I’m not going to dissect every critical review of Faith versus Fact, for that way lies madness. But I will address a few critical reviews when they make points worth discussing. This one, in fact, says very little about my book, which I consider a bonus.
The review, “Two-way monologue: How to get past science vs. religion” is actually a joint review of FvF and The Territories of Science and Reigion by Peter Harrison. It appeared in the Los Angeles Times, and was written by Colin Dickey. I think Dickey’s claims of why science and religion are truly compatible are misguided, and steeped in postmodern dislike of objective truth.
First, the piece isn’t really a critical review of FvF—more like a lukewarm one, for he spends only a few paragraphs on my book (thank G*d), before devoting the rest of his review to Harrison’s thesis. Dickey notes that he understands why, as an evolutionist, I might be peeved about the conflict between my career and creationism, but adds that debates between science and religion are futile:
One always feels a bit for scientists like Coyne, who have no doubt spent much of their professional careers dealing with people who irrationally discount their ideas and their work. Arguments over the age of the Earth or the origin of the species are exhausting even to the most casual observer; one can only imagine how dispiriting they are to one who’s made evolutionary biology her or his life’s work. But the problem with all of these arguments is the belief that the debate between science and religion is a thing one can “win,” as though there were some central set of propositions and axioms that all parties could agree to, a basis for some kind of lucid exchange and final judgment everyone would accept. If there is one belief one can empirically demonstrate to be wrong, it’s that these debates are anything but circular and fruitless.
This betrays a profound misunderstanding of my thesis, and of the debate in general. Of course we don’t expect religionists to roll over and admit defeat! That’s not the way such issues are settled.
First note that my thesis, which is similar to that of many other New Atheists, is that science tells us verifiable facts about the cosmos, and has led to ever-increasing understanding of that cosmos, while religion, which also makes empirical claims, has no way of deciding whether its own claims are “true”, even in the provisional sense that science uses that word. That’s why I called my book Faith Versus Fact.
So yes, the debate can be “won”, not when religionists admit that their beliefs are unsupported and untestable, but when religion passes away from the world, as it is doing now. The fight will be long, and we won’t be alive to see the victory of secularism—make no mistake, a reliance on reason and observation will ultimately defeat superstition—but win we will. Already many people have given up their faith because they see no evidence for its claims, or they see the conflicts between incompatible claims of different religions. Already we know that these debates are NOT “anything but circular and fruitless.” It’s a debate between how to adjudicate truth claims: by faith or by rationality, and how can such a discussion be fruitless? And if it is fruitless, at least for the nonce, it’s because religionists stubbornly cling to their irrational blanket of superstition.
But Dickey (and apparently Harrison, whose book I’ve not read), see the debate as irresolvable for other reasons as well:
a. Science and religion both rely on teleological narratives, so they have “common ground”. Dickey says this:
Which is not to say. . . that there wasn’t still common ground between the two. Among the many similarities that persist between the two entities is their fondness for teleological narratives. Both science and religion can tend toward descriptions of history that focus on an inexorable progression toward some kind of end. Just as Christianity has long focused on the Second Coming and the End of Days, science has at times adopted a Whiggish sense of itself, shaped by the belief that it is constantly progressing forward. These strains have always been a part of the Western intellectual tradition, but natural philosophy and natural history once permitted alternative conceptions of time, self, and thought. In the reorganization of knowledge in the 19th century, these alternatives were downplayed, delegitimized, and, for the most part, forgotten.
This is ludicrous. First of all, while the tenets of religion sometimes involve teleological processes, the understanding of the divine, as I’ve long maintained, has not progressed at all. We know no more about whether there is a God, much less the number of gods or their nature, than did the ancient Greeks. New religions have cropped up and lie beside old ones. There has been no progress here.
In contrast, science’s teleological path (not narrative) has led to increasing improvement in understanding the universe—unless, perhaps, you’re someone like Dickey who can’t bring himself to admit it. Yes, there have been periods of stasis, and some blind alleys, but the claim that science really has led to greater understanding of the cosmos needs no defense. In truth, only an idiot or a postmodernist could deny such a claim. Just look at how much more we know about human heredity, or about how the Universe began and is organized, than did the authors of the New Testament.
b. Science merges with religion because they both use “apocalyptic terminologies.” This is a truly bizarre argument—a claim of those who are desperately groping to find commonalities between disparate fields. Why not say that science and sports are harmonious because sportswriters use apocalyptic terminologies when referring to the fates of teams? While making this specious argument, Dickey manages to get in a lick against global warming:
The discourse of popular science journalism has become thoroughly imbricated with the religious rhetoric, where global warming is described in explicitly “apocalyptic” terminology: in a recent piece for Reuters, to take one such example, David Auerbach predicted that “[a] child born today may live to see humanity’s end.”
This tendency to appropriate biblical rhetoric for questions of science and policy only reinforces the blurring that has taken place between the supposedly diametrically opposed poles of science and religion. “Such popular accounts of science not only assume the social functions of myth with their attendant moral imperatives,” Harrison writes, “but some also propound their own ersatz eschatologies.” One need not be a climate denier to recognize that the rhetorical moves of many scientists today are the result not of science’s incompatibility with religion, but its long dependence on it.
That’s garbage. To claim that “seeing humanity’s end” not only appropriates Biblical rhetoric (a stretch at the least), but shows the dependence of science on religion, shows how desperate this kind of accommodationism has become. Such rhetoric is not, as Dickey claims, the norm. His claim needs no further refutation.
c. Science isn’t really about truth anyway. Dickey makes a two-part argument here. First, he argues that much of what people see as “science” is really technology, which doesn’t really have much to do with science anyway. I’ll let readers deal with this fatuous claim (remember, Dickey goes along with Harrison’s claims right down the line):
Harrison’s way out of the dilemma is to first recognize that “science” and “religion” are only tentative shorthand for a disparate collection of various competing ideas and methodologies. “Science,” for example, has become synonymous (or at least closely allied) with “technology,” even though the two often have very little in common. Much of what goes on in the “tech sector” these days is based entirely on semiotics; coding, after all, has nothing to do with applied sciences and has everything to do with linguistics and logic. And yet “technology” becomes the means to justify science to the public: “Science is true, we are repeatedly told, because it works,” Harrison writes.
Well, medicine, which is science-based technology, can serve as an example of the palpable value of science. Does Dickey really think medical technology (or our ability to fly space probes past Pluto) “is based entirely on semiotics”? Again we see the desperation of accommodationists, and what kinds of arguments they emit in their death throes.
Second, Dickey makes a claim I deal with in FvF: that science really doesn’t find much truth anyway, because it’s so often been wrong. Here’s Dickey agreeing with Harrison:
And yet “technology” becomes the means to justify science to the public: “Science is true, we are repeatedly told, because it works,” Harrison writes.
There is, of course, a subtle slight-of-hand [sic] involved in this line of justification, and one that becomes apparent as soon as we consider how many scientific theories and models that have yielded true predictions, practical outcomes, or useful technologies have nonetheless been superseded […] The history of science is a graveyard of theories that “worked” but have since been replaced.
It is appalling to see an educated person make the argument that science doesn’t “work”. For even when science-based technology “works,” that shows that science has produced approxmately correct explanations of the world. And much science that “works,” in terms of making verifiable predictions, worked long before it was incorporated into technology. Such advances include quantum mechanics, the identification of DNA as the genetic material, and our discovery of the Big Bang.
OF COURSE science has been incomplete or wrong, yet nobody but a chowderhead would claim that it hasn’t led to progressively greater understanding of the universe, and better ability to deal with our problems. We’ve eliminated smallpox and have almost done the same for polio. We know how to produce clean water supplies for big cities. We have airplanes to get to distant lands. In what ways has religion “worked” to uniquely impart to us one solid truth about the universe? And by that I mean one idea (for religion produces no truths) that hasn’t been suggested as well by secular humanists.
d. The supposed conflict between science and faith isn’t mostly about truth, but about morality and values. Dickey:
And the struggles between science and religion are rarely about “truth,” anyway. “While the ostensible focus in high profile science-religion disputes is factual claims about the natural world,” Harrison notes, “such debates are often proxies for more deep-seated ideological, or, in its broadest sense, ‘theological’ battles.” The real questions up for debate have to do with politics and policy, with Darwin and the Bible only standing in for different views on governance, family, and education. “For their part, what religiously motivated antievolutionists fear is not the ‘science’ as such,” Harrison argues, “but the secularist package of values concealed in what they perceive to be the Trojan horse of evolutionary theory.” No one involved truly cares about what happened in the past, whether that past was 6,000 years ago or 4 billion years ago; what they care about is who gets final say over their own lives, and their children’s lives. “Perhaps these skirmishes should be thought less in terms of conflict between science and religion, and more as theological controversies waged by means of science.”
My response is short: people wouldn’t have these conflicts, even about values, if they didn’t accept the epistemic claims of religions in the first place. If you don’t think that morality comes from God, because you don’t believe in a God based on lack of evidence, then such battles simply can’t occur. Further, many creationists are indeed interested in the truth of the Bible, for if they see that evolution’s tale is true, the whole provenance of Scripture comes into question.
e. Finally, we’re using science wrong. We shouldn’t appreciate it for telling us true and marvelous things about the universe, but use it as a vehicle for our self-understanding and betterment. Dickey seems to conceive of science as a self-help program, much as Deepak Chopra does. Have a gander at this:
Outside of the realm of policy, though, what is available to the rest of us is a return to natural philosophy, a habitus that involves using the study of nature as a means to personal understanding and betterment. Such study not only brings back the element of personal introspection and refinement into discussions of the natural world, but it also rejects the teleological aspect of modern science. It is less concerned with the steady march of progress toward some final state of knowledge, and more concerned with an inner progress in which one recognizes both the scope and majesty of the natural world, as well as one’s specific place within it.
. . . Scientists — those who have devoted their life to the study of the physical and biological world — can be forgiven for thinking they are assuaging, multiplying, and extending. But the rest of us might be better served to use their discoveries not to one-up the believers in our midst, but to enrich our own personal habits of mind.
Excuse me, but I prefer my science straight rather than on the rocks, for “natural philosophy” dilutes science by appropriating it as a vehicle for metaphysical or philosophical speculation, as it did in the days when it was engaged in using nature to buttress the existence of God. Yes, we can use science to appreciate ourselves as evolved and material beings, but we can also appreciate how all elements came from stars, and that frogs are related to sparrows, and a whole panoply of wonders that doesn’t lead at all to “personal understanding and betterment”.
What solipsism and misunderstanding of science permeate Dickey’s review! If these arguments are the best these men can muster to show that science and religion are compatible, I can suspect only that they lack intellectual rigor or that there’s something else motivating their pathetically weak arguments. For any thinking person knows that there is true incompatibility in the ways that science and religion perceive truth (and yes, Dickey admits they’re both in the truth business) and in the “truths” that each discipline produces.
Postmodernism poisons everything.
The religious nuts, including apologists such as Dickey & Harrison, are desperate to prevent the further erosion of religious belief, not acknowledging the world would be far better if all religious and political dogma died away, something that may not actually happen until humans share the fate of the dodos and passenger pigeons and every other species wiped out by human activity. Without all that dogma getting in the way, we may have a chance to change our environmentally destructive bad habits and avoid bringing about our own extinction, but I’m increasingly skeptical that we have the collective will to change enough in a timely manner.
I’ve never been especially familiar with the Los Angeles Times, but I must admit to a bit of a surprise to see them giving so much space to somebody who denies the crisis of global pollution. Really? I thought they had a better reputation than that.
What’s particularly depressing is that I can’t think of any of the negative reviews you’ve mentioned that have really embraced the whole point of the book: the incompatible epistemology of science and religion. In religion, faith is the ultimate virtue; in science, the one unforgivable sin. That’s not at all a controversial observation nor difficult to grasp…so what’s everybody’s excuse for missing it? Why are all the reviewers so hellbent on pretending that this dichotomy doesn’t even exist?
b&
Let me quote Donald Prothero:
“An inconvenient truth will always be less popular than a reassuring lie. People are not “rational machines”, we are belief engines. We use any trick we can to make the evidence fit our beliefs or twist it to fit, or deny it or ignore it.”
Yes, alas. We are less rational animals and more rationalizing ones…or, as a certain J. Coyne might put it: we choose faith over fact.
b&
Apropos teleology:
Some,like me, might add that (natural) science got rid off all “higher” purpose and meaning from the universe.
To riff off of Dan Dennett…once you’ve discovered the crane, the idea of a skyhook no longer holds merit. And, without fail, everything we’ve investigated, once resolved, has turned out to have a crane holding things up, not a skyhook.
We’re certainly to a large extent the authors of our own stories…but we’re building them from the ground up. Even when it superficially appears otherwise, our future selves aren’t dictating our past actions. Teleology makes for great narration and often serves as a good model in high-level understanding of the actions of intelligent entities such as ourselves…but we know, with as much certainty as we know that the Sun rises in the East, that such a model is inapplicable outside of a very narrowly-focussed domain.
Shouldn’t be surprising. We have lots of such useful-but-limited models. Heavy things fall faster than lighter ones, for example; books and (dead) birds really do fall much faster than pieces of paper and feathers. The flat earth, too — if, as is the case for 99%+ of all humans who’ve ever lived, you never venture more than an hundred miles from your birthplace, the difference between flat and oblate spheroid not only is negligible, but may well lie beyond your ability to measure. And domesticated plants and animals most emphatically have been intelligently designed (or, at least, modified) over the course of at least tens of millennia. All those models still retain very limited but well-defined utility; problems only arise when you attempt to apply the model outside of its applicable domain.
As Dickey does when he accuses science of having a teleological narrative.
b&
Nice!
Tanks!
b&
Dickey’s argument relies heavily on cherry picking. He finds a quote that talks about the end of humanity, and suddenly there’s a concurrence. Likewise the teleological view of science is certainly old hat now. On the other hand both of those can be shown to be central to Christianity in particular since the beginning. Frankly, if he were to make these arguments about Christianity and Communism they would be more convincing.
Agree. Dickey sounds like he was assigned to write a critical review and just started blue-skying different flaccid arguments. Rather than throwing out the bad ones and starting over, he lazily signed it and handed it in. Good grief. I too had a distant vague impression that the Los Angeles Times was a pretty classy outfit. Not any more.
I’m completely bemused by the language argument. Languages constantly grow and change, words are invented gain new meanings as they are used in different situations, especially when they become associated with a particular event or are used as a simile in a well-known event. Since Watergate, we’ve been adding “-gate” to all manner of things for example.
At the church council in which the Nicene Creed was developed, the lingua franca was Greek, and those who didn’t speak it weren’t invited – Latin wasn’t considered a sophisticated enough language to discuss the concepts involved.
Fast forward to the Bible being translated into English and hundreds of words and phrases had to be invented to complete the work. Iirc, there are 2-3 pages of them in Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion’.
Shakespeare invented hundreds of words too. “Bubble” is one of his, or at least there’s no earlier record of it. Try describing a bubble without using the word, then think of the other situations in which bubble has come to be used, such as finance. That one started with the South Sea Bubble.
Religion is part of our history, and of course its language has become part of everything we do, even when it’s unrelated.
This is the second story in a row where Jerry has used the word “nonce”. In Britain that means paedophile, and yes, that’s how paedophile is spelt in English!
Jerry’s nonce is a real word originating in Middle English. Your nonce is 70’s slang.
I know – just making the point that language changes, and it certainly wasn’t a criticism.
I know, but it’s made me wary of ever using that word again!!!
The OED clearly shows that a very large percentage of English language words have changed meanings over time. Also, that English
absorbs words from any language it finds a use for. If anything, this makes the English language rich and more nuanced.
Translations, of the Bible especially, must use concepts from the language of the people it is for. Otherwise, much of the document would be unintelligible. There cannot be one to one correlation of the words and concepts.
If you read translations of one poem by different translators and compare them to the original and each other, this becomes obvious.
A poetry teacher I once had pointed out the
various meanings of words used by Gerard Manley Hopkins in “The Windhover”. The word “buckle” has up to seventeen denotations and/or connotations.
Another good word, destroyed on WEIT! Ant made me paranoid to say the hoi polloi because of the redundant definite article.
Fear not. IIRC, most of the linguists here promote description, not prescription.
‘Tain’t as bad as the Le Brea tar pits…”the the tartare pits…?”
b&
“Le?” “Tartare?”
😀
Erp! I never did do well with gendered languages. But “brea” is spanish for, “tar.” Thus, it’s literally “the The Tar tar pits.” Where charred sushi is the specialty…?
b&
Lol!
I was going to give the credit for “tartare” to a domineering spell checker…
I believe we had the discussion about “chai” too in that it just means “tea” so “chai tea” is redundant.
The best is when someone spells “moron”, “moran” which inevitably prompts someone to say, “don’t tell Larry”.
I remember reading that groups of online communities will start speaking a certain way to the point that you can tell what community they belong to by their syntax, word use and spelling errors.
The “Moran” meme started with a picture of a guy holding up a sign “GET A BRAIN! MORANS”
Google for the image of a guy in a blue starred bandana and a Cardinals shirt. I still chuckle every time I see it.
Whither The Los Angeles Angels and Dodgers?
I imagine they’re staying in the Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco….
b&
Re “moran” there are mistakes I do all the time and some that I mostly don’t do because english isn’t my native language. Reading a scifi from the 50’s (IIRC) by a rather prolific author, I just saw a mistaken “they’re”/their as so often today. If I see them I suppose I don’t do them quite as often… (which may be a bad assumption).
There should be grant money available to study why such mistakes stand out so prominently in everyone’s writing but one’s own.
Some typos seem to be almost programmed in, something to do with the arrangement of letters on a qwerty keyboard, I think. Such as ‘worng’. Or ‘wroks’, there was a company called Pipe Works and I invariably used to type ‘pipewroks’ and have to correct it, I was most amused to receive correspondence where the company’s own employees had made the same mistake…
cr
I wouldn’t worry about using ‘nonce’ in its correct meaning. That slang usage for ‘paedo’ is so obscure I doubt many people have ever heard of it.
cr
Its largely Mockney slang used on screen, I’ve never heard anyone say it otherwise.
Most famously used by Phil Collins (IIRC) in Brass Eye: “I’m talking nonce sense”.
Except for, invariably, here! Every time the word is used! As another who frequently uses it in the traditional sense this is annoying me no end.
And I believe the Australians get a kick out of seeing Canadians walking around with sweatshirts and hats and other clothing with the word “ROOTS” on it as they did at the olympics one year, since the clothing company “ROOTS” sponsored/manufactured the Canadian athletes’ clothing.
I don’t disagree with your basic point, but your information about “bubble” seems to be incorrect. A couple of Internet sources I checked (including etymonline.com, which is generally reliable) trace the word back to the 14th century, considerably predating Shakespeare.
‘Predating’ is a word that I avoid for reasons of homophony. In reference to time, ‘antedate’; in reference to trophic ecology, ‘eat’.
More like reasons of polysemy.
Although context usually removes all confusion in any case. (What’s the best way to prepare Shakespeare?)
(With fava beans and a good chianti?)
b&
Bahahahaha!!!!
“It appeared in the Los Angeles Times”
Slight correction–it appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books. It’s a predominantly online publication whose reviews tend to be more intellectual than a mainstream paper like the Times, though in this case the LARB plainly employed an educated fool.
I suppose because the science “magic” is out of sight of the author they suppose that there is not very much science behind the Flappy Bird game they are playing on their iPhone. Indeed, such a person may wonder why people were not playing Flappy Bird in Jesus’ time, since the coding of it has so little to do with the physics and chemistry we have learned since that time. For that matter, the author seems skeptical that science has even learned anything. So it must be a deep mystery to him why the Apostles didn’t play Flappy Bird and take selfies with Jesus.
I find it difficult to believe that the author is dumb enough to actually believe the crap he is shoveling here. No one who can write for a paper can be *that* dumb, can they?
He’s right, of course, that people confuse technology with science. Some people think we don’t need science funding because Apple is making iPhones for a profit, for example. Although the public conflates science and technology, technology is built on science nonetheless. iPhones exist only because of our knowledge of the physics and chemistry of semiconductors, and the geology knowledge to find the exotic materials they are built out of. And without vast buildings full of exotic materials fashioned into computers based on our knowledge of quantum mechanics and atomic physics, there would be nothing for all of those coders at Google and Facebook to do.
Yeah – I was thinking similarly, except on the lines of we have high rise buildings now when we didn’t before. It’s because of science that the technology has been developed.
Nobody — and I truly mean not a single human being — has a clue of just how much science pervades technology.
A couple days ago somebody made a comment here that got me thinking of how to make colorimetrically correct photos of Solar System objects as viewed from above the atmosphere. And one of the things I’ve learned about since then is that optical calibration is essential to the operation of lots of satellites, but that it’s also a really big problem to have a calibration that not only survives the stress of launch but any period of time in space. And how’re you to have confidence in your calibration if you can’t check it from time to time?
So there’s a USGS project that, as it turns out, happens to be at a facility in Flagstaff with a quiet library where I camped out for a couple days once to use their wall outlet for my laptop…whose mission is to create accurate measurements of the Moon that satellites can use as a calibration standard.
Now, I know nothing at all about Floppy Bards, but I do know that iPhones wouldn’t be anything remotely like what they’re like were it not for our satellite network…and non-trivial aspects of our satellite network function as well as they do because a couple guys with a shed on the parking lot of a nondescript government office building on the edge of an university town have, for the past decade or more, been making very careful and meticulous basic science observations of the Moon. And with equipment well within reach of a dedicated amateur astronomer, too…the only reason we’ve got the data is because we, as a society, understand the value in paying those couple guys enough that they can dedicate a significant portion of the time they’ll be alive to answering the simple question: “What does the Moon look like?”
Go to Congress, especially these days, saying you want…oh, a few, maybe several million dollars over the course of a decade to try to figure out what the Moon looks like, and they’ll laugh you out of the room. But, fortunately, these guys managed to sneak exactly that under the radar…and civilization as an whole has benefitted far more from their work than they’ll ever collect in salaries.
But I doubt they mind. After all…they know better what the Moon looks like than basically anybody else who’s ever lived, and how freakin’ cool is that!?
b&
Yes, exactly, times a million.
When people act like science isn’t doing a lot of heavy lifting for them personally the oblivious ingratitude strikes me the same as someone who spits on their parents.
Yes, he is right enough about the common confusion between science and technology. I generalize the two by saying that science is inquiry and technology is application. But the two go hand in hand, as advances in one can advance the other.
Maybe I’m forgetting whole areas, but it seems to me that the vast majority of biology doesn’t count as technology. Modern biology certainly takes advantage of state-of-the-art technology, but that’s not at all the same thing.
Medicine and agriculture would be applied (technological) biology. Chemistry might have the highest technology-to-science ratio of the sciences, and I’d guess that geology (thanks to the oil companies) might be next.
But even the ones towards the bottom of the list, like cosmology, tend to have close ties to practicality…you can’t do serious cosmology these days without working closely with the theoretical physicists, and theoretical physicists would be sitting on their thumbs without the research physicists like the ones at CERN. And everybody who’s ever gotten any sort of advanced medical imaging or radiation therapy or the like can thank those whose main focus is building particle accelerators for the theoretical physicists to have data to make theories that the cosmologists can wrestle with.
…which, again is most emphatically not why the cosmologists do or should do what they do. The side benefits are wonderful, to be sure…but, if coming up with an evidence-based explanation for what happened over a dozen billion years ago when our corner of the Cosmos was transitioning into its current form isn’t enough reason for cosmologists to do what they do, then what’s the point of life in the first place?
b&
My husband makes drugs ( 😉 ) and most of the “R” part of the R & D looks like pure science to me. And I wouldn’t equate agriculture with biology; it uses biology.
Is the rest of the R part recreation?
Laughing out loud!
Your husband needs to hook me up with cheap Relpax. 😉
Go to Canada.
Oh, wait..
+1
“coding, after all, has nothing to do with applied sciences” Really? Can the gay then tell me why a computer program write in the sand doesn’t work? Why does he pretend that compilers are something fast co-natural with computer architecture or simply appear from nothing because computers want to help us?
Apparently, the only macroscopic thinks that emerges from nothing are animal-communicators with messages from african-lions written in English…
Last I checked, it relies pretty heavily on the application of logic, number theory, electro-magnetism (as you say, a program written in the sand isn’t going to help you much) and the underlying laws of Physics to name a few.
I think (hate to say it) the writer of the article has a point. Although modern computing couldn’t exist without some extremely sophisticated applications of the laws of physics (I could say the same of my car), it isn’t necessary to know any of these things in order to write a computer program.
A computer program could work with punch cards or fluidics (though not as well).
Applied ‘programmers’ don’t necessarily need to know anything about physics or even (apparently) much about logic, (or number theory or electromagnetism), as I remind myself at work when struggling with the latest pointless monstrosity of a project-tracking application inflicted on us. (Christian websites are another example – somebody ‘programmed’ them). Any more than a compiler of ‘cryptic’ crosswords needs to know about encryption algorithms.
So I guess I agree with the guy that “coding has nothing to do with applied sciences” in the same way that driving a car doesn’t. Many drivers (probably most) are in permanent ignorance of what makes the wheels go round.
(I’ll willingly concede that the guys who write low-level OS/hardware-related stuff need to know heaps about physics, but they’re only a small percentage of programmers).
cr
I see the point you’re trying to make here, but I think your car analogy is closer to comparing someone using a computer to applied sciences than it is to a coder. Perhaps a closer fit would be comparing the coder to a car mechanic. Sure, anyone can “write code” or “fix cars” without much knowledge. The ability to browse the web and read at the level of the average 12 year old should suffice in getting someone off the ground with a Hello World program.
But the claim that coding has “nothing to do with applied science?” Sorry, I don’t buy it, unless it has nothing to do with applied science in the same way that people who are bad at Chemistry or Physics aren’t doing applied science. Using the definition of science, broadly construed, that Jerry uses in his book, coding has plenty to do with applied science in the same way that plumbing or my car mechanic example does.
You can ignore the methods of science or apply them improperly while writing some code, but it’s going to be demonstrably worse that someone who designs code using evidence from similar systems and proven design standards while applying the same laws of mathematics and logic that hard sciences use. A good coder writes code, tests it, integrates it with other systems, tests the integration, performs both verification and validation; and, using my former industry, Aerospace and Defense as an example, demonstrates failure rates below 1e-7, 1e-8, or 1e-9 for the most vital software. These methods apply to anyone who wants to create a viable piece of software in the modern world that is safe, secure and reliable. So, I don’t think the fact that some (in fact I’d probably agree with you that it’s actually most) people who write code do it terribly has anymore to do with coding using applied sciences than does a crank mixing solutions in his basement has to do with chemistry using the methods of applied science.
“How to get past science vs. religion”
Who says we non-accomodationists aren’t past it? The accomodationists argue about it just as much as we do. We’re both simply arguing for what we think is correct. If either side finally agreed that the other side was correct that’d be the end of it.
It takes two to tango.
oh how I so dearly want such idiots corralled on a desert isle and prevented from using this science that they decry so.
And therefore we should refrain from writing about the way things really are? I don’t suppose Dickey goes to his MD and admonishes her to quit dispensing proven medicine because she’ll never convince committed homeopaths that they’re wrong.
Good point.
Am reminded of the recent NY Times obit of John Gibbons, science advisor to Bill Clinton:
‘“Science is still the wellspring of new options,” he told The New York Times in 2003. “How else are we going to face the issues of the 21st century on things like the environment, health, security, food and energy?”
‘Late in life, Dr. Gibbons worried that the public was losing faith in science. “The bloom has been coming off the rose since ‘Silent Spring,’ ” he said in 2003, referring to Rachel Carson’s seminal 1962 book on the ravages of DDT. “People thought of science as a cornucopia of goodies. Now they have to choose between good and bad.”
‘The urgent need, he added, is to reestablish science as an important means of resolving social ills.
‘“I hope rationality will triumph,” he said. “But you can’t count on it.”’
Yep, if some sufficient majority of the public can’t trouble itself to do some reasonable amount of intellectual heavy lifting and critical thinking, then I suppose that the best one can realistically do is hope that the public will not lose too much “faith” in science, eh? 😉
Indeed.
Shall we let people kill “witches” in Africa–
Or shall we teach them there are no such thing as witches, curses, devils, magic spells, etc.
To be Sagan’s proverbial “candle in the darkness” in a demon-haunted-world means shining a light on all kinds of superstition/pseudoscience– even peoples’ sacred cow. People “need” their “faith” because they’ve been indoctrinated to believe that horrific things will happen if they lose it.
It’s not a matter of winning… it’s a matter of educating people so they move beyond the superstitions of their ancestors.
I don’t think Dickey actually read FvF. There are clear examples in the book to refute most of what he wrote, and the rest of his assertions are just amusing nonsense. Are you sure he isn’t Deepak under an assumed name trying it from a different, but equally bizarre angle?
It is puzzling that here is a writer for a supposedly important newspaper writing stuff some of us simply find perplexingly ignorant. We are forced to scramble about looking for plausible rationals for his behavior. Is he stupid, or lazy. Was he totally brainwashed as a child or did he bang his head falling down stairs? What could motivate someone to write a review without reading the book. The list of unanswerable questions go on and on.
I would not describe the “progression” of science as teleological. Progress isn’t in and of itself teleological. Teleology implies that there is a preordained goal. Science progresses, that is, we accumulate more, and more accurate, knowledge, but the path this progression takes is not set. Science goes where the data lead.
But it doesn’t do it via punctuated equilibrium. 😼
Well said. The most fundamental motivation in science is curiosity. It reveals new understanding as an end in itself.
Yes. The “science is teleological” canard is incredibly obviously wrong for one huge glaringly obvious reason. Which is why rickflick is wondering whether this person is stupid or lazy. That reason is that science works. Using science reliably results in progress.
Compare that to religion. Unless one considers the ability to string together more and more words while keeping any meaning as low as possible, using religion does not reliably result in progress.
This doofus really doesn’t understand how science works – to suggest science is really just superficially masking a deeper ideological argument is laughable. Really? Does evidence-based mean anything?
A very entertaining post, and as expected you accurately summarize and then deftly trounce your opponent. On this occasion the result reminds me of Bambi vs Godzilla.
What an irritating bloviator. The really convenient thing about certain areas of the liberal arts is that you can say pretty much whatever you want and there’s a chance someone will publish it. The snootier you sound, the better.
Dman it! I bet that’s what has held me back! I’m not snooty enough!
If every LA grad were like you we’d have world peace. (Except in bathrooms…)
World peace and bathroom domination! That is my new goal!
That, and an end to religious superstition. And affordable prescription drugs for all, including Canadians.
…perhaps you should come in again…?
b&
Ha! Three things! World peace, bathroom domination and an end to religious superstition! No-one expects the Canadian Inquisition!
Hell, there are areas in the humanities where you’re damn well expected to say something counter-intuitive, iconoclastic, etc. I mean, if you make sense, well, that’s just so unrefined, isn’t it?
Reblogged this on Richard Trus Videos and commented:
interesting.
If Dickey doesn’t think science has discovered much truth then he’s conceiving of science much too narrowly. We all do science every day. Any time you try to uncover the reality of a situation using reliable means you’re doing science.
If my iPhone starts malfunctioning there are several tests I or the Apple Store “geniuses” might run to determine what’s wrong and how to fix it. This won’t win a Nobel prize, but it’s science nonetheless.
Professor Ceiling Cat is too polite to point out (beyond the [sic]) that this erudite student of literature used the phrase “slight of hand” in place of the correct “sleight of hand”. In a YouTube comment, I wouldn’t even have noticed. In a book review, it sticks out like a soar [sic] thumb.
don’t you mean “an inflamed opposable digit”?
There is an age old and acknowledged connection between science and technology, between labs and instrument makers, and applied science and technological growth. Just ask any government, or – I am sure – Rosling’s world statistics.
Only someone who hasn’t coded and/or need to slight-his-brain could write something that asinine. A good template for coding is math (surveying resources needed and at hand for solving problems; big data handling), but else that is computer science. There is also a lot of hardware, network technology, physic modeling (just moving things around on the screen, or CGI!) and biology of senses in today’s coding.
But above all coding is – as science and technology – evolutionary tinkering.
Postmodernism ponderously poisons pluralities.
At best his argument would show that computer program creation (programming, etc.) was a linguistic technology, not that it wasn’t science based. Hint: linguistics is a science.
“Of course we don’t expect religionists to roll over and admit defeat! That’s not the way such issues are settled.”
No, Mr Bond, we expect them to die. Mwahahah.
I loved that line. Such a neat twist on the usual hackneyed thriller situation.
cr
+1
I review a lot of books and read a lot of book reviews. I am constantly astounded that most reviews of FvF miss the entire point. There is a 400 plus comment thread on one Amazon review that misses the point every single time. Try to reel the conversation back to the premise that religion can add nothing to the conversation about hold-in-your-hand reality and you are told that to understand Coyne’s error you must first read Smith’s 1874 treatise on Hobbsian gobblety-gook. The Latin translation is best! But it’s written backwards so you must read it in a mirror. It’s all an invention based on someone else’s invention. I’ve actually come to have more respect for people who have real faith – belief without knowing – than religionists who are so scared of not knowing they make crap up. One bright spot is the baseball cartoon floating around the ‘net that was recently posted here. “I have a baseball. Prove it! Here.”
On the topic of climate change, Dickey is simply wrong and comes perilously close to trotting out a full fledged accusation that the consensus on climate change is a religion. I dealt with this just the other day on Facebook with a college professor of Economics whose claim to fame is having taught none other than Paul Ryan, the 2012 Vice Presidential candidate for the Republicans.
He started fairly reasonably, claiming to doubt the model projections regarding AGW. But after a few quick refutations of his claims, the frantic accusations of conspiracy started flying. After some back and forth, I kept reminding him that this conversation so far is not about him doubting the data and whether we can do something about climate change, it is that he is proposing a full-fledged conspiracy theory spanning many decades and multiple continents. It was at the point that he played the religion card, ad hominem attack method and Tu Quoque fallacies all at once. Not only are people who accept the consensus religious about it, but we’re elitists and he’s sick of hearing about my “conspiracy about a conspiracy.” I gave him a link to Senator Inhofe’s claim that Genesis 8:22 refutes global warming and asked which side is being religious now. Finally, he blew his cover completely by doing a Gish Gallop of typical denier talking points including the fact that the data and programs used to develop the models are being kept from the public in a vast cover up.
Within 5 minutes, I provided him to the source code and data from GISS. The silence since has been utterly deafening.
He had his ass readily handed to him by myself and a couple of other commenters on the thread, but what irks me is people like this who hold University positions get slots on radio shows and actually present themselves as an educated person (he is very well educated, just not in climate science) telling blatant lies to the public. (In one of my final comments I provided him with 3 quotes from himself when he denied claiming conspiracy.) The far right will gladly eat this up as they rely on authority rather than evidence; not just any authority, but an authority willing to confirm what they already think they know. It is beyond sickening.
The truth bomb that he works so hard to avoid hearing is this:
If there were any real evidence for gods, souls, afterlives, demons, or anything else mystical or divine– scientists would be at the forefront testing, refining, and honing, that evidence for their own benefit like they do with everything else that is real! You’d see a growing body of knowledge with scientists increasingly getting on the same page as they do with x-rays, DNA, evolution, climate change, electricity, space travel, quantum physics, the Higgs boson, magnetism, atoms, etc.
If there was any real evidence for such things, Templeton prize money would surely have produced it by now surely– and James Randi’s prize money– not to mention all the funds thrown at churches and psychics and other such gurus claiming knowledge of such things– and these scientists would be testing it so that we could all find out more. Think of the research Stephen Hawking would put forth just to be conscious but not encumbered by a body that has ALS! Does anyone imagine that any scientist who actually thought there was REAL EVIDENCE for such a things wouldn’t be doing the best to find out more– especially given that ETERNITY might be at stake?! And not just our own eternity– but the eternity of everyone we have ever loved– everyone ever!
How arrogant to imagine a priest or guru or magic book or self proclaimed prophet somehow knows more through magical mystical divine ways (and you better believe or else)! If it could be known, then scientists would be at the forefront of that knowledge– not tiptoeing around the subject.
When can we rational people stop pretending that these sorts of “woo” belies are humble or sane or anything more than superstition? You know how you think demon belief isn’t really scientific folks? Neither is god belief!
We expect real things to distinguish themselves from imaginary things, illusions,and mis-perceptions, and superstitions via scientific testing. Science is the best and only proven method we have for getting at the truth that is the same for everybody no matter what they believe. Science takes in to account the ways we are known to fool ourselves. And it has built in error correcting mechanisms so that we can refine and hone our knowledge and discard that which isn’t correct.
When the truth really matters we’d never accept that which suffices for theology (feelings and purported holy books or revelations). If a child was missing, it would never be enough to say that “Jesus must have poofed them away because he needed another angel!” The parents would want to know where that child’s body was– they’d want facts! REAL EVIDENCE.
Even though some scientists may believe in some fuzzy supernatural things, they don’t believe in the SAME things and there is no method for determining which, if any, is more correct. Francis Collins is no more likely to be correct with his magical beliefs than the Hindu reincarnationist– at least as far as all the scientific evidence is concerned… because there is no evidence for any disembodied beings nor gods of any concrete description nor afterlives of any sort (whatever that would even mean).
Moreover, consciousness is a product of an evolved brain– an immaterial being (whether god, demon, Thetan, or ghost) makes no sense from a biological level– why would an immaterial being “need” consciousness? Conscious beings need consciousness to successfully survive and reproduce– neither of which would be of essence to an immaterial being (which I’m having a hard time distinguishing from a non-existant being). Nor does it make sense from a physics perspective– (although it makes a lot of sense why humans might imagine such beings might exist!)
For the same reason science dispels and over-writes all other myths and superstitions when it comes to truth, it must and will do so with religion and all messages people claim to be getting from “beyond”. If there is any truth there, it will become science, but as it is, one mystical belief is no more likely to be true than millions of competing mystical beliefs the believer in such things rejects. I have a feeling your reviewer doesn’t want to believe that his mystical beliefs are as “unscientific” as all those other myths he rejects outright.
–so it’s word games, tangents, smoke and mirrors, and a review where he can confirm his biases that his faith is perfectly compatible with science (unlike all those crazy faiths—ha!).
I have to disagree on the last point. Being somewhat neuroatypical, I find that science can indeed lead directly to “personal understanding and betterment”, and in a way which religious thought cannot even conceive of.