The Age of Reason?

The BBC 4 radio program, Beyond Belief, is a weekly discussion of religious issues, approached, as most things BBC, from varied and usually interesting and thoughtful perspectives.  The August 15 program addressed the impact of globalism on religion. 

Each of the three guests on the program declared him or herself 'on the fence' with respect to the effect of globalization on religion.  Modernity and 'scientism' were supposed to bring secularization, and spread by globalization, but this hasn't been the effect.  Religion shows no signs of going away or even morphing very substantially.  In fact, it seems to be thriving around the world.  Evangelism, Islam, Pentecostal religions are on the march.

Yes, one of the guests said, it's on the march, and globalization leads to opportunities for communication and dialog, but it also leads to fundamentalist certainty, where different religions don't want dialog.  This is a common phenomenon, perhaps the standard one, through the ages.  Another of the guests pointed out that this isn't only true of religion, but could be a phenomenon of the globalized world in general.  Everyone wants to be 'the answer'. It is also true of pure materialists and anti-religious views such as Marxism.  It's human.

Said the same guest, the last 200 years have been hard on religion; the French revolution, American Revolution, the rise of nationalism, which has meant the fracturing of the Catholic Church, and its losing land, schools, influence, etc., whole religious systems attacked by fascism and communism, religious systems attacked by scientism, and imperialism.  This, he said, has left religious communities with deep suspicion of any organization that says it's going to make the world better, since the last 200 years have seen organizations trying to wipe out religions in order to make the world better.  Of course, it's hard to argue that religion has done the job, either.

Science has systematically eaten away at the empirical claims of sacred texts (like 6-day Genesis, Noah's Ark, Red Sea parting, Jonah surviving the whale's gut, 6000 year old earth).  Literalist interpretations should by now have been thoroughly undermined by such a march of basically undoubtable materialist success.  Any breach in any aspect of a sacred text--including acknowledging that the text could be metaphoric rather than literal--opens the gates of doubts of any other aspect of the Revealed Truth.  If this part isn't true after all, then how do we know that other part is true?  That is one of the reason why the literalists don't want to open the door to such options.

The persistence, and even expansion of fundamentalistic religion in the supposed Age of Reason is a puzzle in a way.  (Among other things, it brings us science doubters, like Rick Perry, serious candidate for the presidency of the United States.)  One might expect that the march of factual de-confirmation of received texts would, in a rationalist world,  have also undermined the other ideas in the texts concerning principles of faith, morals, and even the basic belief that some sort of 'God' is out there--or caused at the very least a retreat to a more generic deism (God exists, and started it all, but doesn't intervene in personalized ways in our lives).  A lot of what has occurred by the tilt back towards fundamentalism belies our belief that we're either rational or empirically driven.

But what if you think of it from a Darwinian perspective, in which the only thing that matters in any existential way is surviving to reproduce?  From this perspective, it doesn't make any difference what we believe, as long as, as a society, we're identifiable, trustworthy, etc., behaving and conforming predictably and so on, attributes which many religious systems encourage in one way or another, but so does culture generally.  'Rational' just means having a  reason for things.  Fundamentalists certainly have such reasons, even if most scientists don't agree with their particular accepted truths.  Indeed, in this sense, science becomes just another set of answers to the profound questions of life, another fundamentalist certainty, no more or less 'valid', in terms of making it through life, than any other set of answers.

That this is true is supported by the predictability of persons' responses to new events.  When someone makes a pronouncement or a major event happens, people interpret it in light of their accepted social, political, religious, or theoretical beliefs.  We are rarely swayed from such beliefs by new 'facts'--we either say we don't believe the new facts, we ignore them, or we re-interpret them.   Even scientists have political and social, not to mention scientific-theoretical, commitments that lead them (us) to do that.  Rationality does not mean seeing the world 'objectively' in the usual sense of that term.

There are fundamentalists in science, who adhere unquestioningly to dogma -- including those who refuse to allow the questioning of any aspects of evolution.  Sometimes, in fact, they acknowledge that but say they do that to combat anti-evolution fundamentalists who will mis-use or mis-state any such questioning within science--a strange reason for a scientist to color or ignore facts!  But, as we've written many times here on MT,  there's no legitimate place for dogma in science, and that's where it should differ from religion. Unlike religion, science is or should be about questioning, challenging, pushing accepted wisdom.

But that clearly the age of systematic empiricism doesn't mean that other kinds of belief become unsustainable--either that no one can sustain such beliefs, or that beliefs contrary to facts can't sustain successful human lives.

Humans Teaching Humans about Human Evolution

On Friday I spoke at a conference for current and future K-12 science teachers hosted by Kean University in New Jersey.

My host was Professor Brian Regal of Kean University - a historian of science who specializes in, among other fascinating subjects, human evolution, monsters and Darwin, so he’s great fun for sharing stories and enthusiasm about fossils.

I did my usual spastic song and dance about human evolution... something I can never seem to get unexcited about. I titled my talk "Humans Teaching Humans about Human Evolution" because it's pretty strange that we teach at all. Plus, when we teach each other about our own evolution, even people who accept evolution can get all bent out of shape.

But before me, Ross Nehm gave an excellent presentation on the research he does on the cognitive basis of learning science, particularly the principles of evolution and the theory of natural selection.

He has compared answers from college students to those provided by professors for the following questions:
1. How do bacteria develop resistance to antibiotics?
2. Why do cheetahs run so fast?
3. How could the blind cave salamander have gotten that way?

The professors routinely respond with, "why are you asking me all the same question in three different ways?" However, students routinely come up with three different (and incorrect) answers to these questions and they often include statements like “the bacteria need to change or else they’ll get killed by the antibiotic.”

Nehm showed data on what he called “liabilities” that students bring to the classroom. This component of their knowledge is prior, erroneous knowledge that they then have to overcome to learn the correct stuff. Some students have so much liability, or debt, that even though they may learn more than their peers in a course, and they may get the highest grades on the exams, they don’t necessarily learn enough to overcome it. This is why he advocates that teachers actively battle the liabilities that students bring to the classroom by assessing first what the liabilities are and then addressing them in our curriculum.

Then Nehm introduced the concept of “p-prims” which can inhibit our ability to learn evolution properly. P-prims are the common sense stories we use to explain the world around us. They’re right in life but they can be completely wrong in science. Click here for examples.

Because I don’t know much about p-prims, and because I’m an anthropologist, I saw something else. A lot of the evolution-education troubles that Nehm found were, to me, rooted in the human habit of anthropomorphizing species or individual bacteria, for example, in some epic tale of a "Majestic Quest to Evolve" (meant to be read with that deep grizzled movie trailer voice).

And this made me realize that it’s not just the learner who’s falling victim to this narrative quicksand, it’s the teachers too. We anthropomorphize and spin narratives like crazy when we’re teaching evolution. Maybe you don’t, but you’re probably boring.

(That was said with tongue-in-cheek, but with a grain of truth on the taste buds.)

Those of us who are trying to make evolution interesting for sleepy college students may be making everything a lot worse. On the other hand, evolutionary principles take longer than one semester to sink-in for the vast majority of people (Think about that teachers! Didn't it take you longer than a semester for the light bulb to shine on?), so maybe we shouldn’t worry if the initial take on evolution isn’t quite right as long as there is some sort of uptake in the first place.

Many science writers are guilty of anthropomorphizing the players in the game of evolution too. Giving motive to jellyfish is unscientific, but it’s one of the only means for describing behavior, using only words on a page, to someone who’s not witnessing it for themselves. It’s also a great ploy to keep up readership: Nobody wants to open the New York Times Science page and read a Jellyfish Instruction Manual. We want drama. And we get it. Along with a complete misunderstanding of evolution… the kind that leads people to erroneously apply its principles to government social policy, or, worse, to worry and to stir up fear about others who may do so.

Which naturally brings me to the final event at the conference. After a wonderful day of discussing evolution with really cool NJ teachers including a good hour dedicated to the new Ardi discovery, I was handed a goodie bag that all the participants received which included some helpful NSTA materials.

But my bag had something extra - a little package addressed to me with a printed label. Ross Nehm got one too. I figured it was just paperwork for the guest speakers since it was in a Kean University yellow envelope. I opened it in the airport while waiting for my flight. Inside was anti-evolution/ pro-Bible (is there any other kind?) propaganda in the form of a pamphlet, glossy color book and DVD from the Jehovah’s Witness group Watchtower. Someone had hijacked university letterhead on their crusade against evolution.

With uplifting information like this on their website, it’s a wonder the group manages to keep so many members: “Evolution presents modern man as an improving animal. The Bible presents modern man as the degenerating descendant of a perfect man.”

Celebrating my inner ape, my inner fish, and, most importantly, my inner degenerate happens to be some of the most glorious things about life. It’s a shame that something like this will never inspire awe and love in so many.

Fundamentalism and anthropological naivety

We were channel hopping this weekend, looking for the broadcast of Penn State's first football game of the season (well, Ken was looking; Anne wasn't). That led us to pass through several religious channels that our cable service provides.

It is in a sense an incredible phenomenon. Someone, usually manifestly poorly educated, in a robe of some sort, spouting off patent non-sense and opinion, in a rhetorical and tonal style to appeal to unquestioning emotion, and audiences (sometimes very large audiences) nodding unquestioningly (often in tears).

It is incredible that in our supposed age of science, this can still occur. It is an unsavory dose of reality, that wealth, education, and comfort do not actually educate people (unless by some weird chance these preachers are right and the entire empirical world an illusion). This is culture in action. We scientists and intellectuals flatter ourselves that we're the enlighteners of a benighted world, but it's not really true. People are surrounded by science, including evolution, and still it doesn't sink in.

In fact, we probably err in bemoaning the degenerating world that these religious hawkers are selling (and selling is an appropriate word for much of it, of course). We are perhaps the most formally educated population in human history: by far more people with more years of school, more credentialist degrees, technical training, and access to knowledge. Nonetheless, today as ever before, it has only been a small elite that is really 'educated' in the sense that applies here. High levels of this kind of knowledge have never been the daily bread of the majority of people, and they aren't now either.

The arguments produced in favor of sacred-text religion are specious and in the US often culpably misrepresent the claims of science, and we have every duty to try to correct them. But the real issue is not the physical facts of evolution vs theology. It's a deeper cultural fact about people, and symbolic battles for power and feelings of importance.

People generally like simple answers that explain everything. And they need opiates to calm their unease about the harsh realities they know are part of life. Mysteries can be appealing but also frightening, especially to those who know they're mortal. Science is no exception--simple answers are very appealing--which is why we do our best to resist unquestioned genetic determinism or darwinism. There should be no Gods, or gods (whether the latter be Marx or Darwin, Michael Jackson, or $$). Gods are dangerous. People are still willing, sometimes eager, to die for them.

We saw a comment in the news this weekend to the effect that fundamentalism will be the downfall of civilization. The rise of fundamentalism, according to this British scientist, means that global problems, such as climate change and population growth, won't be addressed with the kinds of worldwide cooperation needed to solve them. We realize that this was meant as a bemoaning of the human strife caused, justified, or motivated by fundamentalist belief, and we share that view. But it's important to understand that, as stated, it's totally wrong. First, it's probably fair to say that economic differences rather than religious ones are preventing global agreement on climate change. And secondly, if anything, the most advanced civilizations have thrived on marauding justified by religion (theological or, as in Marxism, secular). Mass-scale malevolent treatment of groups of people by other groups of people is perhaps one of the characteristics of large-scale complex societies.

It may also be natural for there to be people of good will who resist these dire aspects of human culture. There may be no precedent for it, but we hope they will eventually prevail.

The strident atheist scientists

The BBC has a 5-minute interview program and on May 16 their website aired such an interview with Richard Dawkins. Although a public figure, he is purportedly a professor of Public Understanding of Science, at Oxford. That is unfortunate, because he like many others in science these days (especially, evolutionary biologists) are cashing in on a kind of strident atheism that is a bad misrepresentation of science, just the opposite of what they should be doing.

Dawkins said in this interview, as he has elsewhere, that he doesn't believe in something for which there is no evidence. Therefore he says he shouldn't have to deal with God any more than with the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Of course, he has every right to doubt the claims of religion (or tooth fairies, or Santa Claus), or the literal truth of religions based on sacred texts that purport to relate to the real world. Many scientists, who spend their lives trying very hard to understand the world share his skepticism about the claims of religion and other 'mystical' kinds of phenomena.

But it's very bad science! We should be educating the public--and ourselves--as to what science as we know it is really about, not propagandizing our personal views on the world (or, at least, we should be clear that those are our views, and not based on science per se). The reason is quite simple, but we think just as important.

Science uses an array of methods to study a range of phenomena and has some semi-formal rules of decision-making (called the 'scientific method'). We agree, as a culture, that the principles of things like mathematics and our idea about logical reasoning are true. We agree on acceptable forms of measurement, data collection, data analysis for drawing both specific observational conclusions as well as generalizations (theories) about Nature. But therein lies the most important issue.

Dawkins and the professional atheists say that as scientists they don't believe in that for which there is no evidence. But what they really mean, and to give them credit may not even be aware of, is that they don't accept things for which there is no acceptable evidence. And that is a kind of tautology. Something is defined as 'true' (or, at least, plausible) if and only if it is within the realm of their kind of evidence.

There's nothing at all wrong with doing this, but it does make science an axiomatic system for viewing some particular aspects of the world. What is wrong is not recognizing that this is what they are doing. In fact, there is a great deal of evidence for religious claims--even if that doesn't legitimately apply to claims such as the Biblical fundamentalists make about young earth and intelligent design.

Hundreds of millions of people claim that they have had what scientists would call mystical experiences. Many say they communicate directly with God. Whether that's literally true or not is, in fact, beyond the scope of current science. The reason is that current science doesn't deal with, and many if not most scientists won't accept, such types of subjective, personalized evidence as evidence.

Science says it deals with the material world, but that communicating with God is not material, and therefore not real in the sense of materialism. But what is 'material'? Before the discovery of, say, electromagnetic radiation, we could not deal with unobservable aspects of it (like parts of the spectrum we couldn't see). Dark matter in space is another kind of example. We can't see it in the usual way, and only claim it's there because it seems to affect the pattern of radiation as it passes to us through the cosmos.

Once a phenomenon is discovered and can be measured, it becomes part of the 'material' world and joins the panoply of scientific causes. We can never know what things we don't yet know, and it is a kind of arrogance to assert that things we don't know by our chosen way-of-knowing aren't true--or that there is 'no evidence' for them.

We cannot challenge the atheists' skepticism about the often patently false material claims of religion. But it is badly misleading the public 'understanding' of science to present science as if it is the only way of understanding the realities of existence.

What we are saying provides absolutely no support for religious or other mystical claims! We cannot, and do not, imply that claims of personal contacts with God are true or even what 'true' would mean in this case. The mistake Dawkins and other strident scientist-atheists make does not in any way lead to the conclusion that Genesis may be true after all!

But scientists and the public alike should realize that science is a part of our culture, not something handed down to us from the outside (by whom? God??)! It is a particular, and hence limited, way of characterizing the world. In terms of manipulating the world, it is immensely powerful. And it does seem to provide ever-better accounts of what we see around us. But it is a system that is based on a set of accepted rules. Religion and its kin are in a similar way cultural phenomena.

To a hard-nosed scientist, the comforting claims of religion don't seem to ring true, and that can be a depressing thought, given the pain and suffering that clearly are part of reality. Atheism is easy to understand. It is easy to make the personal judgment that claims of speaking with God are illusions. But personal conviction is not the same as science, and not what science is all about. If you don't want to accept as evidence such claims, fine. But it's part of your assumptions. And that's what the public, religious or otherwise, should understand about the nature of science in relation to the nature of Nature.

Dawkins was asked in the same interview what is the point if he doesn't believe in God. His answer was that the point is to enjoy life, to live life to the fullest. This seems to us to ignore Darwin's own lessons, to further perpetuate misunderstanding, not further the public understanding, of science. Dawkins has been called "Darwin's Rottweiller" because he has written so much in defense of evolutionary thought, but within a Darwinian framework, the point, if there is one, is only to survive and reproduce. And that is not even a 'point', as if there was some sort of ordained purpose; instead, it's just the nature of life.

Anything else we make of life, our values, our sense of beauty and purpose, our beliefs and so on, is our own invention. It may be the most important aspect of our lives as we experience them, for sure. But it is personal, and does not reflect scientific knowledge and there is no reason other than celebrity gawking why the opinion about the point of life of a scientist as scientist, is any more meaningful than anyone else's view. Again, this is relevant to science only so far as the evidentiary and topical basis of science goes, which would say that Nature has properties, but doesn't have a 'point'.

If Dawkins had said that science doesn't tell us anything about the 'point' beyond the Darwinian framework, and that this is not an area where expertise of any kind at all has any bearing, and that what he can offer is his own view of life for those who might be curious about it, then he would have been doing his job to enhance public understanding.