Not a Wonk, or, Specialization is for Insects

This blog has drifted away from its original piratical purpose (to which I very much hope to return in time for my capstone next semester), but since it's a convenient and publicly accessible platform, I'd like to use it to share my response to American University's new "wonk" marketing campaign. For some background, I'd encourage you to check out both the university's official website devoted to the campaign and The Eagle's coverage of its launch on campus.

‎"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."

- Robert A. Heinlein

While I think the goals of promoting community spirit and pride in knowledge of American University's recent "American wonk" marketing campaign are commendable -- as may well be the attempt to reappropriate the term "wonk"-- I don't think this term conveys what's great about our campus community to people not familiar with what we are attempting to accomplish linguistically. As dictionary.com and Wiktionary.org reveal, the connotative meaning of the term -- to people not associated with AU -- is overwhelmingly negative, not to mention historically charged with racial and sexual orientation overtones. While AU is seeking to independently redefine the term, realistically, I don't believe we're in a position to accomplish that at a level that extends beyond the campus community and incoming freshmen who are not familiar with the term. Linguistic reappropriation tends to be most successful when it is broadly and intersubjectively undertaken. Is AU really in a position to effect that level of societal change? Think about the contemporary connotations of "queer" and the struggle to reclaim it as a term of pride outside of a limited community. The negative connotations of "wonk" may not be as charged or even as hateful, but they're present nonetheless, and I'm skeptical of AU's ability to single-handedly whitewash them away. Based on the interviews in the promotional video, the vast majority of students who were enthusiastic about the campaign had never heard the word "wonk" before. What of those who had and found "wonk" wanting? Anecdotal evidence from AU peers, alumni, and outsiders to the campus community indicates that the negative connotations of "wonk" are alive and well.

Furthermore, as a cultural practice, the reappropriation of formerly derogatory or inflammatory terms requires an honest acknowledgement of their status as hateful, mean-spirited, or biased. AU seems to have made no such effort with this "wonk" campaign, glossing over the negative connotations and handing down a brand-new definition of the word that may exhibit certain denotative similarities with its ancestors, but which does not confront -- and therefore cannot overcome -- the sins of its father.

The real-world uses of "wonk" being tracked by the American Wonks website are certainly a mixed bag in terms of whether they are used positively ("A reader is impressed with brainiac wonks Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor and asks if they are the future of conservatism") or negatively ("Speaking of nebulous politicospeak, Taegan Goddard's new wonk-tastic Political Dictionary is now available"). But more importantly, almost all of them are used to refer to professionals with narrow interests, often unable to communicate those interests to a wider audience or relate them to other fields: "Two researchers created an experiment that will be known beyond psych wonks." (Merriam-Webster concurs with this latter sense.) Is this really how we want AU graduates to be characterized? As (social) scientists or practitioners unable to make their work relevant, accessible, or interesting to those outside their field or professional circle?

More fundamentally, even if we accept the more charitable definitions of "wonk" as gaining some cultural traction -- and it's possible that AU is part of a broader movement in that direction -- I believe that the word's association with highly specific areas of knowledge is the wrong message for our university to be sending. An undergraduate institution, at least, should aspire to and take pride in cultivating well-rounded, critical, analytical thinkers -- not cranking out narrowly specialized pre-professionals. Indeed, that's the very goal of the General Education Program. It is explicitly anti-wonkish.

Finally, I'm troubled by the explicit focus on "universities as businesses." I understand that a great deal of marketing research was undertaken to produce this particular branding attempt -- and that a certain amount of advertising is absolutely necessary to let people know about the excellent classes, professors, and ideals AU has to offer -- but I think we make a mistake when we think of AU as something to sell, rather than as a place to come to learn -- and perhaps more importantly, to learn how to learn. When we "brand" and "label" (quite literally, in the case of the free t-shirts the university was handing out liberally on the quad today -- and at what cost?) our undergraduates as specialists, we're endorsing an idea and creating certain expectations about what kind of person we want students to become. Do we really want our undergraduates to be experts? Or would we prefer that they be educated in a variety of fields which will inevitably touch upon, influence, and inform their chosen field of work?

As AU seeks to define itself and identify its niche in the world of higher education, it is important that we do not lose sight of the broader goal of helping students learn how to learn, think, and act as responsible, ethical, and informed citizens. And if we've given up that goal in order to train students to get elected as politicians, hired as corporate executives, and appointed to diplomatic posts -- to sell our university to prospective students in the crudest sense of the term -- we've given up on all the things I know and love about American University.

VIII. Some olive branches and an end

Erin:

Fair enough. It's certainly an appealing idea, but with language as a closed, self-referential system, I'm not yet convinced it's possible. I need to think about that some more and finish Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's War and Reason -- and my reading for Rational Choice week in philosophy -- before committing to even the theoretical possibility of social prediction given perfect information. Suffice to say, I'm more interested in what's possible given today's technology and relatively unconcerned with prediction.

For what? The truism that people don't always act in their own best interest and use language imprecisely?

Meh, I typo with some frequency. I like better the irony that your passionate advocacy of skepticism and unfettered inquiry does not extend to wanting to discuss heterodox knowledge claims …

(Alan Shore begs to differ, but that’s hardly the spirit in which I meant “with all due respect.”) Please believe me when I tell you I have incredible amounts of respect for someone who intelligently, critically, and civilly hashes out the nuances of science and religion with me via the comments sections of a Facebook post for an entire week. Seriously. That basically defines my standards of respect-worthy behavior. However, I don't respect your (or anyone else’s) strawmanning of postmodernism. It *is* intellectually cowardly and it shuts down the possibility of debate just as quickly as the hysterical wilderness cry of “Faith means I don’t need to think about your evidence!” rules out any discussion of the merits of evolution with a blindly faithful (and fearful) creationist. It’s not hard to make a case for postmodernism being cast as a secular version of religion’s blasphemy and heresy – arguments that can’t (won’t) be talked about because they are too repugnant or would undermine an established system of belief. That said, I accept that you weren’t directly critiquing my arguments or language. This is, more broadly, a frustration with many people’s outright dismissal of knowledge claims on the basis of labels. It goes for Prof. Jackson’s apparent hatred of all of economics ever, or my philosophy teacher’s mocking of feminism just as much as for categorical rejections of postmodernism. And if that frustration translated into an unnecessarily harsh condemnation of your position, I apologize.

Your contention that you just don’t like postmodernism is, at a bare minimum, more intellectually honest than claiming that it’s all bullshit – and it’s certainly legitimate to have some sort of intuitive reaction to a way of thinking about the world, as discussed before. Granted, I don’t understand how a heterogeneous agglomeration of theories and methods could so grievously offend someone to the point that they can’t even bear to discuss them. This is actually a question of no small interest to me, but if you’d rather not talk about it, I will certainly respect that. I aim to challenge, not to antagonize. (I sometimes fall short of this goal.) We’ve abstracted pretty far from the original conversation, in any case.

Summary: I respect you (unquestionably) and the tenor and thoughtfulness of your arguments right up to the postmodernism bit. If I was overly confrontational (and it wouldn’t be the first time), I apologize sincerely. An olive branch: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2010/01/spacestories-gallery/all/1 (Even though Wired Science plays fast and loose with science news sometimes.)

Chris:

All fair. As yet another sidenote, I would say that though postmodernism, like any intellectual philosophy, is fairly heterogeneous inasmuch as it is treated differently across each academic discipline, the common threads that run through all of the postmodern movements are strong enough to be criticized as a whole. To a certain extent, I can criticize the Harold Washington Library and constructivism in the same breath because of their shared qualities. Unfortunately, the connections that I see in this regard must be fairly "right-brained," so it is difficult to put them into the proper terms. In terms of postmodern architecture, I am at least adept enough to say that very vew architects successfully create something that is both intertextual and good looking. What's worse, they often build those buildings on top of old, interesting buildings. They do make good sets for fighting with Batman, though.

"Hubble is back!" at number 6? These guys don't know how to prioritize... Though I will agree that the transit photos are pretty amazing.

Erin:

Oh, sure. There's definitely value to having and being able to us terms like "postmodernism" and "constructivism" and "science" and "religion." Else we wouldn't be able to talk about anything at all. I just think they should be subject to the same skepticism and analysis as ... basically everything else in our experience (or claimed to be beyond it...).

The transit photos are way cool! But I cannot understand why the discovery extensive pure water sheet ice on Mars wasn't a top story. Or the one about smashing the spaceship into the moon to send up a plume of liquid water. Also, Mars is supposed to be pretty bright tonight. I hope you're able to see it, since Boris Johnson has once again failed to issue an edict banning all non-essential lighting within the London metropolitan area for a couple hours one night a week for stargazing purposes.

Chris:

Of course. At the same time, when I say a word like "constructivism" or "religion," I have an absolute meaning in mind. The trick is communicating to others exactly what I mean by those words, which is something different (and I believe, more useful) from a simple, self-evident statement that those words mean different things when used by different people.

As for Mars, no matter how bright it may be, it's a little darker today, as NASA's given up on freeing the Spirit rover.

Erin:

For it was star stuff and star stuff it remains. Requiescat in pace.

VII. What is language?

Erin:

If you do come up with such an equation, let me know and I'll construct a multi-colored graphical representation of it :) However, I think that doing in doing so, I would miss the point just as much as J. Evans Pritchard, PhD does (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOENu0fK0uM). Much to the chagrin of the analytic philosophers, ordinary language, like poetry, simply doesn't map neatly onto the Cartesian coordinate system, let alone onto the elegant symbolism of first-order logic. But, as Wittgenstein points out, it still *works.* Stuff happens when we call something "religious," even if its meaning is contested and vague. (Or perhaps more accurately, stuff happens because its meaning is contested and vague). So for things other than making the initial acquaintance of a new term or structuring the framework of a formal debate, I don't think dictionary definitions are good for much. As far as analyzing the potential for the institutions of science and religion to coexist and work together in the real world, I think it's a lot more helpful to look at how the words are thrown about, as cavalierly as they may be. Then too, I have no particular investment in labeling Sagan as religious or not, since it doesn't really affect my position one way or the other. That's your and PTJ's fight and, as we lack a universal shibboleth for all religion (as opposed to Christianity's handy little test of faith: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5RGxE2_G0I ...), I fear such a debate is going to devolve into a speculative interpretive attempt at getting inside Sagan's head which seems to be an explicitly non-empirically verifiable exercise. As you point out, Einstein used religious language to legitimate his work to a popular audience; I don't think we can judge whether or not he (or anyone else) was ACTUALLY religious from his writing -- just whether or not he used the language of religion, then, more interestingly, what might have caused him to do so and what the effects of doing so were (are ...).

Didn't mean to imply the consumption of spaghetti was mean-spirited when I said it was mocking. (Tell me, though, was there transubstantiation involved or was it a symbolic act of consubstantiation? Or merely an instantiation of that age-old tradition of communion, in the original sense of the word? )

As for people being idiots, I don't think irrational decision-making, inaccurate risk-assessment, or poor driving skills is much of a defense of this position, since irrationality and misperception of risk are pretty much universal. They're puzzling phenomena, to be sure, but they don't have much (any-) thing to do with intelligence. And I don't think "people are idiots" is a particularly compelling account of such behavior. It's got about as much explanatory power as the version of rational choice theory that assumes all people are rational decision-makers then proceeds to explain how they act rationally in any given situation. I'm not convinced that parsimony (your Occam's razor account) is all that important an epistemic value in social explanation.

With regard to ketchup, there is clearly a difference between the two products ... but both are called "ketchup." Why? How were advertisers able to convert mustard into a Veblen good while still labeling it "mustard," but the same was not true of ketchup? Why do people think, as Moskowitz suggests at the end, "ketchup is ketchup" but not "mustard is mustard"? The only way to answer these questions is to look at how the words are used within the social context of the condiment market ... A dictionary definition of "ketchup" or "mustard" is not going to answer those questions anymore than an entry for "flipped" is going to mention the French Prince of Bel-Air: http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=1428

Chris:

Everything can be mapped into logical statements as long as they're precise enough. It's just a matter of finding all the lurking variables.

I used driving as a single example (not to mention the oblivious pedestrians and bikers one always sees, not to mention again the errors in planning the roads, not to mention the errors of people who don't pay for their roads to be maintained properly, not to mention the fact that the problem stems from improper training due to our low standards for drivers' tests set by idiots who decided that anyone should be able to pass them, a chain of idiocy that pervades almost everywhere). I don't really care if it's a compelling account of such behavior; it's easy to say and gets my point across exactly.

People are idiots; there's no way around that. P.T. Barnum once (probably) said, "Nobody every went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people," and I don't think anyone's improved upon that quip yet (maybe Dr. House, early seasons).

In terms of the epistemic value of parsimony - The point of the rule of parsimony is to get rid of stuff you don't need. It is therefore invaluable in any endeavor that either wants to be understood, wants to understand things, or both.

You know my favorite thing about any postmodern accounts of language? Actually, two: one, they completely ignore Chomsky or anyone intelligence; and two, like all postmodernists, they use deliberately confusing language to hide the fact that they're bullshitting people. The last piece of postmodernism I appreciated was Pulp Fiction, and that came out in 1994. I can't be bothered to engage postmodernism because I'm reasonably certain it will give me an unnecessary heart condition. Which, to be fair, science and not religion will eventually cure.

Erin:

No, you're wrong. First of all Frege invented and the Vienna Circle made use of formal logic as an alternative to and improvement on everyday language, not a representation of it. The logicians saw language as it is spoken as an impediment to philosophical inquiry, not as constitutive of it (except perhaps as constitutive of philosophical "problems" ...). In the Tractatus, Wittgenstein did see logic as the fundamental form of language, but such an interpretation is only useful for generating a theory of truth or a theory of language-- fun philosophical problems, if you're into that kind of thing, but certainly not explanatory theories of how the world works. They weren't intended to be. All of the hard core advocates and developers of formal languages I've read (/about) so far have seen their systems as heuristic devices for solving philosophical problems, not as accounts of the real world. Tarski, for instance, admits that there might well be insurmountable difficulties in applying his semantic conception of truth to ordinary language.

In any case, to map concepts like connotation and reference and "improper" or imprecise uses of language into a logical system would require so many logical operators (you'd need one for every way in which a word related to another word ...) that you'd just end up with a reproduction or translation of the language we speak today. Similarly, while accounting for all the variables that exert causal influence over how we use language might be theoretically possible, it is practically untenable. It's like Mill's argument that it is theoretically possible to predict an individual's actions if we know everything about that person and his or her context -- but that we can never, operating in the real world, know all that, so we need different methods for the social sciences.

I'm sure it was easy for you to say that "people are idiots," but I'm honestly not sure what the point of that sentiment is, besides misanthropy. You haven't defended it as an explanatory account of human behavior (as I argued before, in explaining everything, it explains nothing) -- and it certainly doesn't generate any insights, let alone predictions. Why didn't the US militarily threaten the UK during the Suez Crisis? Why did the US become involved with NATO intervention in the Balkans? "Because they were idiots"?

As for refusing to engage with anything you deem "postmodern," with all due respect, I think that's a pretty cowardly and intellectually close-minded position. I went into this at some length this summer, so I'll direct you here: http://roguishcommonwealth.blogspot.com/2009/06/dissent-dissent-on-pirate-blog.html as Thomson raises similar arguments to yours. By all means, critique the substance and merits of my arguments (as you have been) but don't slap the label "postmodern" on them and whine about confusing and obfuscatory language. I find advanced scientific language confusing and obfuscatory. Why? Mostly because a fairly sophisticated and specific vocabulary is needed to address complex subject matter, and I don't happen to be familiar with it. I know Chomsky claims he'd never be able to learn the language of postmodernism but a) I think that's laziness and b) I sincerely doubt I've used any such language in this conversation. If I have, by all means, call me out on some specific instances and we can talk about those! In any case, what I'm arguing for here is a method of understanding the social world that pays attention to the causal role the use of language plays in the social world, not a philosophical project of revealing hidden structures of violence and oppression, which is primarily what Chomsky's critique deals with.

Chris:

It's still interesting to me, as a thought experiment, to imagine the complexity of language broken down. As I mentioned, I am not prepared to actually do it. However, I do not believe in irreducible complexity; it seems to me that there should be some way to break things down. I do not mean to imply that I am rewriting the history of rewriting language. Again, it is a thought experiment.

As is, so far as I'm concerned, the idea that it is possible to predict an individual's actions. To me, that's more of an intellectual litmus test than a sincere endeavor. (I do not doubt, though, that we will eventually come up with technologies that can do exactly what we're describing. It'll just take a long time.)

"People are idiots" is shorthand.

I like the irony that I mis-typed the word "intelligent."

It is impossible to call someone a coward with "all due respect."

Like all things, postmodern writing follows a bell curve where most of the middle stuff is okay, but not particularly interesting. Those average people of all disciplines try to cloak their uselessness in confusing language. I just end up seeing more postmodern crap than other crap. I did not mean to accuse you of using such language.

On a deep level, I just can't stand postmodernism. It may be intellectually weak of me to not continue to engage postmodernism, but it will make me a small measure happier. You may treat this as intellectual weakness, primarily because it is, but I am ill-equipped to continue. Sorry.

TO BE CONCLUDED ...

VI. How do we define anything?

Erin:

It's probably true that some people find the "atheist" label off-putting, but the comments I've heard have more to do with AURA's tendency to take a tone of intellectual superiority towards anyone belonging to a religious community and the attitude that all religious people must not understand what science is or why it is important. It's not so much the atheism that bothers people as the tendency of some of AURA's members (though I think not the group itself) to be anti-religion. Hard to start a dialogue premised on rejection of an entire group's identity.

Sure, dictionaries are handy things (as for how dictionaries get there definitions, I highly recommend this book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Professor-Madman-Insanity-English-Dictionary/dp/0060839783 from when I went through my dictionary phase), but they're notoriously bad at speaking to the connotational dimension of language and when an issue is as ideologically and politically charged as "science v. religion," chances are that acknowledging something more than denotative meaning is going to be necessary to structure a productive debate. That's why I'm more concerned with how terms are actually used and what effect they have than how we ought to define them. Maybe Sagan's world view doesn't fit under Webster's "religion" entry (or maybe it does), but it still matters that people call his view religious. That's more interesting to me than the question of whether or not Sagan (or Einstein or anyone) is "actually" religious. And actually, I think a conceptual dictionary of family resemblances is a great idea: think about it! It would probably have to be digitally structured, but think of how you could link words and concepts to each other in a massive web of meanings and relations! It would probably look something like Wikipedia, though less encyclopedic and perhaps more visually oriented.

Sidenote: What class was the Great DiPrima-Jackson Religion Debate a product of? And why wasn't I in that class?

Chris:

Personally, I haven't seen AURA do the sorts of things that would lead to such a level of animosity, were they not self-identified as "no-religious." Then again, I wasn't here when it was founded and only started going to meetings this past fall. I know that they've co-hosted a debate or two, which could have been the issue, but since I've been going, it's been speakers and spaghetti.

Again, maybe it would help to inform my view by saying that I hate people and think that they're almost universally idiots - this has nothing to do with religion. I'm therefore completely uninterested in "how terms are actually used." Calling bird poop "droppings" doesn't make it any different.

The debate was a byproduct of Social/Science/Fiction in spring of 2008. I forget how we actually got into this, but it had something to do with Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow. [It kills me, by the way, that you can't underline or italicize in Facebook, but I refuse to put book titles in quotation marks.] Excellent class, of course - it's on a two-year cycle and (apparently) quite different each time.

http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/31/carl-sagans-apple-pie-recipe/

Erin:

Spaghetti is delicious, even when it is consumed with mocking intent. And if you ever get Dr. Tyson to speak, I'll absolutely show up (provided it's not this year).

I take a pretty dim view of cynicism among anyone under the age of 60, but I suppose if you want to hate humanity that's your prerogative. I alternate between being frustrated and fascinated by the fact that so few people seem to think like I think (not so much what I think but how), but I don't think that makes them idiots. Basically, I don't understand the social world particularly well intuitively and I appreciate intellectually the puzzles it presents. Looking at language and how it's used is an appealing way to cut into this puzzle as language mediates, if not defines, much of what happens there. But then, I think there's an irreducibly subjective basis to what approach people take to making sense of the world. That's not an argument for "anything goes" relativism -- there's still an imperative to conduct your inquiry according to rigorous standards that are, as Weber puts it, "valid for other people," and to be intellectually honest about your work (your "Don't lie!") and nor does it exempt any approach from skepticism and criticism -- but I cannot find another compelling argument for theoretical and methodological differences among people from similar backgrounds. At some level one mode of understanding is just more intuitive than another. (On an individual level, of course, I love some people very much, strongly dislike a smaller number and am more or less indifferent to the rest. Kind of like most people.)

One of the articles I just read for my International Security class (which is, you'll probably not be stunned to find out, taught by a constructivist) begins by taking a stab at defining religion. Perhaps you'll find their recognition of the heterogeneous character of "religion" (in the context of a justification for drawing upon Kierkegaard's understanding of faith) more productive than my imagined web of meaning. (My imagined web of meaning is pretty amazing, though; it's all glow-y and responsive and interconnected like the plants in Avatar.) Anyway, here's what Lausten and Waever say: "Once, in criticising Kant’s transcendental categories, Hegel ironically claimed that every time he asked for a piece of fruit at the greengrocers he got an apple, a pear, but never a piece of fruit. Like apples and pears we only have Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc., never religion as such. Nevertheless, Hegel’s argument was not that this prevents comparisons and the introduction of categories. The point is,

however, that one has to accept that our way to the universal (religion as such) goes through the particular (Christianity)." [Disclaimer: It is possible that the image of Hegel shopping for apples contributes to my interest in this point.] Maybe an understanding and acknowledgment the limiting context of our definition is a better appraoch than resorting to limitless families? Regardless, I think the strength of your reaction to calling Sagan's world-view a religion demonstrates pretty clear that it does matter (in the sense of generating observable effects) how words are used ...

Alas, it appears I'm missing that class this year too. I'll soldier on somehow.

Here, have some posty-toasty asteroid lit: https://docs.google.com/fileview?id=0BwOyd8-QlWaTOGM3Y2NiNDAtMzk3YS00YjhmLThkYzEtOTI1MWE4ODAxYTQw&hl=en.

Chris:

My reaction to PTJ's calling Sagan's world-view "religious?" I looked it up and decided that it was possible but an incredible stretch. "If we are to call Sagan’s beliefs his religion, as we may do, we must include the caveat that those beliefs are nothing like the religions that we know." And then, of course, going into an abbreviated version of my whole point, that religion as defined and as practiced involves certainty and invocation of the supernatural, which aren't things that Carl Sagan does at all in his work.

I'm sure that given time and the Principia Mathematica, I could come up with a hilarious equation that takes into account the strength of a definition based on its position (1, 2, or in the case of the definition I thought supported the "Sagan's religious" argument, 3) and the number of words from that definition which support versus deny the claim, but I neither have the time nor the Britishness to do so. It would be fun, though.

In terms of mocking intent for the Flying Spaghetti Dinner? Eh. The flying spaghetti monster is, I think, sort of an icon of a few years ago. I think it's a character that stretches across the line of theism versus non-theism into the realm of "snarky kids" in general. And to boot, it's an open event that's advertised by AURA as an AURA event with spaghetti provided by AURA and a movie (Religulous) screened by AURA. Whoever went just for the free spaghetti and got offended deserved it. Also, they are idiots (not for their religion in this context, but because they didn't figure out that they might be offended by going to a meeting of people whose "beliefs" they are diametrically opposed to). And because there's nothing wrong with theists laughing at the Fred Flintstone world of the Creation Museum in Kentucky.... See More

Which is an excellent transition into my "people are idiots" thingy. I'm merely being realistic. I don't mean that people are without redeeming qualities; merely that on the whole, the vast majority of people are idiots. (Get into a car and drive around. You'll find them. They often hide in plain sight in the left lane of expressways or drive giant SUVs because they think that they're safer for their families. Occasionally, one will leap across four lanes of traffic to get to an exit. Or better, use an exit that's not actually there. I will grant that there are less idiots in Germany and the state of the Autobahn is an excellent biproduct.) Then, on the one end are the truly psychotic among us, whom I don't think count as idiots, and on the other end, there are the people who at least meet some minimum requirements for making 3.8 billion years of evolution worth it. Note: this does not mean that I agree with them.

To learn how the social world works, it's best to assume either the worst or the simplest (or both - they usually fit together quite well). It's not very difficult. And again, I don't think that's a cynical statement as much as one that's tried and true.

Barely related to all of this: http://gladwell.com/2004/2004_09_06_a_ketchup.html - There may not be a Platonic ideal of ketchup, but there's certainly a difference between ketchup the sauce and ketchup the condiment.

TO BE CONTINUED ...

V. How do we define "religion"?

Chris:

Though Einstein uses the word "religion" there, I still don't believe he's using what most people would recognizably call religion. Though I'm not accusing you of this, theists (and especially the intelligent design community, realizing the value of trying to synergize science and religion) have made the "Einstein was religious" argument by either vastly expanding the definition of religion essentially to "numinousness" (which I think is poor, because of the reasons I discussed in reaction to Webster's definition of "religious" - what Einstein means by "ultimate reality" is not what a religion means, and I continue to hold that exploring that "ultimate reality" takes very different forms in the realm of science (=let's try to figure it out) versus religion (=what does the book say). I may be accused of oversimplifying, but again, this comes down to the idea of ultimate truth and the supernatural that religion expresses.)

To a certain extent, I can agree with your point about "getting people onboard" from a practical standpoint, but only as a Tyson-esque backdoor way to get them to acknowledge that there is absolutely no evidence for the supernatural. Yes, I think that some people understand that there's no evidence - that's where "faith" comes in - but nearly every piece of evidence I see tells me that even more people do believe in miracles. Half of Americans believe in guardian angels, after all. And getting those people into science can show them that there is no such thing as a miracle. (Is it any surprise, by the way, that the US Air crash has been dubbed "Miracle on the Hudson?")

But I don't believe that using religion is a good way to get people into science. Dr. Tyson discusses one of those reasons in the person of Newton, who stopped thinking when he decided to invoke God tweaking the motion of the planets. As he says during his "Beyond Belief" speech (a variation on the "Perimeter of Ignorance" essay), the man who invented calculus on a dare could easily have figured out Laplace's math, but he didn't because he solved it with magic. Map this problem onto every lab in the country, and you're going to have a bunch of people who just stop after they hit a big problem or make enough money. The last chapter of all of their giant, unreadable books will be, "Well, I couldn't figure this one out and I'm retiring, so God." And then it'll take a while for the next person to pick up the work because of it.

Part and parcel of religion, in the way that it is practiced recognizably today, is a belief in the supernatural. We can correlate higher degrees of religiousity with higher belief in the supernatural, and I would argue that there is a causal link there because of the content of religion - it tells people about magic, an infallible immortal guy, and argument from authority quite literally as gospel.

Now, you or I may be able to hypothesize a version of religion that doesn't have these things. As I argued in my response to "Carl Sagan's Religion," such a religion is "indeed a set of beliefs surrounding an ultimate truth; however, they are markedly different from conventional religion because they do not proclaim to know or have a monopoly on the truth. Where traditional religions are conservative in that they are loath to consider new evidence that would suggest their fallibility, Sagan’s view of the universe is progressive, inviting new ideas about the nature of nature. If we are to call Sagan’s beliefs his religion, as we may do, we must include the caveat that those beliefs are nothing like the religions that we know." We may be able to use Einstein's "religion" in our hypothetical (again, though, most of his biographers would have huge problems with our calling Einstein "religious"). We can end up with a definition so close to Sagan's "numinousness" that it's not worth even redefining religion. But to get people to "believe" in that religion, I think, is just as difficult in getting them to "believe" nothing at all, and nothing at all comes with way less baggage.

You write of the alternative I'm proposing. I'm not proposing a specific practical alternative. It is not (nor is it virtually ever) my goal to create the world I would advocate for. Rather, I am espousing my belief (which certainly could be wrong) based on my available evidence that religion is unnecessary and incompatible with the practice of good science.

In summary, then, there is a definite advantage to getting more religious people into science. I don't think, though, that there's any chance of doing it while preserving religion in a recognizable form. My thoughts are mainly of the dangers of bringing religion into science in the same way the writers of the US Constitution feared the dangers of bringing together religion and state - the two would tend to have this awful habit of turning into some kind of scary hybrid that's just completely unproductive.

Erin:

Yeah, everyone wants to have Einstein on their side. (WWED?) I only brought him into the debate because of my fondness for “holy curiosity,” which I feel is an elegant phrasing of my belief that scientific (and social and philosophical and theological …) inquiry can indeed be a holy pursuit insofar as it can motivate us to do everything we can to push the limits of our understanding and abilities within some sor t of ethical framework (the sort of ethical framework that says “love thy neighbor” and that teaches us that secular pursuits [like science] can also be vocations that demand a full commitment of one’s intellectual energies.) Variations on the Protestant Ethic, I suppose, if I’m going to be scrupulous about citing my influences. I understand “holy” is not vocabulary you’re comfortable with, and with the intelligent design community seeking to appropriate Einstein to legitimate teaching the very definition of pseudoscience as science, it’s not hard to see why, but I’m not going to let a bunch of disingenuous anti-science activists claim that term any more than I’m going to let Republicans claim the “values voters” label. And I’m going to continue to resist your simplification of religion as a recommendation to “look to the book” (or stone tablet or papyrus scroll or whatever) for answers, when a scientific vocation would demand quite the opposite and the imperatives of liberation theology make demands which science and technology can (*can,* if religion lets them) answer.

So, clearly defining religion is a subject on which we differ at this point -- and I’ll come back to that later – but first let me address this question of getting people on board with science. I like Tyson’s methodology of education which essentially exhorts people to think skeptically and critically for themselves (instead of, say, placing antagonistic signs on public buses) – and I agree that a desirable consequence of that is likely to be a rejection of pseudoscience (though not of religion qua religion). However, those methods only work if people are listening, and the people Tyson needs to convince are probably not going to show up to a lecture at the Hayden Planetarium on rejecting the supernatural, leaving him preaching to the choir (sorry …). Thus my desire to promote some common ground between religion and science – not on an epistemological basis but on an ethical one. That is, the common ground isn’t one of “different ways of knowing about the world” – while that’s an interesting debate to have (QED), it absolutely does run the risk of confounding the two and letting people think God lies just beyond the perimeter of ignorance so they can stop asking questions. And that’s bad. Instead, I think highlighting overlapping ethical imperatives (“sometimes religion and science tell us to do the same thing”) is a much more effective means of creating the conditions of possibility for a genuine conversation that’s needed to change minds (citation: Habermas). In addition to the tangible results in terms of alleviating human suffering, such a conversation would mitigate current misunderstandings of science (as unethical) and religion (as anti-curiosity) that characterize the relationship today.

Why go through all this work rather than just marginalizing the fundamentalists and excluding them from conversations entirely? It would certainly be simpler and probably scientific progress would go faster and more smoothly. But in the final analysis, the speed of scientific progress isn’t my overriding concern. Such a line of thought is just too reminiscent of libertarians who think economic efficiency should be the ultimate goal of society. As frustrating as attempting to engage intelligent design proponents (those who seek to represent intelligent design as science, anyway) can be and as threatening as such people’s position really is to science, I don’t think science as an institution is ever important enough to justify treating people in what is essentially a dehumanizing, silencing manner. Beyond being counterproductive to skeptical project (try asking the AU Episcopalians how they feel about AURA sometime, and I think you’ll see what I mean), discourse about the faithful’s intellectual immaturity makes it all too easy to treat them as inferior. Please understand that I’m not accusing you of doing this (nor am I suggesting some sort of slippery slope leap to a mass genocide of the Methodists at the hands of the astrophysicists -- I’m aware of the shades of Godwin’s Law here), I’m simply stating my position that marginalization is not a good or right way to treat people. Too, I’m aware that “marginalize the fundamentalists” is an exaggeration -- if not outright misrepresentation – of your own position. But I do think it’s a consequence of your general orientation. It may be that science needs champions who do see it as the summum bonum of human activity, but as much as I love science and as much potential for good as I think it contains, that’s never going to be me. I’m not trying to convince you that religion is necessary -- that's never been my position; I am going to stick by my claim that religion can be compatible with the practice of good science.

As for defining religion, I don’t think you’re ever going to arrive at a definition of religion that doesn’t exclude people who consider themselves religious (me?) or include people who don’t want to be considered as such (Sagan?). Wittgenstein (guess who we studied last term for three weeks in Analytic Philosophy?) has a handy method for dealing with such hard-to-define words which involves admitting that there is no “essential” or “objective” – or dictionary – definition of a term like “religious.” (How could there be, for something that is fundamentally a human construction? We can’t even define “chair” particularly well.) Instead, he recommends looking to how a word is used to determine its meaning. “Religion” is obviously used in ordinary language as both as a means of legitimation (Einstein!) or delegitimation (Dawkins!) -- and while the claim that it means different things to different people is trite, it’s also true, and given the power of the label, relevant. Of course, what you’d end up with if you were to map out all these uses of “religion” would be a series of meanings, linked by family resemblances where Islam overlapped with Judaism on the question of (mono)theism and Judaism overlapped with Catholicism on the importance of ancient writings and Catholicism with Protestantism on the question of original sin and Protestantism with Buddhism in a conceiving of a life after this one and Buddhism with Hinduism on the matter of karma … Eventually we’d get to something that overlapped with Sagan’s numinousness (via pantheism if nothing else) with none of these criteria as a necessary or sufficient to demarcate “religion” as it is actually used. The point being, I don’t think your -- or Prof. Jackson’s (“Ultimate significance?” What does that even mean? How would that not include ethics [which are often wholly secular?]) -- attempts at defining religion are particularly useful. Given that people who consider themselves religious do – in practice – use their religious beliefs as motivation for relentless scientific enquiry, I think this is something to be championed, publicized, and celebrated, as it can generate results both in accordance with my ethical views (Further human knowledge! Help people!) and my intellectual views (Debunk pseudoscience! Show people science is a tool for good!).

Chris:

I would argue that the AURA people would seem antagonistic merely by putting "atheists" in their moniker. For many and varied reasons, people get a very negative reaction from "atheist" that they don't even get from "Muslim" in this country. Michael Shermer discusses this in his study of the horribly unsuccessful attempt to create a new label foratheists. In my opinion, this is why they should call themselves a skeptics' society.

Putting all practical concerns aside (because they're boring and insanely speculative), it should come as no surprise that I think the definition nonsense is pure crap. We're really good at defining things incredibly specifically; we're just not good at transmitting those definitions to others. I would agree, of course, that there is no Platonic essense of a word's definition, but I think it would be profoundly unproductive to leave it at, "We use words to mean different things, so the words mean different things." Each word would have an entire class of definitions. What a horrifying world this would be! Rather, we have these wonderful things called dictionaries, and if we could teach people to use them, we might be a little better off (And how do those dictionaries get their definitions, I might hear one asking? Smart people with lots of time on their hands figure them out. Experts, I think they're called.). Perhaps then we as a society could get out of this nonsense about "ooh, I want to be called this, but I'm not really, so I'll just call myself this anyway." But people suck. That's why I have no concern about the practical. To quote Dr. House (who was clearly just quoting me from my early childhood - that's actually true), "People are idiots." (And we can all find a lot of evidence to support that.)

As a sidenote, I believe that PTJ and I explored what our definitions of ultimate significance are in our back-and-forth. Ultimate=fundamental (M-W); significance=meaning/conveying meaning. If we didn't explicitly discuss it, it's because I think it was at least clear to the two of us. And despite the fact that it's posted online, our primary audiences were essentially each other. (PTJ posted his thing essentially as a response to something I was talking about in class, though he had already started writing it; I posted mine in direct response.)

TO BE CONTINUED ...

IV. Interlude: What about the social sciences?

Chris:

99% of social science is not science. And Einstein was not religious in any meaningful way, unless you similarly overdefine religion as "anything that makes us feel wonder at the bring of our understanding," which is weaker even than PTJ's "Carl Sagan's Religion."

(I think that this is getting a bit unwieldy - unsurprising considering how many directions we've gone toward.)

Erin:

[Separate discussion... I'll reserve judgment on whether social science is science till after I've finished my course in Philosophy of the Social Sciences (though so far that's been more concerned with the ontology of the "social' than the definition of "science"). At this point, though, I'm with Weber in saying that whatever it is (and for Weber at least, an interpretive element does not stop the social sciences from being "strictly empirical sciences"), its methods are (or should be) scientific. If someone wants to claim social science isn't science, I'm ok with that so long as they recognize that it still represents a valid, empirically rigorous way of knowing about the world. I'm comfortable with the social as a knowable realm that does not operate according to scientific law. But perhaps that's best left for another time ...]

As for Einstein, what's relevant is that his religious views motivated his scientific inquiry: "Science can be created only by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding. This source of feeling, however, springs from the sphere of religion."

Again, not my view of the world, nor the only possible religious motivation for the practice of science, but why not take advantage of such sentiments to work together? I'm not a huge fan of naive syncretism, but I *am* all for getting people on board with science and very much opposed to the alternative you're proposing.

(And, yeah, it is. Massively unwieldy. I'll also maintain it's been a much more productive/educational use of my study time than most of the work I've been assigned this week.)

Chris:

[I would argue that social scientists usually are not rigorous enough to have their work considered "good science," though they certainly at least pay lip service to scientific methods because it helps ground their work in the language of science. Again, the problem is when social science treats its conclusions as more accurate than they really are. As I'm fond of saying, it's too bad that 99% of social scientists give the other one percent such a bad name.]

[Also, is that course being taught by someone who has a vested interest in calling the social studies sciences? Could be dangerous.]

Erin:

[Oh, I understand why many social scientists have dogs in the "is social science science?" fight; the "science" label confers a great deal of legitimacy to their work and when people exhibit a tendency to dismiss anything that isn't science as sophistry and illusion, it's no wonder everyone's so intent on subsuming their methodology under the science rubric. I guess what primarily concerns me in the debate is establishing that, whatever we call them, there *are* empirically rigorous, appraise-able, causal explanations of the social realm that are uniquely preferable to a wholesale application of the methods of the natural and physical sciences as a method of problem-solving. As I'm not trying to publish or sell anything at this point -- and as I don't need to convince most of my professors of the legitimacy of these other ways of knowing -- it doesn't really matter to me whether what Catherine and I did with our pirate research project this summer, for example, or what Jutta Weldes does in her Cuban Missile Crisis book is "science" or not. I do know that our methods were rigorous, conceptually coherent, reproduceable, and applicable to many other social phenomena -- and that they generated new understanding of a genuine puzzle that can be held up to the qualitative empirical data we used. Those qualities matter to me much more than earning the "science" label or generating falsifiable predictions.

As for the class, the lecturer is a very open-minded philosopher of science who has done a lot of work with the evolution of morality and applying game theory and computational methods to the evolution of norms. The class teacher's research interest is evolutionary psychology, but again, from the perspective of philosophy of science. Not my cup of tea -- by any means -- but as both of them are philosophers, not social scientists, their interests are considerably less vested than if they were practicing evolutionary and social psychologists. Again, the question of whether or not what we call the social sciences is "really" science is largely bracketed in that class: We did spend several weeks on the subject of objectivity and values in the social sciences, but questions of whether the social sciences are (can be, should try to be) objective and what objectivity actually means (probably not value-free, as it turns out) are distinct from questions of scientific-ness. Plus, give me some credit for thinking for myself here! I always treat my professors' philosophical and definitional commitments with a healthy level of skepticism.

Digression: It was with incredible amounts of agonizing, soul-searching, discomfort, and sharply critical thinking that Catherine and I embraced a relational methodology for the pirates this summer, and while our decision to do so was absolutely influenced strongly by working with Prof. Jackson, we had come up with the idea of a discourse analysis of piracy before ever meeting him. Of course, this idea did not predate our taking a research methods class with Prof. Howard who was Prof. Jackson's PhD student, and rest assured, we're very much aware of that. All the same, if we'd found another methodology more compelling, we could easily have sought out a different professor to work with. So there was -- as ever -- an interplay of influences and personalities at work, and if anything, the fact that we were working with a professor who has the strongest vested interest in selling one particular methodology (let's not pretend last year's IR Theory -- at least the second half -- was anything else) I've come across made as look at what we were doing even more critically. End digression. I just figured since you'd already dragged space into this, I'd put in a pirate plug as well :) ]

Chris:

[Sounds interesting. Didn't mean to put your professor on trial.]

Erin:

[I always put my professors on trial.]

TO BE CONTINUED (and returned to science and religion) ...

III. ... and Einstein doesn't help.

Chris:

1. Evolutionary biology does give us predictions which we're able to test (for example, what we've just found out about the Y chromosome).

2. The God of the gaps is one of the most common apologist ways to get religion back into line with science, and it never works.

3. Newton's concept of gravity is that of a physical law, not of a theory, so he only gave us a measurement system, not a theory. Quantum gravitation and the GUT will give us more recognizably testable outgrowths.

4. Einstein's hallmark was that nothing was holy. He often used language that would make him sound more accessible (i.e. "God does not play dice."). One always needs to put that caveat in when bringing up Einstein in a theism debate.

5. This still goes back to one of the hallmarks of religion: you learn things based on faith, not observation. Science (and many other fields of human inquiry that are historically far less destructive than religion) can tell us to keep asking questions. Most of the wiseass atheists I know were at Sunday School at some point in their lives when they were forced to shut up because they were asking too many questions. Now, as you point out, this does not have to be the case, but when you're asking people to take the words of thousand years-dead people as fact, you'll always tend to run into this problem.

5a. Which is not to say that I'm advocating for the wholescale demolition of anything that has to do with religion. Just the religion part. Sure, we can keep the books around to study. We just shouldn't be using them as history books or as infallible texts. And whatever you can say about "it doesn't have to be" whichever way, the major religions (not the marginal ones like Buddhism, which isn't generally even a religion) take their texts as infallible. I think it's probably easier to completely marginalize those bodies that to get them to admit that their stories are actually fairy tales.

6. Again, religion can't, by itself, generate an ethic. Of course, there's interplay between what you've read in the past and what you want to do with your future, so it's a two-way road, but if we decide that asking questions and creating an "ethic of human progress" is a good idea, we can probably reread some religious text to tell us that same thing. But as long as something like that is taught to us like dogma, as religion is, we're going to run into the same massive problems that religion always (=99%) brings.

P.S. In TNG, people are able to work to better themselves and generate human progress without religion, and I don't think anyone watching the show thinks that's an absolutely ridiculous notion, or that it would be impossible for humans to actually do. So, the next random thing I would post would be that scene in ST: First Contact where Picard explains to Lily what the future's all about.

Erin:

1. We can get some testable predictions out of evolutionary biology but much of the (scientific!) work it does is descriptive not predictive in orientation. This is true of the behavioral sciences and economics as well. Lack of predictive power doesn't make an enterprise inherently unscientific. My intention here was just to push a little on your contention that "Science is that which generates testable predictions and this makes it superior to all other modes of understanding." Science is not (just) that which generates testable predictions. Your conception of empiricism as a value-neutral, ahistorical, unproblematic solution to knowledge claims is an oversimplification and idealization of science that ignores the empirical reality of how science is and has been practiced. For more on the contextual location of empiricism (from today's reading for one of my IR classes ...) see Williams, 1998: http://spejt.highwire.org/cgi/content/abstract/4/2/204, pages 210-215. Again, I'm not saying, "reject science"; I love science. I'm the daughter of a scientist. I want to be a (social) scientist when I grow up. I spend my spare time reading National Geographic and watching Cosmos online. I *am* saying that you should subject empiricism and the scientific method to the same rigors of skeptical inquiry that you advocate so ardently. Empircism is every bit as much a context-driven human construct as religion.

2. Please listen to what I'm saying! I never made this argument, I agreed that it's flawed, and it doesn't interact with my thesis that science and religion can produce overlapping ethics in any way.

3. Newtonian physics is not a theory but a research program. At the core of that research program were assumptions that were exempt from empirical refutation if research within that program was to be productive. Yes, science has progressed beyond Newtonian physics (which is why Lakatos uses it as an example in his account of how scientific knowledge changes over time), but that doesn't make it "unscientific" -- except, perhaps, if you define "science" in a narrow, contextually specific, non-empirical way that I'd argue is rather useless. Again, the point here is that science is not a monolithic, exclusively empirical enterprise. Again, that doesn't mean it's "wrong" and it doesn't mean it's inferior to religion -- or even competitive with it. It does mean the debate doesn't end with "science is empirical."

4. Einstein did use religious language to make his arguments more accessible. He was also a brilliant scientist who self-identified as a religious man and a deist. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1607298,00.html.

5. This is an argument against dogma and against lousy Sunday School teachers. It is not an argument against religion. I went to Sunday School and I was explicitly encouraged to engage in a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. The anecdotal evidence cuts both ways. If you choose to define religion as "dogma which discourages free thinking and requires that ancient texts be taken as fact" then you're going to win the debate before it begins, simply by framing things in your own terms. But you're going to exclude all non-fundamentalist religion (and yeah, it's out there) from your analysis so your conclusion's going to be pretty damn weak in scope.

5a. The major religions, excluding Islam, do not take their texts as infallible, and I'm not sure what your warrants for this argument are. There are plenty of non-fundamentalist Christians out there who do not think the Bible is the literal word of God and who acknowledge its many contradictions. And, right, by all means, let's marginalize the fundamentalists. They're clearly too stupid and underdeveloped to even try teaching or communicating with. Savages. Plus, marginalizing those we disagree with has a really super track record throughout all of human history ...

6. Religion, in its interaction with practice, does generate an ethic. People act in accordance with religious teachings because they deem them to be adequate guides for moral behavior. It's not a matter of re-reading texts as a post hoc religious justification for action: It's a matter of ethical imperatives that are already there, that encourage questioning and research, and that point in the same direction as science.

Finally, I agree that religion is not a necessary condition for progress or improving the human condition. But given that a great many people are religious, and that religion can serve as a handy heuristic device for promoting scientific research, why not team up when religion points in the direction of pushing ever further the limits of our knowledge?

TO BE CONTINUED ...

II. Religion and science are not unproblematic ...

Erin:

A word of clarification, then a line-by-line (without wading into your epic debate with PTJ which, while I wish I could have witnessed it, is somewhat separate from the point I was trying to highlight in posting this article): As someone whose only firm commitments at this point are to humanism, the explicitly non-theist (though not non-religious) principles of Unitarian Universalism, and the brilliance of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, I have very little interest in defending religion as a way of knowing about the great cosmic mysteries and am not about to do so. “Militant atheist” wasn’t my wording and wouldn’t have been. I am, however, utterly uninterested in Dawkins’ brand of evangelical atheism. I agree with Sheiman (and I suppose with Prof. Jackson) that continuing to cast religion and science as antagonists is not only a poor representation of reality but is counterproductive to the promise that both institutions hold for human progress. At some level, when you assert that there is something inherently violent and destructive about religion, you commit yourself to opposing it through means that can well become militant. Telling people they’re stupid for believing in God certainly isn’t physical violence, but to the extent that religion *is* an identity for many people, this kind of approach is a form of (admittedly posty-toasty) violence (to their subjectivity). By no means should religious belief be treated as some sort of sacred cow (oof, sorry) exempt from criticism, but nor is “religious faith is stupid, immature, and harmful” a legitimate starting point for debate.

As for Dawkins, he is indeed a brilliant old British biologist. He is also someone who has chosen to devote a significant portion of his life to converting the world to his version of atheism through a variety of disrespectful (and therefore fairly hypocritical, not to mention ineffective) means. He stays in my post. Anyway, he wants to be there, adorable grin and all.

On, as you say, to Sheiman’s arguments and your responses. I’m not particularly invested in defending the totality of his article (just his main thesis about partnership), but such an exercise seems like more fun than writing 1200 words on Marx’s and Smith’s theory of value, so here we go. You’re halfway right that religion doesn’t define human norms or behavior; it certainly doesn’t do so in any deterministic way, but it absolutely *influences* norms. Do you really think that norms of US foreign policy are not influenced by our historically Christian identity and idea that we’re somehow God’s chosen people? (Please understand that this is in no way a normative endorsement of said identity; merely an observation that it exists.) At that same time, as you point out, norms of behavior shape religious belief. There are a lot of very good contextual reasons for my religious identity based solely on the fact that I grew up in a liberal academic 20th century American household. That’s historical contingency and mutually constitutive causality for you (in case you’d been yearning for some social constructivism of late). More broadly, my point here is that religion’s influence on social norms is in no way lessened by its not being handed down on stone tablets: it has real influence because people believe it does and act accordingly. Why does this matter? First, because it points to the pragmatic absurdity of trying to eradicate religious belief: It’s not just a product of society but also a cause of it. And second, because recognizing that religion is not simply a mechanical effect of time and place means acknowledging that there’s nothing inherent in the institution of religion that stops people from thinking. Some religions do seek to do just that; many others do not. Blanket attacks on religion as coercive and unthinking, however, represent a fundamental misunderstanding premised on generalizations built on a few (admittedly really loud) manifestations of the phenomenon of religious belief. Take a moment to listen to the quiet faiths – the Quakers, the Buddhists, the Unitarians, among others for – that do indeed encourage free thinking.

Ok, on to science. Your claim is that science and religion are incommensurable approaches to our knowledge of the universe, to which I have two responses. First, claiming that, “Faith is not a way of knowing about the universe because it’s not based on empirical science” is a classic example of begging the question. Your assumption that empiricism is the best or only means of knowing things predetermines the outcome of any debate just as much as the theist’s claim that, “Faith means I don’t need empirical evidence for anything I claim to know” does. I happen to find empiricism pretty damn attractive, but that’s not to say there are not all sorts of philosophical problems with knowledge claims and justified true belief that cannot be answered with a simple appeal to empiricism (Gettier problems and all that). And, much of contemporary philosophy of science further complicates the situation by observing that while Popperian falsifiability is a tidy improvement on verification, scientific theories aren’t actually (empirically …) thrown out on the basis of contravening evidence. Hence Kuhn’s paradigms and Lakatos’ research programs, which are defined by a core set of assumptions, propositions, and beliefs that are, by definition, empirically irrefutable. Empiricism does not unambiguously mean knowledge, and science does not unambiguously mean empiricism: my point here is that championing “science” as the apex of epistemic perfection is every bit as dishonest and misleading as Sheiman’s strawmanning of militant atheists.

My second response to this incommensurability claim – and the one I’m most comfortable with – is the one you essentially cede later on: that science and religion are asking different questions and are seeking different kinds of knowledge. Yeah, some religions have a bad habit of stepping on science’s turf, but again, there’s nothing inherent in religion that says this has to be the case. Criticize specific instances of this epistemic infringement if you like, but don’t target the institution of religion.

I’m not sure where your claim that religion doesn’t tell us how to act or what is good or evil comes from: It absolutely does. Most of the Christian Bible can be divided into one of those functions or the other. Religion is by no means a necessary condition for morality but it certainly functions as a sufficient one. And so too does science – and it’s in this appropriation of traditionally religious turf that religion feels threatened. Unfettered scientific enquiry is and must be its own imperative: Keep asking questions ad infinitum. And it creates its own narratives (albeit very narrow ones) of “how we should act”: We should seek out scientific and technological solutions to human problems because we can. By creating narratives of humanity as its own salvation, scientific inquiry does indeed offer up a version of what is “good.” Secular, sure, but no less ethical because of its empirical basis. And for progressives like Sheiman, this “infringement” is a space of possibility. Science’s version of what’s good and religion’s version of what’s good can and in many cases do overlap. To the extent that both can buttress improvement in the human condition, there’s ample room for dialogue and good cause for abandoning the dichotomous characterization Dawkins – and plenty of evangelical Christians – are so eager to preserve.

As for religion being an early phase of intellectual development in individuals, again, this presupposes that empiricism is a “better” way of understanding the world than religious belief. That religion chronologically precedes empiricism in an individual’s epistemic commitments is an empirical claim; that empiricism is a better way of understanding the world is a normative question and not subject to the rigors of empirical verification. In any case, I think the pragmatic argument carries the day here: Even if it’s a developmentally prior form of understanding, religious belief is a subjectively legitimate path to knowledge for those who hold it and as such, it’s going to influence their patterns of action in a way that will leave them unpersuaded by allegations of their intellectual immaturity. Hardly a good means of converting the faithful to skepticism. Which, as you point out, Tyson pretty much gets. Other than that, I’m not sure how this immaturity argument interacts with the claim that science and religion can team up to do good things in the demon-haunted world.

Your next point, however, is pretty hypocritical. You criticize Sheiman for a narrow definition of “nature” then go on to define religion as “Don’t worry about it. You’ll meet magical people when you die.” I understand that was probably for rhetorical effect, but as we’ve both pointed out, tone and characterization matter in these kind of debates and that’s hardly an understanding of religion that’s going to get you very far in convincing the faithful of the merits of scientific empiricism. First, not all religions include, nor are most religions defined as, metaphysical conceptions of an afterlife. The religious enterprise concerning our aversion to death that Sheiman is speaking to is not one of a celestial afterlife in the clouds but one that argues for creating the kingdom of heaven on earth: for doing what we can so that our neighbors don’t die unnecessarily. Science too, insofar as it does not happen in a social or ethical vacuum, compels us to do the same – and gives us the technological means to do it. Why breed wheat with a greater yield? Why work harder to get the jump on quickly mutating viruses? Why develop better genetic tests for life-threatening diseases? Because in doing so we can push the limits of our understanding of the world. Because it improves people’s lives. Because Christ tells us to take care of the poor and the sick. These reasons aren’t incompatible at all and the potential they create for the alleviation of human suffering and the furthering of human knowledge is something that should be acknowledged and celebrated. And while it’s hardly likely to solve the epidemic of pseudoscience or get intelligent design OUT of our science classrooms, it just might facilitate the discursive climate and common ground that I imagine would be a prerequisite to these kinds of moves.

Chris:

Better off continuing Dr. Tyson-penned works. http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/essays/nathist/perimeterofignorance

Erin:

I agree that God isn't necessary to fill in the gaps of human knowledge. (But I kind of suspect that's not how many contemporary theists conceive of the divine in any case.) And as I said earlier, you don't need to convince me that science is a better way of understanding the universe. (But this is a more complex claim to make that "science wins because it's empirical and predictive!" I mean, evolutionary biology's not explicitly predictive, and I'm still down with that. Within Newtonian physics, universal gravitation isn't subject to falsification and that's probably ok too.) And yeah, it is bad news when religion tells us to stop asking questions. But Sheiman's contention -- and mine -- is that this doesn't have to be the case: religion can encourage us to keep asking questions too (Einstein's holy curiosity). And it doesn't refute the idea that science and religion can generate overlapping ethics of human progress and that this is fundamentally a good thing.

TO BE CONTINUED ...

I. Can religion and science be partners?

Early last week, I came across this article on the UU World website, which argues that "both science and religion have something meaningful to contribute to a universal ethic." I found this idea novel and appealing, so I posted the link on Facebook. This post caught the attention of Chris DiPrima and sparked a week-long debate on science, religion, the social sciences, knowledge claims, campus politics, language, and human nature. Since then, our debate has come up in conversation with several people who do not have Facebook accounts, and by popular request (and with Chris's permission), I'm posting a transcript of our conversation in several installments here on the pirate blog. Out of fairness to both parties and an attempt to preserve the coherence and flow of our rather unwieldy dialogue (and mostly laziness) I've left it largely unedited.

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Erin Lockwood:

Richard Dawkins, et al., please take note:

http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/151704.shtml.

"It can be claimed that science does not speak to ethics and values, but that is not entirely correct. The scientific method is truly values-neutral, dedicated only to understanding the natural world. The institution we call science, on the other hand, is motivated by a genuine desire to improve the human condition: increasing food yields, curing disease, overcoming the conditions that foster poverty, understanding the reasons for criminal behavior, distributing low-cost personal computers to poor children—the list of science’s humanistic aims is endless.

Thus, the two disciplines—science and religion—continue to express humanity’s teleological quest for progress and perfection: 'the best and most complete form of goodness,' in Aristotle’s words. Science and religion come from the same human aspiration—the quest for transcendence and salvation. Both disciplines strive to understand the essence of the universe, the 'language of God.' And in a sense, both seek to recover humankind’s 'lost divinity.'"

Chris DiPrima:

http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/essays/nathist/holywars

Erin:

Given that Sheiman's claim is that "both science and religion have something meaningful to contribute to a universal ethic," not that religion has anything to begin to counter science's predictive and empirical value, I think he (and I) would agree with pretty much all of Tyson's points except the following: "Let there be no doubt that as they are currently practiced, there is no common ground between science and religion." First of all, it is not clear that this is true even if we were to define the practice of science solely in terms of methodology. See, for example, the work of Heather Douglas: http://www.jstor.org/stable/188707. But, as Sheiman points out, beyond the scientific method, non-epistemic values undeniably influence the current practice of science in all kinds of ways: This is his argument about science being motivated by improving the human condition, and it is at this nexus of the empirical and the ethical that there is room for science and religion to not only talk but to work as partners. ( I'd also argue that even ostensibly "pure" science works to improve the human condition by increasing what we know [*know*, not believe or accept on faith] about the world, but I'm not sure Sheiman goes quite that far ...)

Chris:

First, straight-up, Sheiman characterizes the debate in a way that I feel is dishonest. I don't believe that there is such thing as a "militant atheist:" to be militant, I think one has to do the sorts of things that qualify you as violent, and atheists generally don't burn down churches. In fact, atheists tend not to be predisposed to war-like tendencies. I've argued in the past that questioning one's religion is one of the ways to automatically get a viceral response because it is a chosen identity which people treat as some sort of in-bred one. But this is a discussion for another time.

My point here is that Richard Dawkins is an adorable, grey-haired British man who is one of the greatest biologists of all time, and somehow he has been categorized as militant for much of his career (even before The God Delusion). Now, Dr. Tyson takes Dawkins to task for the way people react to him, which hits on the idea that as long as you directly criticize religion, you will be thought of as "militant." Which is why, by the way, Dr. Tyson avoids making his "Perimeter of Ignorance" speech these days, preferring to introduce skepticism to people and letting them figure out that there's no such thing as the supernatural on their own terms. But again, this is a discussion for another time.

So, to Sheiman's actual arguments. First, religion does not define human norms or behaviors. If that were true, we would still have the Ultimate 747 conundrum of who made the religion (but then, this would bring up the problem of appeal to inappropriate authority - those guys have been dead for a long time). Rather, operational human norms define what parts of religion people agree with at any particular time of human culture. The danger, of course, is that people don't realize this, then pick up on the crazy shit (like the "no mixed fabrics" section), and finally start blowing people up because they're wearing nylon. Because the problem with using religion as the backdrop for your social norms is that it stops people from thinking.

Sheiman insults both science and religion in the last statement of the first section. True believers really do believe that the Big Bang did not happen; this is the ignorance that religion teaches. When atheists say that science invalidates the supernatural, they are correct. There is no way to believe in both the supernatural and science, which states that the universe is knowable through the methods of empiricism alone. This is not a belief for belief's sake; it works, and that is why scientists still use it. If it didn't, the method would need to be changed and scientists would do so. The great thing about science is that it is always open to new ideas, as long as they are based on evidence.

It is true that science cannot say for certain that there is no spiritual world. However, it can demonstrate that there is no mind-body duality and other testable claims that religion makes about the world. As my friend Andrew put it, "Indeed, the problem of getting along with religion is that religion won't play with its toys. it has to keep trying to play with science's toys, which is a bad idea if there ever was one." The bigger point is that science tells us not to believe something until we have evidence for it. The idea that we should believe in something until we prove that it doesn't exist is rather strange, from Russell's Teapot to WMDs. Scinece, on the other hand, is not infringing upon religion's domain. Science does not tell us how to act, or what is good or evil. However, as I have noted above, neither does religion.

Next, Sheiman essentially recapitulates the "God of the gaps" argument that Tyson debunks in his "Holy Wars" essay. If we declare God as the creator of the universe, we are doing so only because science has not yet shown us how the Big Bang started. As Tyson explains, this is not a new idea, and the problem with it is always that human knowledge eventually fills in the gaps. (Meanwhile, it just makes it much harder to get things like the Copernican model of the solar system or evolution accepted by the masses.)

Actually, there is a very good argument about religion being not a vestige of earlier phases of human development, but as a result of early phases of individual development. This is not a hypothesis that leads to the idea that religion will wither away; rather, it explains why our brains fire for religion. Because humans are born with underdeveloped brains, they need to learn from adults. Therefore, the early human brain is predisposed to have a certain amount of credulity so that children will accept whatever their parents say. It is an unintended consequence of this development that leaves the door open for us to remain credulous throughout life, believing in the supernatural. (How is it that nearly every major newspaper has an astrology section, but none have an astronomy section?)

"Science may tell us that nothing exists beyond the natural realm, but at the same time it seeks to push humanity above nature" - I don't see how this has any bearing on the argument whatsoever. Yes, the methods of science allow us to understand the (natural) world around us to the point where we can then improve the world and ourselves (in natural, not supernatural ways. I think that Sheiman is using a deliberately narrow definition of "nature" to prove his point, which I again think is dishonest.). How does this mean that it is comparable to the religious enterprise, which is essentially, "Don't worry about it. You'll meet magical people when you die." Yes, both speak to us about immortality because we don't like to die, but one is a real way to become "immortal" and the other way is a lie. Just because science and religion speak to the same human concerns does not mean that they are compatible; in fact, the opposite is more likely to be true, especially if science and religion are fighting over the same turf for the same money and the same minds.

So, finally, Sheiman uses dishonest rhetorical techniques to try to equivocate the pursuits of science and nature. The bottom line, though, is that religion makes claims about the physical world, which is definitely within the realm of science. Therefore, both cannot be accepted. A God of the gaps, meanwhile, has proven useless over the last few hundred years, so it is foolhardy to invoke it again. The only possible redeeming value of religion would be the invocation of a moral code, but as I have mentioned (and Dawkins et.al explain quite well), religion does not give us a moral code.

For more (since this response is not even long enough to scratch the surface of this sort of thing), PTJ and I had a debate about this during our Social/Science/Fiction class.

PTJ: http://profptj.blogspot.com/2008/04/carl-sagans-religion.html

Me: http://backyardrocket.blogspot.com/2008/04/we-are-star-stuff.html

TO BE CONTINUED ...