Greta Christina on “mission drift” - A commentary

by Massimo Pigliucci

Greta Christina has penned a thoughtful essay on the issue of “mission drift” within the atheist and skeptic communities, which turns out to be an indirect response to the very same talk by Jamy Ian Swiss that led to PZ Myers’ rant about “quitting” the skeptic movement - see my commentary on that here.

Christina begins by asking a deceptively simple question: “If the atheist and skeptical movements focus on political and social justice issues, will that constitute mission drift?” Her initial answer is a simple “No,” but then she elaborates at length, and much of what she says makes eminent sense to me.

Christina immediately breaks down her question into two logically distinct components:

(1) that these movements expand the focus of their existing missions into new areas having to do with politics and social justice, in ways that are consistent with those existing missions and that constitute clear overlap between those missions and these issues;

(2) that the organizations in these movements pay attention to these issues in internal matters, such as hiring and event organizing.

Most of the essay (and most of my commentary) then focuses on (1), with a few brief comments on (2). Let me start with the latter, then, to get the easy stuff out of the way. Yes, of course atheist and skeptic organizations should engage in fair hiring practices, adopt equal opportunity employment policies, offer students rates, organize conferences in locations - when possible - that offer public transport access, choose venues that are wheelchair accessible and so forth. (I would cut some slack on other issues she brings up, like offering sign language interpretation and day care, simply because those things are costly, and many organizations of the type we are considering typically have very limited budgets. Even so, they should try if they can afford it.)

However, as Christina herself implies when she makes the parallel between atheist / skeptic organizations and IBM or the Audobon Society, these actions should be taken qua public organizations, not specifically as atheist / skeptic ones. It’s a matter of simple civil decency, period.

Assuming we are all square on (2), then, it’s time to tackle the significantly more thorny (1) above.

Let’s briefly consider some of Christina’s examples of issues that some people may regard as instances of “mission drift” for atheists and/or skeptics, but which she contends are not. Her list is long, and I do not actually disagree with pretty much any item within it (with the big caveat to which I’ll get below), but just a few examples will give you a good idea:

To skeptics: Why can’t all that rationality, critical thinking skills, scientific method, and prioritization of evidence be applied to testable claims having to do with social justice? … The claim that people have unconscious racial biases which affect our behavior is a testable claim. The claim that children raised in same-sex relationships grow up with deep psychological problems is a testable claim. The claim that people act significantly differently towards infants we think are male and infants we think are female is a testable claim.

To atheists: Why would it constitute mission drift for the atheist movement to focus on how religion harms people by undermining social justice? Why would it be mission drift to focus on the harm done by abstinence-only sex education; by the influence of the religious right on reproductive rights; by the influence of the religious right on public education and economic policy; by fraudulent preachers and psychics preying on impoverished communities?

Why indeed? I do not have any objection to expanding the scope of skepticism and atheism along those directions. In fact, this has been happening for a while. Every year, for instance, the organizers of both TAM (at the national level) and NECSS (at the regional, in this case New York, level) make a point of scheduling talks that aren’t confined to the classic workhorses of skepticism, like UFOs, astrology and so forth. And Christina should know that both American Atheists and CFI have long drawn attention to at least some of the religion-related issues she mentions.

But Christina seems (irritatingly, I must add) to wish to pit herself against what she repeatedly refers to as “the old guard”: Why should the agenda get to be set by the old guard? … Why should the people who are already in the skeptical and atheist movements, the people who have been in the

skeptical movements for years, be the ones to decide which internal policies are core issues for atheism and skepticism, and which ones are on the fringe?

Well, the obvious question is: why not? We all get to set the agenda for what is largely a grassroots movement, and we do so via conversations like the one that Christina has started. But why shouldn’t “the old guard” be a (major) part of it? Just like in every movement, people who have been active for a long time deserve our respect because they’ve been there long before us, have experience, and have demonstrated their ability to get things done. Of course they shouldn’t get to set the agenda in a smoke-filled room somewhere in the middle of the Nevada desert, but they do deserve more respect than the contemptuous dismissal that emerges from Christina’s comments.

Niceties to the old folks aside, there is a larger problem that we all have to tackle in the process of expanding the concerns of the atheist and skeptic movements to the areas mentioned by Christina. It’s the same problem that I repeatedly point out to my feminist philosophy and gender studies academic colleagues: be careful not to mix too liberally what is with what ought to be, because you may regret it.

Recently I chided Michael Shermer for his scientistic tendencies, commenting that what he seems to want is a scientific imprimatur on his libertarian ideology. Certain libertarian policies may or may not work, and that surely is an empirical question about which we need data before we agree or disagree. But my fundamental objection to libertarianism qua ideology is that it doesn’t take in due account issues of social justice. That objection is philosophical in nature, and precedes (though it is not entirely independent of) the empirical. Should it turn out, for instance, that cutting aid to the poor, or undermining a guarantee to health care, or severely curtailing public access to education are somehow more “efficient” from a market perspective, I’d say the market perspective be damned. Certain considerations of value trump pragmatism and efficiency (up to a point, of course, I don’t live in a la-la land where economy just doesn’t matter).

The same goes for a lot of feminist philosophy, where colleagues engage in the sort of debunking that Christina is advocating, a deconstruction of allegedly scientific claims about race, gender, and so forth. This is crucial as a corrective to false, misleading, or discriminatory notions about women and various ethnicities that get cloaked in the mantle of science. But the argument for racial and gender equality should be independent of any particular outcome of empirical research.

I think that the best science does indicate that there are no group-based cognitive and few if any innate behavioral differences between genders. But what if better research should eventually show otherwise? Would we then have to bite the bullet and say, yup, I’m sorry, turns out that group X really does have structural cognitive differences with respect to group Y, so we really shouldn’t allow X to compete for the same jobs or resources as Y?

I don’t think so. We know that there is huge variation in physical and cognitive endowments among individuals (regardless of group), but nobody in his right mind would therefore argue for special privileges for particularly strong or smart people. The fact of the differences simply doesn’t enter into the judgment value of how we ought to construct our society.

Or take the issue of gay rights, over which American society is suddenly making a stunning amount of rapid progress. We often hear “defenses” of the gay life style in terms of it not being the result of a choice. Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t, who cares? So what if someone chooses to be gay, as opposed to having a strong instinctual propensity for it? Why should the cause of the behavior have anything whatsoever to do with issues of rights? But if advocates of gay rights insist on the “it’s not a choice” position, they open themselves - pointlessly, I think - to the possibility that future science may show that it is indeed a choice. Then what?

So, I absolutely welcome both Christina’s broader point that skepticism and atheism benefit from an expansion of their horizons, and her specific list of things that should be open to skeptical investigation or lend themselves to atheist advocacy. But let’s be clear that skeptics and atheists should also be interested in truth and intellectual honesty, wherever it may lead. And should it lead in directions that are not in line with our ideals, we should be prepared to either bite the bullet and modify those ideals or make a persuasive philosophical argument for why they should trump the empirical specifics. Are skeptics and atheists ready to boldly go there as a movement?

PZ Myers quits skeptic movement, should we care?

by Massimo Pigliucci

PZ Myers, the cantankerous evolutionary biologist / blogger who writes at Pharyngula, has officially announced that he is leaving the skeptic movement. Although PZ has been uneasy for a while with several aspects of grassroots and organized skepticism, the straw that broke the camel’s back apparently came during the recent Freethought Alliance meeting in Orange County, CA, in disgusted reaction to another speaker’s remarks. That other speaker is none other than Jamy Ian Swiss, who apparently gave a talk very similar to this one, in which he chastised PZ personally for engaging in a brand of skepticism that, in Jamy’s opinion, is outside the bounds of science.

Nothing like telling a scientist that he isn’t being scientific to piss him off, though admittedly PZ’s threshold for getting pissed off is pretty low. I have no dog in this fight, since I am on record disliking PZ’s rhetoric and I have told Jamy several times in private that I don’t like his approach either — ironically, for similar reasons to my rejection of PZ’s! Nor, frankly, is it particularly interesting to discuss, let alone adjudicate, a minor kerfuffle that is likely to soon become yet another distant blip in the history of skepticism. But there is something to be learned here, which is why I will use this specific incident to make a broader point about what I think is really problematic in the skeptic movement.

Let’s start by taking a closer look at what exactly PZ is complaining about:

it is clear that “scientific skepticism” is simply a crippled, buggered version of science with special exemptions to set certain subjects outside the bounds of its purview. In addition, its promoters are particularly sensitive to having their hypocrisy pointed out (that, by the way, is what triggered his [Swiss’] outburst — you’d have to be stupid or a liar to think that skepticism gives religion special privileges.)

To begin with, skepticism is not, nor has it ever aspired to be, science. It is a grassroots movement with the triple aim of debunking paranormal claims, defending science in the public arena, and promoting critical thinking (all activities for which scientists have little patience and even less direct incentive). The “certain subject” that PZ thinks people like Jamy shouldn’t be giving a special exemption to is, of course, the supernatural. The idea is that science has no bounds, and that it can (and ought to) be applied to any claim whatsoever, no matter how far such claim may be from anything resembling a scientific hypothesis. As readers of RS know, the issue of demarcation projects (science vs pseudoscience, science vs philosophy) is one about which I think and write a lot. It’s also well known that my take is closer to Jamy’s (on this particular issue) than to PZ’s, though I think the matter hinges on non-trivial aspects of epistemology and philosophy of science, and is not something that can be easily settled on the basis of the somewhat simplistic arguments that abound among skeptics (who, after all, are neither epistemologists not philosophers of science).

Regardless, I recognize that very smart people (such as my co-editor for a forthcoming book on this very topic, Maarten Boudry) have different opinions on whether and in what sense science can address supernatural claims, and that they have good arguments with which to back up those opinions. I most certainly don’t think that Maarten and several others are “stupid or liars” just because they happen to disagree with me. Keep that particular comment by PZ in mind, we’ll get back to it soon.

PZ’s rant continues thus: I was also annoyed by the skeptic movement’s appropriation of the term “scientific” all over the place…except that it’s a “science” that doesn’t make use of accumulated prior knowledge, that abandons the concept of the null hypothesis, and that so narrowly defines what it will accept as evidence that it actively excludes huge domains of knowledge.

Ah, yes, one should not dare to appropriate the label “scientific” without proper warrant. Except of course that “warrant” here shouldn’t be equated with “agrees with PZ Myers.” By the way, the concept of null hypothesis is a bit outdated PZ, you may want to read Chapter 10 of my Making Sense of Evolution to bring you up to date on that particular issue. At the very least we should agree that formulating null hypotheses is by no means a necessary condition for doing science (and it certainly isn’t a sufficient one).

So don’t call me a “skeptic”. I’ll consider it an insult, like calling a writer a stenographer, a comedian a mime, a doctor a faith healer, a scientist a technician. I’m out.

Be my guest, but please don’t insult a large swath of people, both professional academics and not, who value that label because — at its best — it refers to the sort of intellectual rigor and curiosity embodied by philosophers like David Hume and scientists like Carl Sagan. At any rate, why do you insist in being so unpleasant even with people you mostly agree with? (Oh, I forgot, you did that to one of my friends too, and I called you on it.)

That’s pretty much it: PZ thinks the supernatural should not be “exempted” from scientific skepticism (a term he considers an insult to science anyway), and on that basis he is willing to call others names and to quit in a huff. Suit yourself, PZ, we’ll survive without you. But it would be a pity to let this episode go without learning a lesson or two.

I think the primary problem with the skeptic movement — of which I am and remain a proud member — is that too many people, both among the “leaders” and the rank-and-file, seem to be in it for the sheer pleasure of calling others out as idiots. Typically this contempt is reserved for religious people, believers in pseudoscience, etc., but occasionally we turn the guns on some of our own and shoot just as joyfully.

No, I am not suggesting that skeptics should refrain from criticizing other skeptics. I have done (and, be warned, will continue to do so!) my fair share of that, because I think there is value in open dialogue and shared critical analysis of other people’s and one’s own ideas. I am rather talking about the easy insult and dismissal without engaging in actual arguments, the first one being contrary to standards of common courtesy among fellow travelers (I mean, there are plenty of targets out there who really do deserve sarcasm and insult, the current leadership of the NRA being just one example among many), the second one simply being contrary to the whole idea of a Hume/Sagan type skeptical inquiry.

Yes, yes, I realize that I have been intemperate myself on occasion. Nobody’s perfect. But I have apologized for such blunders, and I continue to honestly strive to keep myself on this side of the admittedly fuzzy lines between irony and sarcasm, (strong) criticism and insult, or reasoned argument and outright dismissal.

I’m not the only one to have noticed that there is a problem here: just watch my friend Phil Plait’s famous “Don’t be a dick” talk, presented at TAM 2010, already three years ago. Phil’s comment introducing the talk to his readers was: “I can’t promise that I won’t be a dick. But I will strive mightily to try. That’s the most I can do, and the most I can ask of anyone.” Indeed, but somehow I can hardly imagine PZ coming even close to such a pledge. As is well known, the first step is always to be able to recognize that there is a problem. Will the skeptic community be able to do that, with or without PZ Myers?

On A+, with a comment about Richard Carrier’s intemperance

freethoughtblogs.com/blaghag

by Massimo Pigliucci

The buzz is on: the third wave of atheism is on the march. It’s called A+, and it has a nice logo to go with it. A+ is the brainchild of Jen McCreight, a liberal blogger and “perverted feminist” (her words) who writes for Freethought Blogs, and rose to fame initially for her very funny “boobquake” stunt a couple of years ago.

Jen is concerned about issues that have worried me for some time too, particularly the fact that the atheist community seems to me to be rife with misogyny and very little concern for social issues (not even when it comes to the freedom of speech of other atheists, see the abysmally embarrassing failure of the petition on behalf of Alexander Aan).

As a reaction, Jen has proposed a new type of atheism, a third wave after the “intellectual and academic” beginnings and the confrontational “New Atheism.” She proposes an atheism concerned with social issues, where the light of reason and critical scrutiny is directed not just at debunking creationists but also to illuminating questions of injustice about gender, ethnicity and the like.

Here is Jen’s summary of the programmatic points for A+, in a follow up to her original post (see also endorsements by Greta Christina and Nelson Jones):

We are…

Atheists plus we care about social justice,

Atheists plus we support women’s rights,

Atheists plus we protest racism,

Atheists plus we fight homophobia and transphobia,

Atheists plus we use critical thinking and skepticism.

Perfect, I’m on board. But (you knew this was coming, yes?) I do have a couple of observations (before I get to Richard Carrier, as the title promises). One is historical in nature, the other philosophical.

Historically, what Jen, Greta and others are looking for already exists. It’s called secular humanism, and it has had (and continues to have) a huge impact on precisely the issues listed above. How huge? Well, just to cite an example, the UN Declaration of Human Rights is a quintessential humanist document, which has influenced international relations since its adoption in 1948.

Secular humanism has a long history, depending on how exactly one defines the concept, and it includes a series of Humanist Manifestos (the first one of which was published in 1933, the last one in 2003) that address precisely the sort of issues that A+ is concerned with, and then some.

So, my first point isn’t a critique of A+ as much as a reminder that, well, some of us (secular humanists) have been doing that sort of thing for almost a century (not I personally, I’m not that old...).

My second point is more philosophical in nature: I am skeptical that something like A+ can get off the ground — as much as I support its aims — for the simple reason that atheism is not a philosophy, and we should stop pretending that it is.

When atheists are concerned that their position is perceived as being only negative, without any positive message, they shouldn’t really be worried, but should rather bite the bullet: a-theism simply means that one lacks a belief in god(s), and for excellent reasons. It is akin to a-unicornism, the lack of a belief in unicorns. That lack of belief doesn’t come with any positive position because none is logically connected to it.

It is a similar situation for skeptics, who also often suffer being labeled as nay sayers without a positive message. If you are skeptical of, say, homeopathy, you don’t need a positive message qua skeptic: your job is to debunk the irrational and explain why that particular notion doesn’t make any sense (and may cost money and lives). End of story.

Now, skepticism does have a positive counterpart: it’s called science. If you wish to redirect former believers in homeopathy onto a better path to health you send them to a medical doctor who uses science-based medicine. This, however, does not require the skeptic herself to be a medical doctor (nor to play one on tv), it just requires that the skeptic be aware of the relevant literature and community of expertise.

So, what is the equivalent positive counterpart to atheism? Philosophy, obviously. But things get a bit more complicated than in the case of the skepticism-science relationship because different atheists may endorse different positive philosophies. Those like Jen and myself adopt a progressive liberal approach to social issues, i.e. we become secular humanists. But other atheists choose libertarianism, or Objectivism (yeah, don’t ask me why). And let’s not forget that — as much as we usually don’t acknowledge it — there are likely plenty of straightforward conservatives who are also atheists. This variety shouldn’t at all be puzzling, because atheism is not a social or political philosophy in its own right, it is a simple metaphysical or epistemic statement about the non existence of a particular type of postulated entity.

Despite my reservations, I wish Jen and the others the best of luck with A+. As Jen put it, “I want to improve the atheist movement, not create a splinter faction or something. But it’s fabulous marketing-wise and as a way to identify yourself as a progressive atheist.” Count me in, I am a progressive atheist; otherwise known as a secular humanist.

And now to Richard Carrier. He too immediately endorsed A+ over at Freethought Blogs, but his language was so unnecessarily harsh that I almost called up my priest to ask him for some lessons on Catholic tolerance throughout the centuries (ok, that’s not actually true). I have had occasional epistolary encounters with Carrier, and they have left a seriously bad taste in my mouth. His intemperance with people who happen to disagree — even marginally — with his position is nauseating (just ask the editor of Skeptical Inquirer, who occasionally receives and promptly refuses to publish Richard’s letters about my columns).

Here are some excerpts from Carrier’s post about A+, just to give you a taste:

“There is a new atheism brewing, and it’s the rift we need, to cut free the dead weight so we can kick the C.H.U.D.’s back into the sewers and finally disown them, once and for all.”

“Anyone who makes a fallacious argument and, when shown that they have, does not admit it, is not one of us, and is to be marginalized and kicked out, as not part of our movement, and not anyone we any longer wish to deal with.”

“I do not think it is in our interests any longer to cooperate in silence with irrational people, when it is irrationality that is the fundamental root cause of all human evil. Anyone who disagrees with that is simply not someone we can work with.”

“We cannot hold our tongue and not continue to denounce their irrationality in any other sphere, because to do so would be to become a traitor to our own values.”

“This does not mean we can’t be angry or mean or harsh, when it is for the overall good (as when we mock or vilify the town neonazi); ridiculing the ridiculous is often in fact a moral obligation, and insults are appropriate when they are genuinely appropriate.”

“And if you are complicit in that, or don’t even see what’s wrong with it, or worse, plan to engage in Christian-style apologetics for it, defending it with the same bullshit fallacies and tactics the Christians use to defend their own immorality or that of their fictional god, then I don’t want anything to do with you. You are despicable. You are an awful person. You disgust me. You are not my people.”

It keeps going like this for quite a bit, but I think you get the point (if you don’t, uhm, we may have a problem, but I will not tell you that you are fucking evil, nor will I throw you out of my club — particularly because I don’t have one).

And here is the kicker: shortly after Carrier posted his rant, Jen McCreight herself tweeted the following:

“Finally had time 2 read Richard Carrier's #atheismplus piece. His language was unnecessarily harsh, divisive & ableist. Doesn't represent A+.”

I guess the new movement has already excommunicated someone, and that happens to be its most viciously vocal supporter so far.

p.s. Ron Lindsay of CFI just published a commentary on A+ where he hits most of my points, albeit phrased differently.

Friendly advice to skeptics

by Joan Roughgarden

[This is a guest post by my colleague Joan Roughgarden, one of the most prominent evolutionary biologists I have had the pleasure to meet. Joan is Professor (Emerita) of Biology at Stanford University and Adjunct Professor at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology. She is the author of Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People (2004, UC Press, available also in Portuguese and Korean) and The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness (2009, UC Press, also available this September in French). Her YouTube channel is “JoanKauai.” She is a co-editor of the journal founded by Massimo, Philosophy and Theory in Biology.]

Massimo’s recent post about skepticism inspired this distillation and extension on four issues: evolutionary psychology, objectivism, women, and religion. “Skeptics” refers here, as in Massimo’s sense, to contributors and readers of magazines like Skeptical Inquirer, to participants in blogs like Rationally Speaking, and to others whom Massimo identifies as comprising a broadly construed  “Community of Reason” (CoR).

Evolutionary Psychology

Massimo criticizes evolutionary psychology (EP) as a “science-informed narrative about the human condition.” In the blog thread, Brett, extending a rebuttal by David Pinsof, writes “I'm not aware of a single such critic who has given practical advice about how evolutionary psychologists could do their jobs better.” Here then is what EP should do.

Pinsof notes that EP is adaptationism, and yet adaptationism has well-known limits. The net strength of an adaptive selection pressure must exceed the reciprocal of the population size by an order of magnitude to evolve over genetic drift. An adaptive argument should not only show a bona fide benefit for some trait but also that the benefit is sufficiently large. Far fetched adaptive explanations as found in EP are ruled out by this well known population-genetic criterion. EP workers should deal with the magnitude of the selective advantage of any hypothesized adaptive function.

Pinsof claims that EP is “a way of testing the predictions entailed by theories from evolutionary biology (i.e. parental investment theory, reciprocal altruism, signaling theory, biological markets theory, etc.) on humans.” That would be nice, if true. To the contrary, EP assumes these forty-year old theories are correct and attempts to confirm them with data on humans, leading to a discipline riddled with confirmation bias. Sexual selection, parental investment, and the evolution of cooperation and altruism are controversial today in biology. Sexual selection’s premise of near-universal sex roles during mating has met many counterexamples including species with multiple genders, homosexuality, gender switching and sex-role reversal. Even textbook examples such as the peacock and the Bateman fruit-fly experiments have been reevaluated. Genetic analysis has further undercut sexual-selection theory in species such as the collared flycatcher. Behavioral ecologists have increasingly discarded sex-role expectations, placing them at arms length relative to a generic concept of sexual selection simply as “any form of competition for mates” (1,2). Wholesale alternatives to sexual selection are also becoming a possibility (3). Yet EP research seeks to discern classic sex roles within human behavior. EP workers should view behavioral ecology as a work in progress, not as settled science, and should entertain and test hypotheses alternative to those originating in the 1970s. They should not seek to “apply” behavioral ecology to humans, but instead to extend and if necessary, revise behavioral ecology with data from humans.

Objectivism

Massimo characterizes Ayn Rand’s philosophy of objectivism as “an incoherent jumble of contradictions and plagiarism from actual thinkers.” I think the appeal to skeptics of Ayn Rand’s philosophy is her ethics: the virtue of selfishness and rejection of altruism. Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene naturalizes Ayn Rand’s objectivist ethics and provides a seamless transition from evolutionary biology to normative human conduct resulting in what might be termed “evolutionary objectivism.”

The problem is that objectivist ethics may be unnatural after all. Is any animal purely selfish and devoid of cooperative and even altruistic, instincts, intentions and thoughts? Probably not. According to the 1970s framing, cooperation and altruism are selfishness in disguise (Dawkins), or are products of group selection, renamed multilevel selection by the Wilson’s (DS and EO). Skeptics invariably line up behind Dawkins and therefore seek to explain cooperation through limited devices such as kin selection and reciprocal altruism while viewing the Wilsons' as delusional or even over the hill.

The 1970s were a heady time. I was there. We young turks enjoyed exposing the naivety of “good-for-the-species” stories from nature-show narrators, seeing behavior as animal choices to fulfill evolutionary objectives rather than as uninterpreted instinct, and injecting evolution into ecology to bring an explanatory logic to otherwise arbitrary population properties and community structure. So it would be churlish to begrudge the glee of today’s social scientists and philosophers who have begun to play with the power of natural-selection thinking. But much has been learned since then and skeptics ought to pay attention.

It has become ever so clear that more altruism and cooperation occur in animal social activities than can be accounted for with kin selection or reciprocal altruism, and clear that serious doubt remains about the empirical plausibility of group selection even given its theoretical possibility. Instead, a third way can account for how cooperative behavior forms — through social construction of the individual phenotype. The creature that hatches from the egg or springs from the womb has yet to complete much of its development. It then develops morphologically and behaviorally in the company of others. This development culminates in an individual that possesses an evolutionary fitness. Individual-level natural selection selects for individuals who cooperate in their mutual development of a high individual fitness. I have analogized this process to teamwork in athletics in which training together leads to team winnings that underwrite the individual reproductive success of each teammate (4). Yet individuals on the team will not prosper if each does not perform to the best of their ability, nor if lovers cheat.

Today’s skeptics disappointingly project one side of an obsolete evolutionary debate as the basis for an ethical norm. In doing so, skeptics not only confuse is with ought, but are mistaken about what is.

Women

Badrescher observes that Massimo lists only one woman among the 15 CoR “leaders” he singles out. Mark Erikson adds that “there is serious work to do in the CoR on this [gender imbalance] issue.” Massimo replies that “I honestly couldn't come up with names [of women] that had the same visibility as those [men] I listed.”

The near absence of women in the CoR dialogue has two main causes, I think. First,
CoR members know what they want to hear, making it nearly impossible to advance alternative views. Men listen to men. They slap each other on the back with their tongues. Men regard another man as competent until proven otherwise, and men regard a woman as incompetent until proven otherwise. Volunteering to engage under these circumstances is difficult and usually a waste of time.

Second, the CoR project is inherently masculinist. It privileges Reason. Although evidence may show that people rarely make decisions rationally, by the CoR project they should. Reason is a goal, if not a fact. But is Reason a good goal, or more accurately, should Reason offer the sole guide to decision and action? Men are raised to think so. Men think through Reason they can control their bodies, overcome their emotions and manage the world.

Feminist scholarship, novels and art consistently highlight the body. A woman’s lived experience teaches that Reason cannot control the body. Periods come and go on their own, a baby grows on its own, tears flow on their own. Why fight it? It’s best to recruit one’s body as a partner to make decisions that make sense and feel right too. Male athletes may also come to this realization.

The CoR project should apply its critical acumen to itself. Is its emphasis on Reason reasonable? Could the evolutionarily refined lower brain be more reliable than the evolutionarily recent higher brain? A welcoming discussion on such questions and a general sense of openness will surely lead to more participation by women.

Religion

Lance Bush writes “teaching children nonsense and bad ways of thinking is wrong, religious education by its very nature almost always entails this, and the atheist community should not shy away from saying so.” Bill continues, “sometimes one [encounters] situations where an entire field is full of hogwash, and skeptics specialize in saying this. For example, I dismiss what clergy have to say in general — I think the whole discipline is just defective, and I have little regard for what they have to say.’’ Massimo agrees with Bill, saying “the academy itself, of course, is far from perfect, and I don't think departments of theology (as opposed to, say, philosophy of religion) belong there. So yes, in those cases your skepticism is well grounded.” Marcus Morgan adds that an atheist should ask a spiritualist “if God is ‘knowable’ (knowledge is our highest level of rational satisfaction). If yes, then analyze their reasons and see if they constitute knowledge and decide whether you believe them. If no, and the spiritualist is also agnostic (believes in something that cannot be known) and [sic] all you can do is move on (fast).”

The CoR is relentlessly negative about religious people. I have two pieces of advice about this. First, demonizing religious people has produced a self-indulgent caricature intended for ridicule. Participating in a religious community is not about proving that God exists (whatever that might mean) but about sharing an experience. Part of the experience is identifying with a leader whose words offer guidance to navigating human dilemmas, part is seeing oneself as continuing an ancient tradition, part is enjoying friendship, part is finding others to count on in hard times, part is joining in community projects, part is finding a regular time to reflect on how to live more ethically, part is acknowledging the week’s mistakes and resolving to move on, part is being introduced to timely issues (yes, many churches and synagogues present talks with two “sides”), and so forth. The human need for this participatory experience is difficult to satisfy in secular circles, even in large cities, and is nearly impossible in rural locales. For many religious people, an element of faith is intertwined with their overall participatory experience. Yet the CoR mistakenly foregrounds only the faith element of religious life. What brings people back to church again and again is the participatory experience and what turns them away is a bad experience. The many people who do positively experience religious practice dismiss the CoR as ignorant (true) and not worth listening to (false). All the CoR’s other points, such as the importance of teaching evolution, are lost, shouted to the howling wind. My advice is: lay off the “prove there is a god” stuff. It’s irrelevant and counterproductive.

Second, theology does belong in a university just as say, engineering does. Theology is applied humanities. In 2005 I was invited to lecture in gender studies at Loyola University in Chicago, a Jesuit university. I noticed members of the lecture organizing committee from the theology department. I had never met a live theologian face to face. So I asked to extend my stay a day to meet theologians, to find out what they were like, what they did, and what made them tick. What I discovered was an interdisciplinary humanities program combining history, literary analysis, and philosophy. Their research products are often analyses, similar to the policy studies produced by social scientists. Cutting edge scholarship in theology is some distance from the positions taken by Roman Catholic church leadership. Nonetheless, official church positions do change in response to theological research but at a pace making plate tectonics seem reckless. I respected the intellectual thoroughness, inquisitiveness, patience and honesty I encountered. In 2007, the Loyola theology department organized a symposium that led to a book edited by Patricia Jung and Aana Marie Vigen. I was honored to contribute a paper to it coauthored with Patricia Jung on gender diversity in the Bible (5). Not only the philosophy of religion but also theology itself is an appropriate domain for skeptical methodology.

_____

(1) 2009, Roughgarden, J., Akçay, E., Do we need a Sexual Selection 2.0?, Animal Behaviour, doi:10.1016/ j.anbehav.2009.06.006  79(3):e1-e4.

(2) 2009, Shuker, D.M., Sexual selection: endless forms or tangled bank? Animal Behaviour, doi:10.1016/ j.anbehav.2009.10.031

(3) 2012, Roughgarden, J. The social selection alternative to sexual selection. Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B. DOI:10.1098/rstb.2011.0282

(4) 2012, Roughgarden, J. Teamwork, pleasure and bargaining in animal social behaviour J. Evol. Biol. DOI: 10.1111/j.1420-9101.2012.02505.x

(5) 2010, Jung, P. and J. Roughgarden. Gender in heaven: The story of the Ethiopian eunuch in light of evolutionary biology. Pp. 224-240. In: Jung, P. and Vigen, A. (eds.) God, Science, Sex, Gender. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois.

The Community of Reason, a self-assessment and a manifesto

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by Massimo Pigliucci

I have been an active member of the self-described Community of Reason since about 1997. By that term I mean the broad set encompassing skeptics, atheists and secular humanists (and all the assorted synonyms thereof: freethinkers, rationalists, and even brights). The date is easily explainable: in 1996 I had moved from Brown University — where I did my postdoc — to the University of Tennessee, were I was appointed assistant professor in the Departments of Botany and of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. A few months after my arrival in Knoxville, the extremely (to this day) unenlightened TN legislature began discussing a bill that would have allowed school boards to fire teachers who presented evolution as a fact rather than a theory (it is both, of course). The bill died in committee (though a more recent one did pass, go Volunteers!), in part because of the efforts of colleagues and graduate students throughout the State.

It was because of my local visibility during that episode (and then shortly thereafter because I began organizing Darwin Day events on campus, which are still going strong) that I was approached by some members of a group called “The Fellowship of Reason” (now the Rationalists of East Tennessee). They told me that we had much in common, and wouldn’t I want to join them in their efforts? My first thought was that an outlet with that name must be run by cuckoos, and at any rate I had a lab to take care of and tenure to think about, thank you very much.

But in fact it took only a couple more polite attempts on their part before I joined the group and, by proxy, the broader Community of Reason (henceforth, CoR). It has been one of the most meaningful and exhilarating decisions of my life, some consequences of which include four books on science and philosophy for the general public (counting the one coming out in September); columns and articles for Skeptic, Skeptical Inquirer, Free Inquiry, The Philosopher’s Magazine and Philosophy Now, among others; and of course this blog and its associated podcast. I made many friends within the CoR, beginning with Carl Ledendecker of Knoxville, TN (the guy who originally approached me about the Fellowship of Reason), and of course including the editor and writers of Rationally Speaking.

But... yes, there is a “but,” and it’s beginning to loom large in my consciousness, so I need to get it out there and discuss it (this blog is just as much a way for me to clarify my own ideas through writing and the feedback of others as it is a channel for outreach as an academic interested in making some difference in the world). The problem is that my experience (anecdotal, yes, but ample and varied) has been that there is quite a bit of un-reason within the CoR. This takes the form of more or less widespread belief in scientific, philosophical and political notions that don’t make much more sense than the sort of notions we — within the community — are happy to harshly criticize in others. Yes, you might object, but that’s just part of being human, pretty much every group of human beings holds to unreasonable beliefs, why are you so surprised or worried? Well, because we think of ourselves — proudly! — as a community of reason, where reason and evidence are held as the ultimate arbiters of any meaningful dispute. To find out that too often this turns out not to be the case is a little bit like discovering that moral philosophers aren’t more ethical than the average guy (true).

What am I talking about? Here is a (surely incomplete, and I’m even more sure, somewhat debatable) list of bizarre beliefs I have encountered among fellow skeptics-atheists-humanists. No, I will not name names because this is about ideas, not individuals (but heck, you know who you are...). The list, incidentally, features topics in no particular order, and it would surely be nice if a sociology student were to conduct a systematic research on this for a thesis...

* Assorted nonsense about alternative medicine. Despite excellent efforts devoted to debunking “alternative” medicine claims, some atheists especially actually endorse all sorts of nonsense about “non-Western” remedies.

* Religion is not a proper area of application for skepticism, according to some skeptics. Why on earth not? It may not be a suitable area of inquiry for science, but skepticism — in the sense of generally applied critical thinking — draws on more than just science (think philosophy, logic and math).

* Philosophy is useless armchair speculation. So is math. And logic. And all theoretical science.

* The notion of anthropogenic global warming has not been scientifically established, something loudly proclaimed by people who — to the best of my knowledge — are not atmospheric physicists and do not understand anything about the complex data analysis and modeling that goes into climate change research.

* Science can answer moral questions. No, science can inform moral questions, but moral reasoning is a form of philosophical reasoning. The is/ought divide may not be absolute, but it is there nonetheless.

* Science has established that there is no consciousness or free will (and therefore no moral responsibility). No, it hasn’t, as serious cognitive scientists freely admit. Notice that I am not talking about the possibility that science has something meaningful to say about these topics (it certainly does when it comes to consciousness, and to some extent concerning free will, if we re-conceptualize the latter as the human ability of making decisions). I am talking about the dismissal-cum-certainty attitude that so many in the CoR have so quickly arrived at, despite what can be charitably characterized as a superficial understanding of the issue.

* Determinism has been established by science. Again, wrong, not only because there are interpretations of quantum mechanics that are not deterministic, but because a good argument can be made that that is simply not the sort of thing science can establish (nor can anything else, which is why I think the most reasonable position in this case is simple agnosticism).

* Evolutionary psychology is on epistemic par with evolutionary biology. No, it isn’t, for very good and well understood reasons pertinent to the specific practical limitations of trying to figure out human selective histories. Of course, evopsych is not a pseudoscience, and it’s probably best understood as a science-informed narrative about the human condition.

* The Singularity is near! I have just devoted a full column for Skeptical Inquirer (in press) to why I think this amounts to little more than a cult for nerds. But it is a disturbingly popular cult within the CoR.

* Objectivism is (the most rational) philosophy according to a significant sub-set of skeptics and atheists (not humanists, since humanism is at complete odds with Randianism). Seriously, people? Notice that I am not talking about libertarianism here, which is a position that I find philosophically problematic and ethically worrisome, but is at least debatable. Ayn Rand’s notions, on the other hand, are an incoherent jumble of contradictions and plagiarism from actual thinkers. Get over it.

* Feminism is a form of unnecessary and oppressive liberal political correctness. Oh please, and yet, rather shockingly, I have heard this “opinion” from several fellow CoRers.

* Feminists are right by default and every attempt to question them is the result of oppressive male chauvinism (even when done by women). These are people who clearly are not up on readings in actual feminism (did you know that there have been several waves of it? With which do you best connect?).

* All religious education is child abuse, period. This is a really bizarre notion, I think. Not only does it turn 90% of the planet into child abusers, but people “thinking” (I use the term loosely) along these lines don’t seem to have considered exactly what religious education might mean (there is a huge variety of it), or — for that matter — why a secular education wouldn’t be open to the same charge, if done as indoctrination (and if it isn’t, are you really positive that there are no religious families out there who teach doubt? You’d be surprised!).

* Insulting people, including our close allies, is an acceptable and widespread form of communication with others. Notice that I am not talking about the occasional insult hurled at your opponent, since there everyone is likely a culprit from time to time (including yours truly). I am talking about engaging in apologia on behalf of a culture of insults.

The point of this list, I hasten to say, is not that the opinions that I have expressed on these topics are necessarily correct, but rather that a good number of people in the CoR, including several leaders of the movement(s), either hold to clearly unreasonable opinions on said topics, or cannot even engage in a discussion about the opinions they do hold, dismissing any dissenting voice as crazy or irrelevant.

As you can see, the above is a heterogeneous list that includes scientific notions, philosophical concepts, and political positions. What do the elements of this list have in common, if anything? A few things, which is where I hope the discussion is going to focus (as opposed to attempting to debunk one’s pet entry, or deny that there is a problem to begin with).

A) Anti-intellectualism. This is an attitude of lack of respect for the life of the mind and those who practice it. It may be strange to claim that members — and even some leaders — of the CoR engage in anti-intellectualism, but the evidence is overwhelming. When noted biologists or physicists in the movement dismiss an entire field of intellectual pursuit (philosophy) out of hand they are behaving in an anti-intellectual manner. When professional “skeptics” tell us that they don’t buy claims of anthropogenic global warming, they are being anti-intellectual because they are dismissing the work of thousands of qualified scientists. To be more precise here, I think there are actually two separate sub-issues at play:

A1) Scientism. This is the pernicious tendency to believe that science is the only paragon of knowledge and the ultimate arbiter of what counts as knowledge. And the best way to determine if you are perniciously inclined toward scientism is to see whether you vigorously deny its existence in the community.
A2) Anti-intellectualism proper. This is the thing on display when “skeptics” reject even scientific findings, as in the above mentioned case of global warming.

B) The “I’m-smarter-than-thou” syndrome. Let’s admit it, skepticism does have a way to make us feel intellectually superior to others. They are the ones believing in absurd notions like UFOs, ghosts, and the like! We are on the side of science and reason. Except when we aren’t, which ought to at least give us pause and enroll in the nearest hubris-reducing ten-step program.

C) Failure of leadership. It is hard to blame the rank and files of the CoR when they are constantly exposed to such blatant and widespread failure of leadership within their own community. Gone are, it seems, the days of the Carl Sagans, Martin Gardners, and Bertrand Russells, and welcome to the days of bloggers and twitterers spouting venom or nonsense just because they can.

Where does this leave us? Well, for one thing — at this very moment — probably with a lot of pissed off people! But once the anger subsides, perhaps we active members of the CoR can engage in some “soul” searching and see if we can improve our own culture, from the inside.

To begin with, are there positive models to look up to in this endeavor? Absolutely, and here I will name names, though the following list is grossly incomplete, both for reasons of space and because some names just happened not to come to mind at the moment I was typing these words. If you are not listed and you should be, forgive me and let’s amend the problem in the discussion thread. So here we go: Sean Carroll, Dan Dennett, Neil deGrasse Tyson, D.J. Grothe, Tim Farley, Ken Frazier (and pretty much anyone else who writes for Skeptical Inquirer, really), Ron Lindsay, Hemant Mehta, Chris Mooney, Phil Plaitt, Steve Novella (as well as the other Novellas), John Rennie, Genie Scott, Michael Shermer, Carl Zimmer, and many, many more.

Do I have any practical suggestions on how to move the CoR forward, other than to pay more attention to what the people just mentioned say, and perhaps a little less attention to what is spouted by some others who shall go unmentioned? At the risk of sounding somewhat immodest, yes, I do. Here are a few to get us started (again, discussion on how to improve the list will be most welcome). Once again, the order is pretty much random:

i) Turn on moderation on all your blogs, this will raise the level of discourse immediately by several orders of magnitude, at the cost of a small inconvenience to you and your readers.

ii) Keep in mind the distinction between humor and sarcasm, leave the latter to comedians, who are supposed to be offending people. (In other words, we are not all Jon Stewarts or Tim Minchins.)

iii) Apply the principle of charity, giving the best possible interpretation of someone else’s argument before you mercilessly dismantle it. (After which, by all means, feel free to go ahead and mercilessly dismantle it.)

iv) Engage your readers and your opponents in as civil a tone as you can muster. Few people deserve to be put straight into insult mode (Hitler and Pat Robertson come to mind).

v) Treat the opinions of experts in a given domain with respect, unless your domain of expertise is reasonably close to the issue at hand. This doesn’t mean not criticizing experts or worshipping their pronouncements, but only to avoid anti-intellectualism while doing it.

vi) Read more philosophy, it will do you a world of good. (I am assuming that if you are a member of the CoR you already do read quite a bit of science. If not, why are you here?)

vii) Pick the right role models for your skeptics pantheon (suggestions above, people to avoid are left to your keen intuition).

viii) Remember what the objectives are: to learn from exposing your ideas to the cross-criticism of others and in turn help others learn to think better. Objectives do not include showing the world how right and cool you are.

ix) Keep in mind that even the very best make mistakes and occasionally endorse notions that turn out to be wrong. How is it possible that you are the only exception to this rule?

The question of belief, part I

by Massimo Pigliucci

So, following the advice of my fellow RS writer, Ian Pollock (in his latest “Picks”) I went back and downloaded two of the classical essays about faith and skepticism: William James’ “The Will to Believe” (1896) and William Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief” (1877). The former was actually in part a response to the latter. In this post I will tackle James, next time we’ll look at Clifford [link here].

I must say upfront that — quite aside from my intellectual commitment to skepticism and instinctive abhorrence of anything smelling like faith — I found James’ essays surprisingly and insufferably vacuous and pretentious. Aesthetic judgment notwithstanding, let’s look at his so-called argument (I am using the word very charitably).

James starts out by lamenting that “I have long defended to my own students the lawfulness of voluntarily adopted faith; but as soon as they have got well imbued with the logical spirit, they have as a rule refused to admit my contention to be lawful philosophically.” So, it’s interesting to see that his own students rejected his arguments as soon as they had “imbued” the logical spirit, i.e., as soon as they deployed reason in the service of their philosophical analysis. The perils of teaching critical thinking, I suppose.

James continues his essay by providing his readers with a series of preliminary building blocks for his argument, the centerpiece of which will come at the end of the piece. So, for instance, in section II he finds it “preposterous” to think that our opinions may be modified at will, and provides these examples: “Can we, by any effort of our will, or by any strength of wish that it were true, believe ourselves well and about when we are roaring with rheumatism in bed, or feel certain that the sum of the two one-dollar bills in our pocket must be a hundred dollars?” Well, no, we cannot. But that is quite plainly because we have overwhelming evidence of our rheumatism or of the amount of money in our pocket. Still, fair enough, the point is that one cannot simply will one’s beliefs in arbitrary directions (atheists say the same to incredulous believers, of course: I can’t just “accept” Jesus — my brain revolts at the idea).

James’ second building block comes in section III, where he claims — anticipating modern research in cognitive psychology, to be sure — that belief is not a simple matter of reasoning out the possibilities, but rather the result of “fear and hope, prejudice and passion, imitation and partisanship, the circumpressure of our caste and set. As a matter of fact we find ourselves believing, [but] we hardly know how or why.” Again, true enough. And in fact he goes on to suggest that often what we call reason is little more than cherry picking and rationalizing: “Our reason is quite satisfied, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand of us, if it can find a few arguments that will do to recite in case our credulity is criticised by some one else.” [Of course, he had absolutely no empirical evidence on which to base his contention that this happens anywhere near 999/1000 cases, but that’s nitpicking...] Now, it is precisely because of this that philosophical reflection is important: the whole idea is to train one’s mind to spot rationalizations and avoid logical fallacies and cognitive biases. For that, it helps if you present your reasoning to others to see how they react — James’ own students refusal to go along with his program should have been telling him something.

The first big problem arises within that very section III, when James wishes to use his points so far to conclude that there is no difference between a skeptic and a believer: “If a pyrrhonistic sceptic asks us how we know all this, can our logic find a reply? No! certainly it cannot. It is just one volition against another — we willing to go in for life upon a trust or assumption which he, for his part, does not care to make.” I don’t think so, dear Will. Just because belief is a complex matter and people at times rationalize rather than reason, it does not follow that anyone’s wishful thinking is philosophically equivalent to a position of skepticism about the same. But more on this below.

Section IV is very short, and it essentially boils down to this statement: “The thesis I defend is, briefly stated, this: Our passional nature not only lawfully may, but must, decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot by its nature be decided on intellectual grounds; for to say, under such circumstances, ‘Do not decide, but leave the question open,’ is itself a passional decision — just like deciding yes or no — and is attended with the same risk of losing the truth.” No, it isn’t. James is attempting to eliminate the option of moderate skepticism, forcing his readers into a dichotomous choice: you either say yes (to faith) or you don’t. If you pretend to suspend judgment because of lack of evidence, you are really just saying no. But belief can (and often is) a matter of degree, where yes and no are simply the extremes at the end of a continuum (for a Bayesian, they would be equivalent to assuming priors of 1 and 0, respectively). Moreover, not all beliefs are equally justified by the evidence (in Bayesian terms, the distribution of priors is not flat), so that it may make perfect sense to adopt an intermediate position if the agent judges that there is nothing (yet) that clearly tips one’s conclusions in one direction or another.

Section V starts with a net separation of the believer from the skeptic: “The postulate that there is truth, and that it is the destiny of our minds to attain it, we are deliberately resolving to make, though the sceptic will not make it. We part company with him, therefore, absolutely, at this point.” But how on earth can James know there there is a truth, and that moreover our minds can attain it? And what “truth” are we talking about anyway? There are many possible truths concerning all sorts of subject matters, some of which may and others may not be attainable by human minds, so as a general principle this is sheer nonsense. But of course James is talking about religious truth, so we will proceed further and even more clearly let him hang himself with his twisted logic.

In section VI the author temporarily returns to reasonable philosophical grounds: “I am, therefore, myself a complete empiricist so far as my theory of human knowledge goes. ... Apart from abstract propositions of comparison (such as two and two are the same as four), propositions which tell us nothing by themselves about concrete reality, we find no proposition ever regarded by any one as evidently certain that has not either been called a falsehood, or at least had its truth sincerely questioned by some one else.” Okay, this is consistent with James’ pragmatism, though it smells a bit too much of epistemic relativism (as much later Richard Rorty infamously extrapolated from pragmatist beginnings).

Section VII starts well, but then takes a pretty bad turn. Here is the reasonable bit: “We must know the truth; and we must avoid error — these are our first and great commandments as would-be knowers; but they are not two ways of stating an identical commandment, they are two separable laws.” He is correct here: although if we believe A to be true and it is indeed true, we may thus avoid the error of believing in B, which is not true, this doesn’t guarantee that we don’t end up also believing in all sorts of other erroneous notions: C, D, E, etc. From this, however, what James says next doesn’t follow at all: “We may regard the chase for truth as paramount, and the avoidance of error as secondary; or we may, on the other hand, treat the avoidance of error as more imperative, and let truth take its chance. ... he who says, ‘Better go without belief forever than believe a lie!’ [a reference to Clifford] merely shows his own preponderant private horror of becoming a dupe.” Oh no, you didn’t! It is easy to see that truths and falsehoods are not in a symmetrical relation to each other at all (which is implied by James’ own earlier statement in this section). There are many more potentially false notions out there than true ones, for the simple reason that there is one universe (aside for the possibility of a multiverse, of course) while there are infinite ways in which the universe could be. That is why the skeptic’s position is more reasonable: because error lurks everywhere and truth is rare. Statistically speaking, this is a no brainer.

Indeed, in section VIII James seems to admit as much: “Wherever the option between losing truth and gaining it is not momentous, we can throw the chance of gaining truth away, and at any rate save ourselves from any chance of believing falsehood, by not making up our minds at all till objective evidence has come. In scientific questions, this is almost always the case; and even in human affairs in general, the need of acting is seldom so urgent that a false belief to act on is better than no belief at all.” So, the principle of cautious skepticism applies for all scientific questions (whew!) and in human affairs in general. Okay, then, where exactly does it not apply, and why?

We find that out in section IX: “Moral questions immediately present themselves as questions whose solution cannot wait for sensible proof. A moral question is a question not of what sensibly exists, but of what is good, or would be good if it did exist. Science can tell us what exists; but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal [he of the infamous wager] calls our heart.” I was with James right until the end, and then he blew it. That’s right, science can provides us with facts, not values (pace Sam Harris), but that is why we’ve got philosophy. Philosophy, not religious, my dear Will!

In the same section James attempts to validate his faith in faith, but the examples are lacking: “Who gains promotions, boons, appointments, but the man in whose life they are seen to play the part of live hypotheses, who discounts them, sacrifices other things for their sake before they have come, and takes risks for them in advance? His faith acts on the powers above him as a claim, and creates its own verification.” Granted, those achievements are facilitated by one’s optimism in one’s abilities, but the outcome is in fact always a matter of the usual suspects: effort, skill, and luck. Faith, in James’ sense, simply doesn’t enter into it.

Finally, we get to section X, which is supposed to deliver the punchline. Prepare yourself to be sorely disappointed. James admits that “religion” is a pretty vague category, as there are countless religions and even more (contradictory) religious beliefs. So he needs to abstract things to a high degree if his defense of faith isn’t going to be too tied to any specific doctrine, on which he is not apparently willing to bet his (eternal) life. I am quoting the next bit in full because I do not wish to give the impression that I am shortchanging him:

“Religion says essentially two things. First, she says that the best things are the more eternal things, the overlapping things, the things in the universe that throw the last stone, so to speak, and say the final word. ‘Perfection is eternal’ — this phrase of Charles Secretan seems a good way of putting this first affirmation of religion, an affirmation which obviously cannot yet be verified scientifically at all. The second affirmation of religion is that we are better off even now if we believe her first affirmation to be true.”

Holy crap! Of course science cannot verify the first tenet of religion: it is meaningless! What exactly could one mean by the utterance that the best things are the more eternal and overlapping things, the things that say the final word? What word? Overlapping with what? How does anyone know anything about these “things”? What are these things?

And the following bit is absolutely precious: “We cannot escape the issue by remaining sceptical and waiting for more light, because, although we do avoid error in that way if religion be untrue, we lose the good, if it be true, just as certainly as if we positively chose to disbelieve. It is as if a man should hesitate indefinitely to ask a certain woman to marry him because he was not perfectly sure that she would prove an angel after he brought her home. Would he not cut himself off from that particular angel-possibility as decisively as if he went and married some one else?” Setting aside for a moment the potentially sexist tone of the remark, yes, the man would cut himself off from that “angel-possibility,” but the situation is not at all analogous to that of religion (not to mention that the man might conceivably be happier without any angels around — again, beware of false dichotomies!). The man knows pretty much what he is likely to gain or loose by his decision, and even by his indecision, but we still have not been told by James what exactly it is that we would lose by not believing. The chance of being thrown one last stone by the universe, perhaps? Thanks, I’ll pass.

The misogyny wars

thewellversed.com

by Massimo Pigliucci

I have now been following, largely from a distance, what I’ve come to think of as the misogyny wars inside the atheist-skeptic movement (which has just recently made national news!). I’ve stayed away from the fray because I have had little to add to it, and because it is a treacherous territory where one is almost guaranteed of turning friends into enemies just by chiming in. Still, during my recent vacation in France and Italy (countries that have a lot to teach both about misogyny and women's liberation) I had some thoughts that may be worth sharing — at my own peril, naturally.

The first thing I need to say is that yes, as far as I can tell, the atheist-skeptic (hence forth A-S) movement does have a problem with women. Obviously, not every A-S does, and likely not even the majority (hard data do not exist, as far as I know). But reading the comments of some major figures (which shall go conveniently unmentioned), the commentaries on those comments by the average Joe-the-Atheist (mostly males), and from personal experience at countless “CON(s)” (can we please have a moratorium on using that darn abbreviation?) and meetups, it’s clear to me that there is a problem.

Now, one could reasonably argue (and indeed, people have argued) that the A-S community is simply a microcosm of society at large, and since the latter still shows obvious signs of misogyny, then we shouldn’t be surprised that so does the A-S movement (if you don’t think that society still has a problem with women you have simply not been paying attention, and you need to go back to Feminism 101, which I am not about to provide).

Well, yes, but this observation still doesn’t quite make things right for two reasons. First, just because someone else is misogynist it doesn’t provide an excuse for you to be one too, obviously. Second, and more pertinent to our discussion, A-S pride themselves in being open minded and rational (if not downright politically progressive — pace our small but vocal cadre of libertarian friends), and there is no rational defense of misogyny (if you disagree, may I again recommend Feminism 101?).

So, if women in the movement complain that A-S organization X or Y does not have a sufficiently well developed sexual harassment policy, or it does not enforce such policy swiftly and effectively enough, the people in charge of said organizations ought (moral) to listen carefully and act accordingly.

However (you knew this was coming, yes?), it doesn’t follow, as it has been claimed in the heat of the misogyny wars, that anything a woman says in this department goes and ought (again, moral) not to be questioned. For several reasons.

First off, and this should be obvious, “women” are not a monolithic category who see everything the same way. What may constitute borderline sexual harassment for one woman may be interpreted as innocuous or even welcome flirting by another. (I hope it’s clear that I’m talking about actual borderline cases, not instances of men brazenly groping women in public, or making threats of rape via Twitter.)

Second, and related to the first point, we do not want to create a social environment where people are constantly afraid of stepping across invisible, vague and always shifting boundaries. That would take the fun out of going to the bar after the conference with friends and, frankly, out of flirting with members of the opposite sex (or of the same sex, if you are so inclined). In other words, as we have seen in the workplace and even in schools, there is a danger of overdoing it in the area of political correctness, something that makes for the kind of overcautious and over-regulated society most of us really don’t want — especially the libertarians! (Remember the case a few years ago of a kindergarten child being expelled because he kissed a girl in his class?)

Third, and lastly, there is a danger in automatically assuming that group X (in this case women, but it could be an ethnic minority, or a religious one — including atheists themselves) is automatically right in every dispute regarding treatment of said group. It is well known, for instance, that racism is not confined to white people, and that pretty much any group is capable of xenophobia. An accusation of sexual harassment can not only get someone thrown out of a meeting or a bar, but can perhaps permanently tarnish his reputation in the relevant community, and ought (yup, moral!) to be treated accordingly. While it may make sense to default to the possibility that the charge is justified, any particular case deserves further investigation by the people in charge. Yes, this will complicate the job of conference organizers, so what? Nobody is obliged to organize a conference, but once you do you are expected to provide a certain number of services, a fair treatment of your guests being one.

So, where do we go from here? Here are three conceptually simple, yet I’m sure extremely difficult in practice, action items. First, let’s tone down the self-righteousness, on both sides. It just doesn’t help. Second, organizers of all future CON(s), you need to take the issue seriously, develop and clearly enunciate your policies, and be ready to deal with the consequences in a firm, if courteous and hopefully constructive, manner. Lastly, the A-S community needs to take the first step toward solving any problem: admit that there is one. Pretty straightforward, no?

P.S.: In what is perhaps a preview of what is about to come, something strange (or perhaps entirely predictable, depending on your point of view) happened this past weekend when I posted a link to thoughtful essay by Russell Blackford about the new American Atheists "don't hug unless you ask" policy over at my Google+ stream. I have been warned that I will likely be banned from (ironically) "freethought" discussion groups, and that my views will be seen as misogynistic and those of "a rape apologist, potential rapist." This is just really, really sad.

P.P.S.: Since it's clear from early comments that the point of my P.S. wasn't clear, I am clarifying it now. I meant the above as an example of the sort of trolling that goes on in these instances and is entirely unhelpful to a reasonable debate. I did NOT believe that I was going to be branded a rape apologist and be banned from discussion groups.

RS encore: Carneades, the quasi-lost skeptic

www.lumsreview.com

by Massimo Pigliucci

Few non-philosophers have ever heard of Carneades (214-129 BCE), and yet in some sense he was the founder of the type of thinking that eventually led to modern science. To understand why Carneades is so relevant, we need to briefly examine the context of his contribution to epistemology (i.e., his theory of knowledge). Carneades was the head of the Academy, the school founded by Plato, and Academics had long been embroiled in a debate with the Stoics that went something like this. The Stoics maintained that what they called “cognitive impressions” (i.e., sense data about the world) are, under ideal circumstances, a firm foundation for knowledge. In a sense, this anticipated the empiricist position of the 18th century according to which all knowledge is, ultimately, derived from our senses.

But the Academics replied that we know of many cognitive impressions that are false or misleading, for example dreams, optical illusions and (interestingly) visions of the gods. Classical Academics therefore arrived at the radical skeptical conclusion that one cannot really know anything for sure and that, consequently, the wise person ought to abstain from formulating any opinion.

Ah, the Stoics replied, but if you do that all human activities and forms of inquiry are impossible, clearly an unsustainable state of affairs, especially for philosophers. Moreover – with an argument anticipating modern criticism of extreme deconstructionism – they pointed out that the Academics' stance was self-contradictory: if we can't know anything for sure, how can we conclude (i.e., know) that the best position is to abstain from opinion?

To most non-philosophers this must sound like a classic example of “academic” (in the pejorative sense of useless) debate, but indulge me for a couple of more minutes. Carneades' most important contribution to epistemology was to find a way to overcome the impasse. His solution strikes us moderns as eminently sensible and even obvious, but so does Copernicus' insight that the Sun, not the Earth, is at the center of the solar system.

Carneades reckoned that we don't actually need certain knowledge in order to function and conduct inquiry, all we need is an estimate of how probable a given conclusion is. Indeed, the word “probability” comes from the Latin probabilis, Cicero's translation of the Greek word used by Carneades, “pithanos” -- which means persuasive. That is, in order to form reasonable opinions, we need persuasive evidence. Carneades suggested that a given conclusion can be more or less persuasive (probable) depending on two factors: how well if fits with other components of our knowledge of the world, and how much time and resources we are willing to devote to further consolidate the conclusion itself by additional inquiries. The more we wish to be confident of our assessment (because it is more important for us for whatever reason), the more effort we need to be willing to invest in the pursuit. The reasonable skeptic, then, is justified in holding opinions about things in direct proportion with the persuasiveness of the evidence, as well as in being more demanding of evidence in proportion to the importance of the matter at hand.

As I mentioned earlier, this insights provides the foundations of modern scientific reasoning, and it is one of the most difficult things to communicate to the general public. Take, just because this is Darwin's week, the case of creationism. What many creationists honestly do not appreciate is that they are not just attacking a specific scientific theory: because of the many interconnections among modern sciences, they are rejecting a whole edifice to which a variety of disciplines have contributed over the past few centuries, from physics to astronomy, from chemistry to geology. It isn't that it is impossible for evolutionary theory to be wrong, and it surely isn't that scientists are certain of its truth. It is, as Carneades would have said, that the evidence in favor of the theory is so massive that any reasonable person ought to provisionally assent to its truth.