source: https://www.facebook.com/groups/teachingsecularworldviews/permalink/684031945046627/
Chris Street Allan Hayes - I think the new 'Humanity' subject should have 75% of time spent on Humanism and 25% on Naturalism!
I propose we establish a 'Humanity Education Council' (HEC) cf 'Religious Education Council' (REC).
HEC Members would comprise: academics,atheists, educationalists, freethinkers, humanists, naturalists, philosophers, scientists, secularists, skeptics, teachers, teenagers etc.
The main criteria of HEC membership: a naturalism worldview. Those members or groups with a supernaturalism or religious worldview would not be permitted to become full HEC members with voting rights.
The function of HEC would be to develop a new 'Humanity' National Curriculum (as suggested by Allan Hayes)
HEC would campaign for Government proposals for GCSE Humanity to permit 75% of the time to be spent on Humanism, 25% on Naturalism (to include Atheism and the historical role of Theism).
HEC would campaign for an Act of Parliament to end the compulsory subject of Religious Education in all UK schools. Humanity would compete with Religious Education for teaching time in all schools.
Showing posts with label religious education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label religious education. Show all posts
Thursday, December 04, 2014
Friday, July 01, 2011
Debate: Does religion in education lead towards division or inspiration?
On June 15th the Accord Coalition and University College London held a successful panel debate asking whether religion in education lead towards division or inspiration?
The event was held to mark the 140th anniversary of the University Tests Act 1871, which brought to end almost all religious discrimination in Universities in the UK. The speakers were myself, Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari (Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, 2006-2010), The Rt Hon Charles Clarke (Secretary of State for Education 2002-04) and Andrew Copson (Chef Executive of the British Humanist Association).
A recording of the debate is now available to watch online at:
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/events/2011/06/22/%E2%80%98religion-in-education-towards-division-or-inspiration%E2%80%99/.
Best regards,
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain MBE
Chair of the Accord Coalition
The event was held to mark the 140th anniversary of the University Tests Act 1871, which brought to end almost all religious discrimination in Universities in the UK. The speakers were myself, Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari (Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, 2006-2010), The Rt Hon Charles Clarke (Secretary of State for Education 2002-04) and Andrew Copson (Chef Executive of the British Humanist Association).
A recording of the debate is now available to watch online at:
https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/events/2011/06/22/%E2%80%98religion-in-education-towards-division-or-inspiration%E2%80%99/.
Best regards,
Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain MBE
Chair of the Accord Coalition
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Creation myths have a place in education – in the history lessons
Making the connection
Creation myths have a place in education – but it's in the history lessons of secular schools, and nowhere else
-
- guardian.co.uk,
- Thursday September 18 2008 12.01 BST
- Article history
EM Forster's motto was "Only Connect". Lip service is paid to this essential advice in such notions as "joined-up government", but it seems far more honoured in the breach than the observance – and invariably where its observance would be really, really useful.
Take the connections one might make between the resignation of Michael Reiss from the Royal Society because of his views about creationism in schools, and the opening this week of the first Hindu faith-based school.
One of the Hindu creation myths has Vishnu asleep in the coils of a cobra, itself afloat on a dark ocean whose waves lap the shores of nothingness. After untold aeons of this tranquility a sound of humming began, forming the syllable "om", which increased in power and brought the dawn, thereby waking Vishnu. As he woke a lotus sprang from his naval, and in its petals sat Brahma. Vishnu said to Brahma, "It is time; create the world".
This charming tale is one of many myths told in the equally many religions of the world, the great majority of them long-defunct. It would be appropriate for school history lessons to include a survey of the tales mankind told itself in its infancy, not just for the interest and entertainment value, but because of the references to them in art and literature. No education could be complete, for example, without an understanding of Greek mythology, given its role in our culture; and the same applies to Christianity - itself a version of the much-iterated older myths of a god (Zeus chief among them) who impregnates a mortal maid (Zeus impregnated many) who gives birth to a hero who goes into the underworld and then attains Olympus or heaven. And the theme of return or a promised coming – Baldr the Beautiful, expected after ragnarok; the Christian second coming; the moshiach (messiah) of Judaism - are mythical likewise, but this time as expressions of mankind's hopes for progress or a better world.
There are, alas, those who take these tales literally, and who have died or killed or both in defending them or trying to force other to believe them literally too.Despite them, even so, one would be suspicious of anyone who proposed to teach Hesiod's Theogony or Ovid's Metamorphoses or the Mahabharata or the Epic of Gilgamesh as a textbooks of historical fact. As in all great literature there are insights and instruction to be had from these works; they are rich in allegorical meaning, sometimes it seems unconsciously so. But one would look - one looks - very askance at those who teach the two not especially compatible versions of the Bible's Genesis creation myth as historical fact.
Should chemistry and biology teachers devote part of their lessons to explaining why the story of Vishnu and his cobra is not chemistry or biology? In effect this is what - to put the best construction on it - Professor Reiss was trying to suggest. So blindingly obvious is the answer that there can be no surprise that he ceased to be the Royal Society's director of education with such rapidity once he had, speaking more with his clergyman's hat on (for he is a thing now rara avis in terris: a latter-day Kilvert), proposed the cobra-chemistry idea - though no doubt he had his own tradition's more banal version of it in mind.
No one seems to have realised yet that the question of creationist ideas being taught in schools immediately leads to the more general question of how religion is taught in schools - because all religions have their creation myths - and because it is only an accident of history that religion is regarded as somehow more respectable than astrology or ouija boards, despite being no different in degree of credibility than they.The parallel is rather like outlawing marijuana but allowing an equally or even more dangerous drug like alcohol to be legally sold. So, no one suggests astrology should be taught alongside astronomy, or ouija-board technique alongside historical research. Yet the likes of Reiss think that the myths of mankind's infancy about the origin and nature of the world should be discussed alongside science - ! Clearly there is No Connection being made here.
But now as to that other Only Connect matter. While controversies arise about creationism, new faith-based schools open: this week's brand-new Hindu school, admitting only vegetarian Hindu children, will provide pupils with an education set in the culture and tradition of the Hindu faith. Does that mean Vishnu in the chemistry lab and his cobra and lotus in the biology lab?
The school's head teacher, Naina Parmar, stated a desire to make the school "a haven of peace. Hinduism is a very inclusive faith, which naturally promotes a calm, caring and cooperative learning environment". This is an admirable sentiment, and while faith-based schooling lasts - not too long I trust - in this country, let us hope that ambition is realised. But there is nothing inclusive about the strict exclusivity of this particular school, and there is nothing peaceful about the murderous rage with which Hindus and Muslims slaughter each other periodically in India - remember Ayodhya. The words, alas, ring a little hollow.
The trap that the government has fallen into with its misguided, divisive, ghettoisation-inviting policy of promoting faith schools is well summed up in the words of the chairman of the new Hindu school's governing body, Nitesh Gor: "If we are going to continue to have faith schooling in this country it is unreasonable and discriminatory to deny just a handful of Hindu parents the choice that is already available to much larger numbers of Christians, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and others". Quite: now everyone wants your and my tax money to bring up their children in their own version of the religions that sit on the creation myths that no sensible person wishes to be passed off on a child as any part of the truth about the world.
There is a thus deep paradox in our contemporary society about these matters: the government funds faith-based schools; the sensible majority does not want creationism taught in schools; religion is the vehicle of creationism, despite the cherry-pickers best efforts to distance themselves from the bits they can no longer bring themselves to believe in.
The best solution is to put religion where it belongs: in the history curriculum of non-faith-based schools where religion is no longer a compulsory observance at assembly or any other time.
Friday, July 04, 2008
Religion and philosophy in schools by Stephen Law
In January I attended a 10 week online Oxford University 'Philosophy Gym' course written by Stephen Law. The course included discussion from the chapter 'Ethical Relativism versus Ethical Objectivism' by Louis Pojman (in Introduction to Philosophy by Podjman). Some of the points that Stephen Law makes here are to be found in Laws' excellent 'Philosophy Gym' book eg Chapter 5 (Into the Lair of the Relativist) and Laws' 'The War For Children’s Minds".
Stephen Law will speak to Dorset Humanists February 2009.
Stephen Law's chapter from Hand and Winstanley (eds.) Philosophy in Schools, Continuum 2008.
WARNING: THIS IS LONG!
Stephen Law
Is philosophy in schools a good idea? The extent to which early exposure to a little philosophical thinking is of educational benefit is, of course, largely an empirical question. As a philosopher, that sort of empirical study is not my area of expertise.
But of course there is also a philosophical dimension to this question. As a philosopher, conceptual clarification and the analysis of the logic of the arguments on either side certainly is my field. That is where I hope to make a small contribution here.
This chapter is in two parts. In the first, I look at two popular religious objections to the suggestion that all children ought to be encouraged to think independently and critically about moral and religious issues. In the second part, I explain a well-known philosophical distinction – that between reasons and causes – and give a couple of examples of how this conceptual distinction might help illuminate this debate.
PART ONE: Two popular religious objections
Philosophy in the classroom involves children thinking critically and independently about the big questions. These questions include questions about morality and the origin and purpose of human existence. Examples are: “Why is there anything at all?”, “What makes things right or wrong?” And “What happens to us when we die?”
I want to look at
The second is:
Here is an illustration of both worries being expressed simultaneously. In 2004,
learning how to make informed, rational judgements on the truth or falsity of religious propositions… Pupils would be actively encouraged to question the religious beliefs they bring with them into the classroom, not so that they are better able to defend or rationalise them, but so that they are genuinely free to adopt whatever position on religious matters they judge to be best supported by the evidence. (Hand, 2004)
Many religious people were entirely comfortable with this proposal. But not all. The Daily Telegraph ran a leader condemning the IPPR’s recommendations. Here is Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips quoting from it approvingly:
As [this] Telegraph leader comments, this is nothing other than yet another attempt at ideological indoctrination: 'It reflects the belief that parents who pass on the Christian faith are guilty of indoctrinating their children, and that it is the role of the state to stop them. The IPPR and its allies in the Government are not so much interested in promoting diversity as in replacing one set of orthodoxies by another: the joyless ideology of cultural relativism.'’ (Phillips, 2004)
Here we find both of the concerns mentioned above expressed simultaneously. Surely parents have a right to send their children to a school where their religious beliefs will be promoted without being subjected to this sort of independent critical scrutiny. The state has no right to interfere. And in any case,
The charge of relativism
I’ll consider that charge of promoting relativism first.
Relativism, as Melanie Philips and the Daily Telegraph use the term, is the view that the truth in some particular sphere is relative.
Some truths are indeed relative. Consider wichitti grubs – those huge larvae eaten live by some aboriginal Australians. Most Westerners find them revolting (certainly, the model Jordan did when she was recently required to eat one on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here). But at least some native Australians consider them delicious.
So what is the truth about wichitti grubs? Are they delicious, or aren’t they? The truth, it seems, is that, unlike the truth about whether wichitti grubs are carbon-based life forms or whether they are found in Australia, there is no objective, mind-independent truth. The truth about the deliciousness of wichitti grubs is relative. For Jordan, that wichitti grubs are delicious is false. For others, it’s true. When it comes to deliciousness, what’s true and false ultimately boils down to subjective opinion or taste.
The relativist about morality insists that the truth of moral claims is similarly relative. There’s no objective truth about whether female circumcision, stealing from supermarkets, or even killing an innocent human being, is morally wrong. Rightness and wrongness ultimately also boil down to subjective preference or taste. What’s true for one person or culture may be false for another.
The relativist about religious truth similarly insists that the truth about whether or not Jesus is God is relative. That Jesus is God is true-for-Christians but false-for Muslims. The “truth” about religion is simply whatever the faithful take it to be.
Often associated with relativism is a form of non-judgementalism – if, say, all moral and religious points of view are equally “valid”, then we are wrong to judge those who hold different moral and religious views.
This brand of non-judgementalist relativism about truth is widely considered to be eating away at the fabric of Western civilization like a cancer. It is supposed to be deeply destructive – resulting in a culture of selfish, shallow individualism in which personal preference trumps everything and, ultimately, anything goes.
Relativism is certainly commonly supposed to have infected the young. Schools are often blamed. Marianne Talbot of Brasenose College Oxford, says about her students that they
have been taught to think their opinion is no better than anyone else’s, that there is no truth, only truth-for-me. I come across this relativist view constantly – in exams, in discussion and in tutorials – and I find it frightening: to question it amounts, in the eyes of the young, to the belief that it is permissible to impose your views on others. (quoted in Phillips, 1997, p. 221)
The U.S. academic Allan Bloom writes:
[t]here is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. (Bloom, 1987, p. 25)
The new Pontiff is also deeply concerned. He says,
Relativism even gets the blame for the rise of dangerously rigid political and religious dogmas. Just last week, it was reported that the Ministry of Defence believes that
the trend towards moral relativism and increasingly pragmatic values [is causing] more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism. (quoted in Baginni, 2007)
Interestingly, when Nick Tate, head of the UK’s QCAA (the U.K. body responsible for devising and assessing the national curriculum) introduced compulsory classes in citizenship for all pupils attending state-funded schools, he was explicit that one of his chief concerns was to “slay the dragon of relativism”. (Tate, 1996)
So, relativism is supposed to be rampant. But where did it come from?
The roots of relativism
In the minds of many, the blame lies with the Enlightenment and the 1960’s.Take the U.K.’s Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, for example. He finds particular fault with the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant provides the classic definition of Enlightenment. He says individuals should think independently and make their own judgement, rather than defer more or less uncritically to some external authority:
[Enlightenment is the] emergence of man from his self-imposed infancy. Infancy is the inability to use one’s reason without the guidance of another. It is self-imposed, when it depends on a deficiency, not of reason, but of the resolve and courage to use it without external guidance. Thus
It is no coincidence that “Sapere” and “Aude” have been adopted as the names of two philosophy-for-children organizations.
The Chief Rabbi considers Kant’s thinking dangerous. He says that
according to Kant…[t]o do something because others do, or because of habit or custom or even Divine Command, is to accept an external authority over the one sovereign territory that is truly our own: our own choices. The moral being for Kant is by definition an autonomous being, a person who accepts no other authority than the self. By the 1960s this was beginning to gain hold as an educational orthodoxy. The task of education is not to hand on a tradition but to enhance the consciousness of choice. (Sacks 1997, p. 176)
It’s this Kantian rejection of any external moral authority that might decide right and wrong for us - Kant’s insistence on the moral autonomy of the individual - that is the root cause of our problems. It’s here that we find the origin of today’s relativism. For to teach in accordance with Kant’s thinking, says Sacks, requires,
…non-judgementalism and relativism on the part of the teacher” (Ibid.)
Melanie Phillips concurs. “It seems reasonable,” she says “to regard the Enlightenment as the defining moment for the collapse of external authority” (Phillips, 1996, p. 189) The problem with Enlightenment thinking, argues Phillips, is that
instead of authority being located “out there” in a body of knowledge handed down through the centuries, we have repositioned it “in here” within each child. (Phillips, 1996, p. 28)
For Sacks, Phillips, and many other religious conservatives,
According to Sacks, Phillips, and very many others,
Philosophy in the classroom promotes relativism?
No. In my book The War For Children’s Minds, I deal with this sort of objection – as well as many others – in much greater detail. Here I will merely sketch out three very obvious reasons why to encourage and teach children to think critically even about morality and religion need not entail the promotion of relativism and non-judgementalism.
1. Relativism entails no point to thinking critically. If relativism were true, there would be no point in engaging in the kind of critical thinking that proponents of philosophy in schools recommend. For if relativism is true, the belief that you arrive at after much very carefully critical thought will be no more true than the one you started with. Those who recommend we think critically about the Big Questions – including moral and religious questions – even from a young age are, in effect, opposed to relativism insofar as they think that this sort of activity is able to get us closer to the truth.
2. Philosophy can combat relativism. Secondly, a children’s philosophy programme is free to include critical discussion of relativism. A little close critical scrutiny is able pretty quickly to reveal precisely why the usual politically-motivated arguments for relativism (such as that only relativists can promote tolerance) are, frankly, awful. I believe children should have the failings of moral relativism explained to them. That should form part of their education.
3. Relativism and respect for religious authority. Thirdly, there’s at least anecdotal evidence that, rather than relativism being a product of a thinking, questioning culture, embracing relativism may be a strategy teachers embrace in order to avoid thinking critically about – and, in particular, questioning the authority of – any given religious tradition. If a teacher is required to teach a range of faiths, children are likely to spot that they contradict each other, and will inevitably ask, “Which is actually true? Is Jesus God, as Christians claim, or merely a prophet, as Muslims claim?” Suggest that one religion must be mistaken and phone calls may ensue (“My daughter has been told the Pope might be mistaken”).
Regarding the last two points, I should add, incidentally, that I do not mean that children should simply be told that they must more-or-less uncritically accept that relativism is twaddle. The idea is not to encourage independent critical thought about everything… except, er, relativism. But I see no reason why children cannot be given the very good arguments against relativism (which, presented correctly, are both engaging and fairly easy to grasp) to reflect on at an appropriate stage in their development.
I should perhaps also add that the kind of philosophy programme I would recommend is not, then, an exclusively hands-off affair in which topics are always chosen by children, in which children are never taught basic skills, positions and styles of argument, and in which the supposedly “philosophical” discussion is allowed to take the form of little more than a free association of ideas, with little, if any, logical structure or rigour.
While I am enthusiastic about class discussions on the P4C (Philosophy4Children) model (which are often excellent), I think they probably need to be paired at some stage with some teaching of the basic skills, arguments and positions – including relativism. (This is not to say I favour a dry semi-academic approach either – I think we need to develop new, engaging ways of teaching skills, arguments and positions.)
I don’t deny, of course, that this sort of teaching would need to be carried out by people who are at least reasonably competent in the area, by teachers who, for example, are well-versed in the arguments for and against relativism. Nor do I deny that an intellectually flabby “philosophy for children” programme might inadvertently end up promoting relativism. But there is certainly no necessity that philosophy in the classroom should promote relativism. As I say,
A parental right to a philosophy-free religious and moral education?
Now let’s turn to the second objection I mentioned at the beginning of this section – that parents have a right to send their child to a school where their religious beliefs will not be subjected to critical scrutiny.
Of course, many who favour philosophy in schools will agree with this. They may say, “I believe philosophy in schools is a very good idea, but I don’t think it should be forced on religious parents if they don’t want it.”
I am not going to attempt to make much of a positive case for that perhaps rather illiberal-sounding assertion here. I will simply offer a challenge to those who, like Phillips and the Daily Telegraph, believe that schools that promote a religious faith in a wholly uncritical way are acceptable.
Assuming that Phillips and the Daily Telegraph would consider such political schools unacceptable (irrespective of the desire of parents to send their children to them), the onus is surely on them to explain why we should consider their religious equivalents rather more acceptable – indeed, even desirable.
One move they might make would be to say that our political beliefs are clearly far too practically important – they are far too likely to have a concrete impact in terms of the kind of society we live in – to be left in the hands of the indoctrinators. Religious beliefs, on the other hand, are more other-worldly, and so less of a concern.
But this would be to overlook that religious beliefs are often intensely political. Clearly, religious points of view on homosexuality, charity, a woman’s place in the home, abortion, the State of Israel, jihad, and even poverty and injustice, are all political. There are few aspects of religious belief that don’t have an important political dimension.
Conclusion
I see no reason why an enlightened, liberal approach to moral and religious education of the sort recommended by the IPPR cannot be conducted in religiously-affiliated schools. It is not incompatible with a religious upbringing. Teachers at a Christian school, for example, might say “This is what we believe, and these are the reasons why we believe it. Obviously we would like you to believe it to, but not just because we tell you to. We want you to think and question and make up your own minds.”
I don’t yet see that the appeal to relativism and parental rights justifies either the conclusion that philosophy in the religious classroom is largely undesirable or the conclusion that it be made, at most, an optional extra.
PART TWO: Reasons and causes
In this second part of this chapter, I want to make a well-known philosophical distinction – that between reasons and causes – and then draw out a couple of conclusions concerning philosophy in the classroom.
Reasons and causes
People’s beliefs can be shaped in two very different ways, as illustrated by the two different ways we might answer the question “Why does Jane believe what she does?”
First, we might offer Jane’s reasons and justifications – the grounds of her belief. Why does Jane believe our CO2 gas emissions are causing global warming? Well, she has seen the figures on how much CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere, and she has seen the graphs based on Antarctic ice cores showing how global temperatures have closely tracked CO2 levels over the last 600,000 years. So, concludes Jane on the basis of this evidence, the rising temperatures are very probably a result of our CO2 emissions.
Another example: why does Jane believe there is a pencil on the table in front of her? Because there appears to be a pencil there. She remembers just putting a pencil there. And she has no reason to suppose that there’s anything funny going on (that she’s hallucinating, the victim of an optical illusion, or whatever).
Of course, explaining why someone believes something by giving their grounds or reasons is not yet to say that they are good reasons. Mary may believe she will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger because that’s what a psychic hotline told her.
So we can explain beliefs by giving people’s reasons. But this is not the only way in which beliefs can be explained. Suppose John believes he is a teapot. Why? Because John attended a hypnotist’s stage-show last night. John was pulled out of the audience and hypnotized into believing he is a teapot. The hypnotist forgot to un-hypnotize him, and so John is still stuck with that belief.
Of course, John needn’t be aware of the true explanation of why he believes he is a teapot. He may not remember being hypnotized. If we ask him to justify his belief, he may find himself oddly unable. He may simply find himself stuck with it. He may well say, with utter conviction, that he just knows he is a teapot. In fact, because such non-inferentially-held beliefs are usually perceptual beliefs, it may seem to John that he can see he’s a teapot. “Look!” he may say, sticking out his arms “Here’s my handle and here’s my spout!”
So we can explain beliefs by giving a person’s reasons, grounds and justifications, and we can explain beliefs by giving purely causal explanations (I say purely causal, as reasons can be causes too [see for example Davidson, 1963)).
Purely causal explanations range from, say, being hypnotized or brainwashed to caving in to peer pressure or wishful thinking. These mechanisms may even include, say, being genetically predisposed to having certain sorts of belief (it has been suggested by Daniel Dennett (2006) and others that we are, for example, genetically predisposed to religious belief).
Of course, both kinds of explanation may be relevant when it comes to explaining why Sophie believes that P. Sophie may believe that P in part because there is some evidence for P, though not enough to warrant belief in P, and in part because she is, say, biologically predisposed to believe P. It may be that neither factor, by itself, is sufficient to explain Sophie’s belief.
We may well flatter ourselves about just how rational we are. Sometimes, when we believe something, we think we’re simply responding rationally to the evidence, but the truth is we have been manipulated in a purely causal way. I might think I have decided that sexism is wrong because I’ve recognized the inherent rationality of the case against it, when the truth is that I have simply caved in to peer pressure and my unconscious desire to conform.
Brainwashing
So there are two ways in which we might explain belief. There are, correspondingly, at least two ways in which we might seek to induce belief in someone. We might attempt to make a rational case, try to persuade them by means of evidence and cogent argument. Or we might take the purely causal route and try to hypnotize, apply peer pressure, etc. instead.
One of the most obvious ways of engaging in purely causal manipulation of what people believe is, of course, brainwashing. Kathleen Taylor, a research scientist in physiology at the University of Oxford who has published a study of brainwashing, writes that five core techniques consistently show up:
One striking fact about brainwashing is its consistency. Whether the context is a prisoner of war camp, a cult’s headquarters or a radical mosque, five core techniques keep cropping up: isolation, control, uncertainty, repetition and emotional manipulation. (Taylor, 2005)
The isolation may involve physical isolation or separation. Control covers restricting the information and range of views people have access to, and includes censorship. Cults tend endlessly to repeat their beliefs to potential converts. This repetition may include, for example, very regular communal chanting or singing. Under uncertainty, Taylor discusses the discomfort we feel when presented with uncertainty: by providing a simple set of geometric certainties that cover and explain everything, and also constantly reminding people of the vagaries and chaos of what lies outside this belief system, cultists can make their system seem increasingly attractive. Emotional manipulation can take many forms – most obviously the associating of positive feelings and images (e.g. uplifting or serenely smiling icons) with the belief system, and fear and uncertainty with the alternatives.
Of course, the extent to which these techniques are applied varies from cult to cult. Clearly, they are also applied by non-religious cults and regimes. A school in Mao’s China or under the present regime in North Korea would almost certainly check all five boxes.
I note (though Taylor doesn’t), simply as a point of fact, that religious schools of the sort that tended to predominate in this country up until the 1960’s also very clearly check all five boxes.
That these and other purely causal mechanisms are effective at influencing belief even outside a cult’s headquarters or a prisoner of war camp is surely undeniable. We are all very heavily influenced by them. The success of the advertizing industry is testimony to their effectiveness. Indeed, many advertising campaigns check many, if not all, of Taylor’s five boxes for brainwashing.
When challenged on this, the industry typically insists that it is primarily concerned with “informing” the public - providing good reasons and evidence on which consumers can base a rational and informed choice. Nevertheless the main tools of the advertizing trade are for the most part purely causal. An advertisement for soap powder, lipstick, a car or a loan typically contains very little factual information or argument. The power of these adverts to shape our thinking and behaviour is mostly purely causal – they play on our uncertainties and rely very heavily on repetition and emotional manipulation.
The question of balance
That such purely causal mechanisms are going to shape what people believe is something that is, to some extent, unavoidable. Even in a very liberal educational setting in which philosophy is involved, there will inevitably be many purely causal factors also influencing belief. Certainly, we should admit that a classroom is not wholly given over to the space of reasons. All sorts of causal and psychological pressures are applied, knowingly and unknowingly, within a school. This may even, to a very significant extent, be desirable.
The question is how these purely causal influences should be balanced against giving reasons and justifications, encouraging rational reflection, and so on.
Now I would suggest that the extent to which religious people tend to favour or oppose the introduction of philosophy in the classroom (and the extent to which they would recommend a return to more traditional religious educational methods) tends to a very large extent to correspond with the degree to which they prefer reliance on techniques that are, in effect, purely causal.
Philosophy in the classroom is of course about thinking critically and independently about many of the same issues in which religion has a stake. Free and open discussion, in which all views are open to close critical scrutiny (religious views included) means operating within what Wilfred Sellars called “the logical space of reasons” (Sellars, 1956, p. 169)
On the other hand, while traditional religious education might also involve a degree of free discussion (typically within certain parameters: children may be subtly or not so subtly steered away from asking certain sorts of question or making certain sorts of point), it was generally orientated far more towards purely causal techniques of influencing belief. Daily repetitive acts of worship, repetitive prayer, isolation from other belief systems (including physical isolation from those who hold them), control over the range of materials children have access to (such as writings critical of that faith), the punishment of those who dare to question (a colleague of mine educated in a Catholic School in the 1960’s was punished simply for asking why the Catholic Church opposed contraception) and emotional manipulation (associating “all things bright and beautiful” with the faith, images of moral chaos and hell with the alternatives) – these techniques were the mainstay of religious education.
So while every style of moral and religious education inevitably involves a blend of both engaging children’s rational, critical faculties and (whether or not intentionally) applying purely causal mechanisms, one of the fundamental issues dividing proponents of philosophy in the classroom from religious traditionalists is how these two ingredients should be balanced.
Truth-sensitivity
I want now to look at some of the ways in which reason-involving educational methods differ from purely causal mechanisms for shaping belief. Let’s begin with truth-sensitivity.
One interesting fact about these two ways of getting someone to believe something is that, generally speaking , only one is truth-sensitive.
The purely causal mechanisms of isolation, control, repetition, uncertainty and emotional manipulation, for example, can be used to induce the belief that Paris is the capital of France. But they can just as easily be applied to induce the beliefs that Paris is the capital of Germany and that Big Brother loves you.
The attractive thing about appealing to someone’s power of reason, by contrast, is that it strongly favours beliefs that are true. Cogent argument doesn’t easily lend itself to inducing false beliefs. You are going to have a hard time trying to construct a strong, well-reasoned case capable of withstanding critical scrutiny for believing that Swindon is inhabited by giant wasp-men or that the Earth’s core is made of cheese.
Sound reasoning and critical thought tend to act as a filter on false beliefs. Of course, the filter is not foolproof – false beliefs will inevitably get through. But it does tend to allow into a person’s mind only those beliefs that have at least a fairly good chance of being correct.
Indeed, unlike the purely causal techniques of inducing belief discussed above, the use of reason is a double-edged sword. It cuts both ways. It doesn’t automatically favour the teacher’s beliefs over the pupil’s. It favours the truth, and so places the teacher and the pupil on a level playing field. If, as a teacher, you try to use reason to persuade, you may discover your pupil can show that it is you, and not them, that is mistaken. That’s a risk some “educators” are not prepared to take.
Causal vs normative determination
Some post-modern thinkers insist, of course, that “reason” is a term used to dignify what is, in reality, merely another purely causal mechanism for influencing belief, alongside brainwashing and indoctrination. Reason is no more sensitive to the “truth” than these other mechanisms (for of course there is really no truth for it to be sensitive to). Reason is, in reality, just another form of power – of thought-control. It is essentially as manipulative as any other mechanism.
But this is to overlook the fact that while a rational argument can in a sense “force” a conclusion on you, the “force” involved is normative, not causal.
Causal determination determines what will happen. For example, given the causal power of these rails to direct this train, the train will go Oxford. Indeed, it is causally forced or compelled to. Normative determination, on the other hand, determines not what will happen, but what ought to. It is an entirely distinct kind of determination involving an entirely different sort of “compulsion” or “force”.
A rational argument shows you what you ought to believe if you want to avoid contradiction and give your beliefs the best chance of being true. Take this valid deductive argument:
All men smell
John is a man
Therefore, John smells.
To recognise that this argument is valid, is just to recognize that if you believe that all men smell, and that John is a man, then you ought to believe that John smells. But of course this argument doesn’t causally compel you to accept that conclusion even if you do accept the premises. You’re free to be irrational.
This isn't to deny that rational arguments have causal power. Of course they do. A good argument can have the power to change history (consider the wonderful arguments of Galileo, or the campaigner against slavery William Wilberforce). But when rational arguments have the causal power to shape people’s thinking, they typically have it as a result of their having normative power. People change their opinions precisely because they recognize the normative force of the argument.
[Notice, by the way, that we can easily demonstrate that a rational argument doesn’t have normative power simply in virtue of its having the causal power to shape people’s thinking (though critics who fail to understand the difference between normative and causal determination or "force" typically miss this point). The obvious counter-example is fallacious argument. A fallacious argument lacks any normative power. But notice that, if the fallacy is seductive, it will still have considerable causal power to shape belief.]
So rational arguments have causal powers. But that is not to say that rational argument is in reality just another purely causal mechanism alongside e.g. brainwashing and peer pressure.
So far, I have stressed how rational argument differs from purely causal mechanisms for influencing belief. In particular, rational argument is truth-sensitive, while purely causal mechanisms are typically not. Also, rational arguments, while possessing causal power to shape belief, typically have this power in virtue of their normative power. The kind of “determination” a rational argument “imposes” on us is, in the first instance, normative, not causal. Rational argument is certainly not a form of coercion or manipulation in the way that purely causal mechanisms are.
Let’s now develop that last point a little further. As I explain below, it seems to me that rational arguments allow for a form of freedom in a way that purely causal mechanisms do not.
Reason and freedom
Enlightenment liberals like myself tend to feel uncomfortable about heavy reliance on purely causal mechanisms. Here’s one reason why.
When you use reason to persuade, you respect the other’s freedom to make (or fail to make) a rational decision. When you apply purely causal mechanisms, you take that freedom from them. Your subject may think they’ve made an entirely free and rational decision, of course, but the truth is that they’re your puppet – you’re pulling their strings. In effect, by ditching reason and relying on purely causal mechanisms – peer pressure, emotional manipulation, repetition, and so on – you are now treating them as just one more bit of the causally-manipulatable natural order – as mere things.
On one of the formulations of his categorical imperative, Kant says that we ought always to treat both others and ourselves always as ends in themselves, and never purely as means to an end. We should not treat others or ourselves in an entirely instrumental way, as we might treat a screwdriver or car, to get the result we want. We should have “respect for persons” – for their the inherent freedom and rationality, which, according to Kant, is what distinguishes them from mere things.
Here’s an illustration (not Kant’s) of the kind of respect Kant has in mind. Suppose I need food to feed my starving children. I might get food from the local shop by lying – by saying that I will pay for it next week knowing full well that I won’t. Or I might try to get food by honestly explaining my situation to the shopkeeper and hoping she will be charitable. In both cases, I “use” the shopkeeper to get what I want. But, unlike the first option, the second does not involve using the shopkeeper purely as a means to an end. I respect her rationality and freedom to make her own decision about whether to provide food without payment. Kant says that only the second option shows the shopkeeper the proper respect she is due as a person. The first treats her purely instrumentally, as if she were merely a thing.
Avoiding the purely causal route so far as influencing the beliefs of others is concerned is, presumably, one of the things that Kant would insist on. Indeed, if Kant is right, it seems that reliance on purely causal mechanisms to shape belief also involves a fundamental lack of respect for persons.
How to influence belief?
It is undeniable that, as educators, we do want to influence children’s beliefs. Influencing beliefs is not all there is to education, not by a very long way. But that this is one of the things we are interested in doing in the classroom is surely undeniable. We don’t want to send children out into the world believing that a woman’s place is behind the sink, that it’s morally acceptable to torture animals, that Jewish people are untrustworthy, or that the entire universe is just six thousand years old. Well I don’t, anyway.
So let’s admit that we want to influence what children believe . The question is: how?
My central aim in the second part of this paper has been to show how the philosophical distinction between reasons and causes can help illuminate this question. We have seen that rational argument differs from taking the purely causal route in at least three important ways:
(i) it is truth-sensitive (whereas purely causal mechanisms typically are not)
(ii) while rational arguments can be causally powerful, their causal power typically derives from their normative power – which is a categorically distinct non-causal form of “power”.
(iii) Rational argument allows for an important form of freedom - a freedom that the purely causal mechanisms actually strips from us.
We have also seen that religious traditionalists lean rather more towards purely causal mechanisms for influencing belief then do proponents of philosophy in the classroom. Indeed, this is one of the fundamental issues, perhaps the fundamental issue, dividing them.
How the distinction can illuminate the debate
To finish, I want to provide a couple of examples of how thinking about the debate between proponents of philosophy in the classroom and religious traditionalists in these terms might shed some light on some of the arguments offered on either side.
1. A temptation
First, the distinction makes a little clearer, perhaps, why taking the purely causal route can be tempting. When you open up debate and critical discussion, you run the risk that people won’t believe what you want them to believe. If we suppose that certain beliefs are very important indeed, perhaps even vital for the survival of Western civilization, well then the temptation to take the purely causal route can become very strong indeed.
For example, some argue that, whether or not religious belief is true, it is socially necessary. Remove it, and society will eventually fall apart. So we must rely on traditional religious education to instill it. Bring reason into religious education, and, given its truth-detecting power, the dubiousness of religious belief might be exposed. The results may be disastrous. So philosophy in the classroom – and certainly in the classoom where religion is discussed – is a bad, if not downright dangerous, idea. Many American neo-conservatives take this view.
At least some of these kinds of concern deserve to be taken seriously.
2. Muddling reasons and causes
Secondly, a failure properly to understand this distinction may lead defenders of traditional religious educational techniques to think that their methods are, in essence, really not so very different to what proponents of philosophy in the classroom have in mind. At bottom, aren’t both really just forms of causing-people-to-believe-what-you-want-them-to-believe? As we saw above, Melanie Phillips considers what the IPPR proposes (critical scrutiny of religious beliefs in the classroom) to be, just “another attempt at ideological indoctrination”. In Phillips’ mind, philosophy in the classroom is not an alternative to indoctrination. It’s just a different kind of indoctrination.
It is certainly in the interests of religious opponents of philosophy in the classroom to obscure the distinction between educating within the logical space of reasons, and educating via the purely causal route. In particular, it is in their interests to obscure the fact that the distinction raises some very fundamental questions about freedom, and also about what Kant calls “respect for persons”.
That many proponents of traditional religious educational methods (who would oppose philosophy in the classroom) fail fully to realize the extent to which they are applying purely causal mechanisms to induce belief is also indicated by the fact that when the beliefs in question are political, not religious and when the techniques are applied in political schools rather than religious schools, they consider these same techniques “brain-washing”.
That many of the faithful simply don’t recognize that their preferred educational methods come at least very close to brainwashing is, I suspect, largely due to fact that - within the religious setting of convent schools, madrassas, etc. and, of course, within their own upbringing (“After all, it never did me any harm”) - these techniques have acquired the rosy glow of comfortable familiarity.
REFERENCES
Asch, S. (1951) “Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments”, in Guetzkow, H. (1951), pp. 177-190.
Baginni, J. (2007) “What The Clash of Civilizations is Really About”, The Guardian 14th April.
Bloom, A. (1987) The Closing of The American Mind, New York: Touchstone.
Davidson, D. (1963) “Actions, Reasons and Causes”, The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 60, No. 23, pp. 685-700
Dennett, D. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Viking (Penguin).
Feigl, H, and Scriven, M. (1956) The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. I, Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Guetzkow, H. (Ed.) (1951) Groups, Leadership and Men: Research in Human Relations, Pittsburgh: Carnegie Press.
Hand, M. (2004) ‘What is RE for?’, in the IPPR Event Report What is Religious Education for? Getting the National Framework Right, (http://www.ippr.org/uploadedFiles/projects/RE%20Event%20Report%20-%20FINAL%20for%20pdf.PDF).
Honderich, T. (1995) The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mason, M. (2005) “Philosophy – can’t live with it, can’t live without it”, THINK, issue10, p. 37
Phillips, M. (1996) All Must Have Prizes, London: Warner Books.
Phillips, M. (2004) http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/000330.html.
Ratzinger J. (Cardinal) (2005)Homily at the mass for the election of the Roman Pontiff. 18th April.
Sacks J. (1997) The Politics of Hope, London: Jonathan Cape.
Sellars, W. (1956) "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind", in Feigl and Scriven (1956) pp 127-196.
Tate, N. (1996) Speech to the SCAA, 15th January
Taylor, K. (2005) “Thought Crime” The Guardian, 8th October.
Stephen Law will speak to Dorset Humanists February 2009.
Stephen Law's chapter from Hand and Winstanley (eds.) Philosophy in Schools, Continuum 2008.
WARNING: THIS IS LONG!
Stephen Law
Is philosophy in schools a good idea? The extent to which early exposure to a little philosophical thinking is of educational benefit is, of course, largely an empirical question. As a philosopher, that sort of empirical study is not my area of expertise.
But of course there is also a philosophical dimension to this question. As a philosopher, conceptual clarification and the analysis of the logic of the arguments on either side certainly is my field. That is where I hope to make a small contribution here.
This chapter is in two parts. In the first, I look at two popular religious objections to the suggestion that all children ought to be encouraged to think independently and critically about moral and religious issues. In the second part, I explain a well-known philosophical distinction – that between reasons and causes – and give a couple of examples of how this conceptual distinction might help illuminate this debate.
PART ONE: Two popular religious objections
Philosophy in the classroom involves children thinking critically and independently about the big questions. These questions include questions about morality and the origin and purpose of human existence. Examples are: “Why is there anything at all?”, “What makes things right or wrong?” And “What happens to us when we die?”
These questions are also addressed by religion. The subject matter of philosophy and religion significantly overlap.And where there is overlap, there is the possibility of disputed territory. Proponents of philosophy in the classroom may find themselves coming into conflict with at least some of the faithful. While many religious people are enthusiastic about philosophy in the classroom, there are also many who are either totally opposed to it, or else want severely to restrict its scope.
Some Christians, Muslims and Jews consider the introduction of philosophy an unwelcome intrusion into those parts of the curriculum that have traditionally been deemed theirs. They have developed a whole range of objections.
I want to look at
two very popular objections to the suggestion that all children should be encouraged to think critically and independently about moral and religious questions.The first is:
To encourage a thinking, questioning attitude on these topics is to promote relativism.
The second is:
Parents have a right to send their child to a school where their religious beliefs will not be subjected to critical scrutiny.
Here is an illustration of both worries being expressed simultaneously. In 2004,
the U.K.’s Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) proposed that all children should be exposed to a range of religious faiths and atheism, and also that they be taught to think critically about religious belief.The IPPR recommended that the focus be on
learning how to make informed, rational judgements on the truth or falsity of religious propositions… Pupils would be actively encouraged to question the religious beliefs they bring with them into the classroom, not so that they are better able to defend or rationalise them, but so that they are genuinely free to adopt whatever position on religious matters they judge to be best supported by the evidence. (Hand, 2004)
What the IPPR proposed is, in effect, a form of philosophy in the classroom: the philosophical examination of religious belief.
Many religious people were entirely comfortable with this proposal. But not all. The Daily Telegraph ran a leader condemning the IPPR’s recommendations. Here is Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips quoting from it approvingly:
As [this] Telegraph leader comments, this is nothing other than yet another attempt at ideological indoctrination: 'It reflects the belief that parents who pass on the Christian faith are guilty of indoctrinating their children, and that it is the role of the state to stop them. The IPPR and its allies in the Government are not so much interested in promoting diversity as in replacing one set of orthodoxies by another: the joyless ideology of cultural relativism.'’ (Phillips, 2004)
Here we find both of the concerns mentioned above expressed simultaneously. Surely parents have a right to send their children to a school where their religious beliefs will be promoted without being subjected to this sort of independent critical scrutiny. The state has no right to interfere. And in any case,
isn’t encouraging such critical thought itself a form of indoctrination – in this case, indoctrination with the poisonous dogma of relativism?
The charge of relativism
I’ll consider that charge of promoting relativism first.
Relativism, as Melanie Philips and the Daily Telegraph use the term, is the view that the truth in some particular sphere is relative.
Some truths are indeed relative. Consider wichitti grubs – those huge larvae eaten live by some aboriginal Australians. Most Westerners find them revolting (certainly, the model Jordan did when she was recently required to eat one on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here). But at least some native Australians consider them delicious.
So what is the truth about wichitti grubs? Are they delicious, or aren’t they? The truth, it seems, is that, unlike the truth about whether wichitti grubs are carbon-based life forms or whether they are found in Australia, there is no objective, mind-independent truth. The truth about the deliciousness of wichitti grubs is relative. For Jordan, that wichitti grubs are delicious is false. For others, it’s true. When it comes to deliciousness, what’s true and false ultimately boils down to subjective opinion or taste.
The relativist about morality insists that the truth of moral claims is similarly relative. There’s no objective truth about whether female circumcision, stealing from supermarkets, or even killing an innocent human being, is morally wrong. Rightness and wrongness ultimately also boil down to subjective preference or taste. What’s true for one person or culture may be false for another.
The relativist about religious truth similarly insists that the truth about whether or not Jesus is God is relative. That Jesus is God is true-for-Christians but false-for Muslims. The “truth” about religion is simply whatever the faithful take it to be.
Often associated with relativism is a form of non-judgementalism – if, say, all moral and religious points of view are equally “valid”, then we are wrong to judge those who hold different moral and religious views.
This brand of non-judgementalist relativism about truth is widely considered to be eating away at the fabric of Western civilization like a cancer. It is supposed to be deeply destructive – resulting in a culture of selfish, shallow individualism in which personal preference trumps everything and, ultimately, anything goes.
Relativism is certainly commonly supposed to have infected the young. Schools are often blamed. Marianne Talbot of Brasenose College Oxford, says about her students that they
have been taught to think their opinion is no better than anyone else’s, that there is no truth, only truth-for-me. I come across this relativist view constantly – in exams, in discussion and in tutorials – and I find it frightening: to question it amounts, in the eyes of the young, to the belief that it is permissible to impose your views on others. (quoted in Phillips, 1997, p. 221)
The U.S. academic Allan Bloom writes:
[t]here is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative. (Bloom, 1987, p. 25)
The new Pontiff is also deeply concerned. He says,
We are moving towards a dictatorship of relativism which does not recognize anything as for certain and which has as its highest goal one's own ego and one's own desires. (Ratzinger 2005)
Relativism even gets the blame for the rise of dangerously rigid political and religious dogmas. Just last week, it was reported that the Ministry of Defence believes that
the trend towards moral relativism and increasingly pragmatic values [is causing] more rigid belief systems, including religious orthodoxy and doctrinaire political ideologies, such as popularism and Marxism. (quoted in Baginni, 2007)
Interestingly, when Nick Tate, head of the UK’s QCAA (the U.K. body responsible for devising and assessing the national curriculum) introduced compulsory classes in citizenship for all pupils attending state-funded schools, he was explicit that one of his chief concerns was to “slay the dragon of relativism”. (Tate, 1996)
So, relativism is supposed to be rampant. But where did it come from?
The roots of relativism
In the minds of many, the blame lies with the Enlightenment and the 1960’s.Take the U.K.’s Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks, for example. He finds particular fault with the Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant provides the classic definition of Enlightenment. He says individuals should think independently and make their own judgement, rather than defer more or less uncritically to some external authority:
[Enlightenment is the] emergence of man from his self-imposed infancy. Infancy is the inability to use one’s reason without the guidance of another. It is self-imposed, when it depends on a deficiency, not of reason, but of the resolve and courage to use it without external guidance. Thus
the watchword of enlightenment is: Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own reason!(quoted in Honderich, 1995, entry on Enlightenment))
It is no coincidence that “Sapere” and “Aude” have been adopted as the names of two philosophy-for-children organizations.
The Chief Rabbi considers Kant’s thinking dangerous. He says that
according to Kant…[t]o do something because others do, or because of habit or custom or even Divine Command, is to accept an external authority over the one sovereign territory that is truly our own: our own choices. The moral being for Kant is by definition an autonomous being, a person who accepts no other authority than the self. By the 1960s this was beginning to gain hold as an educational orthodoxy. The task of education is not to hand on a tradition but to enhance the consciousness of choice. (Sacks 1997, p. 176)
It’s this Kantian rejection of any external moral authority that might decide right and wrong for us - Kant’s insistence on the moral autonomy of the individual - that is the root cause of our problems. It’s here that we find the origin of today’s relativism. For to teach in accordance with Kant’s thinking, says Sacks, requires,
…non-judgementalism and relativism on the part of the teacher” (Ibid.)
Melanie Phillips concurs. “It seems reasonable,” she says “to regard the Enlightenment as the defining moment for the collapse of external authority” (Phillips, 1996, p. 189) The problem with Enlightenment thinking, argues Phillips, is that
instead of authority being located “out there” in a body of knowledge handed down through the centuries, we have repositioned it “in here” within each child. (Phillips, 1996, p. 28)
Because each individual “has become their own individual arbiter of conduct” so relativism and the view that “no-one else [is] permitted to pass judgement” have become the norm.
For Sacks, Phillips, and many other religious conservatives,
Kant’s “Sapere Aude!” – the battle cry of the Enlightenment – lies at the very heart of the West’s “moral malaise”.It is not surprising, then, that Phillips would oppose the IPPR’s recommendations that children be encouraged to think critically about their own religious beliefs and traditions.
According to Sacks, Phillips, and very many others,
encouraging children to think independently, particularly about moral and religious matters, is precisely what got us into the awful mess in which we now find ourselves. They believe the time has come to move back in the direction of the traditional, authority-based moral and religious education that tended to predominate before the 60’s.
Philosophy in the classroom promotes relativism?
I have sketched out just one of the many reasons social and religious conservatives will give when explaining their hostility to the suggestion that all children ought to be encouraged and trained to think critically even about moral and religious beliefs. Such encouragement, they claim, promotes relativism. But need it?
No. In my book The War For Children’s Minds, I deal with this sort of objection – as well as many others – in much greater detail. Here I will merely sketch out three very obvious reasons why to encourage and teach children to think critically even about morality and religion need not entail the promotion of relativism and non-judgementalism.
1. Relativism entails no point to thinking critically. If relativism were true, there would be no point in engaging in the kind of critical thinking that proponents of philosophy in schools recommend. For if relativism is true, the belief that you arrive at after much very carefully critical thought will be no more true than the one you started with. Those who recommend we think critically about the Big Questions – including moral and religious questions – even from a young age are, in effect, opposed to relativism insofar as they think that this sort of activity is able to get us closer to the truth.
2. Philosophy can combat relativism. Secondly, a children’s philosophy programme is free to include critical discussion of relativism. A little close critical scrutiny is able pretty quickly to reveal precisely why the usual politically-motivated arguments for relativism (such as that only relativists can promote tolerance) are, frankly, awful. I believe children should have the failings of moral relativism explained to them. That should form part of their education.
3. Relativism and respect for religious authority. Thirdly, there’s at least anecdotal evidence that, rather than relativism being a product of a thinking, questioning culture, embracing relativism may be a strategy teachers embrace in order to avoid thinking critically about – and, in particular, questioning the authority of – any given religious tradition. If a teacher is required to teach a range of faiths, children are likely to spot that they contradict each other, and will inevitably ask, “Which is actually true? Is Jesus God, as Christians claim, or merely a prophet, as Muslims claim?” Suggest that one religion must be mistaken and phone calls may ensue (“My daughter has been told the Pope might be mistaken”).
Embracing relativism provides teachers with an easy escape from this dilemma. They can say “That Jesus is God is true-for-Christians, but false-for-Muslims”. Religious relativism conveniently makes all religious beliefs come out as true.As Marilyn Mason (former chief education officer for the British Humanist Association) here explains, rather than promoting relativism, clear philosophical thinking is actually well placed to combat this sort of shoddy, relativistic thinking.
I used to wonder where my students’ shoulder shrugging relativism and subjectivism about knowledge came from, though I think I now know: talk of “different truths” or “subjective truth” seems to have become the accepted RE way of demonstrating tolerance and mutual respect when confronted with differing and sometimes conflicting beliefs and views on morality or the supernatural… Here is an area where the clear thinking characteristic of philosophy at its best would surely help. (Mason, 2005, p. 37)
Regarding the last two points, I should add, incidentally, that I do not mean that children should simply be told that they must more-or-less uncritically accept that relativism is twaddle. The idea is not to encourage independent critical thought about everything… except, er, relativism. But I see no reason why children cannot be given the very good arguments against relativism (which, presented correctly, are both engaging and fairly easy to grasp) to reflect on at an appropriate stage in their development.
I should perhaps also add that the kind of philosophy programme I would recommend is not, then, an exclusively hands-off affair in which topics are always chosen by children, in which children are never taught basic skills, positions and styles of argument, and in which the supposedly “philosophical” discussion is allowed to take the form of little more than a free association of ideas, with little, if any, logical structure or rigour.
While I am enthusiastic about class discussions on the P4C (Philosophy4Children) model (which are often excellent), I think they probably need to be paired at some stage with some teaching of the basic skills, arguments and positions – including relativism. (This is not to say I favour a dry semi-academic approach either – I think we need to develop new, engaging ways of teaching skills, arguments and positions.)
I don’t deny, of course, that this sort of teaching would need to be carried out by people who are at least reasonably competent in the area, by teachers who, for example, are well-versed in the arguments for and against relativism. Nor do I deny that an intellectually flabby “philosophy for children” programme might inadvertently end up promoting relativism. But there is certainly no necessity that philosophy in the classroom should promote relativism. As I say,
done correctly, philosophy in the classroom is actually well-placed to combat the kind of relativism that is allegedly carrying Western civilization to hell in a hand basket.
A parental right to a philosophy-free religious and moral education?
Now let’s turn to the second objection I mentioned at the beginning of this section – that parents have a right to send their child to a school where their religious beliefs will not be subjected to critical scrutiny.
Of course, many who favour philosophy in schools will agree with this. They may say, “I believe philosophy in schools is a very good idea, but I don’t think it should be forced on religious parents if they don’t want it.”
My view is that the IPPR recommendations are sound: all children should, without exception, be encouraged to think critically – and thus philosophically – even about the moral and religious beliefs they bring with them into the classroom. Religious parents should not be able to opt out.
I am not going to attempt to make much of a positive case for that perhaps rather illiberal-sounding assertion here. I will simply offer a challenge to those who, like Phillips and the Daily Telegraph, believe that schools that promote a religious faith in a wholly uncritical way are acceptable.
Suppose political schools started springing up – a neoconservative school in Billericay followed by a communist school in Middlesbrough.Suppose these schools select pupils on the basis of parents’ political beliefs. Suppose they start each morning with the collective singing of political anthems. Suppose portraits of their political leaders beam down from every classroom wall. Suppose they insist that pupils accept, more or less uncritically, the beliefs embodied in their revered political texts. If such schools did spring up, there would be outrage. These establishments would be accused of educationally stunting children, forcing their minds into politically pre-approved moulds. They’re the kind of Orwellian schools you find under totalitarian regimes in places like Stalinist Russia.
My question is, if such political schools are utterly unacceptable, if they are guilty of educationally stunting children, why on Earth are so many of us still prepared to tolerate their religious equivalents?Why, if we cross out "political" and write "religious", do these schools suddenly strike many of us as entirely acceptable?
Assuming that Phillips and the Daily Telegraph would consider such political schools unacceptable (irrespective of the desire of parents to send their children to them), the onus is surely on them to explain why we should consider their religious equivalents rather more acceptable – indeed, even desirable.
One move they might make would be to say that our political beliefs are clearly far too practically important – they are far too likely to have a concrete impact in terms of the kind of society we live in – to be left in the hands of the indoctrinators. Religious beliefs, on the other hand, are more other-worldly, and so less of a concern.
But this would be to overlook that religious beliefs are often intensely political. Clearly, religious points of view on homosexuality, charity, a woman’s place in the home, abortion, the State of Israel, jihad, and even poverty and injustice, are all political. There are few aspects of religious belief that don’t have an important political dimension.
In which case, my challenge becomes sharper still: if such authoritarian political schools are unacceptable, then why are their religious equivalents acceptable, particularly as these religious schools are, in effect, highly political?
Conclusion
I see no reason why an enlightened, liberal approach to moral and religious education of the sort recommended by the IPPR cannot be conducted in religiously-affiliated schools. It is not incompatible with a religious upbringing. Teachers at a Christian school, for example, might say “This is what we believe, and these are the reasons why we believe it. Obviously we would like you to believe it to, but not just because we tell you to. We want you to think and question and make up your own minds.”
A school can have a strong Christian ethos even while encouraging independent critical thought- indeed, even while promoting philosophy in the classroom.
I don’t yet see that the appeal to relativism and parental rights justifies either the conclusion that philosophy in the religious classroom is largely undesirable or the conclusion that it be made, at most, an optional extra.
PART TWO: Reasons and causes
In this second part of this chapter, I want to make a well-known philosophical distinction – that between reasons and causes – and then draw out a couple of conclusions concerning philosophy in the classroom.
Reasons and causes
People’s beliefs can be shaped in two very different ways, as illustrated by the two different ways we might answer the question “Why does Jane believe what she does?”
First, we might offer Jane’s reasons and justifications – the grounds of her belief. Why does Jane believe our CO2 gas emissions are causing global warming? Well, she has seen the figures on how much CO2 we are putting into the atmosphere, and she has seen the graphs based on Antarctic ice cores showing how global temperatures have closely tracked CO2 levels over the last 600,000 years. So, concludes Jane on the basis of this evidence, the rising temperatures are very probably a result of our CO2 emissions.
Another example: why does Jane believe there is a pencil on the table in front of her? Because there appears to be a pencil there. She remembers just putting a pencil there. And she has no reason to suppose that there’s anything funny going on (that she’s hallucinating, the victim of an optical illusion, or whatever).
Of course, explaining why someone believes something by giving their grounds or reasons is not yet to say that they are good reasons. Mary may believe she will meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger because that’s what a psychic hotline told her.
So we can explain beliefs by giving people’s reasons. But this is not the only way in which beliefs can be explained. Suppose John believes he is a teapot. Why? Because John attended a hypnotist’s stage-show last night. John was pulled out of the audience and hypnotized into believing he is a teapot. The hypnotist forgot to un-hypnotize him, and so John is still stuck with that belief.
Of course, John needn’t be aware of the true explanation of why he believes he is a teapot. He may not remember being hypnotized. If we ask him to justify his belief, he may find himself oddly unable. He may simply find himself stuck with it. He may well say, with utter conviction, that he just knows he is a teapot. In fact, because such non-inferentially-held beliefs are usually perceptual beliefs, it may seem to John that he can see he’s a teapot. “Look!” he may say, sticking out his arms “Here’s my handle and here’s my spout!”
So we can explain beliefs by giving a person’s reasons, grounds and justifications, and we can explain beliefs by giving purely causal explanations (I say purely causal, as reasons can be causes too [see for example Davidson, 1963)).
Purely causal explanations range from, say, being hypnotized or brainwashed to caving in to peer pressure or wishful thinking. These mechanisms may even include, say, being genetically predisposed to having certain sorts of belief (it has been suggested by Daniel Dennett (2006) and others that we are, for example, genetically predisposed to religious belief).
Of course, both kinds of explanation may be relevant when it comes to explaining why Sophie believes that P. Sophie may believe that P in part because there is some evidence for P, though not enough to warrant belief in P, and in part because she is, say, biologically predisposed to believe P. It may be that neither factor, by itself, is sufficient to explain Sophie’s belief.
We may well flatter ourselves about just how rational we are. Sometimes, when we believe something, we think we’re simply responding rationally to the evidence, but the truth is we have been manipulated in a purely causal way. I might think I have decided that sexism is wrong because I’ve recognized the inherent rationality of the case against it, when the truth is that I have simply caved in to peer pressure and my unconscious desire to conform.
Brainwashing
So there are two ways in which we might explain belief. There are, correspondingly, at least two ways in which we might seek to induce belief in someone. We might attempt to make a rational case, try to persuade them by means of evidence and cogent argument. Or we might take the purely causal route and try to hypnotize, apply peer pressure, etc. instead.
One of the most obvious ways of engaging in purely causal manipulation of what people believe is, of course, brainwashing. Kathleen Taylor, a research scientist in physiology at the University of Oxford who has published a study of brainwashing, writes that five core techniques consistently show up:
One striking fact about brainwashing is its consistency. Whether the context is a prisoner of war camp, a cult’s headquarters or a radical mosque, five core techniques keep cropping up: isolation, control, uncertainty, repetition and emotional manipulation. (Taylor, 2005)
The isolation may involve physical isolation or separation. Control covers restricting the information and range of views people have access to, and includes censorship. Cults tend endlessly to repeat their beliefs to potential converts. This repetition may include, for example, very regular communal chanting or singing. Under uncertainty, Taylor discusses the discomfort we feel when presented with uncertainty: by providing a simple set of geometric certainties that cover and explain everything, and also constantly reminding people of the vagaries and chaos of what lies outside this belief system, cultists can make their system seem increasingly attractive. Emotional manipulation can take many forms – most obviously the associating of positive feelings and images (e.g. uplifting or serenely smiling icons) with the belief system, and fear and uncertainty with the alternatives.
Of course, the extent to which these techniques are applied varies from cult to cult. Clearly, they are also applied by non-religious cults and regimes. A school in Mao’s China or under the present regime in North Korea would almost certainly check all five boxes.
I note (though Taylor doesn’t), simply as a point of fact, that religious schools of the sort that tended to predominate in this country up until the 1960’s also very clearly check all five boxes.
That these and other purely causal mechanisms are effective at influencing belief even outside a cult’s headquarters or a prisoner of war camp is surely undeniable. We are all very heavily influenced by them. The success of the advertizing industry is testimony to their effectiveness. Indeed, many advertising campaigns check many, if not all, of Taylor’s five boxes for brainwashing.
When challenged on this, the industry typically insists that it is primarily concerned with “informing” the public - providing good reasons and evidence on which consumers can base a rational and informed choice. Nevertheless the main tools of the advertizing trade are for the most part purely causal. An advertisement for soap powder, lipstick, a car or a loan typically contains very little factual information or argument. The power of these adverts to shape our thinking and behaviour is mostly purely causal – they play on our uncertainties and rely very heavily on repetition and emotional manipulation.
The question of balance
That such purely causal mechanisms are going to shape what people believe is something that is, to some extent, unavoidable. Even in a very liberal educational setting in which philosophy is involved, there will inevitably be many purely causal factors also influencing belief. Certainly, we should admit that a classroom is not wholly given over to the space of reasons. All sorts of causal and psychological pressures are applied, knowingly and unknowingly, within a school. This may even, to a very significant extent, be desirable.
The question is how these purely causal influences should be balanced against giving reasons and justifications, encouraging rational reflection, and so on.
Now I would suggest that the extent to which religious people tend to favour or oppose the introduction of philosophy in the classroom (and the extent to which they would recommend a return to more traditional religious educational methods) tends to a very large extent to correspond with the degree to which they prefer reliance on techniques that are, in effect, purely causal.
Philosophy in the classroom is of course about thinking critically and independently about many of the same issues in which religion has a stake. Free and open discussion, in which all views are open to close critical scrutiny (religious views included) means operating within what Wilfred Sellars called “the logical space of reasons” (Sellars, 1956, p. 169)
On the other hand, while traditional religious education might also involve a degree of free discussion (typically within certain parameters: children may be subtly or not so subtly steered away from asking certain sorts of question or making certain sorts of point), it was generally orientated far more towards purely causal techniques of influencing belief. Daily repetitive acts of worship, repetitive prayer, isolation from other belief systems (including physical isolation from those who hold them), control over the range of materials children have access to (such as writings critical of that faith), the punishment of those who dare to question (a colleague of mine educated in a Catholic School in the 1960’s was punished simply for asking why the Catholic Church opposed contraception) and emotional manipulation (associating “all things bright and beautiful” with the faith, images of moral chaos and hell with the alternatives) – these techniques were the mainstay of religious education.
So while every style of moral and religious education inevitably involves a blend of both engaging children’s rational, critical faculties and (whether or not intentionally) applying purely causal mechanisms, one of the fundamental issues dividing proponents of philosophy in the classroom from religious traditionalists is how these two ingredients should be balanced.
Truth-sensitivity
I want now to look at some of the ways in which reason-involving educational methods differ from purely causal mechanisms for shaping belief. Let’s begin with truth-sensitivity.
One interesting fact about these two ways of getting someone to believe something is that, generally speaking , only one is truth-sensitive.
The purely causal mechanisms of isolation, control, repetition, uncertainty and emotional manipulation, for example, can be used to induce the belief that Paris is the capital of France. But they can just as easily be applied to induce the beliefs that Paris is the capital of Germany and that Big Brother loves you.
The attractive thing about appealing to someone’s power of reason, by contrast, is that it strongly favours beliefs that are true. Cogent argument doesn’t easily lend itself to inducing false beliefs. You are going to have a hard time trying to construct a strong, well-reasoned case capable of withstanding critical scrutiny for believing that Swindon is inhabited by giant wasp-men or that the Earth’s core is made of cheese.
Sound reasoning and critical thought tend to act as a filter on false beliefs. Of course, the filter is not foolproof – false beliefs will inevitably get through. But it does tend to allow into a person’s mind only those beliefs that have at least a fairly good chance of being correct.
Indeed, unlike the purely causal techniques of inducing belief discussed above, the use of reason is a double-edged sword. It cuts both ways. It doesn’t automatically favour the teacher’s beliefs over the pupil’s. It favours the truth, and so places the teacher and the pupil on a level playing field. If, as a teacher, you try to use reason to persuade, you may discover your pupil can show that it is you, and not them, that is mistaken. That’s a risk some “educators” are not prepared to take.
Causal vs normative determination
Some post-modern thinkers insist, of course, that “reason” is a term used to dignify what is, in reality, merely another purely causal mechanism for influencing belief, alongside brainwashing and indoctrination. Reason is no more sensitive to the “truth” than these other mechanisms (for of course there is really no truth for it to be sensitive to). Reason is, in reality, just another form of power – of thought-control. It is essentially as manipulative as any other mechanism.
But this is to overlook the fact that while a rational argument can in a sense “force” a conclusion on you, the “force” involved is normative, not causal.
Causal determination determines what will happen. For example, given the causal power of these rails to direct this train, the train will go Oxford. Indeed, it is causally forced or compelled to. Normative determination, on the other hand, determines not what will happen, but what ought to. It is an entirely distinct kind of determination involving an entirely different sort of “compulsion” or “force”.
A rational argument shows you what you ought to believe if you want to avoid contradiction and give your beliefs the best chance of being true. Take this valid deductive argument:
All men smell
John is a man
Therefore, John smells.
To recognise that this argument is valid, is just to recognize that if you believe that all men smell, and that John is a man, then you ought to believe that John smells. But of course this argument doesn’t causally compel you to accept that conclusion even if you do accept the premises. You’re free to be irrational.
This isn't to deny that rational arguments have causal power. Of course they do. A good argument can have the power to change history (consider the wonderful arguments of Galileo, or the campaigner against slavery William Wilberforce). But when rational arguments have the causal power to shape people’s thinking, they typically have it as a result of their having normative power. People change their opinions precisely because they recognize the normative force of the argument.
[Notice, by the way, that we can easily demonstrate that a rational argument doesn’t have normative power simply in virtue of its having the causal power to shape people’s thinking (though critics who fail to understand the difference between normative and causal determination or "force" typically miss this point). The obvious counter-example is fallacious argument. A fallacious argument lacks any normative power. But notice that, if the fallacy is seductive, it will still have considerable causal power to shape belief.]
So rational arguments have causal powers. But that is not to say that rational argument is in reality just another purely causal mechanism alongside e.g. brainwashing and peer pressure.
So far, I have stressed how rational argument differs from purely causal mechanisms for influencing belief. In particular, rational argument is truth-sensitive, while purely causal mechanisms are typically not. Also, rational arguments, while possessing causal power to shape belief, typically have this power in virtue of their normative power. The kind of “determination” a rational argument “imposes” on us is, in the first instance, normative, not causal. Rational argument is certainly not a form of coercion or manipulation in the way that purely causal mechanisms are.
Let’s now develop that last point a little further. As I explain below, it seems to me that rational arguments allow for a form of freedom in a way that purely causal mechanisms do not.
Reason and freedom
Enlightenment liberals like myself tend to feel uncomfortable about heavy reliance on purely causal mechanisms. Here’s one reason why.
When you use reason to persuade, you respect the other’s freedom to make (or fail to make) a rational decision. When you apply purely causal mechanisms, you take that freedom from them. Your subject may think they’ve made an entirely free and rational decision, of course, but the truth is that they’re your puppet – you’re pulling their strings. In effect, by ditching reason and relying on purely causal mechanisms – peer pressure, emotional manipulation, repetition, and so on – you are now treating them as just one more bit of the causally-manipulatable natural order – as mere things.
On one of the formulations of his categorical imperative, Kant says that we ought always to treat both others and ourselves always as ends in themselves, and never purely as means to an end. We should not treat others or ourselves in an entirely instrumental way, as we might treat a screwdriver or car, to get the result we want. We should have “respect for persons” – for their the inherent freedom and rationality, which, according to Kant, is what distinguishes them from mere things.
Here’s an illustration (not Kant’s) of the kind of respect Kant has in mind. Suppose I need food to feed my starving children. I might get food from the local shop by lying – by saying that I will pay for it next week knowing full well that I won’t. Or I might try to get food by honestly explaining my situation to the shopkeeper and hoping she will be charitable. In both cases, I “use” the shopkeeper to get what I want. But, unlike the first option, the second does not involve using the shopkeeper purely as a means to an end. I respect her rationality and freedom to make her own decision about whether to provide food without payment. Kant says that only the second option shows the shopkeeper the proper respect she is due as a person. The first treats her purely instrumentally, as if she were merely a thing.
Avoiding the purely causal route so far as influencing the beliefs of others is concerned is, presumably, one of the things that Kant would insist on. Indeed, if Kant is right, it seems that reliance on purely causal mechanisms to shape belief also involves a fundamental lack of respect for persons.
How to influence belief?
It is undeniable that, as educators, we do want to influence children’s beliefs. Influencing beliefs is not all there is to education, not by a very long way. But that this is one of the things we are interested in doing in the classroom is surely undeniable. We don’t want to send children out into the world believing that a woman’s place is behind the sink, that it’s morally acceptable to torture animals, that Jewish people are untrustworthy, or that the entire universe is just six thousand years old. Well I don’t, anyway.
So let’s admit that we want to influence what children believe . The question is: how?
My central aim in the second part of this paper has been to show how the philosophical distinction between reasons and causes can help illuminate this question. We have seen that rational argument differs from taking the purely causal route in at least three important ways:
(i) it is truth-sensitive (whereas purely causal mechanisms typically are not)
(ii) while rational arguments can be causally powerful, their causal power typically derives from their normative power – which is a categorically distinct non-causal form of “power”.
(iii) Rational argument allows for an important form of freedom - a freedom that the purely causal mechanisms actually strips from us.
We have also seen that religious traditionalists lean rather more towards purely causal mechanisms for influencing belief then do proponents of philosophy in the classroom. Indeed, this is one of the fundamental issues, perhaps the fundamental issue, dividing them.
How the distinction can illuminate the debate
To finish, I want to provide a couple of examples of how thinking about the debate between proponents of philosophy in the classroom and religious traditionalists in these terms might shed some light on some of the arguments offered on either side.
1. A temptation
First, the distinction makes a little clearer, perhaps, why taking the purely causal route can be tempting. When you open up debate and critical discussion, you run the risk that people won’t believe what you want them to believe. If we suppose that certain beliefs are very important indeed, perhaps even vital for the survival of Western civilization, well then the temptation to take the purely causal route can become very strong indeed.
For example, some argue that, whether or not religious belief is true, it is socially necessary. Remove it, and society will eventually fall apart. So we must rely on traditional religious education to instill it. Bring reason into religious education, and, given its truth-detecting power, the dubiousness of religious belief might be exposed. The results may be disastrous. So philosophy in the classroom – and certainly in the classoom where religion is discussed – is a bad, if not downright dangerous, idea. Many American neo-conservatives take this view.
At least some of these kinds of concern deserve to be taken seriously.
2. Muddling reasons and causes
Secondly, a failure properly to understand this distinction may lead defenders of traditional religious educational techniques to think that their methods are, in essence, really not so very different to what proponents of philosophy in the classroom have in mind. At bottom, aren’t both really just forms of causing-people-to-believe-what-you-want-them-to-believe? As we saw above, Melanie Phillips considers what the IPPR proposes (critical scrutiny of religious beliefs in the classroom) to be, just “another attempt at ideological indoctrination”. In Phillips’ mind, philosophy in the classroom is not an alternative to indoctrination. It’s just a different kind of indoctrination.
It is certainly in the interests of religious opponents of philosophy in the classroom to obscure the distinction between educating within the logical space of reasons, and educating via the purely causal route. In particular, it is in their interests to obscure the fact that the distinction raises some very fundamental questions about freedom, and also about what Kant calls “respect for persons”.
That many proponents of traditional religious educational methods (who would oppose philosophy in the classroom) fail fully to realize the extent to which they are applying purely causal mechanisms to induce belief is also indicated by the fact that when the beliefs in question are political, not religious and when the techniques are applied in political schools rather than religious schools, they consider these same techniques “brain-washing”.
That many of the faithful simply don’t recognize that their preferred educational methods come at least very close to brainwashing is, I suspect, largely due to fact that - within the religious setting of convent schools, madrassas, etc. and, of course, within their own upbringing (“After all, it never did me any harm”) - these techniques have acquired the rosy glow of comfortable familiarity.
REFERENCES
Asch, S. (1951) “Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgments”, in Guetzkow, H. (1951), pp. 177-190.
Baginni, J. (2007) “What The Clash of Civilizations is Really About”, The Guardian 14th April.
Bloom, A. (1987) The Closing of The American Mind, New York: Touchstone.
Davidson, D. (1963) “Actions, Reasons and Causes”, The Journal of Philosophy, vol. 60, No. 23, pp. 685-700
Dennett, D. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, Viking (Penguin).
Feigl, H, and Scriven, M. (1956) The Foundations of Science and the Concepts of Psychoanalysis, Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Vol. I, Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Guetzkow, H. (Ed.) (1951) Groups, Leadership and Men: Research in Human Relations, Pittsburgh: Carnegie Press.
Hand, M. (2004) ‘What is RE for?’, in the IPPR Event Report What is Religious Education for? Getting the National Framework Right, (http://www.ippr.org/uploadedFiles/projects/RE%20Event%20Report%20-%20FINAL%20for%20pdf.PDF).
Honderich, T. (1995) The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Mason, M. (2005) “Philosophy – can’t live with it, can’t live without it”, THINK, issue10, p. 37
Phillips, M. (1996) All Must Have Prizes, London: Warner Books.
Phillips, M. (2004) http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/000330.html.
Ratzinger J. (Cardinal) (2005)Homily at the mass for the election of the Roman Pontiff. 18th April.
Sacks J. (1997) The Politics of Hope, London: Jonathan Cape.
Sellars, W. (1956) "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind", in Feigl and Scriven (1956) pp 127-196.
Tate, N. (1996) Speech to the SCAA, 15th January
Taylor, K. (2005) “Thought Crime” The Guardian, 8th October.
Why knowledge of other faiths is not enough
Jul 03, 2008 10:45:00 GMT
Many seem to think that, so long as a faith school is providing children with knowledge of other faiths, that's good enough.
It isn't. Here are 3 reasons why:
1. For a start, knowledge of other faiths does not necessarily lead to a reduction in friction between faiths. In fact, often the most vicious and violent religious conflicts are between groups with detailed knowledge with what the other believes, e.g. Catholic vs. Protestant; Shia vs. Sunni.
Mere knowledge of other faiths does not produce tolerance and respect. Actual interaction with members of other faiths (and none), on the other hand, probably does have a beneficial effect.
2. Mere knowledge of other faiths, in the absence of any robust critical thinking about faith, often also promotes a very intellectually flabby sort of relativism. Pupils presented with a range of faiths are likely to realize that, as these faiths all contradict each other, most of them (perhaps all of them) must be largely false.
Teachers who want to avoid endorsing this conclusion may be tempted to sidestep the issue by taking a relativist stance: "Well, that Jesus is God is true for Christians, but false for Muslims". Relativism conveniently makes the religious beliefs of all believers come out as "true"!
3. Most importantly,
unless children acquire the sort of critical thinking skills and robust intellectual defences that I'm arguing all schools, religious or not, should foster (and which traditional religious eduction often works so hard to suppress) schools provide the perfect, gullible fodder for the charlatans, snake oil salesmen, cultists and religious zealots waiting outside the school gates.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Stephen Law's speech on religious schools - 7 May 2008 - 4
Example of moral society without supernatural deity handing down morals is Confuscian secular societies. Study Religiousity - most religious countries had more problems with homicide. Evidence does not support mantra that without religion things would fall apart. Implicit pressure by teachers on children not to question the dogma is bad.
Saturday, May 03, 2008
British Humanist Association calls for changes in Primary Curriculum
via Suffolk Humanists & Securalists
British Humanist Association calls for changes in Primary Curriculum
The British Humanist Association (BHA) today made a submission to the DCSF’s Rose Review of the Primary Curriculum, calling for a reform of religious education (RE), a focus on the development of morals, values and social interaction, inclusive assemblies and the teaching of evolution and scientific method in all primary schools.
Andrew Copson, BHA Director of Education and Public Affairs, said, ‘Our submission to the Primary Review incorporates a vital and large part of our work in education – the reform of the primary curriculum to suit better the needs of all children, and to ensure that primary education is inclusive and consistent across all maintained schools.’
Mr Copson continued, ‘In our submission, we make clear the need to reform RE to be a national curriculum subject involving learning about religious and non-religious worldviews, and to promote critical thinking skills. We call for Citizenship Education to be made a statutory part of the curriculum and we make the case, again, for the urgent need to replace divisive compulsory collective worship with inclusive assemblies.’
For further comment or
Read the British Humanist Association’s submission to the Rose Review of the Primary Curriculum here .
www.humanismforschools.org.uk is the first stage of a BHA project for 2008/9 which aims to provide resources not just to teachers but also to teacher trainers, student, parents and governors.
Read the BHA’s policy on religion and schools A Better Way Forward here .
Friday, February 29, 2008
Richard Dawkins Barry Sheerman MP on The Big Debate - RE in Schools
Andrew Copson (BHA Director of Education) and Maryam Namazie.(Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain - video) are guest speakers.
Richard Dimbleby to RD 'does a god shaped perspective or set of values do any harm to the way children should be taught in schools? RD quotes Ten Commandments ' Thou shall have no other god before me; thou shalt make no graven image; thou shalt keep the Sabbath holy. What on earth has that got to do with morals? Thats 3 of the 10 commandments. It would be deeply depressing if the only way children could get moral values was from religion either from scripture or from a being afraid of god - being intimidated by god - anybody who is good for those two reasons is not being really good at all.
Why not teach children the 'Golden Rule' - do unto others as you would be done unto you. How would you like it if other children did that to you? So why do you do it to them? It is depressing if you have to suggest that anybody needs god to be moral. I would hope that our morals come from a better source than that and that they are genuinely moral rather than based on outmoded scripture or based on fear.'
RD 'What is the penalty for apostacy?'
Answer: Under Sharia Law the penalty is death .. but in the UK we do not live under Sharia Law.
Richard Dimbleby to RD 'does a god shaped perspective or set of values do any harm to the way children should be taught in schools? RD quotes Ten Commandments ' Thou shall have no other god before me; thou shalt make no graven image; thou shalt keep the Sabbath holy. What on earth has that got to do with morals? Thats 3 of the 10 commandments. It would be deeply depressing if the only way children could get moral values was from religion either from scripture or from a being afraid of god - being intimidated by god - anybody who is good for those two reasons is not being really good at all.
Why not teach children the 'Golden Rule' - do unto others as you would be done unto you. How would you like it if other children did that to you? So why do you do it to them? It is depressing if you have to suggest that anybody needs god to be moral. I would hope that our morals come from a better source than that and that they are genuinely moral rather than based on outmoded scripture or based on fear.'
RD 'What is the penalty for apostacy?'
Answer: Under Sharia Law the penalty is death .. but in the UK we do not live under Sharia Law.
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Alternate video link (thanks to Bill Pugsley):
http://www.teachers.tv/video/24057
Jonathan Dimbleby and a panel of experts come together to debate the controversial subject of religion in Britain's schools.
The role of religion in education is a subject rarely out of the headlines. Despite Britain's multi-faith society, schools are still required to include a collective act of worship of a Christian nature, while faith schools and religious academies have raised fears about community cohesion and covert selection.
Claims by some religious educationalists that faith is the best way to teach moral values is challenged by others in schools who believe religious morality to be outdated and dangerous.
Dimbleby is joined by Professor Richard Dawkins, Schools Select Committee chairman Barry Sheerman MP, and a multi-faith studio audience.
http://www.teachers.tv/video/24057
Jonathan Dimbleby and a panel of experts come together to debate the controversial subject of religion in Britain's schools.
The role of religion in education is a subject rarely out of the headlines. Despite Britain's multi-faith society, schools are still required to include a collective act of worship of a Christian nature, while faith schools and religious academies have raised fears about community cohesion and covert selection.
Claims by some religious educationalists that faith is the best way to teach moral values is challenged by others in schools who believe religious morality to be outdated and dangerous.
Dimbleby is joined by Professor Richard Dawkins, Schools Select Committee chairman Barry Sheerman MP, and a multi-faith studio audience.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Thought For The World - Stewart Lee - Teach all religion as myths to children
Stewart Lee
Thought for the day - Tuesday
Original audio source
http://www.thoughtfortheworld.org/pdf/transcript_SL.pdf
Thought For The Day Transcript
Stewart Lee 13th February
Last year, as I crossed a picket-line of religious protesters trying to ban a theatre piece I’d cowritten, a phrase popped unbidden into my head. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Few would disagree that the stories and sayings of religions and myths are an unavoidable part of the imaginative fabric of our daily lives, whether one accepts them as literal truth or not. From Jesus’ wise words to his tormentors on the cross, to Odysseus’ cunning use of the Trojan Horse,
Last month, at The Bush theatre in London, I performed a one-man show about the last week of Jesus’ life, as seen through the eyes of his disciple Judas. On some nights, I was aware of the predictable and menacing presence of believers looking to object, but I also had lots of positive feedback from thoughtful priests and enthusiastic secularists alike.
Two years ago, right-wing Christian fundamentalists closed down the theatre piece I co-wrote, Jerry Springer The Opera, due to its religious content. Ongoing attempts to take us to court for blasphemy, and a general doubt over religious freedom of expression introduced by the government's failed Incitement To Religious Hatred bill led to the collapse of the Opera as a financially or artistically viable entity.
So given this, why return to religious themes for a new work? Well, it’s thirty years now since half of the population, as one, watched The Morecambe and Wise Christmas show together at the same time, and even longer since the majority of the nation claimed to believe in the same God, or indeed any God indeed. We live in a society where common ground is increasingly hard to find, where communal points of reference are increasingly rare. Multi-channel media narrowcasts to ever-more focused demographics rather than broadcasting to broad ones.
But what better way is there to look at, as we did in the opera for example, the most essential notions of good and evil than through the Christian vision of heaven and hell in conflict, what better known tale of betrayal is there than the story of Judas and Jesus?
Believers say religious stories survive because they are literally true, but even rationalists accept that religious tales, myths and folk-stories, while not always actually true, can be true in terms of what they tell us about human experience. As rationalists, we should be careful, in trying to block religious education in its most pernicious forms, that we do not prevent young people from accessing a treasure trove of invaluable material. As I travelled the country defending the opera, meatheads made the banal point that we would not have used the Koran in the same way as we appropriated the bible. They attributed this to fear, which is understandable, but ignored the fact that there would be little point in using Islamic stories as a short cut to bigger ideas, when they are not commonly understood by most people in the
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2007 Humanist Society of Scotland
http://www.thoughtfortheworld.org/pdf/transcript_SL.pdf
Thought For The Day Transcript
Stewart Lee 13th February
Last year, as I crossed a picket-line of religious protesters trying to ban a theatre piece I’d cowritten, a phrase popped unbidden into my head. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Few would disagree that the stories and sayings of religions and myths are an unavoidable part of the imaginative fabric of our daily lives, whether one accepts them as literal truth or not. From Jesus’ wise words to his tormentors on the cross, to Odysseus’ cunning use of the Trojan Horse,
everyday language is consistently and quietly informed by religion and myth.But should this source material be available as imaginative resources for everyone, or should its usage be restricted?
Last month, at The Bush theatre in London, I performed a one-man show about the last week of Jesus’ life, as seen through the eyes of his disciple Judas. On some nights, I was aware of the predictable and menacing presence of believers looking to object, but I also had lots of positive feedback from thoughtful priests and enthusiastic secularists alike.
Two years ago, right-wing Christian fundamentalists closed down the theatre piece I co-wrote, Jerry Springer The Opera, due to its religious content. Ongoing attempts to take us to court for blasphemy, and a general doubt over religious freedom of expression introduced by the government's failed Incitement To Religious Hatred bill led to the collapse of the Opera as a financially or artistically viable entity.
So given this, why return to religious themes for a new work? Well, it’s thirty years now since half of the population, as one, watched The Morecambe and Wise Christmas show together at the same time, and even longer since the majority of the nation claimed to believe in the same God, or indeed any God indeed. We live in a society where common ground is increasingly hard to find, where communal points of reference are increasingly rare. Multi-channel media narrowcasts to ever-more focused demographics rather than broadcasting to broad ones.
But what better way is there to look at, as we did in the opera for example, the most essential notions of good and evil than through the Christian vision of heaven and hell in conflict, what better known tale of betrayal is there than the story of Judas and Jesus?
Believers say religious stories survive because they are literally true, but even rationalists accept that religious tales, myths and folk-stories, while not always actually true, can be true in terms of what they tell us about human experience. As rationalists, we should be careful, in trying to block religious education in its most pernicious forms, that we do not prevent young people from accessing a treasure trove of invaluable material. As I travelled the country defending the opera, meatheads made the banal point that we would not have used the Koran in the same way as we appropriated the bible. They attributed this to fear, which is understandable, but ignored the fact that there would be little point in using Islamic stories as a short cut to bigger ideas, when they are not commonly understood by most people in the
All Rights Reserved. Copyright © 2007 Humanist Society of Scotland
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Berkshire Humanists - SACRE Education resources
reposted (pdf) from: http://www.s118900929.websitehome.co.uk/Page_8.htm
Chris Street comments are in bright green; highlights in yellow blockquotes.
The document submitted to Berkshire SACRE proposes that children be taught about Humanism
- Key Stage 1
- What alternatives do Humanist offer to the Bible, the Koran and the teachings of the Prophets?
- a dozen questions
- Key Stage 2
- a dozen questions
- Key Stage 3
- a dozen questions
Our interest in the field of education is particularly concerned with the provision of Religious Education (RE) in state schools and prayers in school assemblies. State schools are those that are maintained out of public funds under the control of Local Education Authorities.
A new National Framework for RE in state schools, published by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) in 2004, for the first time recommends the inclusion of Humanism as one of the belief systems that should be taught about in RE.
We want to assist the six Local Authorities and their schools in our area to revise and then implement their RE syllabuses to include Humanism. To that end we seek Humanist representation on their Standing Advisory Councils for RE (SACRE’s).
We have access to the extensive educational resources of the British Humanist Association. In addition to teaching materials we have members who can visit schools to talk about Humanism.
We would like to see the end of prayers in school assembly at the start of the school day. This act of corporate worship is still required by law although it has become impracticable in many schools and the requirement often ignored. In any case, most pupils don’t take it seriously.
Parents are legally entitled to have their children withdrawn from either RE , school prayers or both. We think this is unsatisfactory. It would be far better to remove the problem rather than the children.
Saturday, December 01, 2007
Daniel Dennett Debates Dinesh D'Souza -"God is a manmade invention"
reposted from: http://richarddawkins.net/article,1942,n,n
Chris Street comments / notes are in bright green;
Chris Street comments / notes are in bright green;
highlights in yellow blockquotes.
Thanks to Florian Widder for the links.
This took place at Tufts University on November 30, 2007.
Description:
Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw7J15TeDG4
Is God a human invention? World Christian Enclyopedia - only religion growing is Islam (by birth rate - not by conversions in); Christianity is not growing - but growing louder and agressive; how much more religious is USA than Europe; homicide + abortion + STD+ teen pregranancy - higher in USA than Europe; non-religious (16%) is fastest growing than any religion. Islam (16%) is not as fast growing as non-religious.
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7MGyayvAa8
Dan Dennett: proposes a compulsory 4th R - Religion - education on religion for all children, starting in primary school, in public and private schools and home schooling.
Subjects: History, creed, rituals, music, symbols, ethical commands and prohibitions. That's it! Just tested, non controversial facts that everyone can agree to about the worlds religions.
I believe in freedom of religion. As long as you teach your children the above syllabus you can teach them whatever you want - so long as it does not disable them from informing themselves further.
In a Ted.com speech (Teach all religions: 5-10 minutes) Dan Dennett also proposes ' no particular spin. Democracy depends on an informed consent. Misinformed does not count - like throwing a coin. Children below age of consent are a special case. Parents are stewards of children - you have a responsibility to the world, to the state , to them - to teach your own creed but also ALL the other creeds in the world. Facts only no values. One reviewer called this totalitarian (surely libetarian), another hilarious. Many religions are so anxious to preserve the purity of their faith among their children and so want to keep their children ignorant of other faiths. But it is indefensible to keep your children ignorant of other faiths.
Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgK6M3WRFcc
Religions are human inventions. Not like the telephone but like music or language. Religions have evolved as much in the last 200 years as the last 2000 and will continue to evolve as much in the next 20 years as the last 200 years. Most of the 10,000 new religions have a half life of a few weeks.
There is no one to thank for this wonderful world - just thank Goodness!
Darwins Theory. Trickle down theory. Evolution of God.
Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzUUnjcTkQg
DD: Evolution of God. Risk of world conflagration started by religious leaders in Iran / Pakistan / USA.
Dinesh D'Souza: Religious numbers are growing. Social Darwinson / Nietsche atheism - rise of Nazi. The Inquisition. Atheism regimes (Mao, stalin, pol pot, castro, communism) have produced millions dead.
Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnGGOKDGLYw
Dinesh D'Souza: Darwin - design and no designer, science supports theism, big bang evidence supports that all of matter came into existence at same time, agreeing with Augustine. Why does universe have the values (mass of electron, elecromagetic force) it has? If you touch expansion rate of universe - we would have no universe and no life (S Hawking). Constants are finally tuned for us! Ockhams Razor says that a Creator created the universe. Science decodes the intelligence out of nature? Why does nature obey laws in the first place. Premises of science are based on Christian values.
Part 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcunc_hQ8U8
Dinesh D'Souza: religion is man made, no evidence of life after death - impossible to have this. Evidence arguement is hubristic. (Dinesh fails to understand evolving nature of science) Nature (eg stones) and human nature (free will, choice, feelings, consciousness). Everything in Dennetts world has to be reduced to materialism. Both are agnostics. Faith is rational based on science. Pascals Wager. We are product of divine intelligence and divine love.
Part 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SryFVhNfvow
who created god? Trickle down theory. How did we get here. Anthropic principle - we exist in a finely tuned universe. Stalin believed in god - the god was called Stalin! Kim ill sun - same. Darwin can explain free will, feelings etc.
Dinesh D'Souza: everything has a cause has a begining. I call the cause of the universe God! (if i dont understand it I call it god!!)
Part 8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8puuM-C9XIY
Dinesh D'Souza: infinite universes but no evidence for this (eg Lee Smolin - frank speculation, a fantasy); laws of nature may require some divine explanation.
Dan Dennett: scientists are speculating about possible causes to the fine tuning of the universe (other than a creator did it). Some Atheists make a mistake - think that there is no difference between right or wrong.
Part 9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0Ts_kPn5Tg
Dinesh D'Souza: morality is a universal phenemenon - 'evolution' transmution from biological meaning; religion is blamed for events that are not religious issues; atheist bigotry;
Part 10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMEu_pGCCU0
Questions: Ockhams Razor and the big bang; Pascals' Wager;
Part 11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpumHZGx7c
Questions: ways of experiencing the sublime / god, mutual exclusivity of religions - decide which religion is right - dont just assume they are all wrong
Part 12:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rae3EUR-W4s
Questions: god is outside human realm of testing - too easy an answer; spheres of human experience (consciousness, love, morality) that rely on subjective human experience - Dennett 'understanding of consciousness' is increasing greatly by scientific study. ID is just a hoax! D'Souza: Universe does require an explanation - a cause!
Part 13:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADLjLcS2kJs
low altruism, man is moral and spiratual; evolution has not accounted for morality (Dinesh); evolution has an explanation for morality (Dennett); Sweden (70% atheist) has a better record than USA - time to grow up; Nietsche (if kill god, lose Christian morality eg value of human life, equality of races or man /woman, abortion); how is Jesus differant from John Frum? is god the goodness we have around us (its good but its not supernatural);
Part 14:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KgVtKKgoks
Stalin advertised himself to be a god; limits of knowledge - limited to senses; cannot get beyond 5 senses (Dinesh); what if we are wrong? trust faith! Parsimony principle
Part 15:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM5mv-g2kUU
everything has to have a creator - so who is gods creator; evolution run amoc? Fundamentalist Evolution (Dinesh)
Selected Comments from http://richarddawkins.net/article,1942,n,n
I wonder what people here think of Dennett's proposition that we should teach world religion.
I agree with Dennett's proposition of teaching religions in school. Not much else to say about it, other than it should not evangelize. As long as religites stop trying to push religion into Science class.
While these debates interest me and i enjoy watching them, I can't help but think it's a complete waste of time.
The only person on that stage with the intellectual ability to change his mind is Dan Dennett.
Christians have had centuries of evidence contradicting their scriptures and blowing their "reasons" for believing in god out of the water, and they still hold their facile beliefs. It's pointless to have a "battle" where one side is able to concede defeat and the other only able to deny that they were defeated.
He did make some terrific arguments on a variety of subjects.
I'll also be honest, I was impressed with a few of the counterpoints that D'Souza made as well.
I think Dennett made a good case that religion is man-made invention just like language...
However, he didn't prove the point of the debate which was the GOD is a man made invention.
Dennett thanks goodness that he is alive. Some people thank God they are alive. Couldn't you see this as exactly the same thing? I asked him this very question (after the video cut off) and he responded with "yes, in fact you can see god = goodness")
In which case, goodness exists is to say god exists, which is to say that God isn't manmade.
yoyoman812 - How does that follow? Dennett was probably saying that you may thank "god", but all you're doing is thanking "goodness." Not necessarily that god = goodness
I see your point, but I think this is the wrong way to deal with this.
I believe there is an issue about why the universe seems so suitable to life (and, despite what so many have argued, this really is the case, or so I believe). I don't think this issue can be easily dismissed.
However, what can be easily dismissed is the idea that a universe suitable for life could be the result of an enternal first-cause creator called God.
Whatever the fine-tuning we may currently think is needed for a universe which allows sufficient physical complexity to permit life to appear, that is unimaginable orders of magnitude less 'fine-tuning' than that needed to allow a God-like creator to exist.
This was expressed very well by Dawkins in TGD.
I believe that this is the argument we should use. If you want to declare the universe unlikely, fine. But then you have to accept the vastly greater unlikeliness of an infinite and omnipotent mind, so your argument fails.
37. Comment #92782 by Terry Thompson on December 1, 2007 at 1:04 pm
I think that we atheists make a mistake in arguing any hypothesis as to what "preceded" the big bang. At this point there is no consensus and it looks silly when we supply hypothesis with little or no evidence. Instead we should point to the fact that the supernatural has now been pushed back from explaining why it rains to reason for the big bang back 13.7 billion or so and THANKS in no small part to Daniel Dennett that our understanding now includes conciesness.
Also I think that we need to distinguish between science and our philosophical suppositions based on our current understanding of science. Evolution is a well tested theory, but to go from the fact that now we do not need supernatural to explain life to the conclusion that there is no supernatural is well rationed philosophy. We can argue that it has much more weight than christianity or any supernatural, but it is a philosophical metaphysical argument nonetheless.
and lastly we need to show why this world view will benefit man better than supernatural. Just arguing it is infinantely more probable does not mean it is a better understanding. It is one argument, as would an argument that understanding better the basis of our morality (from biological and cultural evolution IMHO) will better aid us in improving our morality and culture.
I think the opposite is true. Our solar system is probably wonderfully adapted to life. There is liquid water everywhere.. in the atmosphere of Jupiter, almost certainly in the oceans of Europa and Callisto, and it looks likely that underground seas exist on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. The old idea of a 'Goldilocks zone' - a narrow band around a Sun where life could exists as a result of the heat of the Sun - looks very out of date.
Also, we have hardly explored our Universe. Who knows where life could exist? There have been suggestions that life could even be most abundant between the stars, on numerous extra-solar planets, using radioactive heating as a source of energy.
But anyway. The real issue with the physical constants is that until we know why they are as they are, we have no reason to pin them down to values friendly to life, or even to allow complexity. If you look at the cosmological constant, unless it is extraordinarily fine tuned, the universe would not even allow atoms, let alone complex chemicals or life.
At least that is my understanding of things. I have yet to read Stenger's writings on this matter, and the contrary views of Martin Rees and others.
EDIT:
You make a good point. However, if I understand things right, the issue of fine tuning is primarily not about whether or not life can exist in a universe, but whether or not anything like atoms can exist.
@SPINOZA
Like it or not religion is prevalent in the world. I think a critical and comparative teaching of the different world religions is a good idea. In Scotland when I was at school about 7-9 years ago we had Religious Education class which taught about other religions. We also had Modern Studies and History. Surely within those 3 disciplines it could be taught. I would however like it to be taught in an unbiased manner.
Part 14: Dinesh tries to have it both ways (and this is the crux of his entire argument). First he posits that we can't know what happened before the Big Bang or what happens outside of the Universe, because we are limited by the Universe. We are of this Universe and thus cannot fully (or even partially) understand anything outside of it. HOWEVER, then he (and others like him) says, "Ah, but there's a god, and I know this." Someone needs to ram home "how does he knows this?" if he is constrained by the Universe and the "lens" of his own senses.
I felt that to, im not sure that is actually important, when challenging the notion of an all powerful supernatural deity it is impossible to show it is in actual fact a human construct (in the same way that cthulhu may or not be), dennet knows this and i think the point he makes by displaying the various religions is to introduce the notion that how people interpret god (irrspective of its existence) is instrumental to how they act and if there are various ways of behaving how god wants then maybe this will lead ultimately to questioning the validity of one and alls religion and ultimately god/s it/themselves.
the fact that he then suggests that atheists should share the responsibility of 'atheist' dictatorships is preposterous.
D'Souza muddles every debate. He really doesn't debate, instead he brings a lot of different topics like life freewill, big-bang, ultimate-cause,etc., that, like Dennet said, would require hours to be explained. I think this is a strategy not to answer the issues in the debate.
Also, if Dinesh agrees with evolution, isn't there evidence of intelligence and consciousness ramping up over small, incremental degrees to our current state?
Thanks, Pat. I was there and enjoyed myself. Dennett's concern regarding toxic belief is exactly my own. D'Souza would earn more of my respect if he would tackle that problem directly. Like many here, I'm acutely worried about the elementary school teacher in the Sudan, Ayan Hirsi Ali's safety, and so on.
I often wish I could continue a debate after it ends, so here goes:
1. The evolution of life is something we observe. Natural selection is our theory to explain those observations.
2. The evolution of the universe from the Big Bang forward is not explained by Darwinian natural selection but by an incomplete set of physical laws. These laws are a human invention. When you speak as though the laws of physics somehow exist in the universe, you're guilty of reification.
D'Souza never answered Dennett's 5 opening questions.
Maybe they could wrassle over those in a text debate.
That'd be cool to see.
I think the debate mostly revolved around the same old ideas that D'Souza kept repeating:
a. Pascal's wager.
b. The uncaused cause argument.
c. The tweaking of the universal constants argument
Secondly I think it was an ugly debate (to put it politely) primarily because D'Souza kept bringing in all sorts of arguments each of which may be a subject of an individual debate. There is no possible way one can have a reasonable debate with this guy if he doesn't stick to the topic.
He kept ridiculing the speculations of the multiverse theory and I was surprised that Dan didn't point it out that D'Souza's alternative (god dunnit) is equally if not more speculative.
At one point he said that the caveman in 2000 BC wouldn't know anything outside of a 2 mile radius. Does this guy know anything about ancient civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, South America?
I am glad that Dan caught him when he tried to pin one of his arguments on the irreducible nature of consciousness.
D'Souza talked about humans not evolving in recent history (~last 5-15k years), I believe there are studies that have shown otherwise.
He ridiculed the multiverse hypothesis (or speculation if you like that word) by giving some crazy argument about O J Simpson's defence etc. That is not what the multiverse hypothesis is about!
Bringing out why this might be more psychologically satisfying than intellectually helpful is actually quite difficult.
I think that the fine-tuning argument is the most powerful weapon in the theists' armoury, because it can at least tempt us to deism ... and once we reach deism, it may seem natural to wonder whether there isn't something to revelation after all.
I don't think the argument from fine-tuning should compel any commitment to belief. It has a lot of difficulties, but they are not straightforward to explain in real time. I've always thought that hammering this argument would be the best approach for a theist in live debates. The best strategy is to make deism seem plausible, then ask if it is plausible to stop at deism when the deist god could easily reveal itself, take an interest in its creation, etc.
I haven't watched this debate yet, but that's how I would handle the brief if assigned the theist side of one these debates.
The challenge for atheists is to come up with a response that is cogent ... yet simple and clear enough, and sufficiently independent of other assumptions, to be expressed in real time in a live debate. The best approaches, I think, are the ones that build on problems with whether positing God is a genuine explanatory advance.
Dennett's comment about "creation" being a concept from the novel (DSouza's analogy) and therefore not applicable outside the novel (if all other terms from the novel are rejected) is excellent.
WRT fine tuning: Before Darwin, we guessed that life was designed by God. We couldn't understand how complex life could emerge without a designer.
Isn't it risky for the theist to link God to our current ignorance regarding the fine tuning problem? If this gap in understanding is filled, intellectual honesty requires that we reject the God hypothesis a second time.
What is the purpose of having a course where children are taught the "history" of religion but where you leave out the FACT that they are all created by man and this is all easily verified by historical data? I can see the value of preserving some aspects of religion but those aspects are not unique to religion, they are precepts that make sense for people living in groups to adhere to, especially in a civil society. Children should be taught this, they should also however be taught that there is no correlation between moral actions on the part of people and any (sometimes contradictory regarding what is "moral")guide book as defined by religions. In my view Dennet is going a bit to light on the punching bag of religious belief. Ostensibly he does this in hopes of making inroads into existing entrenched religious modes of thought, though I commend this slow and steady technique it is a bit annoying especially when you know that the facts to offer a more complete refutation of divinely inspired religious belief can be employed in its stead.
"In the name of atheism", Dinesh D'Souza is a complete dick. He is using a different definition of atheism on purpose to argue against points made by Dennett, Dawkins, and others. Atheism as a lack of belief in God never motivated anyone to kill, because killing people or not killing people doesn't logically follow from a lack of belief in something.
At best one could say that a belief in God is necessary to stop the inherent nature of humans to kill one another. I would accept an argument with it as its premise to be logically consistant. I wouldn't accept the premise though.
Steve99 and Russell Blackford
I agree that the fine-tuning argument does seem quite strong. But I tend to think that that is because it is like other after-the-fact statistical arguments. In other words, it's a bit like the woman who dreamt of her sister last night and, what do you know, her sister just phoned her! After the fact, it seems amazing to her, and surely didn't happen just by chance, so she ascribes her dream to something supernatural. Similarly, we look at the physical constants and it seems amazing that the way they are should be as they are, but I am wary of giving this 'seeming amazing' more importance that we should.
I know I haven't set this out too well, but what I am trying to get at is that I think we need to be very careful about arguments based on some form of 'it couldn't have happened by chance'. As RD and others have pointed out, we haven't evolved as beings who are able to evaluate the meaning of probability very well, and it seems to me that acquiring meaning from probability (or improbability) is precisely what the fine-tuning argument tries to do. Indeed, that is what most people did in respect of life on earth before Darwin came along, and they arrived at a Creator.
Russell
(Re 'fine tuning')
I would talk about needles in haystacks.
When people say:
"How likely is it that we are in this given environment with so many things just right?"
I would say:
'Yes. It is almost like looking for a single needle in a million, million haystacks, isn't it?'
[Furious nods]
I would then ask how long it would take to find the needle if we were actually the pointy item in question.
Answer: not very long.
Ok this would need clarification and work, if further questions were asked, and I admit not by me as my understanding of physics is simplistic, at the very best :-)
However, the sudden switch in perspective could elicit the queasy realisation that it is possible to couch questions in inappropriate or simply meaningless terms.
Also, it could also make the point that, in terms of the universe, we are tiny beings indeed.
To automically presume that this is all for us has always struck me as the height of hubris, as well as an error of reasoning.
Fine tuning again.
Unless you are a full blown creationist, even "fine tuning" doesn't lead to the conclusion that the universe was created for us.
Once we have the right "initial conditions" such as the right physical laws and constants and the initial organic molecules the subsequent history of life on earth is well explained by evolution.
Even if the initial conditions were "fine tuned", the subsequent evolutionary history that eventually led to us definitely wasn't.
We owe our existence to some key events which were more or less accidental, like the meteorites that killed off the dinosaurs, climatic and geological catastrophes etc. So even if initial conditions were "fine tuned", there is no reason to expect that would result in us being here, unless the theists argue that "God" also fine tuned his celestial missiles to kill of the dinosaurs, among other things. That would be quite a theological problem.
116. Comment #92892 by Don_Quix on December 1, 2007 at 5:15 pm
I've always found the "universe is fine-tuned" argument to be quite silly. It's easy to take the wind out of this one by pointing out that anywhere in about 99.99999999999% of the Universe, a human being would almost instantly die a very gruesome and painful death. Fine-tuned indeed.
Ludacrispat26: Well done for organising this debate, and posting the videos. My verdict is that Dennett did a great job. No other antagonist got D'Souza to admit that religions were man-made inventions, forced him into defending a Deist position only, and got him to admit that he (D'Souza) needed to read Dennett's books on morality and consciousness. As usual, D'Souza sprinkled so many false statements and non-sequiturs into his rapid-fire delivery that it was exceedingly hard to pin him down.
Regarding the fine-tuning argument, Russell writes:
Ante Kepler, the motions of the planets could be predicted to high accuracy, by means of circles, and circular motions around the current point on that circle, and then circular motions about the current point on that circle, etc. The system was called epicycles. It had a long history. Thousands of years ago, the greeks made gadgets called astrolabes, looking like 19th century clockwork, that computed the positions of the planets by this means. To get high accuracy, multiple epicycles were needed, making it possible to predict planetary motions with high accuracy, but the theory had complex structure, needing various critical numbers (the ratios of the various diameters of the circles, and the speeds of movement around each circle) to get the desired accuracy. The theory was successful however, and people at the time generally assumed that the planets moved in epicycles, rather than regarding epicycles as merely the best available model of the motions.
Post Kepler, the same accuracy could be obtained by far fewer numbers and a simple formula, operating on a quite different principle. Universal gravitation was discovered soon after, and the complex epicycle theory was seen to be a poor theory, despite its great precision (for its time) because there was a simpler, even more precise way to describe the motions, which was discovered to apply to all motions observed throughout the universe.
In the 20th century a proliferation of "elementary" particles was discovered, with even more "magic numbers" than the current theories. The best available model of physical motions today, the "standard model", is simpler, using only 26 (currently) key numbers, and if those 26 numbers are chosen right, they model the entire universe as perfectly as we know how to measure it. But it is still a model. Most physicists suspect an even simpler model will one day be discovered, using different principles and fewer numbers still.
We just don't know whether the actual universe requires fine tuning to obtain interesting complexity within it or not. The fact that our current best model requires fine tuning is a property of the model, and we should not assume, as so many popular science writers do, that the underlying universe is (in the sense of perfectly isomorphic to) our current model. That wasn't true for past models, and there are good reasons to think it isn't true of our current models.
The truth of the matter may be this. If you already believe in revelation, can somehow rationalise away the evidence against a providential and beneficent god, and just feel a psychological conviction about religion, the fine-tuning argument will seem like powerful confirmation.
Conversely, if you find the supposed revelations unconvincing, find the evidence against any kind of providential and benevolent god overwhelming, don't see any signs of disembodied spirits floating around (so invoking one now is invoking something totally new as part of the total ontology, and is thus ad hoc), and are impressed by humans' tendencies to reach for explanations of phenomena that rely on intelligent agency (and by how often such explanations fail even when they are initially psychologically satisfying), then you are likely to look for some kind of mechanism that explains how the constants are what they are and how they have turned out to allow complexity.
That may not be an easy point to package up, but I think it's close to the truth of the matter.
Obviously, I'm in the camp of those who see the evidence against a providential, benevolent god as strong, think the evidence of revelation is unimpressive, etc. Debating this in front of people from the other camp would be difficult, though. Dennett didn't have to do that, but such debates have a wide range of audiences.
Wow, I like how Dinesh uses that reduction to Hitler, and also how he brings up the old red herring "Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot were atheists therefore Atheism is evil". Not impressed at all.
And that "fine tuned" rant is ridiculous, Richard challanged this in "The God Delusion", if the universe wasn't in a state where we could exist then we wouldn't exist to debate it or think about how the universe is fine tuned.
Don_Quix
I think you're mis-understanding the argument. The idea is that the atomic forces seem to be fine tuned to allow gravity to form stars and planets, and the elements to be made by fusion in stars from hydrogen, and building on that chemistry, then biology.
I think this is very much a valid question as to why this is so.
The young man in Part 10 with Gray sock cap, destroyed Dinesh. Dinesh had to take deep breath
and babble about something off topic.
When he asked Dinesh "Where do you draw the line
on absurdities?" was a stunning!
It's not really a valid question. For example what if the universal laws were different? Humans and life in general can only exist because of the universal laws, but if the universal laws were different then there'd probably be phenomana equally as complex as life, just different. We're a product of the universe, it's no good to take the stance that the universe was tweaked to fit us in. It's like asking why the animal was designed around the working heart, he's approaching it from the wrong direction.
Up to video 7 now, one thing I can say about D'Souza is he's a master at walking the fine line of an argument. Instead of attacking a point directly, he'll bring up some tangential and at first blush intriguing idea which ultimately is irrelevant to the discussion. He mentions Pascal's wager for example, which to the layman seems like a very compelling argument. To paraphrase, "If it cost me nothing to believe, then why shouldn't I?" However this means nothing as few believers use such a restricted description of faith, in fact those that do are known as deists at best rather than as theists. Once the trappings of dogma and ritual possessed by real world religions are added upon this kernel of zero loss belief, the recipe for destruction and conflict with other such systems is set. Further, when we analyze the contradictions these varying sets of dogma and ritual bring forth we see that if the God is there it is anything but a good or just one. So the best we can conclude, even giving D'Souza a bone by asserting that yes we agree there is a God, is that that God is either on vacation or crazy. Yes D'Souza is free to go with believing since it costs him nothing but that very choice damns him to also believe that his God is either dead (which is materially identical to non existent as atheists assert) or crazy. This latter option contradicts the thousands of lines of scripture and dogma created by religions to describe, supposedly through divine inspiration, what "God" wants for us. Well if "he" is giving every culture dichotomous commands every few hundred years then he is either malicious or crazy assuming he does exist, but he's definitely not good. I'd rather believe that God was dead than that he was a drunkard, and if he is dead , that is the same as the position that an atheist takes that he does not exist, so it does make more sense to NOT believe, as believing forces us to accept a contradiction of an at times sleeping, at times lightning throwing, at times capricious and malicious "God".
Again I commend D'Souza for bringing up the muddled issues that misdirect from the arguments at hand, ultimately he builds on a house of cards but his job is not to bring you the truth it is simply to *convince you* (ie. "win" the argument) and his style does work if the sales of his book are any indication.
Sure it's a valid question, when it's posed in a genuine way. But, the implication D'Souza and most other people who toss about this argument make is that because the forces seem to be favorable for the universe to exist as it does, and we can't yet explain why, GODUNNIT.
Nobody knows why the universe exists at all. More importantly, we don't have any understanding whatsoever of what the universe actually is. It could be that it is the fundamental nature of a universe to be the way it is right now, and that it is simply not possible for it to be any other way. It's also possible that there are an infinite or near-infinite number of universes with different settings and we just happen by chance to be in one that has conditions favorable to increased complexity. With a near-infinite number of universes, it would not only be possible that our kind of universe could form, but it would be astronomically (pardon the pun) unlikely for it not to form. There are many other possibilities as well.
All I was saying is that the way people like D'Souza use (or abuse) this argument is disingenuous. It's just another aspect of the argument from ignorance. "We don't know why things are the way they are, so godunnit! QED."
My original statement was not a misunderstanding. It was an illustration of how ridiculous it is that a God would go to all the trouble of "fine-tuning" a universe so perfectly so that we could come about, but then neglect to account for the fact that almost the entirety of Its grand creation is instantly lethal to Its most special creatures (us). Of course, as others have stated, the universe may not have been created for us -- that could pose some serious problems for old Dinesh. :D
Dr. Benway wrote:
Well said, but the first statement brings an interesting idea. We know that the current known candidates (string theories mainly) for grand unified theories that do a job of integrating gravity in with the other forces of nature along with predicting the correct values for the fundamental constants all suffer from providing too many answers. Namely, they seem like over broad mathematical constructions that give us all the possible answers instead of just the one that fits our universe, employing unseen dimensions and entities beyond our universe to explain our universe. It may be the case that this is a requirement of explanation of our universe and the state of the various values. This could be true since lacking an ability to view the universe from the outside our logical constructions must necessarily be as generalized as possible, and from this generalization collapses the certainty that is our universe. It is unfortunate that we may be unable to determine "which universe is ours" while bound inside. I say "may be" since the work of an early 20th century mathematician, Kurt Godel essentially defined the limits of what questions can be asked using a logical /mathematical construction. In essence, it is possible for a system constructed to find answers to be unable to answer questions definable using its language. It may be the case that the mathematics foundation that we have created is unable to allow us to answer the question of why the constants seem "fine tuned" and of allowing us the ability to pose questions in the universe to determine the answer. The system itself may preclude our asking falsifiable questions about the universe that can tie one or another GUT to OUR universe and in the language of science that would make the conclusion only a hypothesis.
I am confident though that whatever is outside our universe communes with what is inside and has effects that we can test for and thus allow us to select from the embarrasment of theories that do explain the constants. All that said, there is absolutely no reason to jump from our current state of understanding back to saying "a magic man done it!" when scientific investigation has gotten us so splendidly to the very edge of the universe itself as D'Souza and other theists are always eager to do.
Atlas
Come now, surely inquiry into why things are the way they are is fundamentally what science is all about.
Rather flawed logic there. I think you had better go back and re-read TGD. Not that I consider TGD/Dawkins to be the last word on this matter,to my recollection he does not dismiss this idea. There are some theory's as to why the universe is the way it is and, as I recall he and other scientists consider it to be a valid question. What if atomic forces were such that gravity could not form stars? Then there could be no other elements but hydrogen and consequently no chemistry and biology.
Of course we should try to find out why the laws of physics are the way they are, but to start from the assumption that they're the way they are for some big reason is wrong in my opinion, we shouldn't focus entirely on looking for reason when there maybe none.
It's like asking "why was the universe created in the first place?", we can attempt to find out the sequence of events that lead up to the creation of the universe but is asking that question the correct one for science? Religions often start with the assumption that everything has some deep rooted meaning to it's existance and go from there, and that simply doesn't have to be the case.
What I stated was the Anthropic principal, which is a good argument against the "divine engineer twiddling his knobs" theory. It doesn't disprove there is one, but it's a good reason for why there doesn't have to be one.
Blasphememe
Perhaps you should go back and read the second paragraph of page 143 of TGD in the chapter The Anthropic Principle: Cosmological Version. I don't see how the anthropic principle is "flawed logic." Dawkins certainly didn't invent it. I believe Stephen Hawking is one of its main proponents.
blaspheme wrote:
I don't see how the quoted portion of Atlas' text was flawed logically. It seemed like a perfect paraphrase of the rebuttal to the theist invocation of the anthropic principle. The state of the universe is conducive to our life necessarily since we are here, we should not be surprised that it is so conducive to life because we are here is another way of saying it. The Universes state is a precondition of our existence, our existence is optional among many things that we could be, for example if this was 20 million years ago, life still exists but there is no sentient beings on earth to contemplate it. The fact the universe will (in the future) support sentient life in the form of us does not mean it was made for us (since 20 million years ago there was no "us" but there was all the things needed for us to survive.)
Most annoying bits for me:
1. The yelling. Even with the volume turned low my orienting response is repeatedly provoked. It disrupts my ability to reflect and organize my thoughts while I'm listening. I need the occasional pause.
2. The accusation that Dennett over-extends Darwin into inappropriate domains. He doesn't quote Dennett or anyone to illustrate his point. Unlike D'Souza (apparently), I've never heard an atheist argue that Darwin's model of natural selection explains abiogenesis or the fine tuning of the universe. D'Souza had better back up this accusation with a material example if he doesn't want people to believe he's a liar.
Evolutionary psychology is an emerging field and it's possible a fair amount of human behavior won't be well accounted for by a Darwinian model. But there's nothing inappropriate about the effort to understand how natural selection might favor certain behavioral traits.
3. "My neurons made me do it." You are your neurons. If you say there's no point in telling you it's wrong to kill people because you can't help yourself, we'll simply lock you up. Need anything more be said?
4. If D'Souza truly believed that the fine tuning problem was evidence for God, he'd recommend physicists stop investigating the problem. Why isn't he campaigning against CERN?
Homework for D'Souza:
1. Reification (the map is not the territory)
2. Falsification
3. Fallacy of affirming the consequent
4. Tu quoque
5. God of the gaps
6. What happens when we throw out parsimony?
7. What happens when we throw out corroboration?
8. Try decaf
There is nothing strong about the fine-tuning issue. It is a piece of science that theists have picked up on to try to support their special beliefs.
Argument from ignorance. God of the gaps. Argument from incredulity. Take your pick.
I think it was Dr. Massimo Pigliuci who has talked about how religious claims always occur at the boundary of knowledge. The fine-tuning topic just happens to currently be in that zone. When our understanding encompasses these topics theists will shift their arguments to new ground.
In that sense I think it is a no-win situation trying to have these arguments with theists and I think Dan was somewhat less comfortable when D'Souza galloped off in that direction.
I think a more useful approach, which is what Dan is all about, is presenting the overwhelming evidence that gods and religion and all the ideas about divine connection inherent in them, are entirely man-made. That is the strongest tactic to fight religion, the dangers of which are not supernatural, but are exclusively real things that are done by real people.
156. Comment #92956 by McLir on December 1, 2007 at 8:23 pm
On the talking point of Stalin and Pol Pot being murderous atheists, I think this is an issue worth fleshing out. Totalitarian state communism resembles theocracy in some important ways. There might be some other useful analogies between religious zealotry and certain kinds of secular zealotry -- neo-conservatism and market fundamentalism come to mind. The dangers of these come from valuing ideological systems over actual humans. Perhaps a generalized definition of toxic zealotry could be very useful.
Dennett's resolution sounds like an extremely good idea. If any schools adopt it, I will be very interested to see the results.
158. Comment #92958 by edejard on December 1, 2007 at 8:30 pm
With respect to the "fine tuning" argument, it seems to me that some have misunderstood (misrepresented?) D'souza's version of it. He made it quite clear that it doesn't provide "proof" of god's existence as some have misleadingly suggested (indeed, at another point in the debate D'souza admits that he is an agnostic, which is to say that he doesn't "know" god exists, yet chooses to believe); rather, he argues, the fine tuning evidence "fits" with the theistic worldview. You many agree or disagree with this argument, but you must present it accurately first.
And D'souza's take on the anthropic principle is a bit more nuanced than some have suggested. He has said that if you respond to the fine tuning argument by saying, "Of course the universe -- or at least one small part of it -- is capable of supporting life, whatever the improbabilities, since, well duh, we're here to think about it" you've basically missed the point, because you haven't explained the improbability! The philosopher John Leslie has posited a thought experiment to make this a bit clearer: A man is in front of a firing squad. After dozens of unsuccessful volleys, the warden approaches the prisoner and tells him that this result is too improbable to have happened by chance, and that there must be some conspiracy afoot involving the shooters. The prisoner laughs off this suggestion by saying, "the shooters obviously missed because if they hadn't, I wouldn't be here to have this discussion." This is not a very satisfying answer, since it (like the argument above) leaves a massive improbability unexplained.
After watching the video I was particularly troubled when Dinesh dodged the question on why the Scadinavian societies, by far the most Agnostic/Atheistic in the world, perform the highest on the U.N. development index, have very low levels violent crime, and have the some of the highest per-capita contributions to overseas charity in the world?
This point is particularly useful because much of the questions at the debate (and discussions on this board) seem pointed towards a complete refutation of an a priori God (in a very lose "first cause" deistic sense). Most people here are aware of the argument that if you can posit a "God", then you can also posit an universe with less assumptions. Although the God assumption is substantially (even exponentially) more unlikely than the naturalistic universe assumption. It is still in some sense possible, which means that arguments around this point are at best byzantine. By examining the Scandinavian model I should hope that Dinesh should ask himself: would it be "good" to sell or convert the Atheistic/Agnostic Scandinavians to any particular religion? If so, what are the empirical societal effects would he believe that this would serve?
Dinesh was very disingenious throughout the whole debate because his positions seemed to rely on the most wooly ecumenical deism I've ever seen. Even if we accept (which I don't based on likelyhood)some of his first cause points, he has not given us a reason to care/waste time on contemplating, revering, praying and worshiping towards this very vague "first cause" God. Furthermore, his assertion that Nietzche statement that "Christian values would survive the death of God" proves that the Scandinavian societies are the most just because of their previous Christianity is flawed. First, Nietzche is not axiomatic, or equivalent to a controlling court decision in law, you cannot cite Nietzche as incontrovertible authority. Obviously, Nietzche said a very many horrid things (about women for example) and I doubt that Dinesh would quote him as authority on the matter. Second, if his premise is that a Christian history serves to inculcate greater values, he would still have to grapple with the fact that Scandinavia is by all accounts MORE moral now that it has abandoned its vestigial Christianity.
Is he in a sense advocating a sort of Liberal post-christianism? If he is not then he should ask himself what he finds offensive in this view?
Mango, not at all. First, one can say that the anthropic principle doesn't do the heavy lifting you want it to do without presupposing any sort of agency.
Second, the point of Leslie's thought experiment is that the anthropic principle isn't an explanation at all. It's like saying that the presence of a corpse with gunshot wound, coupled with the absence of a gun, explains a murder. It does nothing of the sort. It does present us with dispositive evidence that a murder has occurred, but it doesn't "explain" the murder. Similarly, the fact that we are here does provide us with dispositive evidence that our part (at least) of the universe is capable of supporting life, but it decidedly doesn't "explain" that fact, especially when it seems to be the case that a very specific set of conditions had to be fulfilled to bring this fact about.
Now I happen to think that Dinesh's answer is very problematic, but I think we must address it without resorting to simplistic references to the anthropic principle.
edejard wrote:
What improbability are you referring to? The improbability of their being sentient life able to ask the question? Who said that was improbable and has *accurately* quantified this "improbability"? We know there are at least 100 billion stars in our galaxy *alone* a large percentage of them similar in structure to our own star. We also know , just in the last 10 years, that there are over 200 extra solar planets revolving a smaller set of stars. It sounds like our probability of existence is quite high from these numbers but then there is the chance of planets in the habitable zone (and note assuming the life is OUR type in that it is carbon based), factoring in these variables can lead to widely diverging results of any estimate of "improbability". The estimates (The Drake equation being a famous one) that have been made to try to put a number on how probable it is that we are here are just that estimates. In fact they are very wild ones as certain variables we know little to nothing about at this time or leave out other ideas of what life can be. So though I am of the view that we will find more refined values to these variables and be able to make more accurate predictions of the probabilities of life or sentient life (and note again, it is always "life like us" the probabilities change when we entertain types of life which is hard for us to imagine), we aren't there yet. This works both ways mind you, we can't state accurately how probable it is , nor can we state how improbable it is. (since that guess also leaves out important variables for which we have little to no data)
The only other "improbability" I can think you are referring to is the one of a universe with the constants that make our type of life possible, again , since we have no idea how universes form or what minimum attributes define universe, we can't say squat about how probable it is for us to be here in this one, either for or against. We already know that there are an infinite number of mathematical possibilities for universes, just because ours is perfect for our type of life doesn't mean that one of the many others that may also exist don't have life which is similarly perfect for those universes even if that "life" is like nothing we can imagine. So again, our ability to define "improbability" goes out the window as we can't even limit what is possible let alone what is life. We shouldn't be surprised that if we apply every filter necessary to restrict life to our own type that the probability of such life will go down but that is a different question from determining the probability of sentient life, whatever form inside our universe or outside it. With the "improbability" misunderstanding explained, surely it should be clear that going from this state of uncertainty in even being able to guess the probabilities of our existence or our universes existence, to asserting "a magic man done it." is irrational. The scientific view is to keep acquiring data and forming hypothesis until we can refine our view and our calculations for these probabilities, giving up the game shouldn't enter into the equation.
edejard; So what you're asking, then, is why are the laws of physics they way they are, which is the step beyond glibly reciting the anthropic principle. Dinesh frames the question as if there are "dials" that have been turned, painting for the listener a scene ripe for a turner of dials. And since he flatly rejected parsimony nothing stops him from a "leap of faith."
For me, and the people I converse with who are not deep into physics, the anthropic principle suffices. It holds water, even though it's not an explanation at a deeper level of understanding of how the laws of physics arose.
All the fundamental constants seem so fine tuned that even slightest variation in any one of them and 'we wouldn't exist'. Therefore the universe must have been fine tuned (by a creator/intelligence/god) with us in mind.
My questions:
1> If one of the questions had a different value, perhaps we (i.e life on planet earth or planet earth itself) would not exist. But how do you know that in whatever universe that did come into existence (with the different constants than ours), life or some complex phenomenon that resemble life and conscious beings would NOT exist? Is there some proof that shows that with slight variation in any of the constants, matter as we know it would not exist at all?
2> Let us accept for a moment that the universe is fine tuned by a creator. What makes you think that the creator had 'us' in mind? We have good reasons to believe from probabilistic calculations that life and perhaps intelligent life exists in other parts of the universe. What is the proof that the creator actually favor the beings on Blargon 7 somewhere in a solar system in Andromeda galaxy? Why us? In all probability the earth is a penal colony to dump all the "failed" models (I think Hitchens has mentioned this idea in god is not great.)
3. To what accuracy do we know these constants. E.g the gravitational constant G = 6.67428[+/-0.00067] x 10^-11 N.m^2.kg^-2. This means there is uncertainty about the 14th decimal place onwards and the value could be:
6.67495 x 10^-11 N.m^2.kg^-2 to 6.67361 x 10^-11 N.m^2.kg^-2. Granted that the uncertainty is very small (~ 0.01 %) but doesn't this in itself prove that things are doing fine with small uncertainty? How much does one of the constants have to vary to make things as we know blow up or not appear at all?
4. Last but not least... it seems like use of the fine tuning argument is nothing but an extension of the god the gaps argument. We don't know why the universe looks fine tuned for life... goddunit. Maybe in my life time I would be lucky enough to see that gap closed.
The fine-tuning argument is based on the same fallacy that so many theistic arguments are based on: special pleading.
If the coincidence of the universe being what it is demands an explanation, then the coincidence of God being what It is demands the same kind of explanation. And if God doesn't demand an explanation, neither does the universe. As always, God is superfluous.
Danesh D'Souza has these views.
1) The big bang created by God created the universe 14 billion years ago.
2) 4.6 billion years ago the earth forms
3) 3-4 billion years ago life starts.
4) 100,000-200,000 years ago humans eventually evolve (in Gods image).
5) 2,000 years ago he finally intervenes to kill his own son which is also himself.
WTF!
D'Souza also uses this argument(I have replaced moustache for atheism).
"Stalin and Hitler where both moustache wearers"
"Moustaches are bad"
"All moustache wearers must take the blame for the atrocities of previous moustache wearers"
Well, my understanding is that the cosmological constant has to be tuned within 1 part in 10 to the 50th power to prevent the universe blowing up.
Steve, do you have a reference for this? I find it very hard to believe given that we don't have the capability to take any physical measurement to past about 12 decimal places of resolution.
I have probably phrased things clumsily. This does mean that we can measure anything to that accuracy, it is more about the possible range of the constant.
For example, in String Theory there are a phenomenal amount of possible universes, most of which have cosmological constants which would result in a rapidly expanding universe with no structure.
Well, God is superfluous, but it does not mean that the fine tuning argument is, in general, a fallacy.
We are probably in the same situation regarding the settings of the constants of the universe as we were in terms of trying to explain the compexity of life before Darwin and Huxley. There really was something that needed explaining, and we found that explanation.
It is as misguided, in my view, to casually dismiss the apparent fine tuning of the universe as 'not a problem' as it would have been to dismiss the complexity of life as 'not a problem'. We should admit that it does need explaining while making it clear that God is not the answer.
Denevius, what? That's exactly the same as saying "Women can complain all they want, but non-suffrage is here to stay as long as women are emotional and non-rational."
Surely that is not what you meant to say.
I think you meant to say something else, and I think you may be right... What you seem to have meant is that the majority of people on earth are too stupid to think for themselves, or do the intellectual leg-work to come to the realizations that intellectual atheists have come to...
But I think it's scarier than that...
... I also think we need to TRY our damnedest (no pun intended), to BRING THE FACTS to people, and to try and lift them up out of their "dogmatic slumber" as Hume did to Kant... and as public education has improved the intelligence of enormous numbers... so too could continued (and length) criticism of religion (which began the instant religions were created) bring more and more people to the truth.
And there is much value in that.
I find it ironic that Dinesh paints a caricature of Dennet disbelieving in things in earlier times such as other planets (I forget what the other thing was). 'Well, there's no evidence for other planets existing!' Well, look at yourself, Dinesh. The apparent 'fine tuning' and 'first cause' point to a god existing? Surely in the earlier time to which you transported Dennet, you would have cited rainbows, lightning and the sun as things that point to a god. You're simply filling the remaining gaps with God.
The fine-tuning argument is no problem when dealing with any reasonable person under normal circumstances, but under the conditions inherent to a formal debate (and against someone like Dinesh), it poses a problem. There is no one-line knock down argument to be provided.
There is the possibility that the universe must exist this way for reasons currently unknown. RD talks about this briefly in TGD. Perhaps the constants are no more free to vary than the proportion of a circle's radius is to its circumference.
Of course, there is the idea of a multiverse. Of all the possible universes, we necessarily exist in one friendly to our form of life.
Then again, who's to say that a different configuration of the constants wouldn't be friendly to life in some different way, or to life unlike any we can imagine? Dinesh baits one questioner into making his point that we as humans aren't capable of knowing/understanding everything. So, why assume that matter must be made of atoms? "For all we know, there might be intelligent beings in another universe arguing that if fundamental constants were only slightly different, then the absence of free quarks and the extreme weakness of gravity would make life impossible."
Any argument of fine-tuning assumes life as we know it is a given. The universe does not care if we're here. We happened to come into existence in the only known part of this vast universe that seems conducive to our form of life for a brief period of time (considering from the BB to whenever we die out, which I see as a small blip on the timescale of the universe). Does any of this imply a designer? If it does, said designer appears to be quite inept, and at best lucky that his 'finely tuned' creation actually gave rise to life on this obscure lump of rock.
Anyway... people actually clapped at Dinesh's handling of parsimony? Well, I suppose it was an impressive 'tactic'.
Also, there's Dinesh's assumption that the BB need a 'first cause'. Yes, time began with the BB… and 'cause' is a temporal concept that only applies to a situation in which time exists. Despite any need you have to invoke a cause and give that cause the attributes of your god, the BB (beginning of time) does not need one.
Some forms of multiverse should be testable. Future observations of the cosmic microwave background may reveal patterns due to gravity waves, and if they do, that has the potential to tell us a lot about the nature of things at the time of the big bang, including several multiverse ideas.
Well, I think that 'knowing the unknowable' is self-contradictory. And you are certainly doing that if you label the unknowable 'God'.
I agree.
Part 14: As I understand it, in answer to a question, DDS says that our whole experience is a product of, and limited, by our 5 senses and we should not deny the existence of god because we cannot sense him.
However, if he cannot be detected or sensed then doesn't this mean that he must be an invention of the human mind!
Maybe i'm just missing something simple here ..
Neal: no, not really. Logically, there is nothing wrong with the existence of a god (or any object) which we can't sense. But if this is a god, it is the deist's god. If you claim an interventionist god, then you have a problem.
xale66x wrote:
I agree, and believe this is is precisely what the universe would look like if we are only seeing or existing in part of an over riding geometry. The funny thing is the proposed candidate theories (mostly string) that successfully integrate and explain the constants are precisely higher geometric (dimensional) systems. I don't see this as a coincidence. We lack experiments yet to pin down the veracity of the statement, but we just may in time.
Fascinating stuff. Is there a concrete hypothesis formulated connecting the existence of a multiverse to expected patterns or is it all just a preliminary conjecture? Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.
Ah, but here lies the catch: They don't claim to know it; they only claim to believe it :)
This is perhaps going a bit far, as these theories haven't really explained anything yet, as they aren't really what we could sensibly call 'theories'. Anyway, String Theory seems to suggest a phenomenal number of possible universe with widely differing values of the physical constants, so it hardly pins them down.
agg wrote:
There are several such hypothesis. Regarding gravity waves, some theorists think analysis of waves reverberating through the universe since the big bang may tell us a bit about the initial conditions that set our universe off to expansion. This may allow us a selection target in the various types of string theories that offer solutions that necessitate a multiverse.
First, I'd like to clarify some often mistaken ideas concerning what a multiverse is. The term multiverse was originally associated with the idea of determining the history of particle trajectories as studied in the QED (quantum electrodynamics) Richard Feynman was the first person to popularize the idea in physics that the trajectory and or energy state of a particle that IS measured, exists because all the other possibilities that are not have "collapsed". In terms of analysis of particle trajectories a mathematical object called the wave function is said to "collapse" to the measured trajectory from all the possible ones. Later, in popular descriptions and science fiction this mathematically useful tool was extrapolated to have physical significance for literary purposes.(search "multiverse" for details of this history)
If the possibilities of alternative paths are infinite then maybe they actually exist and collapse to a given result here because the attributes of our universe "tunes" them in that way. There is no physics behind this assertion, it is only a supposition that comes out of trying to ascribe a physical meaning to Feynman's "sum over histories" the math that describes collapsing wave functions. The newer idea of "multiverse" concerns mathematical solutions to extremely complex multidimensional models for describing not just particles, but all possible interactions of varyingly discrete entities of energy. Mathematical physics has evolved to the point that entire "algebras" can be judged for their merit in predicting all the phenomena we see in our universe in a consistent manner. The problem is that there are many possible solutions to the set of mathematical models that are being studied and we lack experiments to pin down which solution defines OUR universe. The concepts are complex but a rough over view can be had by reading on various topics.
I am an electrical engineer by degree and we have similar examples of mathematical structures that require the existence of infinite entities in order for us to make efficient real world calculations concerning signals, energy, power content, voltage, current...etc. In the EE realm these tools (Fourier, Laplacian and z transforms) are practically limited in how they can be applied by the need to realize a desired level of accuracy in the results in a given computation time, they also have prescience over a discrete set of attributes of electrical signals and make no predictions on particles as we understand them in the science of physics. I think this is the chief distinction that has kept a similar analogy being made between these structures and the possibility of "real" versions of the entities described in the tools. (For example in discrete and continuous signal theory we play with imaginary values freely but we don't assume that somewhere they actually exist, they are for us tools which have amazing ability to simplify real calculations without having any real analog) It is unfortunate that the nuance of mathematical physics are usually grossly mis characterized when prepared for public consumption since they necessarily cover a larger suite of entities, many of which map closely to physical entities that we have discovered to govern our existence in the real universe.
Read more on:
basics:
Richard Feynman
multiverse
"sum over history"
QED
infinite series
differential equations/non linear partial
advanced:
gauge theories
sum over histories /Feynman diagrams
QED (quantum electrodynamics)
E8 symmetry
Heterotic string theory
M theory
Wikipedia has several well written articles for general introductions to these concepts. As always don't use it as a "last word" consult the citations as well.
steve99 wrote:
You are correct, in the strictest popular scientific sense they are as yet unfalsifiable and are technically not even theories. My point is simply that the embarrassment of choice for all these values makes them unique in being best candidates for saying something about why the fundamental values are what they are. Until that first experiment comes however, their just mathematically defined and related but untested ideas.
Some of the reviewers (my good friends) have completely missed the point. The debate resolution was: "God is a man made invention".
Daniel Dennet signed, sealed and delivered his verdict in the 5 questions posed to Dinesh at the end of his first 5 minute speech. Question 4 directly addressed this, and was basically ignored by Dinesh. It asked: "Do you agree that John Frum, Ganesh, Angel Moroni, and Angel Gabriel are human inventions?
The rest of the debate was over the existence of God, at Dinesh's insistence.
Anyone trained in Philosophy (or the sciences) should know that it is a fruitless endeavor to try to prove or disprove God. Dawkins does a good job of explaining this in the God Delusion, Chapter 3 "Argument for God's Existence" and Chapter 4 "Why There Almost Certainly is No God".
The point being that there is no absolute proof either way. (hence the use of "almost certainly" is used in the title of the chapter)
Keep the great debates coming!
Well Done Dennett
Well Done Organizers
Dsouza babbled through most of it.
I think that the best point to come out was the request to teach world religion. Even Dsouza admitted support for this.
There should be a poll in the forum on this question.
I think it's sinister, deliberate and cynical. I think maybe Dinesh knows he's misrepresenting evolutionary psychology (in this example) but that really 'saving souls' is more important than getting the facts of the table. I'm guessing he knows that evolutionary psychology has a much more nuanced explanation for moral behaviour, but he thinks that ultimately it still pales in comparison to the Great Truth, which he has been charged with dispatching.
Since he thinks the ends justify the means, he cheats. More mic time spent muddying the waters is more potential saved souls, he thinks, and let's not worry about having an honest discussion.
I'd like to make a point regarding the teaching of religion in schools. As a Christian I have no problem with the whole smogarsboard of human religion being represented, without the dice being loaded in favour of one or the other. If I were an RE teacher I would do my honest best to do justice to my duty to present the facts about the rituals and underlying worldviews of each of them. I would not by any means (I hope) try to win converts for Christianity while doing my job. I would be prepared to have the content of lessons vetted by adherents of all the religions being studied to make sure that I ws being fair.
What Dennett wants is to teach religion as a function of natural selection. In order to teach religion in that way you have to have a prior commitment to natural selection, which, insofar as it claims to explain everything, is a philosophical worldview that not all RE teachers will necessarily hold. Or should they be required to demonstrate a commitment to natural selection before being appointed? Is this the kind of scenario that Dennett envisages? Do you people, committed as you surely are to the principle of freedom to believe or not to believe, really want to see this happening? - teachers and educators of all kinds being selected on the basis of a priori ideological commitments? Natualistic selection procedures! Purposeful (not at all random) weeding out of undesirable mutations within our educational fraternities!
Not in the talks I have listened to (I have not listened to this one). I last heard him mention this in a TED talk (www.ted.com). All he wants is for children to learn about all major world religions without these religions being preached at them. If that is done, he has no objection even to faith schools.
This took place at Tufts University on November 30, 2007.
Description:
Dinesh D'Souza, Christian and best-selling author, faced off against Tufts professor, author, and atheist Daniel Dennett in a debate on the existence of god. The resolution for the debate was as follows: "God is a manmade invention." Daniel Dennett argued the affirmative, and Dinesh D'Souza the negative.All 15 video parts: http://tinyurl.com/2mww7m
Part 1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iw7J15TeDG4
Is God a human invention? World Christian Enclyopedia - only religion growing is Islam (by birth rate - not by conversions in); Christianity is not growing - but growing louder and agressive; how much more religious is USA than Europe; homicide + abortion + STD+ teen pregranancy - higher in USA than Europe; non-religious (16%) is fastest growing than any religion. Islam (16%) is not as fast growing as non-religious.
Part 2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7MGyayvAa8
Dan Dennett: proposes a compulsory 4th R - Religion - education on religion for all children, starting in primary school, in public and private schools and home schooling.
Subjects: History, creed, rituals, music, symbols, ethical commands and prohibitions. That's it! Just tested, non controversial facts that everyone can agree to about the worlds religions.
I believe in freedom of religion. As long as you teach your children the above syllabus you can teach them whatever you want - so long as it does not disable them from informing themselves further.
In a Ted.com speech (Teach all religions: 5-10 minutes) Dan Dennett also proposes ' no particular spin. Democracy depends on an informed consent. Misinformed does not count - like throwing a coin. Children below age of consent are a special case. Parents are stewards of children - you have a responsibility to the world, to the state , to them - to teach your own creed but also ALL the other creeds in the world. Facts only no values. One reviewer called this totalitarian (surely libetarian), another hilarious. Many religions are so anxious to preserve the purity of their faith among their children and so want to keep their children ignorant of other faiths. But it is indefensible to keep your children ignorant of other faiths.
Part 3
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgK6M3WRFcc
Religions are human inventions. Not like the telephone but like music or language. Religions have evolved as much in the last 200 years as the last 2000 and will continue to evolve as much in the next 20 years as the last 200 years. Most of the 10,000 new religions have a half life of a few weeks.
There is no one to thank for this wonderful world - just thank Goodness!
Darwins Theory. Trickle down theory. Evolution of God.
Part 4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzUUnjcTkQg
DD: Evolution of God. Risk of world conflagration started by religious leaders in Iran / Pakistan / USA.
Dinesh D'Souza: Religious numbers are growing. Social Darwinson / Nietsche atheism - rise of Nazi. The Inquisition. Atheism regimes (Mao, stalin, pol pot, castro, communism) have produced millions dead.
Part 5
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnGGOKDGLYw
Dinesh D'Souza: Darwin - design and no designer, science supports theism, big bang evidence supports that all of matter came into existence at same time, agreeing with Augustine. Why does universe have the values (mass of electron, elecromagetic force) it has? If you touch expansion rate of universe - we would have no universe and no life (S Hawking). Constants are finally tuned for us! Ockhams Razor says that a Creator created the universe. Science decodes the intelligence out of nature? Why does nature obey laws in the first place. Premises of science are based on Christian values.
Part 6
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcunc_hQ8U8
Dinesh D'Souza: religion is man made, no evidence of life after death - impossible to have this. Evidence arguement is hubristic. (Dinesh fails to understand evolving nature of science) Nature (eg stones) and human nature (free will, choice, feelings, consciousness). Everything in Dennetts world has to be reduced to materialism. Both are agnostics. Faith is rational based on science. Pascals Wager. We are product of divine intelligence and divine love.
Part 7
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SryFVhNfvow
who created god? Trickle down theory. How did we get here. Anthropic principle - we exist in a finely tuned universe. Stalin believed in god - the god was called Stalin! Kim ill sun - same. Darwin can explain free will, feelings etc.
Dinesh D'Souza: everything has a cause has a begining. I call the cause of the universe God! (if i dont understand it I call it god!!)
Part 8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8puuM-C9XIY
Dinesh D'Souza: infinite universes but no evidence for this (eg Lee Smolin - frank speculation, a fantasy); laws of nature may require some divine explanation.
Dan Dennett: scientists are speculating about possible causes to the fine tuning of the universe (other than a creator did it). Some Atheists make a mistake - think that there is no difference between right or wrong.
Part 9
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0Ts_kPn5Tg
Dinesh D'Souza: morality is a universal phenemenon - 'evolution' transmution from biological meaning; religion is blamed for events that are not religious issues; atheist bigotry;
Part 10
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMEu_pGCCU0
Questions: Ockhams Razor and the big bang; Pascals' Wager;
Part 11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqpumHZGx7c
Questions: ways of experiencing the sublime / god, mutual exclusivity of religions - decide which religion is right - dont just assume they are all wrong
Part 12:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rae3EUR-W4s
Questions: god is outside human realm of testing - too easy an answer; spheres of human experience (consciousness, love, morality) that rely on subjective human experience - Dennett 'understanding of consciousness' is increasing greatly by scientific study. ID is just a hoax! D'Souza: Universe does require an explanation - a cause!
Part 13:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADLjLcS2kJs
low altruism, man is moral and spiratual; evolution has not accounted for morality (Dinesh); evolution has an explanation for morality (Dennett); Sweden (70% atheist) has a better record than USA - time to grow up; Nietsche (if kill god, lose Christian morality eg value of human life, equality of races or man /woman, abortion); how is Jesus differant from John Frum? is god the goodness we have around us (its good but its not supernatural);
Part 14:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KgVtKKgoks
Stalin advertised himself to be a god; limits of knowledge - limited to senses; cannot get beyond 5 senses (Dinesh); what if we are wrong? trust faith! Parsimony principle
Part 15:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pM5mv-g2kUU
everything has to have a creator - so who is gods creator; evolution run amoc? Fundamentalist Evolution (Dinesh)
Selected Comments from http://richarddawkins.net/article,1942,n,n
8. Comment #92738 by Spinoza on December 1, 2007 at 11:23 am
I wonder what people here think of Dennett's proposition that we should teach world religion.12. Comment #92747 by eXcommunicate on December 1, 2007 at 11:41 am
I agree with Dennett's proposition of teaching religions in school. Not much else to say about it, other than it should not evangelize. As long as religites stop trying to push religion into Science class.While these debates interest me and i enjoy watching them, I can't help but think it's a complete waste of time.The only person on that stage with the intellectual ability to change his mind is Dan Dennett.
Christians have had centuries of evidence contradicting their scriptures and blowing their "reasons" for believing in god out of the water, and they still hold their facile beliefs. It's pointless to have a "battle" where one side is able to concede defeat and the other only able to deny that they were defeated.
21. Comment #92761 by yoyoman812 on December 1, 2007 at 12:09 pm
I wanted to mention that I was at the debate and thought the Dennett did not prove his point.He did make some terrific arguments on a variety of subjects.
I'll also be honest, I was impressed with a few of the counterpoints that D'Souza made as well.
I think Dennett made a good case that religion is man-made invention just like language...
However, he didn't prove the point of the debate which was the GOD is a man made invention.
Dennett thanks goodness that he is alive. Some people thank God they are alive. Couldn't you see this as exactly the same thing? I asked him this very question (after the video cut off) and he responded with "yes, in fact you can see god = goodness")
In which case, goodness exists is to say god exists, which is to say that God isn't manmade.
22. Comment #92762 by eXcommunicate on December 1, 2007 at 12:15 pm
yoyoman812 - How does that follow? Dennett was probably saying that you may thank "god", but all you're doing is thanking "goodness." Not necessarily that god = goodnessHey, Dinesh, the Universe is just how it is. Life evolved according to the conditions in which it found itself, not the other way around.
I see your point, but I think this is the wrong way to deal with this.
I believe there is an issue about why the universe seems so suitable to life (and, despite what so many have argued, this really is the case, or so I believe). I don't think this issue can be easily dismissed.
However, what can be easily dismissed is the idea that a universe suitable for life could be the result of an enternal first-cause creator called God.
Whatever the fine-tuning we may currently think is needed for a universe which allows sufficient physical complexity to permit life to appear, that is unimaginable orders of magnitude less 'fine-tuning' than that needed to allow a God-like creator to exist.
This was expressed very well by Dawkins in TGD.
I believe that this is the argument we should use. If you want to declare the universe unlikely, fine. But then you have to accept the vastly greater unlikeliness of an infinite and omnipotent mind, so your argument fails.
37. Comment #92782 by Terry Thompson on December 1, 2007 at 1:04 pm
I think that we atheists make a mistake in arguing any hypothesis as to what "preceded" the big bang. At this point there is no consensus and it looks silly when we supply hypothesis with little or no evidence. Instead we should point to the fact that the supernatural has now been pushed back from explaining why it rains to reason for the big bang back 13.7 billion or so and THANKS in no small part to Daniel Dennett that our understanding now includes conciesness.
Also I think that we need to distinguish between science and our philosophical suppositions based on our current understanding of science. Evolution is a well tested theory, but to go from the fact that now we do not need supernatural to explain life to the conclusion that there is no supernatural is well rationed philosophy. We can argue that it has much more weight than christianity or any supernatural, but it is a philosophical metaphysical argument nonetheless.
and lastly we need to show why this world view will benefit man better than supernatural. Just arguing it is infinantely more probable does not mean it is a better understanding. It is one argument, as would an argument that understanding better the basis of our morality (from biological and cultural evolution IMHO) will better aid us in improving our morality and culture.
The rarity of life in our own solar system seems to suggest that life managed to come about inspite of the physical constants. They maybe fine tuned for the universe to exist in the way it does but this universe seems to do a bad job in supporting life as we know it.
I think the opposite is true. Our solar system is probably wonderfully adapted to life. There is liquid water everywhere.. in the atmosphere of Jupiter, almost certainly in the oceans of Europa and Callisto, and it looks likely that underground seas exist on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn. The old idea of a 'Goldilocks zone' - a narrow band around a Sun where life could exists as a result of the heat of the Sun - looks very out of date.
Also, we have hardly explored our Universe. Who knows where life could exist? There have been suggestions that life could even be most abundant between the stars, on numerous extra-solar planets, using radioactive heating as a source of energy.
But anyway. The real issue with the physical constants is that until we know why they are as they are, we have no reason to pin them down to values friendly to life, or even to allow complexity. If you look at the cosmological constant, unless it is extraordinarily fine tuned, the universe would not even allow atoms, let alone complex chemicals or life.
At least that is my understanding of things. I have yet to read Stenger's writings on this matter, and the contrary views of Martin Rees and others.
EDIT:
2) Your statment assumes that life as it exists on earth is the only possible form life can take.
You make a good point. However, if I understand things right, the issue of fine tuning is primarily not about whether or not life can exist in a universe, but whether or not anything like atoms can exist.
@SPINOZALike it or not religion is prevalent in the world. I think a critical and comparative teaching of the different world religions is a good idea. In Scotland when I was at school about 7-9 years ago we had Religious Education class which taught about other religions. We also had Modern Studies and History. Surely within those 3 disciplines it could be taught. I would however like it to be taught in an unbiased manner.
45. Comment #92791 by eXcommunicate on December 1, 2007 at 1:31 pm
Part 14: Dinesh tries to have it both ways (and this is the crux of his entire argument). First he posits that we can't know what happened before the Big Bang or what happens outside of the Universe, because we are limited by the Universe. We are of this Universe and thus cannot fully (or even partially) understand anything outside of it. HOWEVER, then he (and others like him) says, "Ah, but there's a god, and I know this." Someone needs to ram home "how does he knows this?" if he is constrained by the Universe and the "lens" of his own senses.49. Comment #92797 by phasmagigas on December 1, 2007 at 1:39 pm
I wanted to mention that I was at the debate and thought the Dennett did not prove his point.
I felt that to, im not sure that is actually important, when challenging the notion of an all powerful supernatural deity it is impossible to show it is in actual fact a human construct (in the same way that cthulhu may or not be), dennet knows this and i think the point he makes by displaying the various religions is to introduce the notion that how people interpret god (irrspective of its existence) is instrumental to how they act and if there are various ways of behaving how god wants then maybe this will lead ultimately to questioning the validity of one and alls religion and ultimately god/s it/themselves.
56. Comment #92806 by phasmagigas on December 1, 2007 at 1:55 pm
dinesh parades the false notion that pol pot etc killed because they were atheists, this is ridiculous, is there any evidence anywhere that anybody has ever killed another because they were atheist? There is however lots of examples counted daily where one person will kill another primarily based on their acceptence of a god and what they believe its requirement of them is.the fact that he then suggests that atheists should share the responsibility of 'atheist' dictatorships is preposterous.
D'Souza muddles every debate. He really doesn't debate, instead he brings a lot of different topics like life freewill, big-bang, ultimate-cause,etc., that, like Dennet said, would require hours to be explained. I think this is a strategy not to answer the issues in the debate.
69. Comment #92824 by drenghdndvtm on December 1, 2007 at 2:22 pm
I find it so frustrating that Dinesh couldn't/wouldn't understand that if you assert God always existing it's just as plausible to do the same for the universe. At least there is something testable with the latter.Also, if Dinesh agrees with evolution, isn't there evidence of intelligence and consciousness ramping up over small, incremental degrees to our current state?
Thanks, Pat. I was there and enjoyed myself. Dennett's concern regarding toxic belief is exactly my own. D'Souza would earn more of my respect if he would tackle that problem directly. Like many here, I'm acutely worried about the elementary school teacher in the Sudan, Ayan Hirsi Ali's safety, and so on.I often wish I could continue a debate after it ends, so here goes:
D'Souza: Dennett is guilty of over-extending Darwin. Evolution can't explain why we believe certain propositions are true. The premises of modern science are based upon Christian metaphysics, namely that the universe follows rational laws because there is a rational law-giver.Whaa?
1. The evolution of life is something we observe. Natural selection is our theory to explain those observations.
2. The evolution of the universe from the Big Bang forward is not explained by Darwinian natural selection but by an incomplete set of physical laws. These laws are a human invention. When you speak as though the laws of physics somehow exist in the universe, you're guilty of reification.
Descriptions of God are to a large degree man made.By what method do we sort the man-made part from the ___ part? Does this method exclude toxic superstitions?
Propositions concerning God and the afterlife aren't going to be supported by decisive empirical evidence. Still, we ought to take these propositions seriously, as our beliefs about God and the afterlife affect how we live now.If how we live now is what matters, why not focus upon that and screw the rest?
Atheists naively deem everything we don't know as "can't possibly exist."Actually, science is a method for falsifying hypotheses. Propositions not yet falsified often can be assigned a degree of confidence in relation to competing hypotheses using standard criteria.
The atheistic viewpoint cancels out the subjective dimension.Actually, we have developed ways to study subjective experience. And further: although matters of feeling and preference may not serve as reliable guides to what's true about the universe, they remain important truths about one's self.
Free will and morality have no meaning for a materialist.Nonsense. Dualism, BTW, is highly problematic.
We are both reasoning in the dark. The only difference is he won't admit it.In order to reason together both parties must agree upon the rules. If parsimony is accepted as a rule, the self-creating God hypothesis must be afforded a lower probability than the self-creating universe hypothesis. If parsimony is rejected as a rule, things are going to get pretty wacky.
Humbly open yourself to God. You might come to see that humans are a divine creation, a product of divine intelligence and divine love.Personal revelation provides no barrier to toxic belief.
D'Souza never answered Dennett's 5 opening questions.Maybe they could wrassle over those in a text debate.
That'd be cool to see.
89. Comment #92847 by SameerMarathe on December 1, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Okay I watched the full debate. My impressions:I think the debate mostly revolved around the same old ideas that D'Souza kept repeating:
a. Pascal's wager.
b. The uncaused cause argument.
c. The tweaking of the universal constants argument
Secondly I think it was an ugly debate (to put it politely) primarily because D'Souza kept bringing in all sorts of arguments each of which may be a subject of an individual debate. There is no possible way one can have a reasonable debate with this guy if he doesn't stick to the topic.
He kept ridiculing the speculations of the multiverse theory and I was surprised that Dan didn't point it out that D'Souza's alternative (god dunnit) is equally if not more speculative.
At one point he said that the caveman in 2000 BC wouldn't know anything outside of a 2 mile radius. Does this guy know anything about ancient civilizations in Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, South America?
I am glad that Dan caught him when he tried to pin one of his arguments on the irreducible nature of consciousness.
D'Souza talked about humans not evolving in recent history (~last 5-15k years), I believe there are studies that have shown otherwise.
He ridiculed the multiverse hypothesis (or speculation if you like that word) by giving some crazy argument about O J Simpson's defence etc. That is not what the multiverse hypothesis is about!
92. Comment #92851 by Hume is our politiks on December 1, 2007 at 3:18 pm
First time I see this guy D`Souza, he is really something. How a person of apparent intelligence can come to such obscure conclusion as to posit another entity outside the universe to explain it is beyond my understanding. He says "The universe is exactly fine tuned for life to exist", I wonder if he skipped his astronomy and biology classes and didn`t realized how marginalized life is and how harsh conditions have been for any type of life to survive. Dennet should`ve pointed this out96. Comment #92858 by Russell Blackford on December 1, 2007 at 3:42 pm
People here often seem to miss the strength of the fine-tuning argument. It's not really that the universe is fine-tuned for life. It's that the universe is fine-tuned for any sort of complexity at all. It looks as if there has to be an explanation as to how there is an internally-complex universe, when almost any combination of possible physical constants and other basic givens would yield a universe without complexity - perhaps one that doesn't last long enough, perhaps one that never expands, perhaps one that expands too fast, etc. I think that it is actually tempting to say, "A powerful intelligent agency must be responsible." That's the kind of answer that many people find psychologically satisfying.Bringing out why this might be more psychologically satisfying than intellectually helpful is actually quite difficult.
I think that the fine-tuning argument is the most powerful weapon in the theists' armoury, because it can at least tempt us to deism ... and once we reach deism, it may seem natural to wonder whether there isn't something to revelation after all.
I don't think the argument from fine-tuning should compel any commitment to belief. It has a lot of difficulties, but they are not straightforward to explain in real time. I've always thought that hammering this argument would be the best approach for a theist in live debates. The best strategy is to make deism seem plausible, then ask if it is plausible to stop at deism when the deist god could easily reveal itself, take an interest in its creation, etc.
I haven't watched this debate yet, but that's how I would handle the brief if assigned the theist side of one these debates.
The challenge for atheists is to come up with a response that is cogent ... yet simple and clear enough, and sufficiently independent of other assumptions, to be expressed in real time in a live debate. The best approaches, I think, are the ones that build on problems with whether positing God is a genuine explanatory advance.
Dennett's comment about "creation" being a concept from the novel (DSouza's analogy) and therefore not applicable outside the novel (if all other terms from the novel are rejected) is excellent.WRT fine tuning: Before Darwin, we guessed that life was designed by God. We couldn't understand how complex life could emerge without a designer.
Isn't it risky for the theist to link God to our current ignorance regarding the fine tuning problem? If this gap in understanding is filled, intellectual honesty requires that we reject the God hypothesis a second time.
What is the purpose of having a course where children are taught the "history" of religion but where you leave out the FACT that they are all created by man and this is all easily verified by historical data? I can see the value of preserving some aspects of religion but those aspects are not unique to religion, they are precepts that make sense for people living in groups to adhere to, especially in a civil society. Children should be taught this, they should also however be taught that there is no correlation between moral actions on the part of people and any (sometimes contradictory regarding what is "moral")guide book as defined by religions. In my view Dennet is going a bit to light on the punching bag of religious belief. Ostensibly he does this in hopes of making inroads into existing entrenched religious modes of thought, though I commend this slow and steady technique it is a bit annoying especially when you know that the facts to offer a more complete refutation of divinely inspired religious belief can be employed in its stead."In the name of atheism", Dinesh D'Souza is a complete dick. He is using a different definition of atheism on purpose to argue against points made by Dennett, Dawkins, and others. Atheism as a lack of belief in God never motivated anyone to kill, because killing people or not killing people doesn't logically follow from a lack of belief in something.
At best one could say that a belief in God is necessary to stop the inherent nature of humans to kill one another. I would accept an argument with it as its premise to be logically consistant. I wouldn't accept the premise though.
Steve99 and Russell Blackford
I agree that the fine-tuning argument does seem quite strong. But I tend to think that that is because it is like other after-the-fact statistical arguments. In other words, it's a bit like the woman who dreamt of her sister last night and, what do you know, her sister just phoned her! After the fact, it seems amazing to her, and surely didn't happen just by chance, so she ascribes her dream to something supernatural. Similarly, we look at the physical constants and it seems amazing that the way they are should be as they are, but I am wary of giving this 'seeming amazing' more importance that we should.
I know I haven't set this out too well, but what I am trying to get at is that I think we need to be very careful about arguments based on some form of 'it couldn't have happened by chance'. As RD and others have pointed out, we haven't evolved as beings who are able to evaluate the meaning of probability very well, and it seems to me that acquiring meaning from probability (or improbability) is precisely what the fine-tuning argument tries to do. Indeed, that is what most people did in respect of life on earth before Darwin came along, and they arrived at a Creator.
Russell(Re 'fine tuning')
The challenge for atheists is to come up with a response that is cogent ... yet simple and clear enough, and sufficiently independent of other assumptions, to be expressed in real time in a live debate.
I would talk about needles in haystacks.
When people say:
"How likely is it that we are in this given environment with so many things just right?"
I would say:
'Yes. It is almost like looking for a single needle in a million, million haystacks, isn't it?'
[Furious nods]
I would then ask how long it would take to find the needle if we were actually the pointy item in question.
Answer: not very long.
Ok this would need clarification and work, if further questions were asked, and I admit not by me as my understanding of physics is simplistic, at the very best :-)
However, the sudden switch in perspective could elicit the queasy realisation that it is possible to couch questions in inappropriate or simply meaningless terms.
Also, it could also make the point that, in terms of the universe, we are tiny beings indeed.
To automically presume that this is all for us has always struck me as the height of hubris, as well as an error of reasoning.
Fine tuning again.
Unless you are a full blown creationist, even "fine tuning" doesn't lead to the conclusion that the universe was created for us.
Once we have the right "initial conditions" such as the right physical laws and constants and the initial organic molecules the subsequent history of life on earth is well explained by evolution.
Even if the initial conditions were "fine tuned", the subsequent evolutionary history that eventually led to us definitely wasn't.
We owe our existence to some key events which were more or less accidental, like the meteorites that killed off the dinosaurs, climatic and geological catastrophes etc. So even if initial conditions were "fine tuned", there is no reason to expect that would result in us being here, unless the theists argue that "God" also fine tuned his celestial missiles to kill of the dinosaurs, among other things. That would be quite a theological problem.
116. Comment #92892 by Don_Quix on December 1, 2007 at 5:15 pm
I've always found the "universe is fine-tuned" argument to be quite silly. It's easy to take the wind out of this one by pointing out that anywhere in about 99.99999999999% of the Universe, a human being would almost instantly die a very gruesome and painful death. Fine-tuned indeed.
Ludacrispat26: Well done for organising this debate, and posting the videos. My verdict is that Dennett did a great job. No other antagonist got D'Souza to admit that religions were man-made inventions, forced him into defending a Deist position only, and got him to admit that he (D'Souza) needed to read Dennett's books on morality and consciousness. As usual, D'Souza sprinkled so many false statements and non-sequiturs into his rapid-fire delivery that it was exceedingly hard to pin him down.
Regarding the fine-tuning argument, Russell writes:
People here often seem to miss the strength of the fine-tuning argument. It's not really that the universe is fine-tuned for life. It's that the universe is fine-tuned for any sort of complexity at all. It looks as if there has to be an explanation as to how there is an internally-complex universe, when almost any combination of possible physical constants and other basic givens would yield a universe without complexity - perhaps one that doesn't last long enough, perhaps one that never expands, perhaps one that expands too fast, etc.It is worth noting there is a difference between current theories of the universe and the universe itself. Our best current theories are excellent at predicting physical behaviour with unprecented, amazing precision. But they are mathematical formulas combined with various assumptions. We don't know what the actual universe is.
Ante Kepler, the motions of the planets could be predicted to high accuracy, by means of circles, and circular motions around the current point on that circle, and then circular motions about the current point on that circle, etc. The system was called epicycles. It had a long history. Thousands of years ago, the greeks made gadgets called astrolabes, looking like 19th century clockwork, that computed the positions of the planets by this means. To get high accuracy, multiple epicycles were needed, making it possible to predict planetary motions with high accuracy, but the theory had complex structure, needing various critical numbers (the ratios of the various diameters of the circles, and the speeds of movement around each circle) to get the desired accuracy. The theory was successful however, and people at the time generally assumed that the planets moved in epicycles, rather than regarding epicycles as merely the best available model of the motions.
Post Kepler, the same accuracy could be obtained by far fewer numbers and a simple formula, operating on a quite different principle. Universal gravitation was discovered soon after, and the complex epicycle theory was seen to be a poor theory, despite its great precision (for its time) because there was a simpler, even more precise way to describe the motions, which was discovered to apply to all motions observed throughout the universe.
In the 20th century a proliferation of "elementary" particles was discovered, with even more "magic numbers" than the current theories. The best available model of physical motions today, the "standard model", is simpler, using only 26 (currently) key numbers, and if those 26 numbers are chosen right, they model the entire universe as perfectly as we know how to measure it. But it is still a model. Most physicists suspect an even simpler model will one day be discovered, using different principles and fewer numbers still.
We just don't know whether the actual universe requires fine tuning to obtain interesting complexity within it or not. The fact that our current best model requires fine tuning is a property of the model, and we should not assume, as so many popular science writers do, that the underlying universe is (in the sense of perfectly isomorphic to) our current model. That wasn't true for past models, and there are good reasons to think it isn't true of our current models.
119. Comment #92896 by Russell Blackford on December 1, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Bonzai, I agree that the evidence against a providential deity is very strong. So strong, that it looks to me that the fine-tuning was not done by anything even like the wishy-washy god of the deists, whch tends to have something to do with goodness and the like. If you ascribe fine-tuning to a deity, that deity starts to look more like a cosmic mad scientist conducting a cruel experiment.The truth of the matter may be this. If you already believe in revelation, can somehow rationalise away the evidence against a providential and beneficent god, and just feel a psychological conviction about religion, the fine-tuning argument will seem like powerful confirmation.
Conversely, if you find the supposed revelations unconvincing, find the evidence against any kind of providential and benevolent god overwhelming, don't see any signs of disembodied spirits floating around (so invoking one now is invoking something totally new as part of the total ontology, and is thus ad hoc), and are impressed by humans' tendencies to reach for explanations of phenomena that rely on intelligent agency (and by how often such explanations fail even when they are initially psychologically satisfying), then you are likely to look for some kind of mechanism that explains how the constants are what they are and how they have turned out to allow complexity.
That may not be an easy point to package up, but I think it's close to the truth of the matter.
Obviously, I'm in the camp of those who see the evidence against a providential, benevolent god as strong, think the evidence of revelation is unimpressive, etc. Debating this in front of people from the other camp would be difficult, though. Dennett didn't have to do that, but such debates have a wide range of audiences.
Wow, I like how Dinesh uses that reduction to Hitler, and also how he brings up the old red herring "Mao, Stalin and Pol Pot were atheists therefore Atheism is evil". Not impressed at all.
And that "fine tuned" rant is ridiculous, Richard challanged this in "The God Delusion", if the universe wasn't in a state where we could exist then we wouldn't exist to debate it or think about how the universe is fine tuned.
125. Comment #92911 by blasphememe on December 1, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Don_QuixI've always found the "universe is fine-tuned" argument to be quite silly. It's easy to take the wind out of this one by pointing out that anywhere in about 99.99999999999% of the Universe, a human being would almost instantly die a very gruesome and painful death. Fine-tuned indeed.
I think you're mis-understanding the argument. The idea is that the atomic forces seem to be fine tuned to allow gravity to form stars and planets, and the elements to be made by fusion in stars from hydrogen, and building on that chemistry, then biology.
I think this is very much a valid question as to why this is so.
The young man in Part 10 with Gray sock cap, destroyed Dinesh. Dinesh had to take deep breath
and babble about something off topic.
When he asked Dinesh "Where do you draw the line
on absurdities?" was a stunning!
It's not really a valid question. For example what if the universal laws were different? Humans and life in general can only exist because of the universal laws, but if the universal laws were different then there'd probably be phenomana equally as complex as life, just different. We're a product of the universe, it's no good to take the stance that the universe was tweaked to fit us in. It's like asking why the animal was designed around the working heart, he's approaching it from the wrong direction.
Up to video 7 now, one thing I can say about D'Souza is he's a master at walking the fine line of an argument. Instead of attacking a point directly, he'll bring up some tangential and at first blush intriguing idea which ultimately is irrelevant to the discussion. He mentions Pascal's wager for example, which to the layman seems like a very compelling argument. To paraphrase, "If it cost me nothing to believe, then why shouldn't I?" However this means nothing as few believers use such a restricted description of faith, in fact those that do are known as deists at best rather than as theists. Once the trappings of dogma and ritual possessed by real world religions are added upon this kernel of zero loss belief, the recipe for destruction and conflict with other such systems is set. Further, when we analyze the contradictions these varying sets of dogma and ritual bring forth we see that if the God is there it is anything but a good or just one. So the best we can conclude, even giving D'Souza a bone by asserting that yes we agree there is a God, is that that God is either on vacation or crazy. Yes D'Souza is free to go with believing since it costs him nothing but that very choice damns him to also believe that his God is either dead (which is materially identical to non existent as atheists assert) or crazy. This latter option contradicts the thousands of lines of scripture and dogma created by religions to describe, supposedly through divine inspiration, what "God" wants for us. Well if "he" is giving every culture dichotomous commands every few hundred years then he is either malicious or crazy assuming he does exist, but he's definitely not good. I'd rather believe that God was dead than that he was a drunkard, and if he is dead , that is the same as the position that an atheist takes that he does not exist, so it does make more sense to NOT believe, as believing forces us to accept a contradiction of an at times sleeping, at times lightning throwing, at times capricious and malicious "God".Again I commend D'Souza for bringing up the muddled issues that misdirect from the arguments at hand, ultimately he builds on a house of cards but his job is not to bring you the truth it is simply to *convince you* (ie. "win" the argument) and his style does work if the sales of his book are any indication.
The idea is that the atomic forces seem to be fine tuned to allow gravity to form stars and planets, and the elements to be made by fusion in stars from hydrogen, and building on that chemistry, then biology. I think this is very much a valid question as to why this is so.
Sure it's a valid question, when it's posed in a genuine way. But, the implication D'Souza and most other people who toss about this argument make is that because the forces seem to be favorable for the universe to exist as it does, and we can't yet explain why, GODUNNIT.
Nobody knows why the universe exists at all. More importantly, we don't have any understanding whatsoever of what the universe actually is. It could be that it is the fundamental nature of a universe to be the way it is right now, and that it is simply not possible for it to be any other way. It's also possible that there are an infinite or near-infinite number of universes with different settings and we just happen by chance to be in one that has conditions favorable to increased complexity. With a near-infinite number of universes, it would not only be possible that our kind of universe could form, but it would be astronomically (pardon the pun) unlikely for it not to form. There are many other possibilities as well.
All I was saying is that the way people like D'Souza use (or abuse) this argument is disingenuous. It's just another aspect of the argument from ignorance. "We don't know why things are the way they are, so godunnit! QED."
My original statement was not a misunderstanding. It was an illustration of how ridiculous it is that a God would go to all the trouble of "fine-tuning" a universe so perfectly so that we could come about, but then neglect to account for the fact that almost the entirety of Its grand creation is instantly lethal to Its most special creatures (us). Of course, as others have stated, the universe may not have been created for us -- that could pose some serious problems for old Dinesh. :D
Dr. Benway wrote:Perhaps those constants aren't independent. Perhaps if we understood more about the geometry of reality, we'd see how all the parts stand in relation to each other, and how each value couldn't be otherwise.
Or maybe God used a machine with dials and carefully rigged the game.
Either way, it's a long way from Big Bang to eat-my-body-drink-my-blood.
Well said, but the first statement brings an interesting idea. We know that the current known candidates (string theories mainly) for grand unified theories that do a job of integrating gravity in with the other forces of nature along with predicting the correct values for the fundamental constants all suffer from providing too many answers. Namely, they seem like over broad mathematical constructions that give us all the possible answers instead of just the one that fits our universe, employing unseen dimensions and entities beyond our universe to explain our universe. It may be the case that this is a requirement of explanation of our universe and the state of the various values. This could be true since lacking an ability to view the universe from the outside our logical constructions must necessarily be as generalized as possible, and from this generalization collapses the certainty that is our universe. It is unfortunate that we may be unable to determine "which universe is ours" while bound inside. I say "may be" since the work of an early 20th century mathematician, Kurt Godel essentially defined the limits of what questions can be asked using a logical /mathematical construction. In essence, it is possible for a system constructed to find answers to be unable to answer questions definable using its language. It may be the case that the mathematics foundation that we have created is unable to allow us to answer the question of why the constants seem "fine tuned" and of allowing us the ability to pose questions in the universe to determine the answer. The system itself may preclude our asking falsifiable questions about the universe that can tie one or another GUT to OUR universe and in the language of science that would make the conclusion only a hypothesis.
I am confident though that whatever is outside our universe communes with what is inside and has effects that we can test for and thus allow us to select from the embarrasment of theories that do explain the constants. All that said, there is absolutely no reason to jump from our current state of understanding back to saying "a magic man done it!" when scientific investigation has gotten us so splendidly to the very edge of the universe itself as D'Souza and other theists are always eager to do.
137. Comment #92928 by blasphememe on December 1, 2007 at 7:15 pm
AtlasIt's not really a valid question. For example what if the universal laws were different? Humans and life in general can only exist because of the universal laws, but if the universal laws were different then there'd probably be phenomana equally as complex as life, just different. We're a product of the universe, it's no good to take the stance that the universe was tweaked to fit us in. It's like asking why the animal was designed around the working heart, he's approaching it from the wrong direction.
Come now, surely inquiry into why things are the way they are is fundamentally what science is all about.
And that "fine tuned" rant is ridiculous, Richard challanged this in "The God Delusion", if the universe wasn't in a state where we could exist then we wouldn't exist to debate it or think about how the universe is fine tuned.
Rather flawed logic there. I think you had better go back and re-read TGD. Not that I consider TGD/Dawkins to be the last word on this matter,to my recollection he does not dismiss this idea. There are some theory's as to why the universe is the way it is and, as I recall he and other scientists consider it to be a valid question. What if atomic forces were such that gravity could not form stars? Then there could be no other elements but hydrogen and consequently no chemistry and biology.
Of course we should try to find out why the laws of physics are the way they are, but to start from the assumption that they're the way they are for some big reason is wrong in my opinion, we shouldn't focus entirely on looking for reason when there maybe none.
It's like asking "why was the universe created in the first place?", we can attempt to find out the sequence of events that lead up to the creation of the universe but is asking that question the correct one for science? Religions often start with the assumption that everything has some deep rooted meaning to it's existance and go from there, and that simply doesn't have to be the case.
What I stated was the Anthropic principal, which is a good argument against the "divine engineer twiddling his knobs" theory. It doesn't disprove there is one, but it's a good reason for why there doesn't have to be one.
Blasphememe
Rather flawed logic there. I think you had better go back and re-read TGD.
Perhaps you should go back and read the second paragraph of page 143 of TGD in the chapter The Anthropic Principle: Cosmological Version. I don't see how the anthropic principle is "flawed logic." Dawkins certainly didn't invent it. I believe Stephen Hawking is one of its main proponents.
blaspheme wrote:Rather flawed logic there.
I don't see how the quoted portion of Atlas' text was flawed logically. It seemed like a perfect paraphrase of the rebuttal to the theist invocation of the anthropic principle. The state of the universe is conducive to our life necessarily since we are here, we should not be surprised that it is so conducive to life because we are here is another way of saying it. The Universes state is a precondition of our existence, our existence is optional among many things that we could be, for example if this was 20 million years ago, life still exists but there is no sentient beings on earth to contemplate it. The fact the universe will (in the future) support sentient life in the form of us does not mean it was made for us (since 20 million years ago there was no "us" but there was all the things needed for us to survive.)
Most annoying bits for me:1. The yelling. Even with the volume turned low my orienting response is repeatedly provoked. It disrupts my ability to reflect and organize my thoughts while I'm listening. I need the occasional pause.
2. The accusation that Dennett over-extends Darwin into inappropriate domains. He doesn't quote Dennett or anyone to illustrate his point. Unlike D'Souza (apparently), I've never heard an atheist argue that Darwin's model of natural selection explains abiogenesis or the fine tuning of the universe. D'Souza had better back up this accusation with a material example if he doesn't want people to believe he's a liar.
Evolutionary psychology is an emerging field and it's possible a fair amount of human behavior won't be well accounted for by a Darwinian model. But there's nothing inappropriate about the effort to understand how natural selection might favor certain behavioral traits.
3. "My neurons made me do it." You are your neurons. If you say there's no point in telling you it's wrong to kill people because you can't help yourself, we'll simply lock you up. Need anything more be said?
4. If D'Souza truly believed that the fine tuning problem was evidence for God, he'd recommend physicists stop investigating the problem. Why isn't he campaigning against CERN?
Homework for D'Souza:
1. Reification (the map is not the territory)
2. Falsification
3. Fallacy of affirming the consequent
4. Tu quoque
5. God of the gaps
6. What happens when we throw out parsimony?
7. What happens when we throw out corroboration?
8. Try decaf
There is nothing strong about the fine-tuning issue. It is a piece of science that theists have picked up on to try to support their special beliefs.
Argument from ignorance. God of the gaps. Argument from incredulity. Take your pick.
I think it was Dr. Massimo Pigliuci who has talked about how religious claims always occur at the boundary of knowledge. The fine-tuning topic just happens to currently be in that zone. When our understanding encompasses these topics theists will shift their arguments to new ground.
In that sense I think it is a no-win situation trying to have these arguments with theists and I think Dan was somewhat less comfortable when D'Souza galloped off in that direction.
I think a more useful approach, which is what Dan is all about, is presenting the overwhelming evidence that gods and religion and all the ideas about divine connection inherent in them, are entirely man-made. That is the strongest tactic to fight religion, the dangers of which are not supernatural, but are exclusively real things that are done by real people.
156. Comment #92956 by McLir on December 1, 2007 at 8:23 pm
On the talking point of Stalin and Pol Pot being murderous atheists, I think this is an issue worth fleshing out. Totalitarian state communism resembles theocracy in some important ways. There might be some other useful analogies between religious zealotry and certain kinds of secular zealotry -- neo-conservatism and market fundamentalism come to mind. The dangers of these come from valuing ideological systems over actual humans. Perhaps a generalized definition of toxic zealotry could be very useful.
Dennett's resolution sounds like an extremely good idea. If any schools adopt it, I will be very interested to see the results.
158. Comment #92958 by edejard on December 1, 2007 at 8:30 pm
With respect to the "fine tuning" argument, it seems to me that some have misunderstood (misrepresented?) D'souza's version of it. He made it quite clear that it doesn't provide "proof" of god's existence as some have misleadingly suggested (indeed, at another point in the debate D'souza admits that he is an agnostic, which is to say that he doesn't "know" god exists, yet chooses to believe); rather, he argues, the fine tuning evidence "fits" with the theistic worldview. You many agree or disagree with this argument, but you must present it accurately first.
And D'souza's take on the anthropic principle is a bit more nuanced than some have suggested. He has said that if you respond to the fine tuning argument by saying, "Of course the universe -- or at least one small part of it -- is capable of supporting life, whatever the improbabilities, since, well duh, we're here to think about it" you've basically missed the point, because you haven't explained the improbability! The philosopher John Leslie has posited a thought experiment to make this a bit clearer: A man is in front of a firing squad. After dozens of unsuccessful volleys, the warden approaches the prisoner and tells him that this result is too improbable to have happened by chance, and that there must be some conspiracy afoot involving the shooters. The prisoner laughs off this suggestion by saying, "the shooters obviously missed because if they hadn't, I wouldn't be here to have this discussion." This is not a very satisfying answer, since it (like the argument above) leaves a massive improbability unexplained.
After watching the video I was particularly troubled when Dinesh dodged the question on why the Scadinavian societies, by far the most Agnostic/Atheistic in the world, perform the highest on the U.N. development index, have very low levels violent crime, and have the some of the highest per-capita contributions to overseas charity in the world?
This point is particularly useful because much of the questions at the debate (and discussions on this board) seem pointed towards a complete refutation of an a priori God (in a very lose "first cause" deistic sense). Most people here are aware of the argument that if you can posit a "God", then you can also posit an universe with less assumptions. Although the God assumption is substantially (even exponentially) more unlikely than the naturalistic universe assumption. It is still in some sense possible, which means that arguments around this point are at best byzantine. By examining the Scandinavian model I should hope that Dinesh should ask himself: would it be "good" to sell or convert the Atheistic/Agnostic Scandinavians to any particular religion? If so, what are the empirical societal effects would he believe that this would serve?
Dinesh was very disingenious throughout the whole debate because his positions seemed to rely on the most wooly ecumenical deism I've ever seen. Even if we accept (which I don't based on likelyhood)some of his first cause points, he has not given us a reason to care/waste time on contemplating, revering, praying and worshiping towards this very vague "first cause" God. Furthermore, his assertion that Nietzche statement that "Christian values would survive the death of God" proves that the Scandinavian societies are the most just because of their previous Christianity is flawed. First, Nietzche is not axiomatic, or equivalent to a controlling court decision in law, you cannot cite Nietzche as incontrovertible authority. Obviously, Nietzche said a very many horrid things (about women for example) and I doubt that Dinesh would quote him as authority on the matter. Second, if his premise is that a Christian history serves to inculcate greater values, he would still have to grapple with the fact that Scandinavia is by all accounts MORE moral now that it has abandoned its vestigial Christianity.
Is he in a sense advocating a sort of Liberal post-christianism? If he is not then he should ask himself what he finds offensive in this view?
Mango, not at all. First, one can say that the anthropic principle doesn't do the heavy lifting you want it to do without presupposing any sort of agency.
Second, the point of Leslie's thought experiment is that the anthropic principle isn't an explanation at all. It's like saying that the presence of a corpse with gunshot wound, coupled with the absence of a gun, explains a murder. It does nothing of the sort. It does present us with dispositive evidence that a murder has occurred, but it doesn't "explain" the murder. Similarly, the fact that we are here does provide us with dispositive evidence that our part (at least) of the universe is capable of supporting life, but it decidedly doesn't "explain" that fact, especially when it seems to be the case that a very specific set of conditions had to be fulfilled to bring this fact about.
Now I happen to think that Dinesh's answer is very problematic, but I think we must address it without resorting to simplistic references to the anthropic principle.
edejard wrote:"Of course the universe -- or at least one small part of it -- is capable of supporting life, whatever the improbabilities, since, well duh, we're here to think about it" you've basically missed the point, because you haven't explained the improbability!
What improbability are you referring to? The improbability of their being sentient life able to ask the question? Who said that was improbable and has *accurately* quantified this "improbability"? We know there are at least 100 billion stars in our galaxy *alone* a large percentage of them similar in structure to our own star. We also know , just in the last 10 years, that there are over 200 extra solar planets revolving a smaller set of stars. It sounds like our probability of existence is quite high from these numbers but then there is the chance of planets in the habitable zone (and note assuming the life is OUR type in that it is carbon based), factoring in these variables can lead to widely diverging results of any estimate of "improbability". The estimates (The Drake equation being a famous one) that have been made to try to put a number on how probable it is that we are here are just that estimates. In fact they are very wild ones as certain variables we know little to nothing about at this time or leave out other ideas of what life can be. So though I am of the view that we will find more refined values to these variables and be able to make more accurate predictions of the probabilities of life or sentient life (and note again, it is always "life like us" the probabilities change when we entertain types of life which is hard for us to imagine), we aren't there yet. This works both ways mind you, we can't state accurately how probable it is , nor can we state how improbable it is. (since that guess also leaves out important variables for which we have little to no data)
The only other "improbability" I can think you are referring to is the one of a universe with the constants that make our type of life possible, again , since we have no idea how universes form or what minimum attributes define universe, we can't say squat about how probable it is for us to be here in this one, either for or against. We already know that there are an infinite number of mathematical possibilities for universes, just because ours is perfect for our type of life doesn't mean that one of the many others that may also exist don't have life which is similarly perfect for those universes even if that "life" is like nothing we can imagine. So again, our ability to define "improbability" goes out the window as we can't even limit what is possible let alone what is life. We shouldn't be surprised that if we apply every filter necessary to restrict life to our own type that the probability of such life will go down but that is a different question from determining the probability of sentient life, whatever form inside our universe or outside it. With the "improbability" misunderstanding explained, surely it should be clear that going from this state of uncertainty in even being able to guess the probabilities of our existence or our universes existence, to asserting "a magic man done it." is irrational. The scientific view is to keep acquiring data and forming hypothesis until we can refine our view and our calculations for these probabilities, giving up the game shouldn't enter into the equation.
edejard; So what you're asking, then, is why are the laws of physics they way they are, which is the step beyond glibly reciting the anthropic principle. Dinesh frames the question as if there are "dials" that have been turned, painting for the listener a scene ripe for a turner of dials. And since he flatly rejected parsimony nothing stops him from a "leap of faith."For me, and the people I converse with who are not deep into physics, the anthropic principle suffices. It holds water, even though it's not an explanation at a deeper level of understanding of how the laws of physics arose.
175. Comment #92981 by SameerMarathe on December 1, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Much is made of the "fine tuning" argument. As I see it the crux of the argument from the theists' side is:All the fundamental constants seem so fine tuned that even slightest variation in any one of them and 'we wouldn't exist'. Therefore the universe must have been fine tuned (by a creator/intelligence/god) with us in mind.
My questions:
1> If one of the questions had a different value, perhaps we (i.e life on planet earth or planet earth itself) would not exist. But how do you know that in whatever universe that did come into existence (with the different constants than ours), life or some complex phenomenon that resemble life and conscious beings would NOT exist? Is there some proof that shows that with slight variation in any of the constants, matter as we know it would not exist at all?
2> Let us accept for a moment that the universe is fine tuned by a creator. What makes you think that the creator had 'us' in mind? We have good reasons to believe from probabilistic calculations that life and perhaps intelligent life exists in other parts of the universe. What is the proof that the creator actually favor the beings on Blargon 7 somewhere in a solar system in Andromeda galaxy? Why us? In all probability the earth is a penal colony to dump all the "failed" models (I think Hitchens has mentioned this idea in god is not great.)
3. To what accuracy do we know these constants. E.g the gravitational constant G = 6.67428[+/-0.00067] x 10^-11 N.m^2.kg^-2. This means there is uncertainty about the 14th decimal place onwards and the value could be:
6.67495 x 10^-11 N.m^2.kg^-2 to 6.67361 x 10^-11 N.m^2.kg^-2. Granted that the uncertainty is very small (~ 0.01 %) but doesn't this in itself prove that things are doing fine with small uncertainty? How much does one of the constants have to vary to make things as we know blow up or not appear at all?
4. Last but not least... it seems like use of the fine tuning argument is nothing but an extension of the god the gaps argument. We don't know why the universe looks fine tuned for life... goddunit. Maybe in my life time I would be lucky enough to see that gap closed.
178. Comment #92984 by SameerMarathe on December 1, 2007 at 9:39 pm
Is there some place where I can look up schedules for talks, presentations, other speaking engagements or these debates by Dan, Richard, Sam Harris et al. I would like to attend one of these things if they happen to be in the neighborhood. I could search on this website but if someone already knows a link or links I would greatly appreciate their passing on the info.The fine-tuning argument is based on the same fallacy that so many theistic arguments are based on: special pleading.If the coincidence of the universe being what it is demands an explanation, then the coincidence of God being what It is demands the same kind of explanation. And if God doesn't demand an explanation, neither does the universe. As always, God is superfluous.
Danesh D'Souza has these views.1) The big bang created by God created the universe 14 billion years ago.
2) 4.6 billion years ago the earth forms
3) 3-4 billion years ago life starts.
4) 100,000-200,000 years ago humans eventually evolve (in Gods image).
5) 2,000 years ago he finally intervenes to kill his own son which is also himself.
WTF!
D'Souza also uses this argument(I have replaced moustache for atheism).
"Stalin and Hitler where both moustache wearers"
"Moustaches are bad"
"All moustache wearers must take the blame for the atrocities of previous moustache wearers"
How much does one of the constants have to vary to make things as we know blow up or not appear at all?
Well, my understanding is that the cosmological constant has to be tuned within 1 part in 10 to the 50th power to prevent the universe blowing up.
Well, my understanding is that the cosmological constant has to be tuned within 1 part in 10 to the 50th power to prevent the universe blowing up.
Steve, do you have a reference for this? I find it very hard to believe given that we don't have the capability to take any physical measurement to past about 12 decimal places of resolution.
Steve, do you have a reference for this? I find it very hard to believe given that we don't have the capability to take any physical measurement to past about 12 decimal places of resolution.
I have probably phrased things clumsily. This does mean that we can measure anything to that accuracy, it is more about the possible range of the constant.
For example, in String Theory there are a phenomenal amount of possible universes, most of which have cosmological constants which would result in a rapidly expanding universe with no structure.
The fine-tuning argument is based on the same fallacy that so many theistic arguments are based on: special pleading.
If the coincidence of the universe being what it is demands an explanation, then the coincidence of God being what It is demands the same kind of explanation. And if God doesn't demand an explanation, neither does the universe. As always, God is superfluous.
Well, God is superfluous, but it does not mean that the fine tuning argument is, in general, a fallacy.
We are probably in the same situation regarding the settings of the constants of the universe as we were in terms of trying to explain the compexity of life before Darwin and Huxley. There really was something that needed explaining, and we found that explanation.
It is as misguided, in my view, to casually dismiss the apparent fine tuning of the universe as 'not a problem' as it would have been to dismiss the complexity of life as 'not a problem'. We should admit that it does need explaining while making it clear that God is not the answer.
Denevius, what? That's exactly the same as saying "Women can complain all they want, but non-suffrage is here to stay as long as women are emotional and non-rational."Surely that is not what you meant to say.
I think you meant to say something else, and I think you may be right... What you seem to have meant is that the majority of people on earth are too stupid to think for themselves, or do the intellectual leg-work to come to the realizations that intellectual atheists have come to...
But I think it's scarier than that...
... I also think we need to TRY our damnedest (no pun intended), to BRING THE FACTS to people, and to try and lift them up out of their "dogmatic slumber" as Hume did to Kant... and as public education has improved the intelligence of enormous numbers... so too could continued (and length) criticism of religion (which began the instant religions were created) bring more and more people to the truth.
And there is much value in that.
I find it ironic that Dinesh paints a caricature of Dennet disbelieving in things in earlier times such as other planets (I forget what the other thing was). 'Well, there's no evidence for other planets existing!' Well, look at yourself, Dinesh. The apparent 'fine tuning' and 'first cause' point to a god existing? Surely in the earlier time to which you transported Dennet, you would have cited rainbows, lightning and the sun as things that point to a god. You're simply filling the remaining gaps with God.The fine-tuning argument is no problem when dealing with any reasonable person under normal circumstances, but under the conditions inherent to a formal debate (and against someone like Dinesh), it poses a problem. There is no one-line knock down argument to be provided.
There is the possibility that the universe must exist this way for reasons currently unknown. RD talks about this briefly in TGD. Perhaps the constants are no more free to vary than the proportion of a circle's radius is to its circumference.
Of course, there is the idea of a multiverse. Of all the possible universes, we necessarily exist in one friendly to our form of life.
Then again, who's to say that a different configuration of the constants wouldn't be friendly to life in some different way, or to life unlike any we can imagine? Dinesh baits one questioner into making his point that we as humans aren't capable of knowing/understanding everything. So, why assume that matter must be made of atoms? "For all we know, there might be intelligent beings in another universe arguing that if fundamental constants were only slightly different, then the absence of free quarks and the extreme weakness of gravity would make life impossible."
Any argument of fine-tuning assumes life as we know it is a given. The universe does not care if we're here. We happened to come into existence in the only known part of this vast universe that seems conducive to our form of life for a brief period of time (considering from the BB to whenever we die out, which I see as a small blip on the timescale of the universe). Does any of this imply a designer? If it does, said designer appears to be quite inept, and at best lucky that his 'finely tuned' creation actually gave rise to life on this obscure lump of rock.
Anyway... people actually clapped at Dinesh's handling of parsimony? Well, I suppose it was an impressive 'tactic'.
Also, there's Dinesh's assumption that the BB need a 'first cause'. Yes, time began with the BB… and 'cause' is a temporal concept that only applies to a situation in which time exists. Despite any need you have to invoke a cause and give that cause the attributes of your god, the BB (beginning of time) does not need one.
As a real scientific hypothesis, the multi-verse hypothesis, should be (is?) actually testable. You seem to dig physics better than I do; perhaps you can shed some light on that.
Some forms of multiverse should be testable. Future observations of the cosmic microwave background may reveal patterns due to gravity waves, and if they do, that has the potential to tell us a lot about the nature of things at the time of the big bang, including several multiverse ideas.
It may become mind-bogglingly absurd but the only chance you would have to logically disprove such a thing would be for it to be self-contradictory
Well, I think that 'knowing the unknowable' is self-contradictory. And you are certainly doing that if you label the unknowable 'God'.
But what I wanted to say is that even if somebody comes up with a logically consistent bullshit explanation, they would still need to overcome the burden of proof and show some evidence. And that's often forgotten in debates like this.
I agree.
Part 14: As I understand it, in answer to a question, DDS says that our whole experience is a product of, and limited, by our 5 senses and we should not deny the existence of god because we cannot sense him.
However, if he cannot be detected or sensed then doesn't this mean that he must be an invention of the human mind!
Maybe i'm just missing something simple here ..
Neal: no, not really. Logically, there is nothing wrong with the existence of a god (or any object) which we can't sense. But if this is a god, it is the deist's god. If you claim an interventionist god, then you have a problem.
xale66x wrote:Perhaps the constants are no more free to vary than the proportion of a circle's radius is to its circumference.
I agree, and believe this is is precisely what the universe would look like if we are only seeing or existing in part of an over riding geometry. The funny thing is the proposed candidate theories (mostly string) that successfully integrate and explain the constants are precisely higher geometric (dimensional) systems. I don't see this as a coincidence. We lack experiments yet to pin down the veracity of the statement, but we just may in time.
Future observations of the cosmic microwave background may reveal patterns due to gravity waves, and if they do, that has the potential to tell us a lot about the nature of things at the time of the big bang, including several multiverse ideas.
Fascinating stuff. Is there a concrete hypothesis formulated connecting the existence of a multiverse to expected patterns or is it all just a preliminary conjecture? Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.
Well, I think that 'knowing the unknowable' is self-contradictory. And you are certainly doing that if you label the unknowable 'God'.
Ah, but here lies the catch: They don't claim to know it; they only claim to believe it :)
The funny thing is the proposed candidate theories (mostly string) that successfully integrate and explain the constants
This is perhaps going a bit far, as these theories haven't really explained anything yet, as they aren't really what we could sensibly call 'theories'. Anyway, String Theory seems to suggest a phenomenal number of possible universe with widely differing values of the physical constants, so it hardly pins them down.
agg wrote:Fascinating stuff. Is there a concrete hypothesis formulated connecting the existence of a multiverse to expected patterns or is it all just a preliminary conjecture? Any pointers will be greatly appreciated.
There are several such hypothesis. Regarding gravity waves, some theorists think analysis of waves reverberating through the universe since the big bang may tell us a bit about the initial conditions that set our universe off to expansion. This may allow us a selection target in the various types of string theories that offer solutions that necessitate a multiverse.
First, I'd like to clarify some often mistaken ideas concerning what a multiverse is. The term multiverse was originally associated with the idea of determining the history of particle trajectories as studied in the QED (quantum electrodynamics) Richard Feynman was the first person to popularize the idea in physics that the trajectory and or energy state of a particle that IS measured, exists because all the other possibilities that are not have "collapsed". In terms of analysis of particle trajectories a mathematical object called the wave function is said to "collapse" to the measured trajectory from all the possible ones. Later, in popular descriptions and science fiction this mathematically useful tool was extrapolated to have physical significance for literary purposes.(search "multiverse" for details of this history)
If the possibilities of alternative paths are infinite then maybe they actually exist and collapse to a given result here because the attributes of our universe "tunes" them in that way. There is no physics behind this assertion, it is only a supposition that comes out of trying to ascribe a physical meaning to Feynman's "sum over histories" the math that describes collapsing wave functions. The newer idea of "multiverse" concerns mathematical solutions to extremely complex multidimensional models for describing not just particles, but all possible interactions of varyingly discrete entities of energy. Mathematical physics has evolved to the point that entire "algebras" can be judged for their merit in predicting all the phenomena we see in our universe in a consistent manner. The problem is that there are many possible solutions to the set of mathematical models that are being studied and we lack experiments to pin down which solution defines OUR universe. The concepts are complex but a rough over view can be had by reading on various topics.
I am an electrical engineer by degree and we have similar examples of mathematical structures that require the existence of infinite entities in order for us to make efficient real world calculations concerning signals, energy, power content, voltage, current...etc. In the EE realm these tools (Fourier, Laplacian and z transforms) are practically limited in how they can be applied by the need to realize a desired level of accuracy in the results in a given computation time, they also have prescience over a discrete set of attributes of electrical signals and make no predictions on particles as we understand them in the science of physics. I think this is the chief distinction that has kept a similar analogy being made between these structures and the possibility of "real" versions of the entities described in the tools. (For example in discrete and continuous signal theory we play with imaginary values freely but we don't assume that somewhere they actually exist, they are for us tools which have amazing ability to simplify real calculations without having any real analog) It is unfortunate that the nuance of mathematical physics are usually grossly mis characterized when prepared for public consumption since they necessarily cover a larger suite of entities, many of which map closely to physical entities that we have discovered to govern our existence in the real universe.
Read more on:
basics:
Richard Feynman
multiverse
"sum over history"
QED
infinite series
differential equations/non linear partial
advanced:
gauge theories
sum over histories /Feynman diagrams
QED (quantum electrodynamics)
E8 symmetry
Heterotic string theory
M theory
Wikipedia has several well written articles for general introductions to these concepts. As always don't use it as a "last word" consult the citations as well.
steve99 wrote:This is perhaps going a bit far, as these theories haven't really explained anything yet, as they aren't really what we could sensibly call 'theories'. Anyway, String Theory seems to suggest a phenomenal number of possible universe with widely differing values of the physical constants, so it hardly pins them down.
You are correct, in the strictest popular scientific sense they are as yet unfalsifiable and are technically not even theories. My point is simply that the embarrassment of choice for all these values makes them unique in being best candidates for saying something about why the fundamental values are what they are. Until that first experiment comes however, their just mathematically defined and related but untested ideas.
Some of the reviewers (my good friends) have completely missed the point. The debate resolution was: "God is a man made invention".Daniel Dennet signed, sealed and delivered his verdict in the 5 questions posed to Dinesh at the end of his first 5 minute speech. Question 4 directly addressed this, and was basically ignored by Dinesh. It asked: "Do you agree that John Frum, Ganesh, Angel Moroni, and Angel Gabriel are human inventions?
The rest of the debate was over the existence of God, at Dinesh's insistence.
Anyone trained in Philosophy (or the sciences) should know that it is a fruitless endeavor to try to prove or disprove God. Dawkins does a good job of explaining this in the God Delusion, Chapter 3 "Argument for God's Existence" and Chapter 4 "Why There Almost Certainly is No God".
The point being that there is no absolute proof either way. (hence the use of "almost certainly" is used in the title of the chapter)
Keep the great debates coming!
Well Done DennettWell Done Organizers
Dsouza babbled through most of it.
I think that the best point to come out was the request to teach world religion. Even Dsouza admitted support for this.
There should be a poll in the forum on this question.
227. Comment #93083 by Creationismsucks on December 2, 2007 at 6:41 am
Does anyone else notice how Dinesh, and believers in general, just trot out the same old crap over and over? Regardless of how many times they're corrected on, for example, what evolutionary psychology is really saying about morals, the next time they talk about it, it's as if no correction had ever occured.I think it's sinister, deliberate and cynical. I think maybe Dinesh knows he's misrepresenting evolutionary psychology (in this example) but that really 'saving souls' is more important than getting the facts of the table. I'm guessing he knows that evolutionary psychology has a much more nuanced explanation for moral behaviour, but he thinks that ultimately it still pales in comparison to the Great Truth, which he has been charged with dispatching.
Since he thinks the ends justify the means, he cheats. More mic time spent muddying the waters is more potential saved souls, he thinks, and let's not worry about having an honest discussion.
I'd like to make a point regarding the teaching of religion in schools. As a Christian I have no problem with the whole smogarsboard of human religion being represented, without the dice being loaded in favour of one or the other. If I were an RE teacher I would do my honest best to do justice to my duty to present the facts about the rituals and underlying worldviews of each of them. I would not by any means (I hope) try to win converts for Christianity while doing my job. I would be prepared to have the content of lessons vetted by adherents of all the religions being studied to make sure that I ws being fair.
What Dennett wants is to teach religion as a function of natural selection. In order to teach religion in that way you have to have a prior commitment to natural selection, which, insofar as it claims to explain everything, is a philosophical worldview that not all RE teachers will necessarily hold. Or should they be required to demonstrate a commitment to natural selection before being appointed? Is this the kind of scenario that Dennett envisages? Do you people, committed as you surely are to the principle of freedom to believe or not to believe, really want to see this happening? - teachers and educators of all kinds being selected on the basis of a priori ideological commitments? Natualistic selection procedures! Purposeful (not at all random) weeding out of undesirable mutations within our educational fraternities!
What Dennett wants is to teach religion as a function of natural selection.
Not in the talks I have listened to (I have not listened to this one). I last heard him mention this in a TED talk (www.ted.com). All he wants is for children to learn about all major world religions without these religions being preached at them. If that is done, he has no objection even to faith schools.
Actually that's not an ad hominem. That's merely abuse. The core of D'Souza's argument against atheism is an ad hominem, however - i.e., refusal to believe due to egocentrism."The worst thing that spouts out of the orifice of that awful being ..."Can I ask you why you indulge in this ad hominem abuse?
What Dennett wants is to teach religion as a function of natural selection.Dennett made his proposal quite explicit. Natural select was not included in the content.
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