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Unreasonable Reason

I find the rise of ‘militant atheism’ a rather fascinating development, with the likes of Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett directing their intellectual strength towards the abolition of religion and the promotion of science and reason in its place. My personal feeling is that – like modern skepticism – the militant atheists don’t realise that they can’t win ‘the war’ when they antagonise more people than they win over. As a case in point, I find myself more interested in rebutting the points of militant skeptics and atheists, even though I am probably closest aligned philosophically with them rather than ‘believers’ (whether in God, or UFOs etc).

Anyone that similarly enjoys the debate over science and religion should definitely check out this email discussion between Sam Harris and writer Philip Ball. The debate began when Ball wrote a column in Nature about Harris’s “Reason Project” (titled “How Much Reason Do You Want?”). Harris responded (rather aggressively I thought, given the mild comments in the article) by “hurling” Ball into the Reason Project ‘Hall of Shame’. Ball replied in kind with a blog entry, “Whatever You Do, Don’t Call Them Militant“, which finally inspired the lengthy email dialogue.

It’s all worth reading because there are numerous good points made by both Harris and Ball, although you also get a feel for how the ‘champions of reason’ are going to struggle winning over the public, when they act aggressively even to someone with Ball’s (rather similar) point of view. Ball touches on what may be the root of the problem in his final email:

One somewhat frustrating aspect of this exchange for me has been that you seem to insist that any disagreement with your point of view is not genuine disagreement as such but is missing the point. My sense is that you cannot conceive how any sane, rational person can hold a point of view different from your own, so that if they insist on doing so, they are obviously being either obtuse or stupid.

Which is very much the major problem with religious fundamentalists – that they consider other points of view as untenable. Lots of great points in the whole discussion, too many to quote here – so go read it if you have the time.

On a sidenote, it was rather amusing to see Harris bring up Rupert Sheldrake’s name in the debate, when attacking Nature:

If ever there were a place to call a spade a “spade,” it is in the pages of the world’s most authoritative scientific publication. Let me remind you that the physiologist Rupert Sheldrake had his scientific career neatly decapitated, in a single stroke, by a Nature editorial. Did his vaguely “woolly” thesis about “morphogenetic fields” deserve at least a ride in a tumbrel? Perhaps. Was his book, ‘A New Science of Life’, as flagrantly unscientific as Francis Collins’, ‘The Language of God?’ Not by a long shot.

Regular readers will know that Rupert is often the arch-nemesis of the militant skeptics – and has recently had a run-in with Harris’s co-Reason Projector Richard Dawkins – so I’m not sure how long it will be before Harris is pulled aside and talked to about his ‘unreasonable’ interest in fringe/psi research

Previously on TDG:

Editor
  1. The atheist militants’ credo:

    All of your argument are belong to us

    —–
    It’s not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me…
    It’s all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!

    Red Pill Junkie

  2. Agreed
    The trouble with Science Magick and Holy water….is that they keep pushing their belief in an afterlife and a western “god” down everyones throats, by their choices of who/what they link to.

    Every man, if he is honest with himself (a rarity indeed) must say that he has NO IDEA if there is a “soul”, “afterlife” and he certainly must say if the god as described in the old testament exists, he certainly is an egomaniacal homicidal psychopath.

    NDEs can easily be explained by natural brain chemistry and wishful thinking, I know, I’ve taken hallucinogens, been there, seen that, 99% pure stuff as a matter o fact.

    Now the lighter side, optimistic side…..there are FAR better paths to spirituality and meaning, for me, advaita does it, just don’t tell me theres a “god” as defined by any major religion, cause you are him, so am I.

    1. Agreed–more or less
      I largely agree with you–and I’m a fan of advaita myself, by the way–but I think it’s a bit simplistic to say that “NDEs can easily be explained by natural brain chemistry and wishful thinking.” Study the literature carefully and you’ll find that not all cases are so easily dismissed (something which I think Greg has addressed in the past).

      Ray G.

    2. Of course
      If i don’t know something, it is impossible for anyone else to know it, period. And if we are all agreeing that ‘we’ can’t know something, then nobody can know that something.

      Hopefully, nobody who would actually know will come to tell, because we would tell him what he knows or not.

      The problem is that people who don’t believe actually believe a negative.

      It is a simple matter to not believe someone making any claim at all and to remain skeptic. Yet, it is intelligent so see what he has to say. I don’t understand why that should represent any kind of threat to that intelligent individual, since that kind of intelligence is the sign of a mature mind that cannot be influenced.

      On the other hand, believing in a negative, denying in other words, is a way of shortchanging ourselves. Nothing new can be learned with that mentality because nothing exists outside of that mentality.

      People rationale by the fact that all are the same because they all look the same. If that is the case, we all are Neros, we all are Hitlers, we all are Ganghis, we all are Christ, and we all are the Anti-christ.

      If I were to go by that kind of point of view, seen from my perspective, then everybody is obtuse and therefore humanity is doomed, because not a single individual can ever remove his head from his own arse and stop thinking it smells good in there.

  3. ..not a closed book
    In their binary world, someone like Sheldrake is the same as a fundamentalist Bible-thumper. Gimme Dr. Gary Schwartz anytime (his site was called “open-minded science” at one time.)

  4. Quote:
    Which is very much

    [quote]Which is very much the major problem with religious fundamentalists – that they consider other points of view as untenable[/quote]

    I dont think this is the big problem with religious fundamentalists. If this is used as the yardstick then fundamentalism goes out of the window as a useful concept. I belief that the moon is a body of rock that orbits the Earth – though i do not belief this blindly, but due to the evidence. I am a Moonist fundamentalist, but that is not useful. If the evidence was to turn away from me and i stuck with my rock idea then i would be showing the same fundamentalist trait.

    We are all fundamentalists in that we consider other points of view as untenable.

    What makes the paranormal world interesting is that evidence of why it should be investigated can be provided. This is why paranormal believers are not fundamentalist and why harder line scientists are not either. When it is a debate about evidence and how it is collected and interpreted then we are on even ground. Fine, people will dismiss others evidence and it is a battleground of ideas and interpretations, but in the case of the paranormal it has not yet had its breakthrough in any one single area – though some are closer than others. In some instances mysterious affects are documented and highly worthy of study, but there is often a big gap between this and a conclusive understanding worthy of being raised above other paranormal explanations.

    Religious fundamentalism doesnt even get this far into the fray, often it doesnt even care.

    1. Fun the mental
      [quote=daydreamer][quote]We are all fundamentalists in that we consider other points of view as untenable.[/quote]

      I don’t believe this statement is correct – I certainly don’t consider other points of view as untenable. I tend to doubt my own point of view more often than I do others actually.

      Or maybe that’s just me, and the rest of the world are fundamentalists.
      😉

      Kind regards,
      Greg
      ——————————————-
      You monkeys only think you’re running things
      @DailyGrail

      1. Possibly! 😉
        I’m not sure

        Possibly! 😉

        I’m not sure though whether this is a state of mind. This can be truthful if there is no position which you can imagine that cannot be correct.

        There is another issue here though. When we make a choice to be open minded and philosophical about all things, what is actually occurring in the brain, and at what level?

        I think it is possible to ask a question, such as ‘am i a pair of trousers?’, then because we are ‘in a philosophical frame of mind’ or even ‘exist in that frame of mind’ we can make the very quick and easy choice and declare that it is possible. Where is this happening in the brain though? Is it possible that while one part of the mind can answer ‘possibly’ to this question other parts are being hypocritical and not living as if this were the case.

        Being open minded about all things, no matter how ridiculous, can be achieved because we are positioning our mental processes in such a way, but i dont think that is the be all and end all of ourselves.

        I could be a pair of trousers, though it is unlikely. I guess here we must decide what we mean by untenable and if what is really happening is open-mindedness in a practicable sense, philosophical sense, plain intellectual stubborn sense or whether that even matters is we are constituent parts capable of believing contradictory notions, and whether the intellectual decision to remain open-minded to all possibilities no matter the meaning or ramifications is even important next to such things as whether we also believe them.

        1. Trousers
          If someone insists to be a pair of trousers, I will take him for his word. Unfortunately, I don’t find much interest in discussing anything at all with a pair of trousers.

          But if someone insists that ‘I’ am a pair of trousers, well I am the one who decides if I am or not, regardless of what people believe to be likely or not.

          By the way, what we consider to be likely has nothing to do with ouf field of inexperience, and it is that field that is the most important.

          For instance, we are supposed to be likely to descend from apes. Well, if someone tells me we are descending from apes I am force to answer that he must speak for himself, regardless of what he and the whole world feels is likely or not.

          Life is not likely to exist on Earth because of the odds. Laws behind matter are not likely to be what they are because of the odds. Consciousness is not likely to exist outside of its related material body because of scientific consensus. Aliens are not likely to visit Earth beacause of the ‘laws of physics’, and so on.

          So, if someone were to refute being a pair of trousers simply because it is not likely, that person certainly would deserve being turned into a pair of trousers.

          Likeliness is probabilistic, yet all the marvels that are facts just here on this planet go against all probabilities. Still, there is a great number of people, not talking about you Daydreamer by the way, there are lots of people who conclude on reality based on what is ‘likely’ or not, not realizing that in the end, they are likely to be wrong.

          Murphy’s law says something like:
          If something can go wrong, you can bet it will.

          Richard’s law says something like:
          If you think its impossible, you can bet it is.

          So, some people are probably really trousers that have apes in their ancestry. Until they realize that in reality they are not the trousers, they are wearing them, and that it is the trousers that have a link to apes, not them.

          1. You guys …
            … are all truly wonderful! I really needed to laugh today and you have provided me with the opportunity – thank you very much. You also talked sense.

            Regards, Kathrinn

          2. Richard’s law
            [quote=Richard]
            Richard’s law says something like:
            If you think its impossible, you can bet it is.[/quote]

            Actually, it should have said:
            If you think its impossible, you can bet it is possible.

          3. first one
            Actually there is a common phenomenon:

            some problems are easily solvable when you don’t know that it is impossible.

            So your first version actually has merit. If you know it’s impossible, it is impossible for you.

            —-
            It is not how fast you go
            it is when you get there.

          4. Exactly
            So, it was not impossible to be so even though i had typed it wrong. (Was typing under Murphy’s law I guess)

            So that in the end, what we believe we know is a personal limit.

            Good point.

  5. The name unspoken
    I have a comment which is taking much too much time to write. So I’ll just mention an odd or interesting thing: the slam on A New Science of Life wasn’t written by just anybody, it was written by John Maddox, “the man who reinvented science journalism” mostly through his stints as chief editor of Nature. Maddox was a CSICOP Fellow, and freely used his Nature throne to lay down the law on the nature and boundaries of science. Between that and his broader influence on journalism he was probably one of the most successful activists of the modern skeptical movement, in addition to being one of its top insiders. And that 1981 smiting of Sheldrake is one of the most celebrated of his actions for the cause, up there with the Benveniste ambush (tagged: randi).

    So was Harris’ slighting of Maddox and by extension the skeptical movement a faux pas, or a calculated gesture?

    1. One sure thing,
      People of good will should continue their work and burn less gas fencing with skeptics.

      Why even bother with them, unless they are of the intelligent type, those who endorse creative opposition rather than systematic opposition.

  6. My mind is not working too well today
    Even so, I found the arguments given here interesting. I am not up to a detailed debate about some of the fascinating points raised.

    Instead I am going to give a point of view that up to now I still hold, although this could change if the circumstances around me also change.

    For me, reason is only half of the answer. We have to parts to our brains, and each works differently, as was proven in the experience of the woman who had a stroke and after she recovered from it she spent a lot of time speaking about it. As a highly qualified scientist in her own right, I found it compelling that she could state much of what she did as it goes far beyond just reason and basic science.

    I have found intuition, and other experiences enough to convince me that there is something else beyond our scientific reasoning. But as there are many people who have not experienced what I did – without the aid of any halucinogenic drugs! – then I can only say that for me this is what happened, but you can believe whatever you wish based on your own life experiences.

    That is the fundamental point I think to all these types of debate.

    No-one can prove there is a god, or a life force outside of our universe/solar system/planet. All we can do is speculate – something we all seem to enjoy doing about any enigma.

    But don’t let my view stop you all coming up with new ideas. Like Kathrinn I find the whole thing uplifting, and I will enjoy listening to further arguments.

    Thank you for an interesting debate – so far!

    Carol A Noble

  7. Fundamentalism
    Nice post. Fundamentalism, in my opinion, is a human tendency, not a religious condition. It exists everywhere, in art, culture, religion and science. Especially in science.

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