Idiot Journalist is the new enemy of reason

A twit of a journalist called Melanie Phillips, writing in the Daily Mail, thinks that science is the enemy or reason. Why? Well, she seems to be saying that abandonment of religion has led to people believing in new age nonsense, alternative medicine etc. Quite why this is science’s fault is unclear, but I think this “journalist’s” reasoning is that Richard Dawkins is somehow arrogant in deriding Intelligent Design, and that this is as illogical as religion. Or something. It is a little hard to make any sense of what passes for a reasoned argument in this woman’s mind.

See if you can make sense of this:

But where Dawkins goes wrong is to assume this is all as irrational as believing in God. The truth is that it is the collapse of religious faith that has prompted the rise of such irrationality.

No. Irrationality was there already – people just believe in other irrational things too – as irrational as religion in many cases.

We are living in a scientific, largely post-religious age in which faith is presented as unscientific superstition. Yet paradoxically, we have replaced such faith by belief in demonstrable nonsense.

It was GK Chesterton who famously quipped that "when people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing - they believe in anything."

Yes. That is why this blog is about critical thinking and skepticism, not just anti-religion. Pity this “journalist” didn’t apply some – maybe explain to her readers how to be a critical thinker. You know – write something useful.

The big mistake is to see religion and reason as polar opposites. They are not. In fact, reason is intrinsic to the Judeo-Christian tradition.

The Bible provides a picture of a rational Creator and an orderly universe - which, accordingly, provided the template for the exercise of reason and the development of science.

A rational creator? No, a petulant creator who demands obedience, worship and sometimes human sacrifice. Whose only son has to die so that he (God – who made the rules, remember?), can forgive us for our sins. Because he couldn’t just forgive us our sins unless his only son dies. Although he is God. Very rational.

And the most irrational thing about all this – believing in this pile of nonsense in the first place. Oh but wait:

Dawkins pours particular scorn on the Biblical miracles which don't correspond to scientific reality. But religious believers have different ways of regarding those events, with many seeing them as either metaphors or as natural occurrences which were invested with a greater significance.

So which is it? Is there a rational creator, or is it all a metaphor? Surely it can’t be both?

The heart of the Judeo-Christian tradition is the belief in the concept of truth, which gives rise to reason. But our postreligious age has proclaimed that there is no such thing as objective truth, only what is "true for me".

Which is the opposite of what science teaches. How is this science’s fault, again?

That is because our society won't put up with anything which gets in the way of 'what I want'. How we feel about things has become all-important. So reason has been knocked off its perch by emotion, and thinking has been replaced by feelings.

Agreed. But why is science to blame?

This has meant our society can no longer distinguish between truth and lies by using evidence and logic.

How else do you distinguish between truth and lies?

In modern times, however, science has given rise to 'scientism', the belief that science can answer all the questions of human existence. This is not so.

Science cannot explain the origin of the universe. Yet it now presumes to do so and as a result it has descended into irrationality.

Count the straw men. Science doesn’t even pretend to know the answers to “all the questions of human existence”, nor does it suggest it has explained “the origin of the universe”. Although it is the best method we have of knowing those things, if they are knowable.

The most conspicuous example of this is provided by Dawkins himself, who breaks the rules of scientific evidence by seeking to claim that Darwin's theory of evolution - which sought to explain how complex organisms evolved through random natural selection - also accounts for the origin of life itself.

Well, I don’t know if Dawkins actually says that. But no scientific theory states that as yet. But at least science tries to answer those questions. What is Phillips’ better way? See what the Bible says?

There is no evidence for this whatever and no logic to it. After all, if people say God could not have created the universe because this gives rise to the question "Who created God?", it follows that if scientists say the universe started with a big bang, this prompts the further question "What created the bang?"

The argument is that saying “God created the universe” is not an answer – it just raises the question “who created God. So “Goddidit” tells us nothing. The Big Bang, however, tells us a lot. And makes predictions.

Indeed, if the origin of life were truly spontaneous, this would constitute what religious people would call a miracle. Accordingly, this claim in itself resembles not so much science as the superstition that Dawkins derides.

If he claimed it true without evidence, then that might be correct. Of course, what scientists are trying to do is find the evidence for the origins of life. Again, what is the alternative? “Magic man did it”?

Moreover, since science essentially takes us wherever the evidence leads, the findings of more than 50 years of DNA research - which have revealed the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life - have thrown into doubt the theory that life emerged spontaneously in a random universe.

Er, no it hasn’t.

These findings have given rise to a school of scientists promoting the theory of Intelligent Design, which suggests that some force embodying purpose and foresight lay behind the origin of the universe.

Some of them may be scientists (not many, but some of them may be), but they’re not practicing science. And the findings didn’t “give rise” to the school. The school existed before – it was religion that “gave rise” to it. They then tried to shoe-horn the evidence to fit the religious beliefs they already had.

While this theory is, of course, open to vigorous counter-argument, people such as Prof Dawkins and others have gone to great lengths to stop it being advanced at all, on the grounds that it denies scientific evidence such as the fossil record and is therefore worthless.

No, they go to lengths to prevent it being taught as science, because it is not. And being taught ID as though it were science would jeopardize future scientific progress.

Yet distinguished scientists have been hounded and their careers jeopardised for arguing that the fossil record has got a giant hole in it. Some 570 million years ago, in a period known as the Cambrian Explosion, most forms of complex animal life emerged seemingly without any evolutionary trail.

Again, nonsense. The Cambrian explosion is not a problem for evolution.

These scientists argue that only 'rational agents' could have possessed the ability to design and organise such complex systems.

Yes, but only because they can’t imagine how it could have come about without God.

Whether or not they are right (and I don't know), their scientific argument about the absence of evidence to support the claim that life spontaneously created itself is being stifled - on the totally perverse grounds that this argument does not conform to the rules of science which require evidence to support a theory.

No, IDists do not have a “scientific argument about the absence of evidence”. They ignore the evidence for evolution, and they have no evidence for their lame idea. So yes, that isn’t science.

As a result of such arrogance, the West - the crucible of reason - is turning the clock back to a pre-modern age of obscurantism, dogma and secular witch-hunts.

Far from upholding reason, science itself has become unreasonable. So when Prof Dawkins fulminates against 'new age' irrationality, it is the image of pots and kettles that comes irresistibly to mind.

Science is unreasonable because it can’t yet explain how life started? And what is your explanation then Ms. Phillips? And what is your solution, if you don’t like science? Because you don’t provide any solutions in this long whine at Richard Dawkins. And if you have no solutions, what is the point? Pots and kettles indeed.

Comments

[Bronze Dog]

Nihilists like her only seek to establish selfish epistemology, specifically her selfish epistemology: Screw the truth and all that jazz about needing evidence and logic, I want everyone to believe in what I personally find comforting for no reason.

And she just inserts some "rational"s here and there to cover her tracks.

Sorry. Kind of a weird bipolar day for me: It's been both funny and frustrating. Couldn't get to sleep because McCarthyism popped into my head.

[Tom Foss]

The big mistake is to see religion and reason as polar opposites.

Gosh, I hope she's not Lutheran, given that Martin Luther said precisely this, and often. "Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason," and whatnot.

Darwin's theory of evolution - which sought to explain how complex organisms evolved through random natural selection - also accounts for the origin of life itself.

She goes so wrong so frequently that it's hard to single out any one mistake as glaring and terrible, but before she goes railing off against what Dawkins and Darwin claim, she really ought to know something about those clams. Specifically:

[F]or the umpteenth time, natural selection is the very opposite of a chance process[.] --Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion p. 214

It doesn't take much looking to find natural selection defined with the word "nonrandom" in the definition, such as "the nonrandom survival of randomly mutating replicators." But I guess fact-checking is beneath a consummate reporter like Melanie.

Speaking of checking things, she really ought to get an editor who can tell her "honey, your column is internally inconsistent" and "you don't have a goddamn clue what 'rational' means."

[Stewart Paterson]

Read her wikipedia entry
She has often written anti evolution stuff, as well as articles linking MMR vaccine with autism. She's also a global warming skeptic(but I'm with her on that one :) )

Read also "The danger of Melanie Phillips" by Jonathan Freedland in the Jewish Chronicle
http://www.thejc.com/home.aspx?ParentId=m12s114&SecId=114&AId=51460&ATypeId=1

[outeast]

It's the Daily Mail FFS.

[Enoch Krapowski]

why are you getting so worked up about an article in the Daily Mail you fools?!!?

[Bronze Dog]

'Cuz a lot of us are compulsive in that we can't let idiocy this large go unchallenged.

Anyway, it's not about the article: It's about an overarching attitude held by so many woos out there. This is just one compact dose of it that makes it easy to focus the attack.

[C]

Actually, most of the people I've met who were interested in "alternative" medicine were pious Christians (and strangely enough, Republican.)

[Tom Foss]

why are you getting so worked up about an article in the Daily Mail you fools?!!?

Hey! I've got a son who's working for the Daily Mail. It's a steady job...

No, nevermind, I already did that joke in PZ's thread.

[Andrew]

Dawkins says nothing of the sort when it comes to evolution explaining the origin of life. In fact he specifically says that evolution doesn't explain it - she clearly hasn't bothered read any of his books.

You know, I'm so used to evolution being described as a 'random process' that I didn't pay it any attention at first. Must watch that.

[TechSkeptic]

Agreed with all you wrote Richard. However she is right to a certain degree. I suspect this has to do with why she is writing it at all.

Here is what I am thinking:

People, thankfully, seem to be casting off the ropes of organized religion. Its slow. Its painful to watch, and it is causing a lot of strife in the world, but my optimistic mind is seeing it.

The problem is that most of these dorks are just replacing it with something else. The Secret, Deepak Chopra, power crystals, scientology, i could go forever.

I think her motivation for writing something this obtuse at all is because people are leaving her religion and she is writing about it. She is wrongly blaming science as if these poeple are leaving in favor of something scientific (if only that were the case). In fact it is the lack of teaching science that is causing the embracing of woo.

Demon haunted world should be mandatory reading in high school.

You actually wrote about a similar topic on a TCS daily post. That guy was an atheist who was wishing the new age folks would just stay with organized religion if they are going to go off replacing it with other nonsense.

[American Scot]

I agree with you TechSkeptic, Demon Haunted World should be mandatory reading for all high school students!
Of course this will never happen under the current system. (Don't want the kiddies to question authority to much)

[Tom Foss]

I don't know if people are necessarily abandoning religion for newage mysticism; quite a lot of the people who are into newage are still practicing religionists. Heck, for every new newage concept, you're guaranteed to find a supplemental book about how Christianity supports it, such as "There is More to the Secret."

Now, granted, it's not the fundamentalist hardcore theists who are swallowing newage, it's the more liberal churchgoers. And they certainly aren't the only ones going for it; there's plenty of Wiccans and quasi-Buddhists out there to eat this up. But more than a few Secretards and Crystal-Gazers have crosses on the wall.

[TechSkeptic]

you know, it occurs to me that this woman (and sooo many like her) blames science for the exodus of people from organized religion to woo simply because so much of woo claims science as its source.

Look at Chopra, The Secret, the great global warming swindle and purple tesla pill. all of them claim something about quantum mechanics, energy, and what not. They will even quote Einstein, or use physicists in their movies.

so this chick sees that and says, "God damn you Science! you are taking all my friends!"

[viggen]

Actually, most of the people I've met who were interested in "alternative" medicine were pious Christians (and strangely enough, Republican.)

Actually, most of the people I've met who are interested in "alternative" medicine are far hyper-left wing, protest the Authority, Bush hating liberals. Woo does not confine itself to a particular political ideology.

Ignorant people always want to believe in something. That's why we're saddled with religion. The problem with this day and age is that ignorant people can communicate their ideas to other ignorant people very easily without any sort of crap filter blocking the way. Welcome to the internet. Google has paved the road for thoughtless souls the world over to appear well-informed and educated about nonsense. I've met several people who got sucked into "What the Bleep" and "The Secret" and 9/11 and moon landing conspiracy theories based upon crap they got off the internet from supposed "informed sources." There was a mechanical engineer in a writing class that I had to take last summer that was dead-set on 9/11 being a Bush administration conspiracy because he hated Bush and wanted to believe the worst and because some website provided him with a few tantilizing ideas that helped make the idea true in his mind. I'm not advocating censorship, but I feel that we are paying the price in the information age of not teaching kids at a young age to discriminate between what they want to be true and what actually is true.

In my opinion, liberals are not more rational or skeptical than conservatives, they just have different reasons to believe in crap that is as bad as or worse than crap believed by the rest of the human race.

[Pelger]

·Hey! I've got a son who's working for the Daily Mail. It's a steady job..."

Posted by: Tom Foss

but he wants to be a paperback writer,paperback writer!. :)

[The Baldchemist]

Do I detect cases of inverted bigotry here.
The whole case against religion is based on the fact that it is involuntary.
It is fed to kids in one form or other from and early age.
There is no democracy in religion- you can't add your two pence to it. There it is- thats what God( whoever yours is) says, told us and we have to live like that otherwise we will go to hell.
It's nothing to do with rationalism but a CONTROL game that we have slowly come to realise is bullshit.
No, give me Dawkins, Crick & Watson,Darwin and Copernicus any day of the week.
Try and have a rational argument with the zealous and bigoted religious.
No science makes no claim to knowing all, unlike religion which lays claim to having all the answers. Put the Bible in the same basket as the brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Anderson. Great post by the way. thanks a million.

[zeek]

Please note that the Daily Mail is the UK equivalent to the National Enquirer. Don't worry too much about anyone who writes there says.

[doug quent]

you look like my anus

[Tom Foss]

For the win!