How do we know things?

June 17, 2011 • 8:37 am

by Greg Mayer

There’s an interesting piece on the NY Times website entitled “Epistemology and the End of the World” by philosopher Gary Gutting of Notre Dame about the recent (failed) prediction of the end of the world by a radio preacher named Harold Camping. Camping was certain it would happen on May 21. Gutting begins by noting

No sensible person could have thought that he [Camping] knew this. Knowledge requires justification; that is, some rationally persuasive account of why we know what we claim to know.  Camping’s confused efforts at Biblical interpretation provided no justification for his prediction.  Even if, by some astonishing fluke, he had turned out to be right, he still would not have known the rapture was coming.

Although his prediction is now refuted, Camping has adjusted his claim, saying that an “invisible judgment day” did occur. This, as Gutting notes, tends to make his claim irrefutable– no evidence can count against it. Philosophers of science (and philosophy of science is largely a branch of epistemology), especially the late Karl Popper, have long insisted that the hallmark of a scientific claim is that there can, in principle, be evidence that would count against it. Popper used Freudian psychiatry as an example of claims that can be made irrefutable. If all men have homosexual tendencies, but you then find one without such tendencies, it means that that man’s tendencies have been so deeply repressed that they are undetectable. Repression saves the general claim, but it also means you can’t have evidence against the general claim. And if you can’t have evidence against it, then you can’t have evidence for it– the claim is untestable. Another example is in the work of Immanuel Velikovsky. He explained the lack of historical records concerning the historical catastrophes he postulated by invoking a “collective amnesia” by which the events were forgotten or repressed (Velikovsky admired Freud). Such dodges and hedges (“dedges”) against refutation tend to disconnect a claim from any possible observational basis for the claim, and are characteristic of pseudoscience.

Gutting is most interested, however, not in Camping and those Christians who agreed with him, but in examining the views of Christians who thought Camping was wrong about the date. He notes that a subjective feeling of certainty provides no basis for knowledge, and that this is what characterizes Camping’s Christian opponents, as well as his followers. Camping’s opponents cite a Biblical passage saying the date of the end of the world is unknowable, but Gutting points out that this makes his opponents’ claim irrefutable, too. (Camping’s original claim, before he said the effects were invisible, at least had the merit of being an empirical, refutable claim.) Their subjective certainty is no more evidence for their claim than Camping’s was for his.

The case against Camping was this: His subjective certainty about the rapture required objectively good reasons to expect its occurrence; he provided no such reasons, so his claim was not worthy of belief.   Christians who believe in a temporally unspecified rapture agree with this argument.  But the same argument undermines their own belief in the rapture.  It’s not just that “no one knows the day and hour” of the rapture.  No one knows that it is going to happen at all.

The briar patch of theology

June 17, 2011 • 5:46 am

The Right ex-Reverend Eric MacDonald is kindly getting me up to speed on Christian theology. He’s recommended to me a series of books that cover the huge diversity of Christian views, although I’m always mindful that those represent the ideas of rarified academics rather than of most religious folks themselves.

My latest read is Introduction to Theology: Contemporary North American Perspectives (1998), edited by Roger A. Badham.  I so excited! The chapters include descriptions of “postmodern paleoorthodoxy,” “postliberal theology” (why is everything always “post”?), “correlational theology and the Chicago school,” “process theology and the current church struggle,” “black theology,” “womanist theology,” and “feminist trinitarian epistemology.”  Why do I torture myself so?  Must I read Duns Scotus next?

At any rate, one thing I already know, from a pre-read scan of the book, is that the writing is dreadful. Either theologians don’t care about whether they express themselves clearly, or they obfuscate deliberately to hide the awful fact that they don’t know what they’re talking about.  I’ll render a verdict later.  But here’s a sample from the very first page:

Most denominations are finding themselves to be somewhat latitudinarian reflections of the dynamic currents swirling through both church and culture as we approach the third millennium. New and old lights, as it were, vie side by side in attempts to define future direction.

English translation: Theology has no idea where it’s going.

“Somewhat latitudinarian reflections”? What are they? And is there such a thing as a static current? “As it were”? As what were? This dude badly needs to read Orwell’s essay “Politics and the English language.”

Bad writing aside, I am at a disadvantage reading this stuff, for I keep approaching it like a scientist. Every time someone makes a claim about God, I ask myself, “How do you know that?” Such is the unbridgeable gap between science and faith, for the honest answer to that question is always, “I don’t!”

Here’s an example.  The editor, Roger Badham, admits frankly that Christianity was complicit in the evils of the Holocaust and other persecutions, and then takes up the thorny problem of why a supposedly good God allows evil to exist at all.  Bear with me as I reproduce his theodicy-based solutions:

A central question that haunts both Jewish and Christian post-Holocaust theology is that of theodicy.  Why, if God acts in history, was the Holocaust permitted to happen? A God who has the power to intervene, but who does not, surely stands indictable of injustice.  There are many attempted solutions:  The classical Greek model of God is of a Being beyond time, an unrelated Absolute, immutable and static.  Immutability and omnipotence remain at the heart of Augustine’s doctrine of God, but he stresses that God is in all parts of creation, and is by no means removed from it.  Schubert Ogden claims that God’s “body is the whole universe of nondivine beings”: therefore, all creatures are effected by God and effect God, and experience levels of freedom.  Paul van Buren, adopting this process model, argues for the self-limiting character of God through the creation of self-determining agents, after which even power is social—shared between God and humanity in covenant together.  God’s power is not absolute, but is relational and persuasive, and can therefore be profoundly frustrated.  Because God is relational, God is affected by, and suffers with, creation.  Tillich’s Kierkegaardian approach is compatible: If moral freedom is an inseparable trait of being human, for God to restrain evil would be synonymous with taking away our humanness.  God  has provided us already with every gift possible by which the Holocaust was to be prevented. [JAC: I am not making this up.] Tillich moves away from personalist or supernaturalist assertions about God as a superbeing or agent, and speaks instead of God as the ground of Being and as Being itself.  God is therefore perceived as the ground of agency rather than as an agent, which profoundly changes one’s theological view of God. Put differently, H. Richard Niebuhr insists that “responsibility affirms—God is acting in all actions upon you. So respond to all actions upon you as to respond to [God’s] action.”

Now I’m not going to go through these “solutions” and criticize them. We’ve done that already.  And some of them don’t even make sense, like the “ground of Being.”  I want to make just two points.  First, as the editor notes, there are many attempted solutions.  Indeed: this paragraph has at least five.  So if you’re interested in understanding why there is evil, and you consider these and all the other solutions, which one is the right one? And don’t say that the only thing that matters is that there are solutions, for the different solutions make importantly different claims about the nature of your god.

There is no way of knowing, no way of deciding among them. Such is the briar patch that ensnares you when you do theology.

Second, do any of these people ever consider the alternative and more parsimonious hypothesis: “there is no problem because there is no God”?  If a scientist were writing this, she’d first have to adduce evidence for a divine being, and for its nature, before showing how that being comports with evil.

Oklahoma!

June 17, 2011 • 5:15 am

It’s a coincidence that my fifth-favorite Broadway musical happens to coincide with my arrival in that very state: Oklahoma! (with an exclamation mark, please).  The Rodgers and Hammerstein play opened in 1943 and ran for 2,243 performances.  The movie, from which these clips are taken, was made in 1950, and won Oscars for Best Music and Best Sound.

The musical starred Shirley Jones (in her film debut) and Gordon MacRae. Here’s a medley of four great songs from the movie, “Oh what a beautiful mornng,” “The surrey with the fringe on top,” “People will say we’re in love,” and, of course, “Oklahoma!”

Speaking of Oklahoma, this is what greeted me in my hotel room yesterday: a Gideon Bible and a prayer that was on a card placed on the bed.

The prayer begins:

Because this hotel is a human institution to serve people,

and not a solely for profit organization,

we hope that God will grant you peace and rest

while you are under our roof.

I’m not in Chicago any more!

But that was more than offset by dinner at Rudy’s BBQ, thanks to UO professor and conference organizer Ingo Schlupp and his student Uli, who took pity on my carless state and ferried me there from the hotel.  Creditable barbecue: brisket with fried okra, potato salad and, of course, sweet iced tea.

We need a new word for “spirituality”

June 16, 2011 • 2:08 pm

Although the word “faitheist,” of which I’m very fond, was coined in a contest on this website, I have no hopes that we can find neologisms to replace the words “spiritual” or “spirituality.”  They seem too ingrained in our discourse. But you know the problem: the words have a smell of religion about them—almost a scent of incense, both the Hindu and Eastern Orthodox variety.

Yet many diehard atheists would claim that they have “spiritual” experiences. Mine come when I’m in some awesome place, like at the foot of Mount Everest, or when I find out some amazing way that natural selection has operated, like making parasites take over the brains of their hosts, making the hosts behave in a way that promotes the parasites’ reproduction.

You know the problem.  Accommodationist and religious people (the prime example is the sociologist Elaine Ecklund), take advantage of the “religious” angle of spirituality, making it seem that, after all, there’s not much difference between religious people and atheists who claim “spiritual” experiences.  We have common ground, even though that commonality is pretty much bunk.  After all, you can have an “out of self” or “I’m-just-a-speck-of-dust-in-the-universe” experiences without having to believe in any supernatural beings. I used to have them all the time in college, prompted by the ingestion of organic substances.

In a short new post, “On spiritual truths,” Sam Harris discusses this issue.  Having spent years in meditation, he seems to imply, at least in his title, that there are spiritual truths, although he’s not explicit about what they are.  What is clear is that Harris has repeatedly experienced feelings of transcendence. But he clearly distinguishes these from any experience that would enable the faithful:

 Perhaps I should just speak for myself on this point: It seems to me that I spend much of my waking life in a neurotic trance. My experiences in meditation suggest that there is an alternative to this, however. It is possible to stand free of the juggernaut of self, if only for a moment.

Yeah, I know about the neurotic trance part.  Anybody who goes to a faculty meeting knows the feeling well.

But the fact that human consciousness allows for remarkable experiences does not make the worldview of Sayed Qutb, or of Islam, or of revealed religion generally, any less divisive or ridiculous. The intellectual and moral stains of the world’s religions—the misogyny, otherworldliness, narcissism, and illogic—are so ugly and indelible as to render all religious language suspect. And I share the concern, expressed by many atheists, that terms like “spiritual” and “mystical” are often used to make claims, not merely about the quality of certain experiences, but about the nature of the cosmos. The fact that one can lose one’s sense of self in an ocean of tranquility does not mean that one’s consciousness is immaterial or that it presided over the birth of the universe. This is the spurious linkage between contemplative experience and metaphysics that pseudo-scientists like Deepak Chopra find irresistible.

I was going to suggest, before I read Sam’s post, that we replace “spirituality” with “transcendence,” but that won’t do, either.  It’s too close to religion, implying that there is some realm that transcends the earthly.  So should we keep the word “spiritual,” knowing that it’s highly likely to be misunderstood when used by atheists, should we simply explain what we mean when we use it, which will make us seem pompously verbose, or should we use a different term?  I have no suggestions.  All I know is that unless we give the proper caveats at length when we use it, people like Ecklund and Chris Mooney will try to bundle us together with the faithful.

It’s flat!

June 16, 2011 • 12:04 pm

Well, as the song says, this is where the wind comes sweeping down the plain.  This is the view from my hotel in Norman, Oklahoma, where the Evolution 2011 meetings start tomorrow.  The hotel/conference center is a huge massif rising above the prairie, and there’s nothing around for miles.  It’s gonna be tough to get something decent to eat.

I hear there’s a good BBQ joint in town, but, sans voiture, there’s no way to get there. Unlucky me.

D. S. Wilson: can Darwin fix Binghamton?

June 16, 2011 • 3:26 am

David Sloan Wilson is best known for his vigorous defense of the evolutionary importance of multilevel selection, a variant of group selection.  His ideas haven’t yet become a part of mainstream evolutionary biology: although multilevel selection must operate in some instances (in evolution, every type of selection must have happened at least once!), I’m not convinced that it explains a great deal about the natural world.

In recent years Wilson, partly supported by the Templeton Foundation, has tried to apply some of his ideas about evolution to revitalize the depressed city in which he lives, Binghamton, New York.  His efforts are profiled in a piece by Emma Marris in the latest Nature, “Evolution: Darwin’s City.” As Marris describes, Wilson’s efforts are based on this evolutionary thesis:

Groups with high prosociality — a suite of cooperative behaviours that includes altruism — often outcompete those that have little social cohesion, so natural selection applies to group behaviours just as it does on individual adaptations. Many contend that group-level selection is not needed to explain altruism, but Wilson believes that it is this process that has made humans a profoundly social species, the bees of the primate order.

And so Wilson scurries around Binghamton, trying to fix it by encouraging prosociality, which means promoting competition between different groups.  He works on parks, school, and playgrounds, and he works hard. I really admire the man for his efforts to raise up his community.

My admiration is hedged, though by two things. First, Wilson is deeply engaged with local churches and religions: although he’s an atheist, he’s always been soft on religion, and has a strong belief in belief. Churches, he thinks, are one of the Darwinian fixes for his town. And that extends to churches whose agenda isn’t progressive:

One of Wilson’s students on the religion project, Ian MacDonald, says that Wilson has “temporarily” allayed his fears about helping religious organizations. But MacDonald is uneasy about what will happen when they try working with closed, dogmatic churches that condemn homosexuality or teach women to obey their husbands’ every command. Wilson says that he is “sympathetic to the ‘niche’ occupied by ‘closed’ churches”; he is not there to judge.

That’s disturbing.  How can one be “sympathetic to a niche” that makes women and gays second-class citizens?

Second, Wilson’s Darwinian agenda seems somewhat misguided—even a bit fanatical. And as Marris shows clearly,  the evolution bit hasn’t been a rousing success:

[Wilson] now spends his days in church basements, government meeting rooms, street corners and scrubby city parks. He is involved in projects to build playgrounds, install urban gardens, reinvent schools, create neighbourhood associations and document the religious life of the city, among others. Wilson thrives on his hectic schedule, but it is hard to measure his success. Publications are sparse, in part because dealing with communities and local government is time-consuming. And the nitty-gritty practical details often swamp the theory; the people with whom he collaborates sometimes have trouble working out what his projects have to do with evolution.

At the Lost Dog [a dog cafe], I ask city planner and frequent collaborator Tarik Abdelazim whether he understands why an academic scientist is taking such a proactive interest in the city. He leans against the bar, glass of wine in hand, and addresses Wilson. “I know you talk about ‘prosociality’, but how that connects to our good friend Darwin, I don’t know.”

Fellow biologists are also bemused. According to Wilson’s former graduate student Dan O’Brien, now a biologist at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, many have reacted to Wilson’s work with “a mixture of intrigue and distance”. That, says O’Brien, “is because he’s not doing biology anymore. He’s entered into a sort of evolutionary social sciences.” Wilson has acquired the language of community organizing and joined, supported and partially funded a slew of improvement schemes, raising the question of whether he is too close to his research. Has David Sloan Wilson fallen in love with his field site?

I wish Wilson well, though he might be more effective if he abandoned the multilevel-selection approach. And maybe he should regard his efforts more as personal altruism than as a demonstration of his evolutionary ideas:

Mary Webster, a resident who has been working on a park-design project in her neighbourhood, says that she initially saw Wilson as a professor with all the answers. Now, she says she realizes that he is “flying by the seat of his pants”. That “sounds about right”, says Wilson and, paraphrasing Einstein, he offers, “If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t be called research.”

Oh dear.

South Pacific

June 16, 2011 • 3:20 am

Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific opened in 1949 and ran for 1,945 performances, nabbing 10 Tony awards (including all four for acting) and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1950.

Here’s a 15-minute medley of many of the great songs from the movie, including “Some enchanted evening,” and “You’ve got to be carefully taught.” The latter song (starts at 10:45) has an interesting history, as recounted in Theatre Journal:

In the second act of South Pacific, Lieutenant Joe Cable sings “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught,” a song about racial prejudice. Rodgers and Hammerstein were counseled repeatedly in tryouts to remove the song, which was considered by many to be too controversial, too preachy, or simply inappropriate in a musical. They resisted the pressure, James Michener (author of the book on which the play was based) later recalled: “The authors replied stubbornly that this number represented why they had wanted to do this play, and that even if it meant the failure of the production, it was going to stay in.” During a touring production of the show in Atlanta in 1953, the song again raised hackles, this time offending some Georgia legislators who introduced a bill to outlaw entertainment having, as they stated, “an underlying philosophy inspired by Moscow.” State Representative David C. Jones claimed that a song justifying interracial marriage was implicitly a threat to the American way of life. Hammerstein replied that he was surprised by the idea that “anything kind and humane must necessarily originate in Moscow.”

Mitzi Gaynor in the movie, singing “Wonderful Guy.” It’s the only song I know that contains the word “bromidic”!

Oh, go ahead: sing along. You know you want to!

“The Ledge”: an atheist movie

June 15, 2011 • 7:49 pm

I’m heading out of town early tomorrow early, but am putting up this press-release-y email I just received from reader “Johnny,” who works for Matthew Chapman, the movie’s director.   It’s a bit breathy, but I checked out the movie and the clips (go here for the preview), and it’s certainly legit.  So here’s a bit of publicity for it.  If you see this movie, or know anything about it, weigh in below.  And if it’s not that great, remember that I haven’t seen it. I wish it well, though.

I’m a fan and subscriber, and a volunteer for atheist writer and director Matthew Chapman for The Ledge, the first big film with an atheist hero and an A-list cast. As you may know, it stars Liv Tyler, Patrick Wilson, Charlie Hunnam, and Terrence Howard. We see The Ledge as an opportunity for atheism to reach far beyond the usual circles, and so far it’s been nominated Best US Drama at Sundance, and made Russia’s Top Weekly Chart (#3) between Pirates of the Caribbean and Thor.

So far, so good. The Ledge could be the Brokeback Mountain moment for atheists, drawing blockbuster attention to our cause. But, if the film doesn’t do well on video-on-demand and through its “test run” in New York and LA theatres starting July 8th, it could fail to go nationwide, scaring studios away from atheist films for years. Christians rose up for Passion Of The Christ, and more faith-based films followed. Do we have that kind of fight?

Could you help spread the word on your blog* and Twitter (I couldn’t find a page beyond your personal one on Facebook)?

Here’s a page of suggestions about how to help the movie. I’ve done my job. Let us know what you think of the flick.

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*Ceci n’est pas un blog.