Category: osculating the rump of faith

“Ignorance = God”: Dawkins’s replacement makes noises about abandoning his nonbelief

May 15, 2017 • 11:30 am

Charles Simonyi, who made millions at Microsoft, is a lover of science. You may remember him, for in 1995 he endowed the Simonyi Professorship of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. The first recipient of that chair was of course Richard Dawkins, who held the position until 2008. The second and current occupant is currently Marcus du Sautoy, a professor of mathematics.  So far du Sautoy hasn’t produced a body of popular writing anywhere comparable to that of Dawkins, but really, who could?  Still, can you name any popular works du Sautoy? Surely he should be very well known by now for his science writing.

Well, perhaps I’ve missed it. But he published a “trade” (popular) book in April: The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys to the Frontiers of Science, which Amazon describes this way (my emphasis):

In The Great Unknown, one of the world’s most brilliant mathematicians takes us into the minds of science’s greatest innovators as he probes the many mysteries we have yet to solve. From the very large to the very small, from the distant future to the deep past, from the complexities of the human brain to the infinities of mathematics, Marcus du Sautoy invites us to join him on a journey to the seven frontiers of knowledge, the outer edges where scientists are actively grappling with the unknown. Can we locate consciousness in the brain? What is dark energy made of? Can we speak of time before the Big Bang? Is it possible to predict the future?

At once exhilarating and mind bending, The Great Unknown will challenge you to think in new ways about every aspect of the known world. Du Sautoy reminds us that major breakthroughs were often ridiculed at the time of their discovery and invites us to consider big questions—about who we are and the nature of God—that even the most creative scientists have yet to answer definitively.

Oy! God? What kind of successor to Dawkins is this man? Well, du Sautoy explains a bit more in a new profile by John Farrell in Forbes, “It’s time to add the human element to the ‘great unknown'”, and what he said is a bit distressing (I’m sure it would distress Richard as well). Read and weep; note that the piece is two pages long:

Just out from Viking, The Great Unknown: Seven Journeys To the Frontiers of Science certainly holds its own in the genre. The book reviews seven of the great puzzles challenging science: in chaos theory, fundamental particles, quantum mechanics, cosmology, the nature of time, the origin of human consciousness, and the very limits of the universe. Towards the end of his book The Great Unknown, mathematician Marcus du Sautoy finds himself reconsidering the question of God’s existence. . . .

“I wonder, though, whether, as I come to the end of my exploration, I have changed my mind about declaring myself an atheist,” he writes. “With my definition of a God as that which we cannot know, to declare myself an atheist would mean that I believe there is nothing we cannot know.”

Du Sautoy no longer believes that. “In some sense I think I have proved that this God does exist. The challenge now is to explore what quality this God has.”

Here in this tortured logic we see the most explicit statement of the “god of the gaps” argument I’ve read in a while. Du Sautoy proved that God exists because he defines “god” as “our ignorance about some phenomena”—and most of those phenomena, like the origin of consciousness, could in principle be addressed by science. Other phenomena, like how life really began, may forever elude us, but not because God is responsible. We just have no good way of getting the data!  It’s as if you said “I will never know what Julius Caesar had for breakfast the day he was assassinated, and I will define that ignorance as God. Therefore I have proven in some sense that God exists. I am no longer an atheist!”

That is of course palpable nonsense, but Farrell at least calls him on it a bit:

In another sense, though, du Sautoy’s statement highlights the problem with so many recent popular science books.

They always end without deeply considering the human element, an element that has given rise to entire fields of study–anthropology, sociology, comparative religion–that very rarely get any attention in popular science books dealing with the big questions.

Well, that’s not so, for there are tons of discussions of why people believe in God in popular science books, though that doesn’t really belong in popular science books. (It is treated, for instance, in The God Delusion and Breaking the Spell.) And the human element is a central part of science books like The Double Helix. And Farrell admits that:

But back to the human element. Du Sautoy shares with many physics-centered science writers the opinion that the version of God offered by most religions and cultures is a rather impoverished one. But I’m skeptical that he’s really devoted much time to looking into fields that study religion even just as a human activity, or to study the source texts of any particular tradition even if only as an exercise in how written texts themselves evolve and how each generation responds to their problems and contradictions.

That’s what’s yet to be explored more fully in books like this latest otherwise absorbing entry in the genre of ‘what science hasn’t figured out yet’.

I don’t know if I’ll actually read this book, because the goddy stuff is just weird, and the argument, at least the one presented here, is ridiculous. If you’ve read it, weigh in below. It seems that in his Sophisticated Natural Theology™, the Charles Simonyi Professor may be bucking for a Templeton Prize.

du Sautoy: for others ignorance is bliss, but for him it is God

Portland student reporter fired for reporting public statement about Islam’s demonization of nonbelievers

May 14, 2017 • 9:15 am

This story, of course, is covered by only right-wing sites (e.g., here, here, and here), but do you expect the liberal press to report on the left-wing vindictiveness of the student press? At any rate, we have video documentation and the testimony of the reporter himself.

The skinny: Andy C. Ngo, a student reporter who works for the student paper Vanguard, was covering (apparently unoffically) a student interfaith panel held April 26 at Portland State University, a notorious home of Regressive Leftist Students—and also of my friend Peter Boghossian, mentioned below.  The College Fix then reports what happened:

Ngo has covered the persecution of atheists and “apostates” in Muslim countries for The Vanguard, and he’s a member of Freethinkers of PSU, which was represented on the panel by student Benjamin Ramey.

After the Muslim student, who organized the panel, took a question about whether the Koran actually permits the killing of non-Muslims, Ngo started recording video. He ended up posting a 40-second clip, and a few hours later, a longer contextual clip with audience response.

Two clips—a longer one and an excerpt, were published by Ngo on Twitter, and here they are:

Here’s what the Muslim student (charitably not named by Ngo, maybe because the student would be threatened by fellow Muslims for speaking the truth) said about Qur’anic dictates on killing non-Muslims:

And some, this, that you’re referring to, killing non-Muslims, that [to be a non-believer] is only considered a crime when the country’s law, the country is based on Koranic law — that means there is no other law than the Koran. In that case, you’re given the liberty to leave the country, you can go in a different country, I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. So you can go in a different country, but in a Muslim country, in a country based on the Koranic laws, disbelieving, or being an infidel, is not allowed so you will be given the choice [to leave].

Here’s a longer clip:

Ngo reports about the longer clip:

This longer video includes a response by someone in the audience who disagreed with the speaker, saying it was “perfectly okay for non-Muslims to live in Muslim lands.” The audience member cited the existence of religious-minority communities in the Middle East as an example of Islamic tolerance.

Although Ngo says he shared the tweet with two colleagues at the Vanguard beforehand, with neither expressing concern, he was fired from the student paper four days later. For recording unofficially? Nope. Read on; this from Ngo’s own account at The National Review (my emphasis):

Four days later, the editor-in-chief of my school newspaper called me into a meeting. The paper’s managing editor was also present. They asked me about a Breitbart piece describing the event. It was the first time I’d seen the piece, which included my tweets and a tweet from one of the panelists. My editor, whom I deeply respected at the time, called me “predatory” and “reckless,” telling me I had put the life and well-being of the Muslim student and his family at risk. She said that my tweets implied the student advocated the killing of atheists. Another person in the meeting said I should have taken into account the plight of victimized groups in the “current political climate.” The editor claimed I had “violated the paper’s ethical standards” by not “minimizing harm” toward the speaker.

. . . In my defense, I told the two editors that I had simply been relating the speaker’s words. While dozens of Muslim states do not consider apostasy or blasphemy a crime, 13 Muslim-majority countries punish these actions with death. The speaker was admitting as much, and as someone who has covered the persecution of atheists and apostates in Muslim countries, I considered that newsworthy. Nevertheless, my editor turned to me and said, “We have to ask you to step aside.” She said I had “a history” of affiliation with conservative media, and argued that that history was toxic to the “reputation of the Vanguard.”

The Vanguard’s own account of the event, “Interfaith event sparks misunderstanding, goes viral”, does its level best to minimize or distort what happened:

Widely shared video clip leaves out event context

A video clip featuring only a portion of the organizer’s quote that addressed the Quranic law about non-believers or infidels being “given a choice” has been shared on Twitter and Facebook without the preceding and following context. This comment from the organizer, widely shared out of context was met with significant criticism by audience members who accessed it through social media and right-leaning media outlets. [JAC note: the paper shows screenshots of Ngo’s tweets, but gives no links, so there’s no way to check what the student really said.]

Another panelist, Benjamin Ramey, the representative secular humanist, also of Freethinkers, replied to the original tweet.

“As one of the panelists present at this event I would like to say that this speech is not taken out of context,” Ramey tweeted.

PSU Assistant Professor of Philosophy Peter Boghossian contributed to the Twitter conversation as well.

“The same people who want to punch ‘Nazis’ are completely silent when it comes to certain people advocating mass murder,” Boghossian wrote.

Well, the Muslim panelist clearly wasn’t advocating mass murder, but simply reporting the sentiments of those Muslims who do, which in fact is the law in some Muslim countries. And for reporting that truth, Ngo was fired. The craven Vanguard added an editor’s note at the end of its piece:

Editor’s Note: The video clip mentioned in this article was originally shared on the personal social media accounts of a former editor and contributor to the Vanguard who is no longer working for the organization. While these clips were not produced or distributed by the Vanguard, the organization and its members have a responsibility to uphold ethical standards on all fronts. 

It is our assessment that this video clip was published and shared without context in a way that placed a PSU student in significant danger. As members of the PSU community, we are compelled to protect and support this student and urge readers to consider the explanatory nature of these comments and recognize the event’s intent to foster inclusion and understanding. What could have been a dialogue of mutual understanding became a source of pain and fear for some of those involved.

The Vanguard is committed to minimizing harm and providing context that takes special care not to misrepresent or oversimplify in promoting, previewing or summarizing a story, as per the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics.  

Markedly biased media outlets have featured the event organizer’s comments without necessary context. The Vanguard does not endorse, condone or support the way this student was represented by said media outlets. We vehemently reject any association with this type of dangerous misrepresentation.

Note again what happened: a Muslim student, not named, simply agreed that the policy of some Muslim countries, based on the Qur’an, is to either allow the killing or banishment of apostates and infidels (and, of course, gays). To simply state that in public is deemed harmful, reckless, and “predatory.” And why did the clip place the student in danger? What kind of danger? Would his fellow Muslims try to harm him for simply reporting what some Muslim countries do? If so, then extremist Muslims have achieved a remarkable goal: not just prohibiting criticizing of the faith, but preventing reporting of what happens when the faith becomes part of law. It’s like saying someone’s in danger when he says that Saudi Arabia won’t let women drive.

Now the Bible mandates death for those who curse their parents or work on the Sabbath, and advocates genocide and slavery. If a Christian panelist said that, would it be deemed harmful? Perhaps not, because no country has made “Biblical morality” its official law, though some Islamic countries have sharia law as official law.

And simply for reporting that truth, a student was fired. This is, of course, part of the Left’s decision to throw atheists, women, and gays under the bus in favor of extolling Islam.  The reason, as we all know, is that the Authoritarian Left considers Muslims people of color, and oppressed to boot. Well, in many places Muslims themselves oppress other Muslims (Sunni vs. Shia), gays, women, and atheists—to the extent of officially calling for their murder. These sentiments are not only ignored by reprehensible papers like the Vanguard, but are protected by them, to the extent that honest reporting of Islamic perfidy is censored. Such papers wouldn’t, however, quash reporting of those Baptist sects which demonize homosexuality.

What we have here is a double standard based on pigmentation alone—and perceived pigmentation, for many Israelis could be deemed “people of color.” But you’ll never hear them called that.

Shame on the Vanguard and its cowardly reporting. A paper that not only ignores the inconvenient truth but covers it up is a disgusting paper.

The Conversation kisses the rump of religion again

May 11, 2017 • 10:31 am

I thought that The Conversation was largely a news and scholarly opinion website, but every once in a while they slip in some religious nonsense that baffles and saddens me. (For one example, see this risible argument for religiously based brain/mind dualism, and this ridiculous slice of tripe explaining why morality requires God). And now we have a piece from yesterday brought to my attention by reader RJC: “Five rational arguments why G0d (very probably) exists“. The author, Robert H. Nelson, is a Professor of Public Policy at The University of Maryland, which proves once again that scholars outside the field of religion can still be seduced by the blandishments of faith. In Nelson’s case, he simply adduces a few phenomena that science hasn’t yet understood (but may someday), or things that he doesn’t understand (like evolution) and triumphantly concludes, “Therefore God.” As RJC wrote me, “My quick, superficial read tells me it’s 5 “god of the gaps” arguments, gussied up a bit.”

And indeed it is. I’ll be brief (I hope) since we’ve heard most of these arguments before. Here are the phenomena that, says Nelson, convinced him that “the existence of God is very probable.” (He doesn’t give a probability.) He says there are five ideas, but offers six. I’ll put two together. (I covered God-of-the-gaps arguments, including the first two below, in Faith Versus Fact, pp. 152-177.)

  • The “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics”.  Nelson says this:

“In 1960, the Princeton physicist – and subsequent Nobel Prize winner – Eugene Wigner raised a fundamental question: Why did the natural world always – so far as we know – obey laws of mathematics?

“. . . How could two distant objects in the solar system be drawn toward one another, acting according to a precise mathematical law? Indeed, Newton made strenuous efforts over his lifetime to find a natural explanation but in the end he conceded failure. He could say only that it is the will of God.

“Despite the many other enormous advances of modern physics, little has changed in this regard. As Wigner wrote, “The enormous usefulness of mathematics in the natural sciences is something bordering on the mysterious and there is no rational explanation for it.”

“In other words, as something supernatural, it takes the existence of some kind of a God to make the mathematical underpinnings of the universe comprehensible.”

Did that convince you that there’s some kind of a God? I didn’t think so. The ability of math to describe physics simply means that there are physical “laws”: regularities in the universe. (In fact, as I said in FvF, if there weren’t such laws, we couldn’t exist!) As I also said in my book (p. 159):

But if there are such laws, then the usefulness of mathematics is automatically explained. For mathematics is simply a way to handle, describe, and encapsulate regularities. As you might expect, there is in fact no law of physics—no regularity of nature—that has defied mathematical description and analysis. In fact, physicists regularly invent new types of mathematics to handle physical problems, as Newton did with calculus and Heisenberg with matrix mechanics. It’s hard to conceive of any  regularity that couldn’t be handled by mathematics. So “the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences,” as physicist Eugene Wigner titled one of his scientific papers, simply reflects the regularities embodied in physical law. The effectiveness of math is evidence not for God, but for regularities in physical law.

Of course then Nelson might say, “But there wouldn’t be physical laws without God! Where else would they come from?” If I were snarky, I’d say “Satan,” but the best answer, and it’s a good one, is simply “We don’t know. Maybe that’s just the way things are.”

  • “The mystery of human consciousness.” Nelson says this

 “How can physical atoms and molecules, for example, create something that exists in a separate domain that has no physical existence, human consciousness?

“It is a mystery that lies beyond science.

“. . . Yet, our nonphysical thoughts somehow mysteriously guide the actions of our physical human bodies. This is no more scientifically explicable than the mysterious ability of nonphysical mathematical constructions to determine the workings of a separate physical world.

“Until recently, the scientifically unfathomable quality of human consciousness inhibited the very scholarly discussion of the subject. Since the 1970s, however, it has become a leading area of inquiry among philosophers.

“. . . The supernatural character of the workings of human consciousness offers a second strong rational grounds for raising the probability of the existence of a supernatural God.”

What hubris to deny that there can never be a scientific explanation for consciousness! It’s clearly a physical phenomenon that relies on the brain and its activity; you can change it with drugs; and you can take it away with ketamine. Doesn’t that suggest that consciousness depends in some way on physicality? Granted, we can’t yet explain the evolutionary and neurological basis of “qualia” (subjective sensations like pain), but surely the thoughts of other animals guide their bodies as well. Does that mean that when a cat jumps in a lap to get warm, it’s evidence for God?

Better here to say, “we don’t yet know” rather than pull a god out of your fundament. For there is no independent evidence for a god, and Nelson is postulating an immensely complex being as a solution for less complex phenomena.

  • Aspects of evolution have eluded understanding, and it appears to be a teleological process. Since this is my field, I’ll quote everything Nelson says:

“Darwin’s theory of evolution in 1859 offered a theoretical explanation for a strictly physical mechanism by which the current plant and animal kingdoms might have come into existence, and assumed their current forms, without any necessary role for a God.

In recent years, however, traditional Darwinism – and later revised accounts of neo-Darwinism – have themselves come under increasingly strong scientific challenge. From the 1970s onwards, the Harvard evolutionary biologist Steven Jay Gould, for example, complained that little evidence could be found in the fossil record of the slow and gradual evolution of species as theorized by Darwin.

In 2011, the University of Chicago evolutionary biologist James Shapiro explained that, remarkably enough, many micro-evolutionary processes worked as though guided by a purposeful “sentience” of the evolving plant and animal organisms themselves – a concept far removed from the random selection processes of Darwinism.

With these developments bringing standard evolutionary understandings into growing question, the probability of a God existing has increased correspondingly.”

If the fossil record were jerky, and this reflected the true pace of evolution and not just uneven deposition of sediments, that still would cast no doubt on evolution; in fact, Darwin noted this possibility in The Origin. Gould’s “non-Darwinian” theory for the process behind such a pattern, however, was wrong. And even if it were right, it was still a materialistic process involving small populations, genetic drift, developmental constraints, and species selection. Nelson clearly has no understanding of what he’s talking about.

As for Shapiro, he’s hardly a mainstream biologist, and is not an evolutionist. His ideas about “self directed evolution” and “adaptive mutation” have found no purchase in the evolutionary community, and nobody is talking about a higher probability of God. Teleological theories of evolution, adduced by people like Tom Nagel and Jerry Fodor, simply aren’t convincing, as we have no data leading us to such processes.

  • Advances in human thought and technology were sometimes concurrent, and that’s a Big Miracle.  I kid you not; Nelson says this:

“For the past 10,000 years at a minimum, the most important changes in human existence have been driven by cultural developments occurring in the realm of human ideas.

In the Axial Age (commonly dated from 800 to 200 B.C.), world-transforming ideas such as Buddhism, Confucianism, the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, and the Hebrew Old Testament almost miraculously appeared at about the same time in India, China, ancient Greece and among the Jews in the Middle East – these peoples then having little interaction with one another.”

First of all, the Old Testament is not an advance in human thought. Further, Aristotle was Plato’s student; Buddhism and Confucianism aren’t all that similar to Greek philosophy; and there were interactions among people. Further, civilization had reached the point when there was enough leisure to ponder more abstract questions for all these people. It would be remarkable if there weren’t a transformation in thought prompted by changing human culture, and no surprise if some people, who are after all evolved animals with a shared evolutionary past and genome, happen to hit on the same abstract ideas or moral principles.

But what’s even weirder is what Nelson says about science:

“The development of the scientific method in the 17th century in Europe and its modern further advances have had at least as great a set of world-transforming consequences. There have been many historical theories, but none capable of explaining as fundamentally transformational a set of events as the rise of the modern world. It was a revolution in human thought, operating outside any explanations grounded in scientific materialism that drove the process.

That all these astonishing things, verging on miracles, happened within the conscious workings of human minds, functioning outside physical reality, offers further rational evidence in my view for the conclusion that human beings may well be made ‘in the image of [a] God.’”

Nelson, clearly desperate to find evidence for God (and which God? Zeus? Brahma? Allah?) ignores the social phenomena that gave rise to modern science, nor the fact that science and technology themselves are self-feeding processes, whose practitioners learned from each other. Steve Pinker has explained the rapid rise of Western science in several of his books, adducing phenomena like transportation and the printing press that spread ideas quickly. Here Nelson has produced the craziest evidence for God I’ve ever seen!

  • Humans have a need to worship, be it God or Marx. That itself is evidence for God. But wait. . . Christianity has persisted, and even Marxism is disguised Christianity! That itself proves God.  I kid you not—again. Have a gander:

“Even though Karl Marx, for example, condemned the illusion of religion, his followers, ironically, worshiped Marxism. The American philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre thus wrote that for much of the 20th century Marxism was the “historical successor of Christianity,” claiming to show the faithful the one correct path to a new heaven on Earth.

In several of my books, I have explored how Marxism and other such “economic religions” were characteristic of much of the modern age. So Christianity, I would argue, did not disappear as much as it reappeared in many such disguised forms of “secular religion.”

That the Christian essence, as arose out of Judaism, showed such great staying power amidst the extraordinary political, economic, intellectual and other radical changes of the modern age is a fifth rational reason for thinking – combined with the other four – that the existence of a God is very probable.”

All this shows is that humans are credulous and have a need to follow leaders; they also are prone to adhering to superstition (as is Nelson!) when they don’t understand something. I bet Nelson would even claim that atheism itself is not only a form of worship, but Christianity in disguise!

Were I to have written Nelson’s article in, say, the 10th century, my five arguments for God would be Lightning, the Black Plague, Epilepsy, Magnetism, and Solar Eclipses. Now we see that as nonsense. But much of Nelson’s argument can already be seen as nonsense, and he should be well aware of claiming that our scientific ignorance of some phenomena constitutes evidence for God.  I suspect without knowing that Nelson is religious. And the evidence is increasing that The Conversation is soft on superstition.

The religiosity of National Public Radio

May 1, 2017 • 9:00 am

One of our readers, Thomas, has a website called Airbag Moments, which seems to be devoted to cogent critical review of the U.S.’s National Public Radio (NPR). For years I’ve been harping about the organization’s pro-religious stance (see some of the posts at this search), and not just from unctuous Krista Tippett, either.

In his latest post, “Yes, public radio is pro-religion“, Thomas makes a good case for that thesis, citing not only entire shows on NPR that are religious and pro-religion (as far as I know. there are no atheist shows); but also announcers that have religous belief or are soft on faith (a surprisingly large number); individual shows that are blatantly pro-faith; “religion unfriendly” events that are ignored or downplayed by NPR; and public statements or tw**ts by NPR announcers that give tongue to faith. He also inquired about this issue (and their faith) to several NPR announcers, some of whom actually answered him.

I recommend reading the whole thing if you think NPR is evenhanded about faith. Here’s something that surprised me (quotes from Thomas’s post are indented):

Shockingly I just heard the contributor credits at the end of Science Friday and was horrified to learn that the Templeton Foundation is a sponsor. The missions of that very wealthy foundation include trying to prove various religious notions like the efficacy of prayer, and to promulgate the misguided assertion that science and faith are compatible. I have not detected much bias in this direction on Science Friday, but I am not a regular listener. I don’t know when this unfortunate relationship began.

On the “objectivity” of NPR when it comes to reporting about religion:

Journalists are routinely required to disclose conflicts of interest and even recuse themselves from stories or even their jobs. Michelle Norris, for example, left her position as host of All Things Considered when her husband took a position with Obama’s reelection campaign. Yet religion gets something of a pass in this regard. It is routine for reporters not to discuss their personal beliefs and practices even when they are reporting on religion. This is an obvious double-standard. How can a Catholic reporter, who seriously believes in transubstantiation, the infallibility of the Ex-Cathedra utterances of the Pope, etc., possibly be objective when covering Catholicism if the assumption is that Norris can’t be objective about Obama because her husband works for the campaign? I mean I sort of get it about Norris, although I credit her with having a totally independent brain from that of her husband and personally think she needn’t have stepped down, but a person’s religion is a deep part of their personal identity – not just something their spouse does.

You may think this is a non-issue, but unless we keep calling attention to this kind of stuff, America will slide deeper into superstition. This station is, after all, funded in part by the American taxpayer, and thus should be secular in tone.

Here’s one religious show on NPR:

Interfaith Voices. Their treacly, obsequious-to-religion slogan on Twitter is “Approaching the world’s religions with an open, humble mind.” Hosted by a Catholic Nun. (I always find it ironic to approach religion with a “humble mind” given the unfathomable arrogance so many religious folks have involving their evidence-free certainties about reality and personal relationship to the infinite almighty.)

Do they have atheists and agnostics regularly on that show? If not, than this is non an even-handed treatment of religion.

And here’s an example of the ludicrous religious dissonance of someone who many of us probably listen to regularly, Scott Simon, host of NPR’s Weekend Edition:

UPDATE 4/30/29

Scott Simon went into some detail about his personal theology in an interview on today’s show:

NEVINS: Do you know where you’re going? I don’t believe in heaven or hell. So…
SIMON: No. I know what I tell myself, but do I know that for sure?
NEVINS: What do you tell – what do you say?
SIMON: Oh, I – you know, I believe in a heaven and I’ll be reunited…
NEVINS: You think that?
SIMON: I’ll be reunited with my parents and with my lost sister and with, you know, every pet I’ve ever had and loved. And I’ll be up there waiting for my wife and children. Is that for real? Of course not. But that’s what I tell myself to get through the day.
————-

Thomas added in an email to me:

I’m familiar with this sort of double-think from intelligent people, though I have never subscribed to the idiotic banality “genius is holding two opposing ideas in your head at once.

What kind of person tells themselves stuff they don’t think is “real” so they can “get through the day”?

NPR’s creeping religiosity not only surprises me, as always happens when smart or eloquent people profess faith in superstition, but also bothers me. Perhaps you have to be an atheist to notice this kind of airwave pollution, but I object to it.

Scott Simon. Will he see Fluffy in Heaven?

New Scientist osculates religion and damns atheists again

April 18, 2017 • 2:48 pm

Just recently, New Scientist, which I no longer bother to read (people send me emails me about their articles), published a piece claiming that atheism is much like religion in being a “belief system” (see my critique here). Now the magazine has repeated both its dissing of religion and its osculation of faith in a misguided short article called “Unholy? Scientists should embrace the science of religion.” (It also has a subtitle that further denigrates nonbelievers: “Belief-ologists” are revealing how religion works. Belittling their work does nothing to further the secularists’ cause, but learning from it might.”)

Well, that depends on what the author means by “the science of religion”. I haven’t heard any secularist argue that there’s no merit to understanding the historical, evolutionary, and psychological origins of religion, or why it has such a strong hold on the human psyche. Those are interesting questions. If “the science of religion” is taken to mean buttressing the truth of religious claims through natural theology, then yes, that’s not so good. But in fact the article means the former, which is not problematic. Yet New Scientist still wants to beef, beginning with the obligatory slur on Richard Dawkins. It then proceeds to simply rewrite history:

IT IS just over a decade since Richard Dawkins lit the blue touchpaper with his book The God Delusion. It introduced much of the world to the so-called new atheism – a forceful rejection of religion based on the premise that scientific materialism offers a superior explanation of the universe, while religion is a corrosive influence on society: a pathological meme planted in the minds of defenceless children.

Though a great read and a liberating influence for many closet atheists, The God Delusion largely omitted a new strand of scientific enquiry emerging around the time it was published. Those working on the “science of religion” – a motley crew [JAC: why this slur?] of psychologists, anthropologists and neuroscientists – explained it as a by-product of normal cognition. Thanks to evolution, they argued, our explanation-seeking minds find religious ideas intuitively appealing, gobbling them up as a hungry trout swallows a fishing fly.

To many disciples of the new atheism, this was little more than, well, heresy. They decried it as “accommodationism” – an illogical and often harmful attempt to pretend religion can still serve a purpose now that science rules the roost. Never mind that the cognitive by-product theory does not imply that religious beliefs are true – far from it. Nor does it claim religion and scientific materialism are compatible. It merely attempts to explore religious belief and disbelief using the tools of science, rather than rhetoric.

The new atheists attacked it anyway. In terms of public debate around the appropriate role of religion in society, this was a mistake. It alienated as many people as it won over, leaving the new atheists preaching to the converted, polarising the debate and dissuading moderates of both secular and religious persuasions from getting involved at all.

That’s completely wrong! The arguments about religion’s origins were in fact made by one of the New Atheists, Dan Dennett in Breaking the Spell, as well as by people like Pascal Boyer. This was not accommodationism, but curiosity about why religion came to be, and of course no New Atheist I know criticized these people. In fact, they quoted them. Accommodationism is not the study of the historical origins of faith, but the claim that religion and science are perfectly compatible! I don’t know what in tarnation the author is talking about here, but it’s dead wrong. Many of us are curious about how and why religion came to be. It’s New Scientist, not we, who denigrate those working on the problem as a “motley crew.”

The author then gives a motte to counteract this bailey, saying that (in contrast to the article I mentioned earlier), atheism is not really a faith like religion (duh!), but then ends up going after atheists anyway:

The science of religion challenges core elements of the new atheism: for example, the belief that religion leads on the whole to misery and suffering. Belief-ologists say religion was the “social glue” that held early societies together. That doesn’t mean religion is required to play that role today. But simply ignoring or high-handedly dismissing its power will not abolish its sway or further the secularist cause. And given the rise of religiosity in global affairs, there is much more than a rhetorical joust at stake.

Let us get this straight: yes, religion may have originated because it was a spandrel on some evolved human mentality, or because it was supposed to be a form of social glue (there are many explanations); but that is an entirely different question from asking whether religion was beneficial for the world in the past or is so now.

None of us doubt “the power of religion”; it it were powerless, like flat-earthism, we’d largely ignore it. But it’s not by any means certain that a world without religion would be a worse world, and the example of atheistic Scandinavia argues otherwise. What New Scientist is doing here is conflating two different issues in a confusing way, and simply lying about what New Atheists think. The point of this dreadfully argued piece seems just this: New Atheists are BAD! Yet we’re said to be bad for something we never did.

New Scientist is increasingly defending religion and damning New Atheists, and there’s no reason why a scientific journal should even be publishing articles like this. If I had a subscription to this rag, I’d cancel it now.

h/t: Ivan

Easter special: Nicholas Kristof asks President Carter if the claims of Christianity are real

April 16, 2017 • 10:30 am

Jimmy Carter is perhaps the US President that I’ve most admired in my lifetime for living his ideas, particularly after he left the White House. He works tirelessly for good causes like Habitat for Humanity, is kind and humble, hasn’t tried to enrich himself,  left his Southern Baptist church because it denigrated equal rights for women, and took his terminal cancer diagnosis with equanimity (he may actually be okay now).

But I’ve never really been clear about the nature of his religious beliefs. Yes, he’s a Baptist, but does he buy into all the Christian mythology?

Apparently he does, at least according to an interview conducted by Nicholas Kristof for the New York Times, “President Carter, am I a Christian?” Kristof poses some tough questions for Carter, who simply affirms his belief in Christian mythology—at the same time he rejects creationism because he claims to accept science!

Here’s a bit of the interview:

ME: How literally do you take the Bible, including miracles like the Resurrection?

PRESIDENT CARTER: Having a scientific background, I do not believe in a six-day creation of the world that occurred in 4004 B.C., stars falling on the earth, that kind of thing. I accept the overall message of the Bible as true, and also accept miracles described in the New Testament, including the virgin birth and the Resurrection.

I find this stunning. Carter rejects the Genesis story of creation because he has a scientific background, but accepts the equally unbelievable Biblical story of the Resurrection because  his faith tells him it’s true (see below). This is gold-standard cognitive dissonance, but he can get away with it because we have no evidence bearing on the Resurrection save conflicting Biblical claims (and the absence of parthenogenic reproduction in humans), but tons of scientific evidence against creationism.

But wait: there’s more! Carter tells us why he accepts these ancient accounts (except for those in Genesis, of course):

 [KRISTOF]: With Easter approaching, let me push you on the Resurrection. If you heard a report today from the Middle East of a man brought back to life after an execution, I doubt you’d believe it even if there were eyewitnesses. So why believe ancient accounts written years after the events?

[CARTER]: I would be skeptical of a report like you describe. My belief in the resurrection of Jesus comes from my Christian faith, and not from any need for scientific proof. I derive a great personal benefit from the totality of this belief, which comes naturally to me.

The fact that something helps you or makes you feel better has no bearing on its truth! His dismissal of even the need for a scientific evaluation of the Resurrection shows that he’s not really operating rationally here. And he’s taking as fact whatever gives him “personal benefit”.

But wait: there’s more!

[KRISTOF]  I think of you as an evangelical, but evangelicalism implies belief in inerrancy of Scripture. Do you share that, and if so, how do you account for contradictions within the Gospels?

[CARTER]. I look on the contradictions among the Gospel writers as a sign of authenticity, based on their different life experiences, contacts with Jesus and each other. If the earlier authors of the Bible had been creating an artificial document, they would have eliminated disparities. I try to absorb the essence and meaning of the teachings of Jesus Christ, primarily as explained in the letters written by Paul to the early churches. When there are apparent discrepancies, I make a decision on what to believe, respecting the equal status and rights of all people.

Usually it is the consilience of different accounts that gives veracity; that’s the way science establishes what’s true. In Carter’s case, though, he takes discrepancies to be evidence for truth! And then, based on what he wants to believe, he simply punts and decides which Gospel is true.

Finally, Carter affirms his belief in the literal efficacy of prayer (something disproven in at least one good scientific study of heart patients), but then dismisses the need to show that prayer is efficacious after Kristof cleverly raises the “Why doesn’t God heal amputees?” question:

[KRISTOF]: Do you pray daily, and if so, do you believe in the efficacy of prayer in a miracle kind of way, or in a psychologically-this-helps-me-deal-with-the-world kind of way?

[CARTER]: I pray often during each day, and believe in the efficacy of prayer in both ways. In my weekly Bible lessons, I teach that our Creator God is available at any moment to any of us, for guidance, solace, forgiveness or to meet our other needs. My general attitude is of thanksgiving and joy.

But then Carter says that some exigent needs can’t be met by God:

[KRISTOF]: Skeptics have noted that when prayers are “answered,” there is usually an alternative explanation. But an amputee can pray for a new leg, and a new leg never grows back. Isn’t that a reason to believe that prayer helps internally, but doesn’t access miracles?

[CARTER]: It is usually impossible to convince skeptics. For me, prayer helps internally, as a private conversation with my creator, who knows everything and can do anything. If I were an amputee, my prayer would be to help me make the best of my condition, to be a good follower of the perfect example set by Jesus Christ and to be thankful for life, freedom and opportunities to be a blessing to others. We are monitoring the status of cancer in my liver and brain, and my prayers are similar to this.

If I were an amputee, and believed that God could literally answer prayers, I’d be praying for a new leg!!

I wonder what would convince Carter that these stories in which he rests his faith are fiction.

Here we have a man who says he accepts the tenets of science, but then rejects them if they yield conclusions that don’t make him feel good. In that sense, he’s evincing intellectual hypocrisy. But of course, that’s the mindset required to be a believer yet also feel that you’re modern, liberal, and on board with science.

Yes, I still admire President Carter greatly: he’s a good man who does good works. But I now view him as somewhat delusional and self-deceiving, and thus I’ll never be able to see him in quite the same way again.

New National Security advisor rejects connection between Islam and terrorism

February 25, 2017 • 10:15 am

On February 13, Michael Flynn resigned as Trump’s National Security Advisor, and he’s now been replaced by H. R. (Herbert Raymond) McMaster. Nobody can argue that McMaster is not qualified, what with his extensive experience in the military and as a security specialist in the Middle East. Even Slate approves of him, calling him “the Army’s smartest officer,” though noting that McMaster has little experience in Washington and, as a renegade of sorts (i.e., he doesn’t favor torture), he may not have free reign to diverge from Trump’s plans.

As yesterday’s New York Times reports, McMaster also differs from Trump on the issue of “Islamic terrorism,” taking the apologists’ view that groups like ISIS, or those who practice terrorism in the name of faith, are “perverting Islam”:

President Trump’s newly appointed national security adviser has told his staff that Muslims who commit terrorist acts are perverting their religion, rejecting a key ideological view of other senior Trump advisers and signaling a potentially more moderate approach to the Islamic world.

The adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, told the staff of the National Security Council on Thursday, in his first “all hands” staff meeting, that the label “radical Islamic terrorism” was not helpful because terrorists are “un-Islamic,” according to people who were in the meeting.

That is a repudiation of the language regularly used by both the president and General McMaster’s predecessor, Michael T. Flynn, who resigned last week after admitting that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence and other officials about a phone call with a Russian diplomat.

It is also a sign that General McMaster, a veteran of the Iraq war known for his sense of history and independent streak, might move the council away from the ideologically charged views of Mr. Flynn, who was also a three-star Army general before retiring.

Well, we know why previous administrations have rejected the connection between Islam and terrorism, despite groups like ISIS explicitly drawing that connection—groups that certainly wouldn’t consider themselves as un-Islamic. One reason is simply to privilege religion in general and Islam in particular: it’s a rule of American government that religion of any sort must not be criticized. Further, some Islamic states give us oil or let us use their land for military bases, and presumably would be angered if Islam were dissed in any way. The Times gives a third reason, one connected to the second:

In his language, General McMaster is closer to the positions of former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush. Both took pains to separate acts of terrorism from Islamic teaching, in part because they argued that the United States needed the help of Muslim allies to hunt down terrorists.

“This is very much a repudiation of his new boss’s lexicon and worldview,” said William McCants, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the author of “The ISIS Apocalypse.”

I have to say that on this one issue, I think that Trump is closer to the truth than is McMaster, at least acknowledging a connection between Islam and terrorism, even though people like McMaster and Obama were, as we all knew, playing a semantic game. (I’m not, by the way, endorsing the totality of Trump’s views on Muslims or Islam!) But it still puzzles me that even Shia Islamic states like Iraq, who are constantly under religiously-based attack by Sunni Muslims, must also play the game, pretending that religion has nothing to do with these internecine battles. (The possibility that they’d be angered by invoking Islam is what, the Times says, has kept the issue euphemistic.)

In the end, the failure to acknowledge the religious roots of hatred and terrorism will impede a solution. Why, for example, should we turn to moderate or ex-Muslims like Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Maajid Nawaz as a strategy for to de-fanging extremist Islamism if the problems have nothing to do with Islam? A whole group of strategies becomes off-limits if you rule out a priori that religion plays some rule in terrorism.

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(From the NYT): President Trump appointed Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, left, as national security adviser on Monday. Credit Al Drago/The New York Times

h/t: Eli