Sophisticated theologian with science training: Jesus is like dark matter

December 28, 2011 • 6:30 am

Via Russell Blackford at Metamagician, we have an accommodationist piece in The Drum Opinion by Alister McGrath, “Science is about explanation, religion is about meaning.” McGrath is a professor of theology at King’s College London and President of the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics (note to thelogians: ditch the word “apologetics”), and has written several books, including Darwin and the Divine and Surprised by Meaning, (a clear allusion to C. S. Lewis’s autobiography; indeed, McGrath is writing a biography of the man).

McGrath also has a Ph.D. in molecular biophysics, and so should know something about how science works. But you couldn’t prove that from this piece, which evinces four of the six characteristics shown by theologians who try to comport science with religion (I listed the six in my debate with John Haught).  I will now call this theological strategy religionism.  Here are the 4/6:

  • Assert that science and faith are complementary ways of getting at the truth, and so should be friends.  McGrath is a NOMA-ist:
“If science is about explanation, religion is thus about meaning. Science helps us to appreciate the wonder of individual aspects of the universe; religion to see, however dimly, the “big picture” of which they are part.”
Dimly indeed!
  • Show that religion answers real questions about the world. Never mind that while theology is perfectly capable of “posing” or “addressing” questions, it’s not capable of answering them.  That’s proven by the fact that every religion has different “answers.”  McGrath:

“As Richard Dawkins rightly observes in his recent Magic of Reality, there’s something wonderful about the universe. The inspiring beauty of the night sky, solemn arctic landscapes, or a magnificent sunset fill us with wonder.

Yet they also make us ask deep questions. Where did everything come from? What’s it all about? What’s the point of life? These are questions that intrigue both science and religious faith, especially those who find delight and satisfaction in both. . .

Christians have always held that their faith makes sense of the enigmas and riddles of our experience. It’s not about running away from reality, or refusing to think about things (to mention two shallow popular stereotypes of faith.”

There’s no mention, of course, of the problem that “what makes sense” of things isn’t necessarily true.  Richard Feynman argued that science is the best way to prevent people from fooling themselves about the truth.  Using the “what-makes-sense” criterion is a sure way to fool yourself.

  • Criticize science for its failings.  In this case, the failing of science—as compared to faith—is that our answers may not be timeless.  As McGrath notes:

“But science is ultimately about a method – a way of making sense of things. Its outcomes change down the ages. Its interim reports are always important and interesting, but they are also provisional. A century ago, most scientists thought that the universe had always been here. Now, we believe it had a beginning.”

The implication here is that the truths of faith never change, and that’s an improvement over science. Well, the provisional nature of scientific truth is something I don’t have to defend, for how can you find out what’s true about the universe unless you can continually question what you know, and strive to prove our understanding? But it’s invidious to suggest that religious truths are unchanging.  It’s just that their change doesn’t come from within theology—from any greater understanding of God—but from the findings of science (e.g., evolution) or changes in secular morality (e.g., recognition of the rights of women and gays).

For Christians, faith is not a blind leap into the dark, but a joyful discovery of a bigger and clearer picture of things, of which we are part.

  • Show that just like religion, science is based on faith.  This is a slight variant of claim #3.  If the New Atheists are going to claim that there’s no evidence for God or the tenets of any religion, then accommodationists like McGrath can just argue that science is no better than religion in this respect.  McGrath’s unfortunate example is dark matter:

“Some atheist scientists ridicule Christians for believing in a God whose existence cannot be proved. Yet science regularly posits the existence of things whose existence cannot be proved to make sense of our observations.

Thus we infer the existence of dark matter from observations that would otherwise be puzzling. We can’t see it, and we can’t prove it’s there. Yet this doesn’t stop most leading astronomers from accepting its existence.

We can’t see it; we can’t touch it; we can’t smell it; and we can’t hear it. Yet many scientists argue that it’s the only meaningful explanation of observed gravitational effects. Where the naive demand proof, the wise realise that this is limited to logic and mathematics.”

Well, putting aside that scientists don’t demand proof, but provisional yet well-supported answers, let us take up the issue of whether dark matter is like Jesus.  I’m not a physicist, of course, and it would be onerous and time-consuming for me to look up all the scientific research on dark matter.

Fortunately, we’re about to be treated to another Marshall McLuhan moment, for I have someone right behind this sign who knows a ton about dark matter, about how its existence is a scientific hypothesis, and how scientists are actually trying to test for its existence.  Yes, I have behind this sign the physicist Sean Carroll, who has written extensively about dark matter on his website Cosmic Variance.  And what Carroll says to McGrath is essentially this: “I’ve heard what you are saying. You know nothing about dark matter.”

I sent Sean McGrath’s article and asked for his thoughts on the “dark matter = faith” claim. Here’s Sean’s answer, with a lot of links if you want to read about dark matter—and you should certainly read the last link.

I suspect Alastair McGrath might be a double agent. If you wanted to highlight the intellectual superficiality of how modern theologians talk about God, you could hardly do better than to contrast it with how modern physicists talk about dark matter. For one thing,  science never “proves” anything at all (as I talk about here).

For another thing, we’re trying very hard to find direct evidence of dark matter:

“Guest post: Juan Collar on dark matter detection.”

“Has Fermi seen new evidence for dark matter?”

“Guest post: Neal Weiner on the era of dark matter direct detection.”

“Dark matter is just messing with us now.”

And we’re always looking for alternatives that might do a better job, and discarding models that don’t work:

“Dark matter vs. modified gravity.”

“Looking for dark matter in all the wrong places.”

“Dark matter: still dark.”

“Dark matter: just fine, thanks.”

But those alternatives don’t catch on, because the dark matter hypothesis makes very specific predictions, which are tested and come out right:

“Dark matter exists.”

“Guest post:  Evalyn Gates on comic magnification (or invasion of the giant blue space amoebas).”

“Mapping the dark matter.”

So to repeat the obvious, dark matter is nothing like God. [JAC: do read at least the post at this link]

Sorry for the long list of links. So much silliness, there’s just too much to say, it’s hard to know where to start. –Sean

Thanks, Sean, for looking those up.  And so another Sophisticated Theologian® is shown up for what he is: somebody who dissimulates and trashes science to advance his faith in the Baby Jesus.

Rosenhouse on scientism, part 2

December 28, 2011 • 4:38 am

For those interested in the pejorative term of “scientism,” applied so often to atheists, note that over at EvolutionBlog Jason Rosenhouse continues his discussion of the issue with a new piece, “A follow-up post about scientism.”  He’s adding a few notes in response to discussions on other websites, including my post on Paul Paolini’s definition of scientism at Rationally Speaking.

Jason makes some good points, one of them being this:

Moving on, my next point was that it is very easy to fall into a definitional morass when discussing this issue. The correctness of the assertion that science is the only way of knowing depends a lot on how you define the phrases “science” and “way of knowing.” It is very easy to render this discussion trivial by taking a sufficiently narrow definition of science.

For example, if you define science so that it is limited entirely to questions about the natural world, then it is obvious that science is not the only way of knowing. Historians produce knowledge, but they do not study the natural world. I would be very much surprised, though, if any of the folks typically accused of scientism actually reject historical scholarship as a legitimate route to knowledge. If history is the refutation of scientism, then no one is guilty of scientism.

It is certainly true that in everyday usage, when people use the word “science” they are usually thinking of something related to the natural world, probably physics, chemistry or biology. But it is equally true that people don’t usually have abstract discussions about ways of knowing. From my perspective, while it may seem odd to consider history a science, it is even odder to say that scientific knowledge is different in some fundamental way from historical knowledge. It is far more natural to say that they are the results of very similar methods applied to different questions.

Every science educator I have ever met has emphasized to his students that science is best thought of as a method of investigation. If you take that seriously, it is clear that the large collection of methods employed by scientists in their work can be applied just as well to questions that have nothing to do with the natural world. The reason we have a term like “social science” is to capture the idea that there are fields of inquiry with enough of the attributes of science to be worthy of the label despite not studying the natural world. I would further note that people routinely speak of having a scientific mindset or of taking a scientific approach to a problem.

So I don’t think it is unreasonable, in the context of these sorts of discussions, to define science very broadly. It just seems silly to me to say that scientific knowledge is one kind of thing, historical knowledge is something else, philosophical knowledge is a third and mathematical knowledge is a fourth. Mathematicians primarily use deductive reasoning in their work, but deductive reasoning is not some special, mathematical approach to knowledge that is separate from what scientists do. The primary tool of philosophy is dialectical argumentation, but this, too, is not something that is foreign to scientific practice. Academic turf-protection is not something I care much about. My interest is in how you justify knowledge claims, and the methods employed in all of these disciplines strike me as instances of applied common sense, to borrow Thomas Huxley’s definition of science.

I agree, of course, though my custom of sometimes construing science broadly, so as to mean “finding out stuff via empirical investigation and reason” hasn’t met with universal approbation.

And, after discussing various “ways of knowing” that are ruled out as illegitimate, Jason concludes:

The really important thing, as I see it, is that religion be denied any status as a legitimate way of knowing. After that, everything else is a detail.

After all, accusations of scientism are levelled most often by those defending religion—and occasionally philosophy. (As a fellow cultural Jew, it hasn’t escaped my notice that Jason’s comment here is an obvious play on a famous statement by Rabbi Hillel.)

As for Paolini, recall that he defines scientism like this:

We shall say that a belief is scientistic just in case it is falsely justified by a pro-science belief; that is, if a belief appeals to a pro-science belief that does not in fact warrant it, then that belief is scientistic.

Jason’s response is stated much more succinctly than mine:

My problem with Paolini’s definition is that it seems like a trivialization of the term “scientism.” When you accuse someone of being in thrall to an “–ism,” you usually have something more in mind than the claim that he made a bad argument. Referring to an “ism” suggests that the person is not merely mistaken, but mistaken precisely because he adheres to a blinkered and erroneous view of the world. In Paolini’s account, by contrast, you are guilty of scientism the moment you make a certain sort of fallacious inference, with no reference to any broader worldview. I don’t see why we need a special epithet for people who make bad arguments starting from pro-science propositions. Just criticize the argument and be done with it.

In defense of Hitch

December 27, 2011 • 10:13 am

Along with the encomiums accompanying the death of Christopher Hitchens—many of them appearing on this site—comes the predictable dollop of dissenters.  Some of these, I think, are really motivated by an animus toward the man or his ideas, while some seem to be motivated by sheer jealousy.  Others, I think, reflect a peculiar strain in the skeptical movement: if we’re to be skeptical about things, then by all means let us evince some skepticism toward Hitchens, too. Let us temper the shouts of praise with notes of scorn.

My own view is that Hitchens was on the whole a hugely admirable person who is to be extolled for the strength of his character, for his courage in facing death, for his absolute willingness to defend and live out his beliefs, for his eloquence in all venues—but above all for his writing and talks.

He was, of course, a prime rallying point for New Atheism, but he was so much more than that.  He was the Orwell of our time: polymathic, eloquent, able to say something interesting about nearly everything, and deeply opposed to all forms of totalitarianism.  He loved literature and was able to write interesting things about it.  It is a real feat, for instance, to be able to write so enthusiastically about Anthony Powell’s novel A Dance to the Music of Time that a scientist like me would procure it and read every volume of this multi-book treatment of English life.

He had something interesting to say about everything, and even if you disagreed with him he nevertheless satisfied the prime requirement of every writer and journalist: what he wrote always lived, always entertained, always made us think.

Like all humans, he was imperfect.  He could be boorish, especially with a reservoir of amber restorative under his belt.  He was occasionally (but not usually) too pugnacious. He could be paternalistic in some of his remarks about women.  And I wasn’t too keen on his jihad against Bill Clinton or his support of the Iraq war.  The latter has occupied most of his detractors, but remember that it was one political position among many.  I opposed his stance on that largely because he seemed to be giving us license to go into any country whose regime we didn’t like and forcibly remove it—and casualties be damned.  But if he approved going into Iraq, why not North Korea, a far worse regime? Or any of the other dozens of oppressive dictatorships throughout the world?  I wasn’t too hard on Hitch about this, though, because I knew that he was motivated largely by compassion for his friends in Iraq and his hatred of totalitarianism. But yes, in my view his stand was wrong.

And yes, he drank a lot, and smoked. I find nothing to criticize in that. He knew it could injure his health, and didn’t regret it when it did.  So many atheists seem to fall into the category of what I call “leisure fascists”: those people who fulminate when someone engages in any activity that could shorten their lives.  They come out of the woodwork, for example, when I put up a post about barbecue. Tough, I say: life is to be enjoyed, and I’d rather have my tenure on Earth be shortened by a few years if I can sometimes eat barbecue instead of only raw vegetables.  Hitch liked his Johnnie Walker and ciggies; he said they helped him think and enjoy his life.

One of the more invidious attempts to create a “balanced” view of Hitchens is by Massimo Pigliucci at Rationally Speaking, and I give it in its entirety:

As you all know, Christopher Hitchens has recently passed away after a valiant (and very public) struggle against cancer. Most of the commentaries and obituaries were positive, and many of my fellow atheists and freethinkers seem to genuinely admire the man. I have always been puzzled by why, exactly, this is so.

Yes, he was an atheist. Yes, he wrote eloquently. But that’s about it. He was also personally abusive (particularly, it appears, toward fellow writers), misogynist, obnoxiously in your face about his beliefs (or lack thereof), and spectacularly inconsistent (and incredibly often wrong) about his political positions.

So here is my admittedly contrarian collection of commentaries on Hitch, in the hope that we can come up with a more balanced view of the man and begin a thoughtful discussion about just how much good or bad he has done to atheism, freethought, and political discourse.

Pigliucci then links to six articles about Hitchens that contain some criticism, one of them from 2004 which basically imputes all of Hitchens’s unpalatable political views to the fact that he was “a drunk.”

I respond briefly: Pigliucci is full of what comes out of the south end of a bull facing north. Let’s take this dropping first:

Yes, he was an atheist. Yes, he wrote eloquently. But that’s about it.

Give me a fricking break, Dr.3 Pigliucci!  That’s about it? Really? Let me dispel your ignorance of his accomplishments by listing the books he wrote, edited, or co-wrote (from Wikipedia):

Sole author

Sole editor

Co-author or co-editor

Look at the range of topics: literature, politics, Mother Teresa (right on the money, he was), Henry Kissinger (on the money again), Thomas Jefferson, the Elgin Marbles (right again), and tons of essays on diverse topics.  I needn’t say more to dispel Pigliucci’s willful ignorance.

And this:

He was also personally abusive (particularly, it appears, toward fellow writers), misogynist, obnoxiously in your face about his beliefs (or lack thereof), and spectacularly inconsistent (and incredibly often wrong) about his political positions.

I met Hitch only once, and found him charming, as most people did.  He was strong minded in his arguments, and though I’ve watched hours of his debate on YouTube, I’ve never seen an instance of what I’d call “abuse”.  Far more often people were abusive to him, as in the article above that calls him a drunk and urges him to contact Alcoholics Anonymous.  He was opinionated and expressive, but rarely lost his temper unless, as he often was on television, baited by commenters.

Misogynyist? Does Pigluicci know what that means?  Let us check the Oxford English Dictionary. “Misogyny: Hatred or dislike of, or prejudice against women.”  I don’t think Hitch hated, disliked, or was prejudiced against women. Sometimes he was mildly paternalistic, as when he claimed that his wife didn’t have to work, and sometimes he made boorish remarks verging on sexism, as in his famous critique of the Dixie Chicks. But remember that he used equal invective against men: people like Jerry Falwell, whom he called an “ugly little charlatan” and a “little toad” with “chubby little flanks,” and was not accused of being a misandrist.  And he wrote that famous article on women’s sense of humor in Vanity Fair.  Before you call that misogyny, go read it.

Balanced against those remarks is his persistent defense of women’s rights, his criticisms about how religion treated women, and his constant refrain that societies could improve only if they empowered women and gave them reproductive rights. (This despite his personal dislike of abortion—in that case he admirably separated his personal views from political necessities).  So often these days, especially on atheist websites, a touch of sexism or boorishness, or even a criticism of a woman, is instantly condemned as “misogyny.”

Inconsistent in his political views?  Well, he couldn’t be conveniently tucked into a box labeled “left” or “right,” but did that make him inconsistent?  It’s the result of his being an independent thinker.

Obnoxiously in your face about his beliefs?  So often the “obnoxiousness” was simply strong argument or, in the case of religion, any argument. (I presume that by “lack thereof”, Pigliucci is referring to Hitchens’s atheism).  Give me someone who argues strongly for his beliefs, and has evidence to back them up, than a milquetoast who avers that we have to speak softly to make our case and win minds.  And Hitchens’s “obnoxiousness” was part of what made him both entertaining and persuasive.

“Often wrong about his political positions”? Maybe about Iraq and Clinton, but that’s not “often.”  And I find Massimo “often wrong” in his philosophical positions, including those about scientism, free will, and the way we atheists are supposed to behave.  And don’t get me started on Massimo’s biology!

Hitch was no saint, but if he were we wouldn’t have loved him so much.  He was a figure larger than life—larger than literature, too—and we’re better for his having lived among us. Pigliucci is simply wrong in implying that Hitchens’s effect on the world was, on balance, negative.

All I know is that if I had a choice of having a drink and a conversation with Hitchens or Pigliucci, or having to choose to read an essay written by either Hitchens or Pigliucci, I know exactly what I’d do.

The no-free-will experiment, avec video

December 27, 2011 • 5:23 am

I’ve spent a few more weeks reading about free will and the varieties of compatibilism and incompatibilism. And—much to the regret of some of my readers, I suppose—I haven’t changed my mind.  I still don’t think that we can make real “choices” at any given moment; I feel that all of our choices are  predetermined by the laws of physics and chemistry, and I think that all the attempts to save the notion of free will via philosophical “compatibilism” are unconvincing.

And my feeling that the common notion of free will—that at any given time, if the past history of an individual and all of her molecules were replicated, she would always choose the same way—was confirmed by discussions I had with three scientist colleagues. None of these colleagues had thought much about the problem of free will, but all of them, when pressed, thought of “free will” in the way I’ve characterized it. Further, all of them raised the similar objections to my claim that we have no free will in that sense: Wouldn’t that lead to nihilism? What about moral responsibility? But can’t people be persuaded to act in a certain way?, etc.   This is an anecdotal and small sample, but it’s a sample of smart scientists, and all of them initially conceived of free will as the ability to make decisions independent of the laws of physics.

Before I talk a tiny bit about compatibilism, let me present this video, which shows a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) experiment like that used in the famous work of Bode et al. (see reference below for a free download), showing that one can predict the outcome of a decision up to seven seconds before the subject is conscious of having made a decision. The YouTube description says this:

In this clip, Marcus Du Sautoy (Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and current Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science) participates in an experiment conducted by John-Dylan Haynes (Professor at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin) that attempts to find the neurological basis for decision making.

Hayes was one of the authors of the Bode et al. paper cited below.

It’s a complicated set-up, but the results and explanation are cool, even if you think they have no bearing on free will:

Now I’m perfectly aware that the “predictability” of the results is not perfect: it seems to be around 60%, better than random prediction but nevertheless statistically significant. I think, though, that as our ability to image and understand the brain improves, the predictability of which decision the subject will make will improve.  After all, fMRI is rather crude, based as it is on blood flow to certain areas of the brain.  And I know some will object that even if the decision was “predictable” up to seven (and probably ten) seconds in advance, it still could have been a decision, but an unconscious one.

I maintain that if a decision is unconscious—if it takes place in your head well before you’re aware of it—then that is not free will, which involves conscious decisions.  After all, every “decision” has to be reflected somehow in brain activity that is correlated with an action, so we’d expect to see predictable pre-conscious brain activity if there were no free will.  For those who say that seven seconds isn’t long enough, would you deny free will if I could tell you what flavor of ice cream you’d choose while you were on the way to the store, knew what flavors were on offer, but said you didn’t yet know what you wanted?

Now the version of free will I’ve adumbrated is contracausal free will, and it’s clear that I’m an incompatibilist—I believe that our actions and “decisions” are solely the results of the laws of physics and chemistry, and that such decisions are in principle incompatible with my definition of free will.  But I think that nearly all smart philosophers and scientists agree with me on at least one point: our decisions are basically deterministic (perhaps tempered with a bit of quantum indeterminacy, which can’t be part of free will) and are the result of physical laws.  Few people believe in mental/physical dualism thse days.

What people differ about is whether determinism removes our notion of free will. And so they concoct “compatibilist” definitions of free will—ones that make free will compatible with physical determinism.  I have not found one of their arguments remotely convincing, for I adhere to the same notion of free will as most folks do, and am unwilling to change it to conform to some philosopher’s attempt at reconciliation.  To me, free will means “I could have decided otherwise,” and if we can’t do that, then we don’t have free will.  We have something else, and I wish that philosophers would use another term if they’re compatibilists.

I’ve read about compatibilism because someone asked me about the philosophical arguments for it.  I’ve only found four or so that stirred me even remotely, but, as I said, none were convincing:

  • Free will is shown when people’s decisions are seen to respond to reasoned argument. That’s not convincing for two reasons: reasoned argument is still an environmental influence which can impinge on the brain to affect people’s decisions.  Second, whether or not someone is responsive to reasoned argument is itself determined by the laws of physics.
  • Free will is shown when someone’s “decision” is compatible with their backgrounds, temperament, habits, and personality. This isn’t acceptable because it doesn’t show that someone is making a free choice—only a choice that’s consistent with decisions and actions they’ve evinced before. It doesn’t show that they could have chosen otherwise, either.
  • Maybe you can’t decide freely to do something, but you can decide freely not to do something. This is the version of free will suggested by Benjamin Libet, who did the first experiment showing predictability of “choice” by brain imaging.  Dismayed at the implications of his result, he suggested the idea of “free won’t.” That’s bogus, however, because you don’t have any choice whether to veto a contemplated action, either.  (The icing on the cake is that “vetoing” takes place in precisely the same brain regions as “choosing.”)
  • Free will represent the “choices” made by rational, contemplative beings whose faculties have evolved to weigh many factors before making a decision. This subsumes a number of ideas suggested by different philosophers, including Dan Dennett. I don’t find them convincing because to me they just show that our brains are complicated computers made out of meat, evolved to weigh lots of inputs before giving an output. But computers that spit out a single output—a choice—after absorbing many inputs are still computers, and we don’t think that computers programmed to respond to complicated inputs have “free will.”  Does a chess-playing computer have free will? If you think so, then go tell it to the philosophers.

I still think that compatibilism represents a sort of kneejerk philosophical response to the fact that nearly everyone finds totally unpalatable the idea that we are automatons whose actions are completely determined by the laws of physics.  And, as Harris says in his upcoming (and excellent) small book, Free Will, all versions of compatibilism essentially boil down to one pithy description:

“A puppet is free so long as he loves his strings.”

____________

Bode, S., A. H. He, C. S. Soon, R. Trampel, R. Turner, and J.-D. Haynes. 2011. Tracking the unconscious generation of free decisions using uItra-high field fMRI. PLoS ONE 6(6): e21612. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0021612

Pollination

December 26, 2011 • 11:27 am

This is a beautiful 4.5-minute film on pollination from a TED talk. Someone appears at the end who may have made the film, but I don’t recognize him. If you do, weigh in. But watch the film and enjoy the bounties of natural selection.