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 ...