Scienceblogger Josh Rosenau has a post up where he claims that there are other valid ways of knowing, apart from science. Regular readers will know that woos make this claim all the time, which is why I think this subject is pretty important. So much so that I wrote about the fallacy that is The appeal to other ways of knowing - the claim that the tools of critical thinking and science are not sufficient to evaluate the believer’s claim; therefore the believer's claim has validity despite the lack of evidence for it. It’s generally not worth making a new post about this every time someone mentions it, but Josh, as well as being a blogger with the generally awesome Scienceblogs, is also Public Information Project Director at the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), the organization that works to keep evolution in US public school science education. So when Josh suggests that religion might provide one valid way of knowing, it’s relevant.
Josh’s (first) post on this subject is On vampires and ways of knowing. It was written in response to Jerry Coyne’s post How many “ways of knowing” are there? (which is how I found it). You have to scroll down a few pages in Josh’s post before you get to where he starts to support his “other ways of knowing” argument. If you read those two posts (especially Jerry’s), you’ll realize that what’s behind this discussion is the recent argument about so called “accommodationism” – the idea that science and religion need not conflict. Accommodationists think that the “new atheists” with their harsh criticisms of religion, are making it harder to get people to accept evolution. (I’m simplifying the discussion. If you’re been reading PZ, Larry, Jason or Jerry Coyne, you’ll know what I’m talking about.) The accomodationist stance does appear to be the NCSE’s position, although Josh’s post is not an official NCSE statement.
The reason for that preamble, is that before Josh gets to his “other ways of knowing” arguments, he takes a dig at the people who don’t approve of accommodation, or as Josh refers to them, “enablers”:
This is all part of the long and tedious battle between a clique of atheists who seem intent on enabling creationists in their muddling of the nature of science (enablers) and people who think it's possible for science and religion to exist without meaningful conflict (so-called accommodationists). [My bold.]
He repeats this “enablers” wording later, and in comments.
First of all, you’ll note that Josh in no way demonstrates that the new atheists are “enabling creationists,” (he even says that they only “seem intent on…”) and yet he immediately follows by assuming his point is proven and henceforth labels the people he disagrees with as “enablers” – which is ad hominem, since he didn’t justify the wording. As a further sign of his dishonesty, he doesn’t even use the much less pejorative (and more accurate) description of his own side, which would be “accommodationists.” Instead he uses “so-called accommodationists.” Weasel wording at best, and hardly a positive sign.
More to the point, “enablers” seemed like a strange label to apply to the anti-accommodationist people. It’s a specific term used by psychotherapists and the like, and has a specific meaning. I looked up “enabler” in several places. This one is fairly typical, where it defines enablers as people who:
…allow loved ones to behave in ways that are destructive. For example, an enabler wife of an alcoholic might continue to provide the husband with alcohol. A person might be an enabler of a gambler or compulsive spender by lending them money to get out of debt.
In this fashion, though the enabler may be acting out of love and trying to help or protect a person, he or she is actually making a chronic problem like an addiction worse. By continuing to lend money to the gambler, for example, the gambler doesn’t have to face the consequences of his actions. Someone is there to bail him out of trouble and continue to enable his behavior.
Looking at that explanation, it seems to me that if anything, the real enablers are the accommodationists. Think about it. They (the accommodationists) tell the addict (religious believer) that their religious delusions are OK and totally not inconsistent with science at all. They (the accommodationists) are the ones who actually do enable the addicts (religious believers) by providing them with their drugs (rationalizations for belief in both religion and evolution). They are certainly protecting religious believers from having to face the consequences of their beliefs. I’ll leave you to decide which side is actually making a chronic problem worse. Regardless of what you think, it’s pretty clear that Josh has made no attempt to justify calling his opponents enablers. His argument by label is lazy and not a little sleazy. And since he’s really describing what his side does, it’s actually also projection. (Hey, I can do psycho-babble too.)
OK, so what are Josh’s other ways of knowing? Essentially, it’s what we get from fiction:
…telling stories about vampires is a great way to convey certain truths about the world we all live in. These aren't truths that science can independently verify, but they are still true in a meaningful way.
No one should watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer they (sic) way they would watch a documentary, but they should certainly watch the show. It's brilliant, and it uses this exact sort of literary truth to tackle tricky subjects like drug addiction, spousal abuse, peer pressure, bullying, and the challenges of adolescence in late 20th century America with a sophistication and humor that would be impossible in any other form.
Oh dear. It’s hard to believe a smart person could make such a bad argument. He’s saying (and he further clarified this is the comments and in subsequent posts) that works of fiction tell us truths, make us think of things, or in a way, that perhaps we wouldn’t be able to otherwise. Maybe, but he’s confusing a way of knowing something with a way of having it explained. Reading fiction may be a way of understanding something – but it’s just an explanation of what is already known by some other means. It’s not a way to determine what is true in the first place.
For example, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, one of the characters gets so heavily into magic that it messes up her life. Nothing else has meaning for her anymore, she lies to her friends, she puts herself and her friends in danger, nearly gets someone killed, damages her own physical and mental health. This is obviously an allegory about drug addiction. From this we learn that drug addiction is bad. But we don’t know that drug addiction is bad from this episode of Buffy. We know that drug addiction is bad from stories about drug addiction, from people we have known who were addicts, from reports on addiction etc. We already knew this from some other way of knowing – one based on observation, verification and replication (aka “science”). The fictional Buffy the Vampire Slayer just explains this – gets us to remember and understand these facts that were already known before by some other means. But we only get the allegory, and register the fact that addiction is bad, because we already know addition addiction is bad. If we didn’t already know addition addiction was bad, the allegory wouldn’t make sense.
Buffy also tells us things that are not true. For example, that vampires exist. And yet we don’t learn from Buffy that vampires exist - we already know they don’t.
Josh must know this, but he digs himself in deeper in one of his follow up posts, Defining terms:
To return, then, to ways of knowing, I'll define them as systematic methods of evaluating truth claims against new sources of knowledge
For once I agree. But how do you use Buffy to evaluate the truth or otherwise of the statements:
- Drug addiction is bad
- Vampires exist.
You can’t do that from watching Buffy – you have to go outside of the fictional TV program, and check what they’re telling you against the real world. That is, you must do some form of science (informally defined), to check what Buffy is telling you – to “know” what is true, if you like. Therefore Buffy is not a way of knowing, by Josh’s own definition.
The peculiar irony here is that the talk Jerry is complaining about was delivered at DragonCon, a science fiction/fantasy convention filled with people celebrating the truth of unreal things. I didn't see Genie's talk because I was manning NCSE's booth, watching a parade of costumed fans wait in line to get autographs from William Shatner (James T. Kirk), Leonard Nimoy (Spock), Kate Mulgrew (Star Trek Voyager's Capt. Janeway), and Patrick Stewart (Jean-Luc Picard). These fans are devoted to the various incarnations of Star Trek, and were willing to spend $40-75 for just one signature from one of the Star Trek captains. And they don't all want the same signature. Some think Picard is the greatest captain in the Star Trek Universe, some think Kirk is the better captain, and a few prefer Janeway.
These, again, are truth claims…
Again, oh dear. No, these are not truth claims. These are opinions.
In any event, science as a "way of knowing" does not produce truth. People have known that since the failure of logical positivism in the early 20th century; science can lead us away from untruths, and lets us narrow in on the truth, but science can only approach truth asymptotically, and rarely as any sort of smooth function. Furthermore, the truths that other "ways of knowing" aim to provide are of a different sort than scientific claims. As a scientific claim, "vampires fear crosses" is as meaningless as "Picard is a better captain than Kirk" or "The Cubs are the greatest team in baseball's history," and none of those is any more scientifically meaningful than "Jesus is my personal savior." [My bold.]
Tell that to people who believe, literally, that Jesus is their personal savior.
"Picard is a better captain than Kirk" is an opinion only, not a scientific claim as Josh proposes. "The Cubs are the greatest team in baseball's history," might be just an opinion, or perhaps it could be verified empirically by tabulating numbers of games won or lost, numbers of home runs scored or whatever. Then it would be a scientific claim. If it were, then it would clearly be more meaningful, scientifically, than the Jesus statement. Either way, Josh is wrong again.
I like novels. I like TV. I like art. I like baseball. I think there is truth to be found in such endeavors, and I think any brush that sweeps away the enterprise of religion as a "way of knowing" must also sweep away art and a host of other human activities. I've tossed out the comparison before, and have yet to get any useful reply to it.
OK, here’s a reply. Novels and art are not ways of knowing – they can be ways of explaining what is already known, ways to make us think, or pure entertainment only, but they are not ways of knowing. So when we say religion is not a way of knowing, we clearly do not need to sweep away novels or art as a way of knowing, because they were not ways of knowing in the first place.
Novels and art do not usually make empirical claims. In the rare cases where they do (for example, many people believe The Da Vinci Code is based on fact), those claims can be tested. Where they are false, the claim can be dismissed, but that doesn’t require us to “sweep away” the rest of fiction that is just fiction.
I hope those replies were useful.
Josh continued to defend his idea in comments, and in further posts. (You should read the comments – most disagree with Josh.) In one comment, Josh writes
How do we decide that some non-empirical ways of knowing are OK, while others are incompatible with science?
The only basis Coyne offers, and the only one I can recall being offered by other enablers, is that religion and science are incompatible because religions can make false empirical claims.
No, that’s not it. The problem with religious ways of knowing are:
- There is no basis for making most religious claims. They were essentially made up, usually by ignorant ancient peoples with no idea of how the world actually works. Some of these claims are actually known to be wrong, and
- There is no mechanism to change religious claims when new information is discovered that shows they were wrong. On the contrary, religious believers go to great lengths to cherry pick the things that they think supports their position, while ignoring what contradicts it. And then they lie about the whole thing.
Obviously, science works in the exact opposite way from points 1 and 2 above. It’s disturbing that someone who works for the NCSE (and blogs at Scienceblogs) doesn’t know this.
Jerry Coyne ends his post with:
As for “ways of knowing,” my response is always, “What do you find out? What do you “know”? And how would you know if you were wrong? Was Jesus the son of God? Christians’ “way of knowing” tells them, “Yes, of course!” But Islamic “ways of knowing” say, “No, of course not, and you’ll burn in hell if you believe that.” Revelation, dogma, and scripture are not in fact ways of knowing; they are ways of believing. There are no “truths” that religion can produce which are independent of truths derived from secular reason.
Precisely. Josh’s piece is a totally muddled post relying on little more than equivocation between different things that can appear in fiction, compared to things you can find in religious texts. He just took a blog post from someone he says is an evangelical Christian, and repeated that blogger’s points uncritically (and at great length). It was such a poorly thought out piece that Josh wrote four more posts in the three days following the original one, to try to reply to criticisms raised in the comments and rescue the jumble of the original post. Which wouldn’t matter if Josh were a regular blogger, but he’s Public Information Project Director at the National Center for Science Education! While he does state that his blog is not official NCSE policy, it gives a worrying insight into the way they may be thinking.
In my view, the only interesting thing to come from Josh’s piece was the insight that the NCSE and other “so-called accommodationists” are enablers – that is, they’re enabling religious people to continue with their destructive delusions. Apparently it’s a part of being codependent. (I didn’t “know” that from Josh’s post, by the way. I had to check external sources.)
Other bloggers on Josh’s post:
Jason Rosenhouse - Ways of Knowing
Ophelia Benson - Ways of whatting?
There is only 1 way of knowing. For example in Chinese martial arts they practice and meditate for years to learn one trick and they still do not 'know' what is going on. It takes days of testing and experiments to determine the 'facts' of the trick. With religion you have even less as no tests can verify what they think they 'know' when in fact they only believe.
Posted by: CybrgnX | September 20, 2009 at 06:57 PM
I just asked my kids what they learned in school recently. They tell me they've been learning about space probes and the search for life on other planets.
This comes as a surprise since Star Trek tells us that we already know there are Klingons. Perhaps Trekkies need to mount a challenge to the Curriculum Council to get this situation rectified and have science teachers cover everything we can know and not just what science insists we should know.
Posted by: AndyD | September 20, 2009 at 09:16 PM
Excellent post, Skeptico. Surprisingly stupid arguments from Rosenau.
When Christians say they have another way of knowing, they usually mean they know Jesus is real for them, etc. They aren't talking about anything on the science curriculum.
I don't think too many Christians could give a shit about which powers Rosenau is kind enough to grant them. Woos, on the other hand, will be tickeled pink when they discover it. Expect trouble.
Posted by: yakaru | September 21, 2009 at 05:34 AM
By this logic, watching Eli Stone is a "way of knowing" that vaccines cause autism. Utter bullshit. The whole argument is another way of saying, "science is just another opinion among many - all equally valid."
Posted by: Joseph | September 21, 2009 at 07:26 AM
Excellent post, Skeptico! I wish you posted more often, but at least you tend to make it worth the wait.
Oh, and by the way, I detest arithmetic as much as the next mathophobe, but I think this may have been going a bit far:
;^D
~David D.G.
Posted by: David D.G. | September 21, 2009 at 08:58 AM
I don't think too many Christians could give a shit about which powers Rosenau is kind enough to grant them.
This was a point I made in my own accommodationist post a couple of months back - accommodationism seems to be both elitist and patronising.
It's like saying - we know what's really real but we'll let you believe some other stuff if you really want to. Like anyone has a choice in what other's choose to believe.
On another note, if Christians are allowed to have a different way of knowing, why does Rosenau fight Creationists' choice to know that evolution is a lie?
Posted by: AndyD | September 21, 2009 at 09:23 AM
David DG:
Addition is gateway arithmetic. It can lead to the hard stuff (multiplication).
Posted by: Skeptico | September 21, 2009 at 12:46 PM
Eugenie Scott, Rosenau's boss came up with a slightly better, but still surprisingly stupid argument in this lecture.
Around 37 minutes in, she gives the example of her goldfish. It has learned to predict when it is going to be fed, but it "simply doesn't have the neurons" to understand something like an earth tremor which shakes the water in the tank. "No matter how well it could be explained, it wouldn't have the neurons to understand something like an earth quake." She says maybe we "simply don't have the neurons" to understand some things about the universe.
Fine so far, but then she goes further.
"...and maybe some of those things have been explained through mystical explanations or religious explanations..."
What? If we "simply don't have the neurons", then where would a mystic get the neurons from to comprehend it? She doesn't give any indication of how she thinks this might happen or why it might be possible. Does she mean a mystic might have an inside track into the secrets of the universe? Does she mean by chance someone might have guessed it? WTF?
She als fails to give an example of an anomoly we experience, analogous to the tremor the fish experiences.
Instead she just trails off saying "....Just something to think about."
Pointless. Deliberately fuzzy thinking from these people.
As an antidote to all this blathering, here's a
wonderful lecture from the same series by Dan Dennett
Posted by: yakaru | September 21, 2009 at 02:02 PM
Blank eyes, mouth opening and closing with nothing more than bubbles coming out... check.
Sounds like an Identikit of many woosters, yakaru!
I would love to ask someone like that what is the minumum number of neurons required to comprehend different concepts. However, I imagine I would get the same kind of non-response as I do when I demand of wurld-famus komputor siuntists what the minimum computer requirements are to get to the Moon.
Posted by: Big Al | September 21, 2009 at 04:13 PM
Is this an argument from humility?
Posted by: AndyD | September 21, 2009 at 07:27 PM
Maybe they have. But how would we tell such an actual, correct mystical explanation from a delusion? How would we know which ones were real? And if you can’t tell the difference, what use are they?
This is just The appeal to “science doesn’t know everything”. Technically true but worthless sophistry. If you don’t restrict yourself to things that are backed by some evidence, or if there is at least some logical reason to suppose they might be true, you will believe in absolutely anything. It’s quite shocking that Scott makes such dumb arguments.
Posted by: Skeptico | September 21, 2009 at 10:00 PM
So according to Rosenau, if I say that pepperoni is the best pizza topping and anyone who puts mushrooms on pizza is going to hell, then I'm making a truth claim?
I suppose I could say that it's true for me, but then there's an expectation that others must accept the validity of the claim since I believe it to be true. Which then takes us down the merry path of hyper-relativism, where everything is equally true.
You're right -- it is disturbing that there are people at the National Center for Science Education who believe this kind of tripe.
Posted by: Chayanov | September 21, 2009 at 11:20 PM
I think this video fits the topic:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wV_REEdvxo
Posted by: Tom S. Fox | September 22, 2009 at 03:22 AM
LOL. :)
More like an argument from imbecility.
Posted by: Big Al | September 22, 2009 at 04:35 AM
I got into a debate with Rosenau earlier about his accommodationist stance on Francis Collins. Talking about Collins' religious views on the Moral Law, Rosenau said:
When I questioned why a scientist would be concerned with metaphysics, he responded:From comments #8 and 9. Can there be a more succinct statement of accommodationism than there is no conflict between physics and metaphysics?Posted by: Norwegian Shooter | September 22, 2009 at 08:39 AM
Part of Rosenau's answer to Norwegen (linked in Norwegian's comment) is extremely telling. Of Francis Collins he says:
(Rosenau:)He (Collins) wants evolution taught in science classes. That's what I want. He's an ally. We disagree on other stuff, but who cares? I want him as an ally because the more allies, the better.
Now it's one thing to play politics and ignore your differences for a common goal - even the supposedly evil Dawkins does that. But that is no excuse for the abominable reasoning that they are forced to use in order to disguise their differences.
It's anti-educational to achieve the "goal" of having evolution taught, if it's at the expense of exactly those intellectual skills which lie at the heart of science. All this "other ways of knowing" is not only lunacy, it is also an extremely dangerous ploy. Scientists be just talking about science not playing politics.
I think Dawkins is on the right track when he says that creationism is a bigger threat to Christianity than it is to science. Stupidity of the sort that Rosenau and Scott are promoting is a bigger danger. It undermines exactly the kind of reasoning skills that protect people against creationism.
Posted by: yakaru | September 22, 2009 at 10:19 AM
I think you've just made a good suggestion for Doggerel #201.
Oh, and our vulpine friend's link for easy clicking here.
Was pleasantly surprised to find it was already in my browser history thanks to my subscription to Qualia Soup. I'll take that guy over salad any day.
Posted by: Bronze Dog | September 22, 2009 at 11:55 AM
Wow! I always wanted to find some classic woo statement not yet covered in the great doggerel series! Never thought it would come from the head of the NCSE, though.
It is true. I've often heard "Just something to think about" used after some long-winded explanation about past lives or divine oneness.
Posted by: yakaru | September 22, 2009 at 01:57 PM
Hello atheists, Dr. jerry coyne blocked me on the Why Evolution is True blog because I was demolishing his and his legion of commenter's arguments.
I hope to do the same to you. However, I hope that the guy who writes this blog does not restrict free speech. I also hope he knows how to argue better than Dr. Coyne.
Andrew Alexander
Posted by: Andrew Alexander | September 22, 2009 at 02:29 PM
I could write a story in which the proper way to run a society is communism, or democratic socialism, or libertarianism, or wiring everybody into the Borg Collective. That doesn't make any of those claims true; just because it works in the story doesn't mean it will work in real life. What we "know" from reading the story is the content of the fiction and how we ourselves react to it.
Art is something somebody made up when they weren't trying to eat or screw. It raises questions, but by itself, it doesn't provide answers.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | September 22, 2009 at 02:46 PM
Now that is the funniest thing I've read today.
Posted by: Chayanov | September 22, 2009 at 04:03 PM
Yes, I've heard it too, usually tossed out with a goodly dose of smuggery.
For me, however, the ultimate in wanting to physically assault a wooster, occurred when I was watching what I vainly hoped to be a serious documentary examining the evidence, or lack of same, for alien contact.
This arch-smuggo guy, or grin with legs, whom I had already decided ranked lower on the scale of FSM's creations I'd like to meet than Yersinia pestis, got the last word:
"D'ya ever think that the only way we'll ever PROVE aliens were never here is if they come and tell us they weren't? D'ya ever think about that?"
And then, the kicker (oh, I wish); "Pretty smart argument, huh?"
If only I'd had a machine gun to hand... I'd have a new television now.
Posted by: Big Al | September 22, 2009 at 04:57 PM
Andrew, Skeptico only blocks people whose only recourse is abuse, or who keep flogging the same old decedent equine long after it's been conclusively debunked.
If you've got some cohesive, rational, well-founded arguments, then bring 'em on.
But we're not exactly holding our breath.
Posted by: Big Al | September 22, 2009 at 05:03 PM
I'm afraid that some of Josh's comments make a great deal more sense than you have given him credit for if we understand him as adopting a deflationary theory of truth. And if he were to do so, he would be in very good company.
But even still, as you point out, his other comments are baffling. If "Jesus is my special guy" is just as "scientifically meaningful" as "H2O en masse is water", then the phrase "scientifically meaningful" is meaningless. They're both, I suppose, meaningful statements -- fine -- but only one of them stands close to the facts, to reality.
Posted by: Benjamin Nelson | September 22, 2009 at 08:11 PM
Sorry, but there can actually be a fact of the matter about who is the best captain on star trek if you can agree on what it means to be a good captain.
Not that it undermines your point. We tend to think there is a real dividing line between fact and opinion, but it is really a shorthand for the level of seriousness (or at least the attitude) we are taking in formulating an understanding of a given factual states of affairs. Even "subjective" determinations of things, like taste in music, consist in a set of reasons together with a self-cultivated receptivity to the given phenomena, both of which, if meaningful, are objectively "out there" and account for variations in beliefs.
Posted by: josefjohann | September 22, 2009 at 10:35 PM
Andrew Alexcander,
Here is one of the few cases where Skeptico has banned someone. He did so after that person argued with a litany of logical fallacies, refused to answer rebuttals, didnt link to anything to support his claims, and was an all around douche.
Perhaps you should read through that thread before embarking on a wasteful journey that we have all seen a thousand times here and is pretty tiresome.
Will your argument be the same? Will it be done in the same style? If the answer is "No", please feel free to commence your argument.
You can start by posting your 3 strongest arguments of why evolution is wrong and you are right. Strongest, as in, if these three are demonstrably wrong, weak in the face of evidence supporting evolution or unknowable, then we dont have to bother with any of your other ones.
Posted by: TechSkeptic | September 23, 2009 at 05:20 AM
It is a specific, and oft-repeated, claim of the intelligent design movement that conventional evolutionary theory cannot be reconciled to theism. David Klinghoffer: "Anyone asserting a full-bodies Darwinism has, by definition, rendered God superfluous and irrelevant."
I cannot fault Josh Rosenau for wishing to refute that claim, even if that cannot be done honestly. In evaluating this accommodation stuff, I try to imagine being a biology teacher in a rural school district, challenged by religious parents. I think I would be very grateful that NCSE is accommodationist.
I hadn't been aware of the "enablers" bit, though. That seems bad faith, for sure, beside being meaningless.
Posted by: Ken Pidcock | September 23, 2009 at 09:59 AM
Ken,
Important and good points. In your opinion, though, would Christian parents who are unhappy about evolution being taught really be all that impressed with Rosenau's approach?
Would it not be wiser (and more professional) for the teacher not to share anything about his personal religious beliefs and say that he simply teaches biology and does not have the right to express any opinion about the existence of God?
I would find it unprofessional of teachers to make their views on God known to their students or parents thereof (in the school context).
Posted by: yakaru | September 23, 2009 at 12:07 PM
Wonderful post, Skeptico! Words alone cannot possibly express my joy at finding your blog for the first time today!! I must express thanks to Bart Verheggen for his comment to the most recent post on RealClimate in facilitating this serendipitous happenstance. :) I no longer feel quite so all alone.
Like you and many of those posting earlier comments allude I, too, am deeply troubled and dismayed by Mr. Rosenau's inanity and possible betrayal of "public trust." However, given what I have observed and experienced in "social discourse" over the past few decades, I'm not in the least bit surprised. Nonetheless, I am somewhat concerned that you made no mention of how the Big Bang Theory also accommodates the accommodationists' nonsensical beliefs.
Alas, I can only take Rosenau's post as further evidence that the capacity for reason and a dearth of "education" are so lacking in our current culture, and many others, that our species has little "choice" regarding our impending extinction. Al Gore's "Assault on Reason" has a great deal of evidence supporting that supposition but the greater affliction is the abundant abdication of reason. Believing an imagined authority is, after all, easier than researching, learning and understanding. The United States Imperium could not have grown to its current immensity without such abject self-delusion. It is truly sad that Ralph Wiggum and Ned Flanders are a more common archetypes than Lisa Simpson. :(
Thanks, too, to Tom S. Fox and Bronze Dog for the link to QualiaSoup's video(s). As additional supporting evidence of society's irrationality, please see (if you haven't already) Randy Olson's film "Flock of Dodos: The Evolution-Intelligent Design Circus." I eagerly look forward to reading more from you, Skeptico, keep fighting the good fight. I'm in your corner and will have your back to the best of my ability. ;)
Posted by: colincr | September 23, 2009 at 01:31 PM
I would find it unprofessional of teachers to make their views on God known to their students or parents thereof (in the school context).
As would I, yakaru. I was just thinking that it is convenient for a science teacher confronted with parents concerned that their faith will be challenged to be able to point to NCSE, Francis Collins, Ken Miller, etc.
Please understand that I am not arguing anything substantive here. The thesis of Jerry Coyne's essay, that science and religion are thoroughly irreconcilable, seems to me irrefutable.
But on the ground, "in the school context," it is difficult to explain the difference between Coyne's position and John Calvert's.
Of course, our hypothetical science teacher could be honest and tell our hypothetical parents, "Of course, I will be challenging your faith, which, in fact, has no evidentiary foundation."
Good luck with that.
Posted by: Ken Pidcock | September 23, 2009 at 05:57 PM
I don’t know if you’ve encountered or ever posted about Blooms Levels of Learning, but I think it warrants mentioning here. In Bloom’s taxonomy, “knowledge” is the lowest level of learning. A person can learn of a concept through a written or spoken description and regurgitate the information at this lowest level. At the highest level of learning (evaluation) this person is able to make judgements about the information and its contribution to the person’s overall learning.
Within Bloom’s taxonomy, I can “know” something without ever having any evidence of its truth other than I read or heard the information somewhere.
Science is the only objective way to evaluate my "knowledge".
Posted by: jess | September 24, 2009 at 06:01 AM
Skeptico:
I read this as actually saying, "There is no basis in science for making most religious claims;" please let me know if I've misread. And if that is what you mean, I think this is exactly what Rosenau is saying is not a problem. Because, although conflicting with science may be an issue, making truth claims with neither basis nor objection within science can be governed by other premises -- other "ways of knowing".
Let me ask this: how can you KNOW, using only science, that only science can arrive at truth?
Posted by: AvalonXQ | September 24, 2009 at 11:25 AM
Skeptico has mentioned many times that we are, as a group, open to ideas of other ways of knowing. But there has not been one as good as the scientific method.
Sure,
there are other ways of feeling
There are other ways of believing
There are even other ways knowing, (like using anecdotes and logical fallacies to make claims), but they are not as good as the scientific method.
If there was a superior way of knowing, demonstrably better than the scientific method..sign me up. There simply isnt one that leads to as reliable data, strong predictions and wealth of knowledge as the scientific method has brought us. Anyone is welcome to present there case for one.
If none are better as I am claiming here, why would we use any inferior method of weaning out what is real and what isnt?
Posted by: TechSkeptic | September 24, 2009 at 12:44 PM
Posted by: AvalonXQ | September 24, 2009 at 12:57 PM
avalonXQ:
No, I’m saying there is no basis for many of the claims or religion. Many were just made up. What is the basis for saying that god created Adam and Eve, that there was a fall of man, that we shouldn’t use condoms? They were all just made up.
Not really. He’s saying there are other ways of knowing. The trouble is, he doesn’t actually give any. He thinks he has, but I showed these were not ways of knowing, they were ways of understanding what we already know.
I don’t know that, which is why I never said it. What I said is I can’t think of any other consistent, reliable, generally accurate method. If someone else thinks there is one, it’s up to them to show this equally good or better way, and to show that it is at least as consistent, reliable, and generally accurate as science.
Posted by: Skeptico | September 24, 2009 at 01:02 PM
Up to you – if you have a better method, isn’t it up to you to show that it is better?
How do you get god to answer questions? And how do I know the answers are from god and not just you? And how good have god’s answers been in the past? He was wrong about the age of the Earth, to be sure.
Posted by: Skeptico | September 24, 2009 at 01:10 PM
I don't, and I don't think anyone here has said that. However, several core tenets of the scientific method seem unassailable as ways of evaluating truth:
. Assessment of verifiable phenomena (it happens, and I may not be able yet to tell you how it happens, but I can demonstrate that the phenomenon is real - you don't have to believe in it to see it. Most religions just tell you that faith will show you the truth - in other words, once you believe, you'll believe.)
. Hypotheses to explain the phenomena (We don't stop there, unlike most religions. This is still just an educated guess that seems to explain everything, but there may be many other hypotheses that also do the same)
. Predictions based on the hypothesis (If x is true, then y should be a necessary consequence - which would not be the case for competing hypotheses a, b and c)
. Tests to verify or confute the predictions.
What is exceptionable about any of that? It's not a mystical cabal or a sinister ritual, just a sensible way of asking questions.
I cannot see why "another way of knowing" that doesn't do any of this is better than science - unless someone else can enlighten us, that is.
Posted by: Big Al | September 24, 2009 at 01:15 PM
Posted by: AvalonXQ | September 24, 2009 at 01:15 PM
Using the evaluative method of God's word, his answers were 100% accurate, were they not? According to what, to the scientific method? So, wait a minute, if science contradicts God's word, then God's word is wrong? By whose evaluative standard, and what definition of "truth"?
All I'm looking to do here is making it abundantly clear that it's impossible to use the scientific method to determine whether there are ways to come to truth that don't use the scientific method. If you insist that all truth must be validated scientifically or it doesn't fit your definition of truth, then by definition and definition alone, you have already answered "no" -- you're begging the question.
Posted by: AvalonXQ | September 24, 2009 at 01:22 PM
Okay, I'm concerned that the Brother Dan example was too flippant, and that I might have come off as snide or disrespectful. Not my intent. I'll try again with a more realistic hypothetical.
Let's say that you and I both log into an MMORPG (like World of Warcraft, for example).
We're going to explore the game world, and determine what facts are true about the game world.
But very soon in the discussion, something interesting happens, because it turns out that the creator of the game world is a friend of yours in real life, and you're on the phone with him while we're exploring the game world.
This means that you have an additional source of truth about the game world -- a designer, who can tell you things about the game world that we can verify, and also things about the game world that we can't verify. He doesn't want to spoil the game, so there's a lot that he could tell you but won't.
Consider three categories of facts:
1) Things the designer doesn't tell you about, but we figure out while playing the game.
2) Things the designer tells you about that we later verify by playing the game.
3) Things the designer tells you about that we don't later verify by playing the game.
Now, I might claim that the only facts that I'll accept about the game have to be from my own experience. In other words, categories 1 and 2 only qualify as truth. This would be the purely empirical (or purely scientific) approach to what we accept as truth.
The question is whether we should consider the facts in category #3 to be truth as well.
If so, then we have an additional "way of knowing" -- the testimony of the game designer -- that is independent of our experiences, and not subject to in-game evaluation through our experiences. Some might argue that, since the designer could lie, it might be wrong to consider such unverified statements to be "truth" -- the only statements of the designer that qualify as "truth" are those in category #2, and only AFTER they're indistinguishable from category #1 statemeents (after, not before, they've been verified).
I think it comes down to what you're willing to accept.
Posted by: AvalonXQ | September 24, 2009 at 01:37 PM
I have not read all comments, and I do not want to promote accommodationalist views. I just read the original post, and thought that the 'enablers' part was not right.
I think there is another (quite obvious, I'd say) interpretation of Josh's use of the word 'enabler', that might make more sense in his arguments.
The new atheists can be considered enablers, in the sense that they help religious bigots get offended.
Of course they don't have the right to get offended more than anyone else, but that's not the point. I think the 'hi-jacking' of the word 'enabler' here is not correct.
Posted by: boris | September 24, 2009 at 01:47 PM
That’s your better way? It’s true because I say it’s true, and therefore it’s true? And you complain about begging questions.
I don’t assume the superiority of the scientific method to begin with. The effectiveness of the scientific method has been demonstrated – you’re typing this on a computer aren’t you? What other method has given us anything like that?
I’m god and I’m telling you you’re wrong.
See how silly your argument is?
Which of god’s answers were 100% accurate?
I never insisted that all truth must be validated scientifically. I pointed out that science WORKS and asked you to show a way that works as well. Which you haven’t done. Unless you’re denying that science works, in which case I guess no one can be reading your words (or mine) so I suppose it wouldn’t matter.
So demonstrate your better way, and show that it is better. And no, it’s not begging the question to ask you to demonstrate that your way is better.
Posted by: Skeptico | September 24, 2009 at 01:51 PM
Boris:
Yes, that’s what he meant, to be sure. But his usage is incorrect. Considering a drug addict, say - which is the enabler:
Clearly the enabler is #1. And that’s what accomodationists do to religious believers. The new atheists are #2.
Posted by: Skeptico | September 24, 2009 at 01:57 PM
AvalonXQ:
Then that’s something you know about him that you don’t actually knwo about god. Two things actually: 1) that he exists and 2) that he did design the game.
So your analogy has already failed.
Depends on whether he lies or not. If you can’t be sure he won’t lie, then you wouldn’t know without testing it out..
Well, if you’re willing to accept on faith only, you might be disappointed. Sorry, you have just demonstrated that verification is necessary.
Posted by: Skeptico | September 24, 2009 at 02:04 PM
What method of evaluation is appropriate for determining if another way of knowing is demonstrably better than the scientific method?
More accurate and precise predictive ability.
You dont need the scientific method to measure the length of something, or the time that something takes to happen. If there is a way of knowing that provides better data, i'm all for it.
You ask your brother how far it is to the moon. Then you design a rocket (ask him what the design should be) to get you there.
I'll use the scientific method.
Who will be on the moon faster, safer and with more reliability?
The Russians tried another way of knowing when they trusted Lysenko. That mistake lead to millions of people dying.
Posted by: TechSkeptic | September 24, 2009 at 02:25 PM
Sorry, Skeptico, but you continue to beg the question. You have defined "truth" according to the scientific method, and as such, have eliminated a priori the capability of any other "way of knowing" producing truth.
If we're allowed to use a way of knowing to evaluate the truth value of other ways of knowing, my methodology is valid. If we cannot, by what mechanism do evaluate any way of knowing for truth?
Posted by: AvalonXQ | September 24, 2009 at 02:26 PM
No, I haven’t defined “truth” at all. Try again.
No it’s not, because you haven’t demonstrated it’s a better (or even valid) way of knowing.
Again, up to you, but you have to justify why your method is better or even valid. That’s not science, that’s basic logic – your claim / your job to back that claim up.
Look, I know what you’re trying to do, but there is no way around it – if you want to claim you have a better method, you have to demonstrate it is a better method. How you do that is up to you, but science has a track record of being reliable and useful (look at your computer screen – where do you think the knowledge came from to build it?). You need to show that your method is more reliable and useful.
Posted by: Skeptico | September 24, 2009 at 02:40 PM
The evaluation of the scientific method's primacy as a way of knowing is that it works. We don't judge that the scientific method is best by using the scientific method--at least, not without using two very different definitions of "scientific method" in that statement--we judge the ability of the scientific method to accurately describe reality by its application. The fact that we can use the predictions, findings, knowledge, and theories of the scientific method to develop things like computers and vaccines and scanning electron microscopes that work is the demonstration of the scientific method's value.
Show me another way of knowing that more consistently produces more useful knowledge.
Posted by: Tom Foss | September 24, 2009 at 05:16 PM
Ah, but you see, Tom, God designed the electron microscope. He just lets humans think they invented it. He's that kinda great guy.
The electron microscope was in His plan from the beginning. I'm telling you that He told me so personally. And I'm telling you He told me that He was 100% right about everything.
So it must be true.
Posted by: Big Al | September 25, 2009 at 04:26 AM
Electron microscope is from ID, so's the guillotine and atom bomb. When's the machine that turns people to pillars of salt coming out?
Posted by: Jess | September 25, 2009 at 08:40 AM
Apparently, Lot's wife's demise is a first-hand desciption of someone exposed to an atomic blast. Lot only survived because he had his back turned to the neutron blast and heat flash.
The fact that the back of a thin woollen hooded cloak is not uniformly recommended by civil defence experts as an alternative to a concrete bunker with 6 foot walls buried 30 feet down deters believers in Biblical literal truth remarkably little.
Keep Your Back Turned To It isn't quite as catchy as Duck And Cover, but the advertising guys were still learning the game in those days.
Posted by: Big Al | September 25, 2009 at 10:29 AM
Avalon, I think you've got the wrong end of the stick. Science has grown over centuries to be at the point it is now. Because of a mass of available data and being able to build on the mistakes and discoveries of others it has developed a powerful and useful methodology.
It was never trying to compete with religion or any other way of thinking. It was just trying to sometimes solve specific problems, and other times simply understand nature just out of happy curiosity.
It's religious people who have gotten all huffy because they don't like what has been discovered. The success of science in explaining things has shown up religion to have been fundamentally wrong about the nature of reality. It's not the fault of science. It's the fault of religious people for building their house on sand.
Poets who write about the haunting beauty of the moon don't get all uppity because science proved it just to be a dusty dull wasteland. Movie fans don't get furious when the credits roll because they lost themselves in the film and started feeling real emotions for the characters.
It's about time religious people realised that particular show is over, and that it's time to move on. If they don't harrass scientists and fight against reality, they will be free to do it more sedately, without being laughed at.
Posted by: yakaru | September 25, 2009 at 10:42 AM
Very good points, yakaru!
Many early natural philosophers such as Isaac Newton saw themselves as revealing the wonders of God's work, and the perfection of His creation. They had absolutely no issue with the coexistence of God and sciennce, and nobody set out to destroy religion.
However, the default position of "God did it" to explain every single phenomenon soon became difficult for many scientists to support, as one after another succumbed to mundane explanations.
Soon, the sun rising in the morning, things falling to the ground, the twinking of the stars, etc., etc., were wrested away from the hands of the Almighty.
So where was the unmistakable influence of God? His hiding places became smaller and smaller as time went on (it's called the "God of the gaps"), and this is what led to atheism becoming a respectable philosophical position.
Scientists did not set out to trash religion, it just proved a great tool to explain things that used to be regarded as the province of God.
Posted by: Big Al | September 27, 2009 at 01:01 AM
Novels and art do not usually make empirical claims.
This is the kicker. Yes, literature, poetry, philosophy, and even religion can inspire us, and shed some light on what you might call the ineffable mysteries of the human condition, but that's a very different matter from making empirical claims about matters of objective fact. If you want to express the beauty of a sunrise, poetry is an appropriate tool - but if you want to understand the composition of the Sun, you need a spectrometer.
There are "truths" which are not simple matters of objective fact, but equivocating between those that are and those that aren't doesn't make poetry an effective analytical tool.
Posted by: Dunc | September 29, 2009 at 05:17 AM
Exactly, Dunc. Poetry can paint any number of worlds, but cannot possibly guarantee that any one of them actually exists or ever did.
On the other hand, even a modest telescope will show you stars you could not hope to see with the naked eye, and guarantee that they either exist now, or at least did exist at some time in the past.
You could write a poem about them if you wanted.
Posted by: Big Al | September 29, 2009 at 10:49 AM
Re: ways of K, for some value of K
"Faith isn't just pretending you know something. It's pretending really, really hard." -- Jesus & Mo
Posted by: melior | September 30, 2009 at 03:16 AM
Not being entirely brain-dead, of course I agree with you. I would like to comment on one line in this idiot's remarks:
"In any event, science as a "way of knowing" does not produce truth. People have known that since the failure of logical positivism in the early 20th century"
I would very much like to know if this guy has actually read Kurt Godel's paper on the Principia, or spent the several years studying logic required to even begin to understand it. I would bet anything that he does not have a clue what he means by "the failure of logical positivism," and what's more, he couldn't care less. He is counting on us not knowing any details about this chapter in the development of formal languages. That's a bad bet on this blog- no matter what he says, there are bound to be multiple readers who know that he doesn't have a clue what he's talking about.
Posted by: Green Eagle | October 02, 2009 at 06:45 PM