between terms like “Faith” and “Reason?”

      Religionists try this schtick all the time, where they essentially equate the very use of inductive reasoning to “faith.” But to the degree inductive reasoning is based on
      necessary assumptions then the necessity itself is a form of bedrock-solid JUSTIFICATION that separates reason from the non-necessary justifications used for most “faith” beliefs. Further, induction differs from faith in that induction scales with the evidence. If all swans you’ve encountered are white up until yesterday, and then you discover a new species that are black, if you are thinking inductively you MODIFY your belief based on new evidence.

      Wheres if you believe all swans are white on “faith” then you DON’T modify your beliefs when black swans are discovered. You continue to hold your belief IN SPITE of evidence that suggests you should change your belief, if you were actually thinking inductively. This is the type of belief-holding we see among the “Faithful” (religious) and it’s clearly different than
      induction and scientific inference, so why in the world apply the same label “Faith?”

      1. I understand the difference you’re referring to. What I’m saying is that “rigorous application of reason/logic” (well, actually, the specific rules of reasoning you use) inherently restrict what kind of conclusions and questions you can come up with. I don’t see how the scientific method can allow you to test its assumptions and lead you to reject itself. Hence it has to be taken on faith.

        1. Eli,

          “I understand the difference you’re referring to. What I’m saying is that “rigorous application of reason/logic” (well, actually, the specific rules of reasoning you use) inherently restrict what kind of conclusions and questions you can come up with. “

          What could that possibly mean? Of course reason and logic look for conclusions that are reasonable! Are you suggesting this is some sort of liability?

          What’s the alternative? That we ought to also
          accept conclusions that are unreasonable?
          What are you getting at that could actually be a reasonable critique?

          Or, are you perhaps attempting a demonstration of your very proposition by offering unreasoned replies? 😉

          ” I don’t see how the scientific method can allow you to test its assumptions and lead you to reject itself. Hence it has to be taken on faith.”

          Not at all. Science doesn’t “justify itself.” The scientific method grows out of underlying justifications. You can pose the types of problems that science arose to deal with – e.g. the problem of discerning between variable possible causes of an effect you are trying to understand. If you see a phenomenon “A” in the presence of phonemena B, C and D, and you want to know what causes A, then you have the problem of how to do that. What method will justify your confidence that one…or all…of those things cause “A.” Note…no mention of science at all in that challenge. But science AROSE in response to such challenges.
          It has an answer – e.g. test one variable at a time. If you want to challenge the scientific answer no problem: if you have some other solution, bring it to the table to compare with the scientific solution.
          You don’t have to ASSUME the scientific method; it can be argued for. The justifications will be essentially philosophical – and such arguments are undertaken all the time.

          But if you are worried that one must use reason to produce reasons then..well..duh!

          1. Science doesn’t “justify itself.”

            Actually…it does. Science is a recursive exercise that builds models of reality, compares those models against reality, and refines the models to better match observations of reality.

            All human attempts at understanding are exercises in model building. What sets science apart is that it measures itself against observations of what it’s trying to understand.

            How do you judge your answers? Whatever ruler you use is what your answers will converge upon. By testing against observation, science always steers itself towards better alignment with observation. But religions, on the other hand…well…it’s pretty clear what they measure themselves against, and it ain’t pretty….

            b&

          2. Ben,

            I know we’ve been through this one before.
            You are allergic to philosophy, I know, but can’t help practicing nonetheless 😉

            If you are saying science is self-justifying, a bible believer will tell you the same thing: the bible justifies itself.

            You immediately will recognize the problem with the bible-thumper’s claim – the viscous circularity of assuming something someone is asking your to argue for. Begging The Question.

            If you then start with appealing to the scientific method to argue why the bible-thumper’s claim is poor justification, then you’ve just *assumed* scientific justification, not argued for it. The Bible-thumper will just do the same “Well your scientific method doesn’t pass the muster if you assume MY Biblically-founded method of knowledge!”

            You’d be at a stalemate; you can’t just allow yourself the circularity of ASSUMING your criteria to judge it the best criteria, and then say “no, you can’t do that” to the Bible-Thumper.

            What you’ll have to do is step back, get underneath the rational for either claim, and not just assume them. Once you are arguing in a non-circular way, then you can make a case for science without special pleading.

            The fact is you implicitly recognize this in your own reply, when you write:

            “What sets science apart is that….”

            That’s right! You’ve taken a step back “out of science” in order to look at it’s justifications. You have to, in order to make a non question-begging argument FOR science.

            “How do you judge your answers? Whatever ruler you use is what your answers will converge upon.”

            Yes, and since various rulers can be proposed (e.g. aligning our conclusions with our intuitions, with our feelings, with our subjective individual experience, with assuming a sacred text to be true, etc) then judging “which is best” can not be done by ASSUMING one of the rulers to judge the others; that way every ruler can claim equal validity. If you want to say the ruler science uses is the “best” one you have to appeal to some external criteria, and not simply assume the ruler of science.

            Your own posts shows that science doesn’t justify itself; your arguments assume an external criteria 🙂

          3. BTW Ben, though we differ on a couple of subjects, I agree with much of what you write and really appreciate your contribution
            on WEIT. (And I don’t know how you came to know so much about the Bible!)

          5. Oh, nothing remarkable. A Christian would cite some passage in favor of an argument…so I’d go and look up the passage. And virtually inevitably discover that either the passage didn’t say what they wanted it to say or that it was a perfect example of something really, really, really nasty. That prompted me to read a bit more around the edges…and, believe me, you start to find some really nasty things, right in the heart of the most beloved of passages.

            For example, I’ve even heard Richard Dawkins praise the Sermon on the Mount…but, if you actually read the text, and not the typical sermonized reimagining of it…well, it’s exactly the sort of thing you’d expect to come out of ISIS or Saudi Arabia, to be frank.

            Cheers,

            b&

          9. If you are saying science is self-justifying, a bible believer will tell you the same thing: the bible justifies itself.

            The question is of what the systems encompass.

            The Bible justifies itself, but the Bible is but one small part of reality. It is perfectly true to state that Jesus rose from the dead, in the exact same sense as it is true to state that Luke Skywalker lost his hand in a lightsaber duel with has father, Darth Vader; or that Harry Potter bore a scar on his forehead that was the product of a powerful burst of magic in his infancy when his mother saved him from Lord Voldemort; or that Bottom turned into an ass; and so on.

            All those conclusions are valid within the domains of the actual stories themselves. Where you run into trouble is when you attempt to extrapolate beyond the confines of their pages.

            Science is also valid within the domain against which it checks its answers…but that domain includes the real world. Newton measured the fall of an object and determined it to be accelerating at (in modern units) roughly ten meters per second per second. He figured in the mass of the Earth, and did some similar observations and estimation for the other objects in the Solar System…and figured out that everything is falling towards everything else at an accelerating rate that depends only on the combined masses of the objects.

            And, just as conclusions about Jesus are valid only within the pages of the book in which he lives, Newton’s conclusions about gravity are valid only within the context of the system in which he lived…which happens to be the same system as we live in.

            You want to confirm that Jesus rose from the dead, according to the Bible? Go read the Bible; it’s in there. You want to confirm that Jesus actually rose from the dead? No can do; outside the Bible, that claim is trivially disproven. You want to confirm Newtonian gravitation? Grab a stopwatch and an apple, and drop the latter and use the former to time the fall.

            Circularity isn’t a problem when you’re inside the circle.

            Cheers,

            b&

          10. Vaal,

            “What could that possibly mean? Of course reason and logic look for conclusions that are reasonable! Are you suggesting this is some sort of liability?”

            I think one has to be more precise in defining what is “reasonable”. The conclusions you get are only “reasonable” given the specific set of axioms used to derive them. What I’m saying is that the scientific method rests on a set of specific axioms which are assumed. This, in turn, restricts what kind of conclusions you can get.

            For example, for a long time in physics it was logical to think that an object be either a particle or a wave. In a way, it was assumed that an object can’t be both. Of course, after discovery of quantum mechanics people found out that objects can be both and discarded this assumption.

            “Science doesn’t “justify itself.””

            We actually agree on this. The scientific method doesn’t justify itself, it arises from some basic assumptions in logic and reasoning.

    8. As Jerry has noted many times in the past: This a different meaning of the word “faith” and that meaning is closer to the word “confidence” than the religious meaning of the word.

      In this case, faith (in science) can only mean (as Jerry replied to the nurse): The “faith” we have science is a confidence, based on our experience with the method: It works. We have huge amounts of evidence for this conclusion.

      This is similar to having “faith” that the sun will rise tomorrow. This is a confidence based on much experience.

      For religious faith, on the other hand, faith is belief in things for which there is no evidence. Explicitly so, in many cases (e.g. the story of “doubting Thomas” for Xians).

      1. I agree with this. Religious faith is completely impractical compared to faith in the scientific method just as it’s completely impractical for me to believe that the sun will not rise tomorrow.

  22. Dr. Coyne,

    > I was quite exercised at times,
    > though I hope not strident

    I’ll take this as license to offer my perceptions, hope that’s OK.

    I thought the Q&A worked quite well overall.

    You did interrupt several people to ask “do you have a question” when they started to ramble. I got the sense that the audience was generally happy with how things moved along.

    Listening to the nurse and the rabbi was fascinating and I was glad you gave them time to speak. They used the same arguments we read about all the time! I feel like the believers must meet ahead of time and put all the old arguments in a hat and each pick the one they will present during Q&A.

    As far as tone goes, I thought your interactions with the rabbi showed the audience that you meant what you said in your intro: you were not trying to attack anyone personally. I thought you seemed calm and respectful of his opinions while he seemed to barely contain his anger.

    Thanks for coming all the way out here for a 1-hour event!

    Mark

    1. I feel like the believers must meet ahead of time and put all the old arguments in a hat and each pick the one they will present during Q&A.

      That is hilarious! :0

  23. Suggestion for encouraging questions:

    Last year I attended a lecture by the British architect, Robert Adams, at UCD School of Architecture and author of The Globalization of Modern Architecture. After his presentation, he offered a free book to the person who asked the best question. It really encouraged questions from the audience (rather than bloviating). Yours truly won the book.

  24. How is this for a metaphor: “Religion is the cracks in the sidewalk and science is the solid surface upon which we walk!” Kind of a variant on the god of the gaps.

    1. Religion is living by the child’s rhyme: “Step on a crack, break your mother’s back” and studiously avoiding the cracks. Science is just walking.

  27. I wrote an article in Slate on this very issue (part of which appears in my book), and I hope people can think harder about the different meanings of the word “faith.”

    Ah, but if they think harder then they’re not only in danger of losing their faith, they’re also in danger of losing an easy, simplistic, trite, and extremely popular ‘gotcha’ point.

    ‘Thinking harder’ is dangerous. And hard. I think.

    1. I don’t even think it’s a legitimate confusion for most of them so that it would benefit from more thought on their part. I think it’s a mere ploy, a bit of sophistry cooked up specially for the purpose of throwing something into the gears of the relentless logic of unbelief. Like the ink an octopus emits, hoping to disorient their foe long enough to escape.

      In real life they fully know the difference between how they feel about whether their lights will come on when they flip the switch and how they feel about, say, praying.

      1. No, I think the fact that they fully know the difference between having confidence in light switches and having confidence in God is just as likely to point to a legitimate confusion as to a deliberate ploy. A confusion is confused.

        Spiritual thinking is sloppy thinking, making spurious connections on a superficial level which are then imbued with deep underlying significance. Faith is faith is faith — and if one kind is good then so are the others.

        Hell, equivocation is actually one of their truth-seeking techniques. If all they were doing was using it in hopes that it would disorient the skeptic long enough for them to get away, then they wouldn’t produce it so regularly as a convincing argument for the existence of God. They wouldn’t slap it out so often as their OWN reason for belief. “We all have to have faith in things; we all have to have faith in something; I choose to have faith in God.”

        1. Agreed!

          I am very skeptical, and personally very cautious of, attributing deliberate mendacity to someone presenting a bad argument, be it theists or otherwise.

          Fact is people hold many beliefs for bad reasons, and I’m sure none of us entirely escape it.

        2. “Spiritual thinking is sloppy thinking, making spurious connections on a superficial level which are then imbued with deep underlying significance.”
          I think you’ve hit the essence of the issue right here. Some people are convinced that closing their eyes and waving their hands is a way of dealing with difficult questions. Now, when I find myself confronting someone of this type, what is the most effective response?

  28. RE: “Perhaps one of the most common criticisms of science by believers, then, is that, like religion, it is based on faith. I interpret this to mean, “You are as bad as we are.””

    (Dr. Coyne – if you cover this in your latest book – sorry!! – haven’t got to it yet.)

    Dictionaries include this as a definition of the word faith, “confidence or trust in a person or thing”. That is probably how most of us ‘non-believers’ define it. I’m thinking that maybe most ‘believers’ principally define it the same and to varying degrees unconsciously include the other ‘god based’ faith definitions.

    So using the ‘trust’ form of faith, I have a faith in the process of the “scientific method” in that it will yield truths about the nature of our world and the universe it resides in. And I have faith that the scientists discovering these truths are actually using the scientific method and publishing their discoveries for critical review to ferret out biases and errors that may have occurred. Most of us are not scientists. And we will not be able to ‘fact’ check everything you guys put out. So I have faith in the process of the scientific method in determining the truths.

    In a similar vein perhaps many of the believers use the ‘trust’ form of faith in reference to their particular religion. They have faith in (trust) what the priests, preachers, and religious books are saying about their particular god(s). Most believers are not doing the work of studying the details of their religion, that’s up to the priests, preachers, etc. It may not lead to any sort of actual verifiable natural truths but many believers don’t seem interested in that.

    So in a sense, if my observation has merit, Dr. Coyne’s interpretation “You are as bad as we are.” is believable and I agree that that is what most folks are implying. As Dr. Coyne mentioned a couple days ago, it is a tough challenge to discuss ‘Fact vs. Faith’ without getting peoples back up. ‘Discussions’ about the book with dinner friends a few nights ago got quite lively! All we can do is gently keep pointing out which side is continuously yielding real truths.

    1. Good points made. I’d just add that I think the crux of the definition of faith issue is the degree to which one is lending credence to a proposition based on sound reason and evidence. Faith can be seen as reasonable confidence or unreasonable belief, depending on the aspect of the definition you want to emphasize.

  29. I’m reminded of a joke.

    A sophist walks into the room…

    I just can’t remember the punch line.

  30. about half said “Maru” and asked for a cat drawn in,

    If someone came up and said “uraM2, would you draw a squid? Or Chthulu? Or … would it be hard to tell the difference?
    (Wondering if the Squidly One or one of his minions is listening?)

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