Science of Good & Evil

We're discussing Sam Harris's chapter on Good & Evil today in A&P. Might be useful to glance back at Michael Shermer's Science of Good & Evil, too.

Baloney

A useful checklist for detecting "baloney" (or maybe you prefer Harry Frankfurt's euphemism) from Skeptic publisher Michael Shermer, inspired by Carl Sagan's Demon-haunted World. "When we're growing up we tend to be pretty credulous..."

1. How reliable is the source of the claim?
2. Does the source make similar claims?
3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?
4. Does this fit with the way the world works?
5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
7. Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
8. Is the claimant providing positive evidence?
9. Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
10. Are personal beliefs driving the claim?

Hoosier science

Michael Shermer:

Imagine this account being taught in public school science classes in America: Around 75 million years ago Xenu, the ruler of a Galactic Confederation of 76 planets, transported billions of his people in spaceships to a planet named Teegeeack (Earth). There they were placed near volcanoes and killed by exploding hydrogen bombs, after which their souls, or “thetans,” remained to inhabit the bodies of future earthlings, causing humans today great spiritual harm and unhappiness that may be remedied through psychological techniques involving a process called auditing and a device called an E-meter. This creation myth, formerly privy only to members who had achieved Operating Thetan Level III (OT III) through auditing, is now well known via the Internet and a widely-viewed 2005 episode of the animated sitcom television series South Park.

The absurdity of teaching religious origin stories in a science class could not be more poignant... (continues)

 But that's just what some legislators in Indiana are proposing to do. In science classes! Shermer: "knowledge that requires the imprimatur of legislation is not science." But what do they know?


Humans really don't have a clue sometimes.

"Why I Am An Atheist"

I AM AN ATHEIST. There, I said it. Are you happy, all you atheists out there who have remonstrated with me for adopting the agnostic moniker? If “atheist” means someone who does not believe in God, then an atheist is what I am.

But I detest all such labels. Call me what you like — humanist, secular humanist, agnostic, nonbeliever, nontheist, freethinker, heretic, or even bright. I prefer skeptic. Still, all such labels are just a form of cognitive economy, a shortcut into pigeonholing our fellow primates into tidy categories that supplant the deeper probing of what someone actually thinks and says. (continues)

-Michael Shermer (originally published in Science and Spirit)

tabula rasa

Terrific A&S discussion yesterday prompted by Garrett's personal reflections on the meaning of "spirit" when it's been shorn of immortal connotations but not, quite, of immaterial ones. The ghost in the machine just won't go quietly.


I'm reminded of Steven Pinker's Blank Slate...



 



...and The Matrix, and Robert Nozick's "Experience Machine," and Michael Shermer's "Soul of Science,"... and here's Professor Pinker interviewing his wife Rebecca Goldstein about her 36 Arguments for the Existence of God.

"Denialism" and weirdness

The optimistic view of science is that the theories advanced with its methods will have self-evident appeal to an educated public. Why, then, do people so often behave unscientifically? A sitting congressman claims he’s seen a U.F.O.; a former Playboy model insists, against overwhelming evidence, that childhood vaccines cause autism; Las Vegas vacationers expect to beat the casinos; former British Prime Minister Tony Blair treats his children with homeopathic remedies.

Michael Specter, a science and public health writer for The New Yorker, shows little interest in the first approach in his pugnacious new book, “Denialism,” which carries the ominous subtitle “How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives.” He devotes chapters to anti- vaccine zealots, purveyors of organic foods, promoters of alternative medicines and opponents of race-based medicine, accusing each group of turning “away from reality in favor of a more comfortable lie.”

Specter is not the first to take on doubters of science. More than a decade ago, Michael Shermer — who believed in alien abduction and megavitamin therapy before becoming a confirmed skeptic — adopted a more sympathetic tack in Why People Believe Weird Things. Shermer wisely realized that the public’s view of science is refracted by human psychology. For example, we are wired to see patterns even when none may exist. And from science, as from any explanatory framework, we tend to seek instant gratification, the reassuring company of others, and simplicity... NYTimes 11.27.09

Michael Shermer's encounter with Mr. Deity was weird, but-- like his TED talk-- instructive and fun.

How to Do It (again)

Today on How to Do It, Michael Shermer explains how religion and evolution can live side by side in peace and harmony. It's easy: accept evolution, theists, and accept theism, evolutionists.

(Much depends, of course, on what "accept" means.)

If one is a theist, it should not matter when God made the universe -- 10,000 years ago or 10 billion years ago. The difference of six zeros is meaningless to an omniscient and omnipotent being, and the glory of divine creation cries out for praise regardless of when it happened.

Likewise, it should not matter how God created life, whether it was through a miraculous spoken word or through the natural forces of the universe that He created. The grandeur of God's works commands awe regardless of what processes He used.

As for meanings and morals, it is here where our humanity arises from our biology. We evolved as a social primate species with the tendency of being cooperative and altruistic within our own groups, but competitive and bellicose between groups. The purpose of civilization is to help us rise above our hearts of darkness and to accentuate the better angels of our nature.

Believers should embrace science, especially evolutionary theory, for what it has done to reveal the magnificence of the divinity in a depth never dreamed by our ancient ancestors. We have learned a lot in 4,000 years, and that knowledge should never be dreaded or denied. Instead, science should be welcomed by all who cherish human understanding and wisdom.

This piece drew a sharp reaction from Jerry Coyne, who calls Shermer an "accommodationist" and insists that the only religion not at war with science is Deism. (And here's Shermer's reply to Coyne.)

That's the Dawkins line (though he cares little for Deism either). Karen Armstrong, on the other hand, sees no grounds for conflict and hostilities at all. That comes (she says) when we confuse "mythos" and "logos," and mistake religion to be making factual claims about what actually exists in the world. On her view, no reputable theologian ever really claimed that "God exists" (or that any of us really has a clue what it would mean to say so).

Interesting. But won't that come as a big shock to roughly 99.9% of the religiously devout?

atheist with a soul

First had come the book, which he had entitled The Varieties of Religious Illusion, a nod to both William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience and to Sigmund Freud's The Future of An Illusion. The book had brought Cass an indecent amount of attention. Time Magazine, in a cover story on the so-called new atheists, had ended by dubbing him "the atheist with a soul." When the magazine came out, Cass's literary agent, Sy Auerbach, called to congratulate him. "Now that you're famous, even I might have to take you seriously. ...

Rebecca Goldstein, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction (excerpted at edge.org)

almost true

Also in the news this Sunday:

The Times features no funnies, but this is fun: Monty Python turns 40 (!) this year, will reunite at the Ziegfeld Theater on October 15 (sans the late great Graham Chapman), and starting on the 18th the Independent Film Channel will devote a week to the Pythons, broadcasting an episode a day of a new documentary called "Monty Python: Almost the Truth (The Lawyer's Cut)"...

"Now for something completely different":

Parade reports that 25% of Americans call themselves "spiritual, not religious," and half of them say they never go to church. 60% think "all religions have validity," and 66% expect they'll connect with the dead on the Other Side.

Or on this one. What many understand by "spiritual" includes psychic swindlers like James van Praagh and John Edward, the latter featured this morning on CBS Sunday Morning. 20% say they've already been in touch with spirits. Coincidentally, that's how many watch Edward and van Praagh on TV.

The oddly one-sided emphasis of the CBS report was on reconciling belief in psychic phenomena with one's religious or spiritual prejudices, as opposed to squaring it with (say) logic, reason, and evidence.

What fun the Pythons could have with all this. Oh yeah, they did already (in "Life of Brian"). Well, here's Michael Shermer having some fun.

nice office

Michael Shermer is a kindred spirit, to me and Emerson (not that I've approached their literary fecundity, yet). Just as the Sage of Concord distinguished the residence of his books from the un-roofed places in which he did his best thinking, so Shermer tweets:

My office (I AM working while riding, listening to audio books, writing next book in head):http://www.flickr.com/photo...