Is God An Accident ? - Long Version

November 24, 2005 9:13 AM

Despite the vast number of religions, nearly everyone in the world believes in the same things: the existence of a soul, an afterlife, miracles, and the divine creation of the universe. Recently psychologists doing research on the minds of infants have discovered two related facts that may account for this phenomenon. One: human beings come into the world with a predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomena. And two: this predisposition is an incidental by-product of cognitive functioning gone awry. Which leads to the question ...

Is God an Accident ?
This is a fascinating essary from the current Atlantic reprinted apparently in full for non-subscribers
posted by y2karl (232 comments total)

In a nutshell, the argument:

Understanding of the physical world and understanding of the social world can be seen as akin to two distinct computers in a baby's brain, running separate programs and performing separate tasks. The understandings develop at different rates: the social one emerges somewhat later than the physical one. They evolved at different points in our prehistory; our physical understanding is shared by many species, whereas our social understanding is a relatively recent adaptation, and in some regards might be uniquely human.

That these two systems are distinct is especially apparent in autism, a developmental disorder whose dominant feature is a lack of social understanding. Children with autism typically show impairments in communication (about a third do not speak at all), in imagination (they tend not to engage in imaginative play), and most of all in socialization. They do not seem to enjoy the company of others; they don't hug; they are hard to reach out to. In the most extreme cases children with autism see people as nothing more than objects - objects that move in unpredictable ways and make unexpected noises and are therefore frightening. Their understanding of other minds is impaired, though their understanding of material objects is fully intact.

At this point the religion-as-accident theory says nothing about supernatural beliefs. Babies have two systems that work in a cold-bloodedly rational way to help them anticipate and understand - and, when they get older, to manipulate - physical and social entities. In other words, both these systems are biological adaptations that give human beings a badly needed head start in dealing with objects and people. But these systems go awry in two important ways that are the foundations of religion. First, we perceive the world of objects as essentially separate from the world of minds, making it possible for us to envision soulless bodies and bodiless souls. This helps explain why we believe in gods and an afterlife. Second, as we will see, our system of social understanding overshoots, inferring goals and desires where none exist. This makes us animists and creationists.

Argument aside, the how tos of babie studies cited are fascinating as are the findings:

Six-month-olds understand that physical objects obey gravity. If you put an object on a table and then remove the table, and the object just stays there (held by a hidden wire), babies are surprised; they expect the object to fall. They expect objects to be solid, and contrary to what is still being taught in some psychology classes, they understand that objects persist over time even if hidden. (Show a baby an object and then put it behind a screen. Wait a little while and then remove the screen. If the object is gone, the baby is surprised.) Five-month-olds can even do simple math, appreciating that if first one object and then another is placed behind a screen, when the screen drops there should be two objects, not one or three. Other experiments find the same numerical understanding in nonhuman primates, including macaques and tamarins, and in dogs.

Hmm, five month old babies can count. As can dogs and monkeys. But still...

From Informed Citizen where the motto appears to be Politics, Religion And Respect.
An interesting site the design of which I find not my favorite thing.
posted by y2karl at 9:14 AM on November 24, 2005

Wow, impressive. Thanks y2karl.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 9:24 AM on November 24, 2005

It's a given that the tendency to believe in (g/G)od[s] is "cognitive functioning gone awry," as it's not logically explicable. However, this has never been seen as any actual weakness by believers, so it is unlikely that scientific evidence to back this up will have much of an effect on anyone but the already-atheist. (just getting that out of the way to prevent the flame war... ha, ha.) Of course, that includes myself, so this is fascinating. Thanks y2karl.

First, we perceive the world of objects as essentially separate from the world of minds, making it possible for us to envision soulless bodies and bodiless souls. This helps explain why we believe in gods and an afterlife.

Nice. The inherently appealing idea of dualism has always inexplicably haunted philosophy, and so I'll buy this.
posted by mek at 9:25 AM on November 24, 2005

No, God is an Astronaut.
posted by Mach3avelli at 9:25 AM on November 24, 2005

not to be snarky ... but everything is an "accident." if you believe that all matter originated from one "point" and one "instant," how could anything from that point arrange the eons of universal time? i certainly can't fathom anything but accidents.

One: human beings come into the world with a predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomena. And two: this predisposition is an incidental by-product of cognitive functioning gone awry.

Three: this predisposition is evolutionarily successful ... for now.

Darwin changed everything

Yes, I think he did. Why do you think "natural selection" is the only science under attack by religion? The Vatican might not sanction birth control or gay sex, but they don't doubt that the pill works and that some boys like to kiss each other.
posted by mrgrimm at 9:25 AM on November 24, 2005

Hmm, five month old babies can count. As can dogs and monkeys. But still...

Most apes are raising children at 5 years old. We are all children, compared to the other primates. That's to our benefit, of course, as our intelligence (we keep learning longer) has proved to be a considerable asset. No doy.

Most birds can count up to 5 or 6. Which makes them even stranger.
posted by mrgrimm at 9:28 AM on November 24, 2005

Trying to access the article directly from the Atlantic website brings you:

This article is viewable only by Atlantic subscribers. If you are not yet a subscriber, please consider subscribing online now. In addition to receiving a full year (ten issues) of the print magazine at a rate far below the newsstand price, you will be granted instant access to everything The Atlantic Online has to offer—including this article!

Click here to join us as an Atlantic subscriber.

I have mixed feelings about current copyright law, but posting the lead article from a magazine that is currently for sale on the newsstands feels like stealing.
posted by LarryC at 9:30 AM on November 24, 2005

Yea, but will God bust my ass for 'stealing' a look?
posted by alteredcarbon at 10:00 AM on November 24, 2005

That's a pretty good analysis. The division of cognition into social and physical seems reasonable and the fact that religion falls squarely on the social side suggests that it's a good, clean division. There's certainly no physical evidence for God, after all. I wonder if one might expand this to relate religion to the celebrity cult phenomenon - a need for social function perhaps. The two have always seemed to share a common ground to me.
posted by ny_scotsman at 10:01 AM on November 24, 2005

Great post y2karl.
posted by alteredcarbon at 10:01 AM on November 24, 2005

nearly everyone in the world believes in the same things: the existence of a soul, an afterlife,

Not so. Many religions-- Judaism and Shintoism among them-- do not claim the existence of an afterlife. (At least, that's my understanding.)
posted by jokeefe at 10:07 AM on November 24, 2005

So Atheism is like wearing glasses then?
posted by srboisvert at 10:10 AM on November 24, 2005

And sorry, but I'm feeling a little cranky today-- but I'm beginning to develop a deep suspicion of any argunent to do with the human brain or cognition which relies on the computer metaphor. I think it restricts thought the way that other technological metaphors for the functioning of human consciousness have-- the Victorians, for example, were fond of illustrating thought by talking about electricity, and, later on, the telegraph. The problem obviously being that once you find such an appealing metaphor, you tend to discount things that don't fit into the paradigm.
posted by jokeefe at 10:10 AM on November 24, 2005

One: human beings come into the world with a predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomena. And two: this predisposition is an incidental by-product of cognitive functioning gone awry.

One more, and then I'll stop: why is this predisposition an "incidental by-product" and nothing more? If we are created by God (and I'm so just being the Devil's advocate here, so to speak) wouldn't God create us with minds that could apprehend the divine? Why is this "cognitive functioning gone awry"? Maybe we're supposed to be that way?

Describing the mechanism doesn't explain the result, anymore than describing the inner workings of my iPod explains the music.
posted by jokeefe at 10:20 AM on November 24, 2005

Very interesting, thanks y2karl.
posted by loquax at 10:22 AM on November 24, 2005

This article demonstrates a tremendous naivete about the issues which it discusses. This is clear in many ways, but perhaps the clearest way to show it is to point out that, if the author really "see[s] supernatural beliefs as a cultural anachronism, soon to be eroded by scientific discoveries and the spread of cosmopolitan values," then he can't believe in supermaterial things like science, ideas, beliefs, thought, or mind. In particular, one should remember that "science" is a supernatural truth, or construct. If we can observe the world and discover workable or true things about it, then there is a supernatural order. The founders of modern science claimed just that; that's why the most intelligent of them, Baruch Spinoza, called "the laws by which the world works" "God."

It's possible to believe that there is no supernatural, that there is only material. It's even quite respectable, in my book. But these modern-day "rationalists" are being wholly irrational in believing they've done that; if they had really followed it out and done away with the supernatural, they would've stopped talking about "science" and "ideas" and "beliefs" and "truth" and "rationality." If there really is no supernatural, then the religious people are just as close to the truth as the atheistic, since there is no truth to get close to. (Atheism really only makes sense if it means that "there is no human person who thinks and talks and loves like humans do who started the world," and it amounts to the statement that the forces which move the world are harder to grasp than a happy guy with a beard who doles out eternal life. Since every religion I know of makes that same statement, it seems to me that sensible atheism and true religion aren't very contradictory.)

Mr. Paul Bloom would benefit from a close reading of Aristotle's "On the Soul." It points out that, while looking for physical causes is one way to understand the way human beings function, it isn't the only way; and to ignore our experiences in life, the things we go through every day, as, for example, so-called "cognitive" science does, is to ignore the largest part of our existence.
posted by koeselitz at 10:30 AM on November 24, 2005

Being religious is infantilistic: an all-powerful superior being that approves, loves, disapproves and punishes. That's just the parents when one's small. The feeling persists when one's grownup although there's no visible or tangible evidence: hence divine reward & punishment are invisible or in the afterlife.
No need for coginition gone awry, infantilistic throwbacks are very common in the mammal world. Cf. the kneading of a purring cat for instance.
posted by jouke at 10:35 AM on November 24, 2005

Interesting post, y2karl. I do, however, have some misgivings about reposting a copyrighted piece, even if you are just linking to it.

I really don't see this as anything terribly radical. Superstitious beliefs and how they arise has been a well studied aspect of both human and animal psychology for a long time. That this would extend to beliefs in souls and animism makes a lot of sense. We have strong intuitions, and it's well established that when we are dealing with subjects far beyond what our evolutionary past forced us to deal with, our intuitions often lead us astray. That this would apply to religious belief should catch no one by surprise.

The idea that religion and science can peacefully coexist strikes me as a platitude that simply doesn't stand up to a rigorous analysis. Faith and skepticism are two completely opposing systems of belief, and are not reconcilable.

Many religions have a problem with science because science tends to disprove established religious beliefs. This is the crux of the problem. Science simply cannot be ignored, it has to be actively attacked; this is because it works. Science exposed Genesis as a completely ludicrous account of the early history of earth and humanity. People still refuse to accept this, but that doesn't make it less so. Science rendered absurd religious notions of the mechanics of the natural world.

Now science is attacking the very core of most religious belief: the soul. Evolution put humans not as living incarnate gods, but as animals like any other, and of common descent with all other life on Earth. This terrified those who insisted we were exceptional, created with a spark of the divine inside us that made us sentient. Now, modern understandings of the brain and psychology have dealt a near fatal blow to the concept of a soul separate from our bodies.

Episodes like the Terri Schaivo case are the panicked screams of a belief system that refuses to accept that it is our brains, not some undetectable and eternal spark, that makes us who we are. The people so eager to save Terri refused to accept the plainly obvious: that everything that made her a person had died, that she was reduced to a breathing corpse. They denied that she was in all practical sense dead. Not because they had evidence to the contrary, but because human bodies existing in this state are potent evidence that the brain is what makes us sentient, not some spark that leaves us with our last breath. That a human body in a vegetative state is not a real person is antithetical to belief in a soul.

To disbelieve that the brain is not the true seat of our intellect and will is to hold that nothing we can perceive can be known for certain, and therefore that anything can be true. From this, it would seem, some people conclude that therefore some particular bizarre and unverifiable belief must be true. It's fucking madness and I'm sick of hearing it. We don't need the invisible sky wizard anymore. We have new beliefs, ones that we test, ones that work. We use them to make our lives better and longer, instead of pleading to some curiously absent magic patriarch to give us new ones.

I'm done ranting and derailing. And I'm going to sleep.
posted by [expletive deleted] at 10:40 AM on November 24, 2005

Accident, as opposed to what? If humans had evolved on four legs and ate trees, they would imagine us as an accident. Everything is an accident, scientifically speaking. Does the author presuppose intelligent design?

Re: The Fraternity Theory:
This theory explains almost everything about religion—except the religious part. It is clear that rituals and sacrifices can bring people together, and it may well be that a group that does such things has an advantage over one that does not. But it is not clear why a religion has to be involved. Why are gods, souls, an afterlife, miracles, divine creation of the universe, and so on brought in? The theory doesn't explain what we are most interested in, which is belief in the supernatural.

>You can't quibble about leadership when the leader is invisible and omnipotent.
>An afterlife instills confidence in war and compliance in peacetime.
>Religious structure and good/evil duality pacify warriors within their own tribe and make them more cold-blooded towards enemies, amplifying the power of the group.

Much of the argument hinges on the notion that if most Americans believe something that isn't logical or doesn't hold water scientifically, there must be some profound reason. I wish.
posted by weapons-grade pandemonium at 10:47 AM on November 24, 2005

koeselitz : isn't there some ambiguity in the way the word supernatural is being used? If you take it to mean anything that transcends a rational analysis, then obviously you have to admit there's a lot to it. If it's used to refer to a rational construction used in an attempt to explain experiencing the first definition, then it's that construction which would be replaced by "science and ... values". I think the point that gets missed in the religion vs. science debate is that they are similar in intent... the imposition of rationality on reality. The difference is that science rationalizes itself as well as the process, but there's no way to demonstrate the truth of a religion. They're both beliefs of a sort, but it is proof on one hand against faith on the other.
posted by ny_scotsman at 10:58 AM on November 24, 2005

[expletive deleted]: "The idea that religion and science can peacefully coexist strikes me as a platitude that simply doesn't stand up to a rigorous analysis. Faith and skepticism are two completely opposing systems of belief, and are not reconcilable."

The trouble is that science is just as faith-based, in that it rests on the assumption that the world makes sense and can be comprehended by human beings. True skepticism-- which, as I said a moment ago, might be a good thing-- entails the rejection of "science" as a foolish hope. The belief that the world is something that our physical brains can wrap around could very well be mocked as naive and simple; maybe it is.

"Now science is attacking the very core of most religious belief: the soul."

The fact that it is doing show demonstrates the painful lack of simple cognition in scientists today. If the brain can be explained through merely physical causes, then it cannot stand above physical processes and understand something. If it can't do that, there is no science. Cognitive "science" is self-contradictory.
posted by koeselitz at 11:01 AM on November 24, 2005

koeselitz : "If the brain can be explained through merely physical causes, then it cannot stand above physical processes and understand something"

Unless the nature of the universe makes such reflexivity possible.
posted by Gyan at 11:06 AM on November 24, 2005

koeselitz: science doesn't assume the world makes sense. It assumes that it is consistent. It assumes that you can test things to see if something is true or not. That's all.

As the zen physics koan states: "Anyone who claims to understand quantum physics has not understood it."
posted by freedryk at 11:13 AM on November 24, 2005

The fact that it is doing show demonstrates the painful lack of simple cognition in scientists today. If the brain can be explained through merely physical causes, then it cannot stand above physical processes and understand something. If it can't do that, there is no science. Cognitive "science" is self-contradictory.
posted by koeselitz at 11:01 AM PST on November 24

Looks like someone's been misreading Godel, Escher, Bach again.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 11:14 AM on November 24, 2005

Gyan: "Unless the nature of the universe makes such reflexivity possible."

If there is such a thing as "the nature of the universe," something already stands beyond matter. If a brain can understand that, then something beyond matter is already involved.
posted by koeselitz at 11:16 AM on November 24, 2005

koeselitz : "If there is such a thing as 'the nature of the universe,' something already stands beyond matter."

Unless the embodied workings of matters, is the nature.
posted by Gyan at 11:20 AM on November 24, 2005

koeselitz, perhaps I'm completely misunderstanding you, but if I am not, I am baffled as to why you are equating "nonmaterial" with "supernatural".
posted by kyrademon at 11:25 AM on November 24, 2005

<morpheus>you think that's air you're breathing?</morpheus>
posted by ny_scotsman at 11:26 AM on November 24, 2005

I think that some of the criticisms of the article are off the mark--the author doesn't posit (by my reading-- and I must admit that I haven't read the whole thing) that religious belief in and of itself is a mistake, but rather that current studies of the human brain and cognitive development indicate that human beings have two distinct sorts of fundamental intelligence: one that we share with many other creatures (the physical) and one that appears to be largely unique to our species (the social).

The "mistake" he discusses isn't religious belief per se, but that the adaptation of social intelligence had a few side effects that predispose our organism to belief in the supernatural. It's a fascinating observation, IMO.

koeselitz, I must respectfully completely disagree with your view of cognitive science:

If the brain can be explained through merely physical causes, then it cannot stand above physical processes and understand something.

This is simply untrue--obviously the brain is only physical processes, that's the observable reality. What cognitive scientists, among many others, ask, is what is it about the sum of those processes that gives us the sensations, perceptions, and ideas that we all experience? We have developed many ways of discussing and understanding that which we cannot apprehend directly (like metaphor, for instance). To think that a process of physical occurrences can't generate something more than just those processes is to deny the reality of your own consciousness.
posted by LooseFilter at 11:27 AM on November 24, 2005

LooseFilter : "To think that a process of physical occurrences can't generate something more than just those processes is to deny the reality of your own consciousness."

No, just physicalism.
posted by Gyan at 11:29 AM on November 24, 2005

Well nobody's special if we're all supernatural.
posted by romanb at 11:31 AM on November 24, 2005

freedryk: "koeselitz: science doesn't assume the world makes sense. It assumes that it is consistent. It assumes that you can test things to see if something is true or not. That's all."

Maybe you can tell me the difference. Either way, doesn't that seem like a pretty big assumption? To assume that words like "true" or even have meaning seems like a pretty big step to me.

Optimus Chyme: "Looks like someone's been misreading Godel, Escher, Bach again."

Huh? Haven't read it. I'm thinking more of Aristotle and Nietzsche here. But if you want to talk to straw men, g'head.

Gyan: "Unless the embodied workings of matters, is the nature."

In which case there is absolutely no guarantee that those workings will be ordered. Order can only occur when something acts on things to make them ordered, and that that something is generally termed "nature."

If science were simply aiming at percieving "the embodied workings of matters," then it would never try to extend its findings. It wouldn't even have "findings." It would only observe, and every moment observed would be unique and separate, meaning nothing for the rest of time. There would be no "cause" or "effect," nor any "process" which could be understood and predicted. In short, science would simply be a radical openness. It would not be so hasty as to assume that everything it saw was part of a consistent and constant order.

In fact, science tries to understand and to predict by divining some law or principle behind the things observed. In order to do so, it must assume the ordering influence of nature, and, in order to assume that influence, it must assume that there is an immaterial cause.
posted by koeselitz at 11:35 AM on November 24, 2005

koeselitz : "Order can only occur when something acts on things to make them ordered"

Assumption of agency. Not saying whether that's true or not.

koeselitz : "It would only observe, and every moment observed would be unique and separate, meaning nothing for the rest of time. There would be no 'cause' or 'effect,' nor any 'process' which could be understood and predicted. In short, science would simply be a radical openness. It would not be so hasty as to assume that everything it saw was part of a consistent and constant order."

The order is perceived because of the observed consistency and constancy. Science is unwarranted in claiming that currenct constant models can be extended to all time. We don't know if current models are just contemporary instantiations or not.
posted by Gyan at 11:40 AM on November 24, 2005

My theory has always been religion is a manifestation of mass-insanity. But this idea, religion as a manifestation of mental disability, has merit.
posted by stbalbach at 11:44 AM on November 24, 2005

nearly everyone in the world believes in the same things: the existence of a soul, an afterlife .. and that people darker than themselves are inferior. We need to be careful of giving in to, or even entertaining, beliefs because of predispositions that might be wired in our DNA -- the "accidental by-products of our mental systems." That there is an intrinsic need for religion or "belief" has been argued before. What he doesn't say is, if that's true, then it is terribly sad, at least for those of us who wish humanity would outgrow this once-useful but now somewhat cumbersome way of viewing the world.
posted by QuietDesperation at 11:45 AM on November 24, 2005

I find the author's basic assertion fascinating: that our social intelligence, a very interesting evolutionary adaptation in and of itself, creates an inherent tendency toward inferring goals, motives, or intent where there is no evidence for them. I also find that very tendency at work in this statement:

Order can only occur when something acts on things to make them ordered...
posted by LooseFilter at 11:47 AM on November 24, 2005

Circular and another instance of the overall atheistic position that everything is an accident. There is no intent, meaning, or purpose behind any of it. We exist as a result of a series of accidents occuring in a physical universe.

The article asserts something about some aspect of intelligence and concludes it's an accident. But, of course it's an accident, everything is.

Given the authors belief in accidents, I'd like to know what he considers non-accidents and how he evaluates them, how he determines what is reliably non-accidental in his own mind.
posted by scheptech at 11:57 AM on November 24, 2005

It is a very interesting field of study, but a less interesting article.

It seems to me that the author spends a lot of words on very forced logic that doesn't really prove anything.

we see people as separate from their bodies, we easily understand situations in which people's bodies are radically changed while their personhood stays intact. Kafka envisioned a man transformed into a gigantic insect; Homer described the plight of men transformed into pigs;

But it is just as likely that this idea comes up in stories so often because it is surprising to us - like the baby surprised when an object doesn't fall - rather than a reflection of how we see ourselves.

I really have to take issue with this notion:

But the real problem with natural selection is that it makes no intuitive sense. It is like quantum physics; we may intellectually grasp it, but it will never feel right to us.

I addressed the idea of intuition about scientific principles in a recent AskMe question here (I have linked to that too often, but it fits perfectly here...), the point being that there is nothing particularly counter intuitive about quantum physics, or any other theory. The reason the baby is amazed when gravity doesn't work is that the baby expects gravity to work. If you learn to expect quantum mechanics to work in a certain way and the rules suddenly change, you will be amazed too. Or to put it another way - because so many of you expect quantum mechanics to be amazing - flight amazes us less and less every generation because it is becoming part of learned intuition.

Another really faulty argument earlier:

This is not a value judgment. Many of the good things in life are, from an evolutionary perspective, accidents. People sometimes give money, time, and even blood to help unknown strangers in faraway countries whom they will never see. From the perspective of one's genes this is disastrous�the suicidal squandering of resources for no benefit.

It is my understanding that this is an open question, and that there is ongoing study trying to understand altruism in an evolutionary context. That makes this a statement about the author's personal philosophy, not science.

I found the way Michael Persinger addressed the same neuroscience in a recent lecture to be much more compelling (I mentioned this over in that AskMe question too, here). Sorry I don't have a link or transcript, but I might be able to come up with something if anyone is interested.

Finally, check out The Evolutionist in Conversation with Steven Pinker. A fantastic interview on related subject matter (It may have been a MeFi post, although I can't find it with yahoo, anybody remember it being posted?).
posted by Chuckles at 11:59 AM on November 24, 2005

I agree that it is sometimes terribly sad to consider the bigger picture, but I do think that we are growing out of it--slowly but surely.

What most conversations about religion miss, in my experience, is what needs religious belief continues to fulfill. All human beings are tremendously feeling creatures. Belief fulfills many of our emotional (or: irrational) needs, though it fails to satisfy our increasingly keen rational ones. Conversations about religion (at least in the US) typically focus on the veracity (or lack thereof) of the beliefs themselves, which misses the point.

This is, as Alan Watts would say, mistaking the menu for the food. I don't walk into a restaurant, see steak on the menu, and eat the menu--anyone would easily understand that the menu represents sustenance, but offers no real nourishment itself.

Similarly, religious scripture, thought, and tradition are metaphors to help us understand the ineffable, the non-embodied parts of our experience of the world. This should be fairly easy for most people to grasp, but my sense is that we live in a time of profound anxiety and insecurity, and people want emotional palliative rather than understanding or spiritual questing. Thus the current resurgence of fundamentalism on all fronts (not just religion).

Just because science can't explain everything doesn't mean it can't explain a lot. Also:

another instance of the overall atheistic position that everything is an accident

That's not athiestic, it's Occam's Razor: until there is evidence of intent, one should not posit it a priori. It's not that everything is an accident, it's that there is no evidence yet that any consciousness intended for all this to occur.
posted by LooseFilter at 12:02 PM on November 24, 2005

I agree with gyan, koeselitz - why is it necessary that, in order for something to be ordered, there must be an agency outside of the thing itself causing it to be ordered?

And even if it were so, and even if such a thing must be immaterial, why does that imply it must be supernatural? Unless you are using a very different definition of supernatural than I am.

I will agree that science accepts certain things as true for which there is no absolute proof, and likely no possibility of absolute proof. They may be called assumptions, or axioms - but they may also be called extrapolations. For example, consistency is assumed because 1) consistency has been observed (e.g., when you drop something in the exact same manner, it falls, and in the exact same way every time), 2) assuming consistency has proven to have predictive accuracy (if you *predict*, based on past observation, that if you drop the object in the same way again, it will fall, in the exact same way, again, you find yourself proven right.)

Science is a model of the universes behavior, and most scientists will freely admit that the purpose is to model reality as closely as possible. Could some of the basic assumptions be wrong? Sure. So? They have proven useful.

But merely because it is a model, and therefore an immaterial description, does not mean that it is *separate* from nature somehow. Why would it? Someone living in a boat, making a tiny model of that boat, from materials found around the boat, has not somehow stepped outside of the boat.
posted by kyrademon at 12:04 PM on November 24, 2005

Despite the vast number of religions, nearly everyone in the world believes in the same things: the existence of a soul, an afterlife, miracles, and the divine creation of the universe.

This should surprise no one. We are all human, we are all in the same circumstances, and these circumstances lead us all (or perhaps nearly all) to wish for the same things: that we were not simply animals like the dumb beasts we eat, that we somehow didn't really die (even though we see the bodies of everyone else die and rot), that hoping and wishing (and maybe begging and demanding and yelling at the sky if hoping and wishing didn't seem to be working) was not entirely irrational and would in fact somehow make things more likely to happen, that life wasn't as pointless as it often seems, that life somehow guaranteed justice for all despite appearances to the contrary.

Wishing for this magic package of counter-circumstances (supernatural) stuff, like wishing for a perpetual motion device or a penis enlargement pill, probably makes it a lot easier to imagine that the magic package is possible and maybe even inevitable.
posted by pracowity at 12:07 PM on November 24, 2005

Religions evolve as a system of beliefs that attract, keep, and duplicate believers.

Dawkins' meme stuff was quite the eye-opener for me; it's easy to see how the religion that evolves the most cool "story" and transmission vector(s) will succeed over the other religions that compete for mindshare.

It took St. Paul to polish the rough edges off a hebrew End-Times cult to produce the infectious story about God in identity with Love, a personal savior, eternal rewards, etc. The Church continuously embellished this story with such dogmas as limbo, immaculate conception of Mary, etc etc to provide a supermarket-level selection of doctrine to cover any question of belief.

If you've got a question, the Church will have the answer. And people seek answers in this world, so the church makes them happy. That the answers are bullshit is besides the point, until you start getting into conflicts with the hard sciences, including medicine.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 12:14 PM on November 24, 2005

I see if you mix LooseFilter's and pracowity's above posts together you'd get mine :)
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 12:17 PM on November 24, 2005

weapons-grade pandemonium, you make a great point. You don't kneed to show that the creation of religion had intention, only that it has effects. The notion itself can come about for any number of reasons, it is the effects that keep the notion around over time. Just like evolution v. intelligent design, but with ideas...

koeselitz: The trouble is that science is just as faith-based, in that it rests on the assumption that the world makes sense and can be comprehended by human beings.

Sorry, but that is just garbage. Science presupposes that some subset of how the world works can be comprehended, and it sets out to capture that subset in a useful way. There is nothing faith-based about doing an experiment and seeing what happens. Now I concede, there is a lot of pseudoscientific conjecture that is faith-based, hence that same old AskMe question I keep linking. Don't confuse those Woo-woo dancing quantum-metaphysics ideas with actual science.

LooseFilter: I find the author's basic assertion fascinating: that our social intelligence, a very interesting evolutionary adaptation in and of itself, creates an inherent tendency toward inferring goals, motives, or intent where there is no evidence for them.

I completely agree, that was the most interesting aspect of the article. Mostly in V: We've Evolved to be Creationists, if anyone wants to skip to that part...
posted by Chuckles at 12:24 PM on November 24, 2005

koeselitz: I don't really understand what your definition of supernatural is. See here; supernatural is defined generally as describing that which can not be described by natural laws. Perhaps I am opening myself up to being drawn into an argument about whether or not biblical law may be considered "natural law," but to me the distinction is pretty concrete.

I'm also trying very hard to wrap my head around this statement:

"...it must assume the ordering influence of nature, and, in order to assume that influence, it must assume that there is an immaterial cause."

This reminds me of a famous essay, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences" by Eugene Wigner, which I think you may enjoy reading. The author essentially notes that the Universe is amazingly ordered and can be accurately described by mathematical constructs, but that there appears to be no reason for this whatsoever.

One day, we may very well run into a situation that cannot possibly be described by a mathematical theory because its components obey no mathematical order... Chances are we will not realize it and will simply continue to attempt to describe the situation using theoretical abstractions, being unsuccessful at every step.

Is this a problem? Not really. We haven't lost anything by trying. If we hadn't tried to form a predictive model in the first place, we would be equally unable to make any useful predictions.

There is never a need to assume an "immaterial cause" for all of this order (although I honestly am a bit confused by what exactly you mean). The Universe is the way it is, and as long as it is ordered, we're lucky. There is seemingly no cause for this order, so we acknowledge that reality may actually turn out to be disordered... There's just no point in worrying about that type of situation when your goal is specifically to describe phenomena in terms of predictive models.
posted by dsword at 12:32 PM on November 24, 2005

Chuckles : "Science presupposes that some subset of how the world works can be comprehended"

Physicalism, the current dogma, says that matter is all there is. What complementary subsets has science avoided?
posted by Gyan at 12:36 PM on November 24, 2005

From the linked article:

The anthropologist Edward Tylor got it right in 1871, when he noted that the "minimum definition of religion" is a belief in spiritual beings, in the supernatural.

I find that definition self-interested. Of course an anthropologist wants religion to involve a pantheon of supernatural beings and lots of neat myths and rituals to report in his journal articles. Without that, no chance of tenure!

A definition of religion that excludes, say, Zen Buddhism, as this one does, strikes me as tendentious--made to order for those who want all of religion to be reducible to, and as easily dismissable as, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.
posted by jfuller at 12:46 PM on November 24, 2005

Science presupposes that some subset of how the world works can be comprehended, and it sets out to capture that subset in a useful way.

actually, isn't science just the body of knowledge that is internally-consistent and consistent with its axioms?

Science can indeed "capture" things, eg. ~32 ft/sec/sec, but sometimes it has to give them up (E = mc²'s effect on newtonian mechanics).

"To know that we know what we know, and to know that we do not know what we do not know, that is true knowledge." - Copernicus

posted by Heywood Mogroot at 12:48 PM on November 24, 2005

Physicalism, the current dogma, says that matter is all there is

actually AFAICT the current science is that matter is all that, uh, matters. Should you have an observation that falsifies this then you should publish a paper so others can investigate what you've found.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 12:51 PM on November 24, 2005

Who wrote the article? Is it anonymous?
posted by snoktruix at 12:51 PM on November 24, 2005

Oh, Paul Bloom, whoever he is.
posted by snoktruix at 12:52 PM on November 24, 2005

Gyan, science hasn't avoided anything. Science simply carves out little bits, studies them to death, and offers explanations that fit - that is necessarily a subset. Which brings us to the idea of a Theory of Everything of course...
posted by Chuckles at 12:55 PM on November 24, 2005

It's not that everything is an accident, it's that there is no evidence yet that any consciousness intended for all this to occur.

Well, one has either made one's mind up or not. Believers and atheists have made their minds up, agnostics decline to come to a conclusion.

Assuming one is not agnostic there's really only two options possible. Belief in God (not an accident) or not (maybe an accident, maybe something else, but not real).

In any case the article is unlikely to move anyone anywhere. It offers another example of an 'accident' or 'something hard to understand and draw a conclusion about' or further evidence of God's work depending on where you start from.

isn't science just the body of knowledge that is internally-consistent and consistent with its axioms?

The scientific method itself is agnostic, has to be or it wouldn't be the scientific method. The argument, as always, is in the conclusion-drawing, where scientists or anyone else steps beyond agnosticism and makes assertions about reality. Even assertions disingenuously posed as questions such as 'is god an accident'.
posted by scheptech at 12:59 PM on November 24, 2005

A definition of religion that excludes, say, Zen Buddhism, as this one does, strikes me as tendentious--made to order for those who want all of religion to be reducible to, and as easily dismissable as, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

Which religion isn't?
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:02 PM on November 24, 2005

jfuller: Not to dive off into the bottomless beyond of semantics, but the definition to which you object is much more accurate if one considers "religion" as a subset of a bigger set of thought called "spirituality". Thus, Zen Buddhism, while very definitely a spiritual practice and way of thought, would not be a religion.

Thus: Spirituality: ideas and practices relating to, consisting of, or affecting the internal experience of being.

Religion: a specific kind of spirituality including belief in the supernatural.

But then again, I live in my own semantic world sometimes.
posted by LooseFilter at 1:04 PM on November 24, 2005

Heywood Mogroot : "the current science is that matter is all that, uh, matters."

Same thing. Your formulation allows for inert "existence" for some 'other'. Effectively resolves to what I said.

Chuckles : "Science simply carves out little bits, studies them to death, and offers explanations that fit - that is necessarily a subset."

You implied something different. I'm not arguing that we already understand everything.

You said,
Chuckles : "and it sets out to capture that subset in a useful way."

Which subset is that? Science doesn't limit its inquires. It only tackles one thing at a time because we have finite time & resources. That's a practical limit, not a philosophical one.
posted by Gyan at 1:06 PM on November 24, 2005

It seems to me that science does depend on some concept of regularity. What "proves" a scientific theory is the ability to show it repeatable under experimental conditions. If we flip the switch and the light goes on - nearly every time (I'm hedging here) then we can say that the switch turns on the light. To have this concept, to be able to use it, we must presuppose it. And in this sense science has a normative quality. (I wouldn't say it's based on faith in the same way as religion, but that science is not independent of values.) To have science we need to value repeatability, consistency etc. We don't (can't) know if these concepts actually prove anything or if they are part of natures construction, but only that they apparently give us results we can work with.

I'm not looking to invalidate science, or equate it with religion, but only to avoid the scientism that seems rampant in modern western culture. Science works, I'm a big fan myself, but the results of scientific methodologies are not independent of those who practice science and the cultures they occupy. Cognitive science wants to naturalize epistemology, but science itself is not completely naturalized and hopefully, never will be.

Wait a second, weren't we talking about God?
posted by elwoodwiles at 1:08 PM on November 24, 2005

> Which religion isn't?

Zen Buddhism, to name one (for the second time in five minutes, d'oh), which does not postulate any supernatural beings.


> Thus, Zen Buddhism, while very definitely a spiritual practice and way of thought,
> would not be a religion..

Reminds me forcibly of those interminably boring arguments between lit-crit snobs and sci fi fans.

"All sci fi is genre crap."
"But what about this? It's not crap."
"Then it can't be SF."
posted by jfuller at 1:08 PM on November 24, 2005

'Supernatural' and 'miracle' have always seemed to me to be illformed concepts: if there were gods, and they mucked around with relaity, that would be the natural order of things, no? These would be concrete phenomena, and you could at least attempt to understand the mechanisms which could describe them. 'It takes 250 MegaApollos to keep the sun in motion...". I don't understand in what sense something which could (hypothetically) be percieved and have an effect on reality would somehow not be a part of that same reality.
Same goes for miracles; if they occurred, they'd just be part of life, the laws of the universe would allow for gods impregnating women, moving stuff around, etc.
The way I see it, 'supernatural' and 'miraculous' are descriptors for things which I (personally) believe but don't understand and wish to remove from intelligent scrutiny.
posted by signal at 1:10 PM on November 24, 2005

I don't know much about Zen Buddhism, does it abandon the Buddhist concepts of reincarnation, nirvana and karma? If not then it definitely deals with the supernatural.

As for order, that's merely the manifestation of natural laws. The absence of order would mean the absence of laws (pure chaos).
posted by sineater at 1:13 PM on November 24, 2005

and makes assertions about reality.

Any assertion about "reality" is prima facie bogus. We model what we know empirically, and there is no guarantee that this modelling will incorporate the entire reality stack of existence.

But science is free to make assertions about empirical reality. These stand or fall on their own merits.

Even assertions disingenuously posed as questions such as 'is god an accident'.

I'm purposely avoiding the fpp since I dislike articles on wank, but studying the brain's developmental models, when if not how it forms beliefs, is interesting and can provide useful insight to some of the "why"s of how we come to believe what we do.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:13 PM on November 24, 2005

Heywood Mogroot, I think you are talking more about formal logic than science, not that they are entirely dissimilar. I'm not sure where to go with that distinction, except back to what I said in response to Gyan...
posted by Chuckles at 1:21 PM on November 24, 2005

Heywood Mogroot : "Any assertion about 'reality' is prima facie bogus."

‽‽

Self-reference is a bitch.
posted by Gyan at 1:21 PM on November 24, 2005

To the extent that Zen Buddhism disincorporates Mahayana crap, it's a discipline and not a religion.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:22 PM on November 24, 2005

gyan: unqualified reality outside the observer. Empirical reality is the subset that we exist in. How much empirical reality subsumes the Ultimate reality is a question that has no answer.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:23 PM on November 24, 2005

Heywood Mogroot : "How much empirical reality subsumes the Ultimate reality is a question that has no answer."

Heywood Mogroot : "Any assertion about 'reality' is prima facie bogus."
posted by Gyan at 1:24 PM on November 24, 2005

Gyan: Which subset is that?

Any given subset that any given scientist is studying on any given day. I don't think I said what you think I said, but I might have... If I did, it was my mistake.
posted by Chuckles at 1:25 PM on November 24, 2005

The anthropologist Edward Tylor got it right in 1871, when he noted that the "minimum definition of religion" is a belief in spiritual beings, in the supernatural.

I don't agree with this. I'm no atheist, but I don't believe in the supernatural or in spiritual beings.
posted by scarabic at 1:25 PM on November 24, 2005

What Heywood just said. Science is the modeling of a reality. We take it to be accurate because it works. In this way science is not based on the assumption of some thing, but of some value, in this case "works."
posted by elwoodwiles at 1:25 PM on November 24, 2005

Sorry, I didn't read that last bit Gyan:

Science doesn't limit its inquires. It only tackles one thing at a time because we have finite time & resources. That's a practical limit, not a philosophical one.

Absolutely, no limit on the range of topics to be inquired about, but science only presumes to offer answers where it has found answers that work. That is a philosophical limit on what science claims to know now, science makes no claim at all about what might be known in the future.
posted by Chuckles at 1:29 PM on November 24, 2005

The way I see it, 'supernatural' and 'miraculous' are descriptors for things which I (personally) believe but don't understand and wish to remove from intelligent scrutiny.

Science is about the "how", and Occam's Razor. To the extent that science can construct a soild chain of reasoning from first principles and empirical observation to explain how a purported miracle came to occur, it is not avoiding the question.

But, of course, science should remain humbly cognizant that deep deep down there is no there there. Science is built on a foundation of null knowledge (origin and existence of the universe).
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:35 PM on November 24, 2005

This from the article struck me:

Children with autism typically show impairments in communication (about a third do not speak at all), in imagination (they tend not to engage in imaginative play), and most of all in socialization.

So are autistic kids "animal-like" (using the term descriptively and not perjoratively) to some extent?
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:36 PM on November 24, 2005

Reminds me forcibly of those interminably boring arguments between lit-crit snobs and sci fi fans.

...mmm, kind of, but I think you're assuming that I've made a value judgment that I haven't. There is something fundamental that sets Buddhism apart from the religions with which it's usually grouped: Buddha clearly asserted that all we can really know is our embodied lives, and thus his spiritual teachings were geared toward focus on the internal, subjective experience of being. He often admonished his disciples away from the supernatural, no?

Of course, Christianity as it exists today profoundly distorts many of its own teachings, so I imagine much the same has happened in Buddhism. But I don't live in a Buddhist culture, all I get is the westernized version of it here in the US, which is free of all sorts of cultural and historical baggage.
posted by LooseFilter at 1:39 PM on November 24, 2005

Chuckles : "but science only presumes to offer answers where it has found answers that work. That is a philosophical limit on what science claims to know now, science makes no claim at all about what might be known in the future."

I think you've changed the point you were arguing. You originally said, "Science presupposes that some subset of how the world works can be comprehended, and it sets out to capture that subset in a useful way." That use of 'presupposes' casts a different light than the "offers answers where it has found answers that work".
posted by Gyan at 1:41 PM on November 24, 2005

koeselitz: Put your hands up and step away from the Deity. Smuggling gods into threads is proscribed behaviour. I repeat...step away from the deity.
posted by Sparx at 1:42 PM on November 24, 2005

empirical reality

Understood. I'd suggest most believers in God have, at some point in their lives, decided they need to decide and can no longer remain at the 'waiting for evidence' stage. I've offered the notion in other threads that such evidence will never be available as long as free will exists, that the two are incompatible. The Christian thought process goes like this: we have free will and are meant to decide, in the face of ambiguity, whether to believe or not. Any empircal evidence of God's existence would end that ultimately important process (to Christianity) immediately, would remove the burden of deciding, and essentially bring the world as we know it to an end.

That's the thinking anyhow, so when someone says there's no empirical evidence for the existence of God, I agree: we're still talking about it so of course not.
posted by scheptech at 1:47 PM on November 24, 2005

so I imagine much the same has happened in Buddhism.

That's Dawkins' meme angle working its magic. Sterile doctrines within any order that treats with the masses will tend to get replaced with more meaningful & satisfying (to the masses)rococo, ad-hoc teachings over time.

I just saw this with my fundie mother last week. A good idea she had, "worry is pointless", got transformed into a Great Religious Relevation that "Worry is a rejection of God's Power in your life".

Which teaching will gain more currency over time?
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 1:48 PM on November 24, 2005

I don't think I changed anything. Should I have said "The scientific method presupposes that some phenomena can be explained, and sets out to capture that phenomena in a useful way". Is that really different. Isn't this just about semantics now. Is the entire debate raised by the article just semantics. Am I writing anything right now. If I beg mathowie to bring back the Matowie's Baby sock puppet will he ban me. Does anyone care. Do I care.
posted by Chuckles at 1:49 PM on November 24, 2005

> I just saw this with my fundie mother last week.

Heh. That explains everything, Heywood dear.
posted by jfuller at 2:02 PM on November 24, 2005

we have free will and are meant to decide, in the face of ambiguity, whether to believe or not

This is an important precept that isn't stressed enough these days I think. St Thomas had it easy, too easy one could argue.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:13 PM on November 24, 2005

Chuckles : "Should I have said 'The scientific method presupposes that some phenomena can be explained, and sets out to capture that phenomena in a useful way'."

Same thing; commensurate with your original formulation, and indicates a 'faith'/
posted by Gyan at 2:16 PM on November 24, 2005

Same thing; commensurate with your original formulation, and indicates a 'faith'/

Chuckles' original formation:

"Science presupposes that some subset of how the world works can be comprehended, and it sets out to capture that subset in a useful way. There is nothing faith-based about doing an experiment and seeing what happens."

I disagree about the 'presupposition' and 'capturing', but the general import stands without faith. Science is just a body of knowledge. It is what it is. There are scientific axioms -- eg. the proper experiment produces proper results, but even these are consistent with scientific empiricism.

Where's the articles of faith in science?

As for Physicalism asserting that "matter is all there is", I responded that that which exists may or may not matter to us. If it matters to us, it is matter.

To which:

Your formulation allows for inert "existence" for some 'other'. Effectively resolves to what I said.

I allow for the existence of things that do not matter to us, and I consider this consistent with secular materialism, if not Physicalism. I consider s.m. to be the reigning model, not Physicalism, btw.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:39 PM on November 24, 2005

Science's articles of faith.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:45 PM on November 24, 2005

Same thing; commensurate with your original formulation, and indicates a 'faith'/

No, it doesn't indicate a faith. It just indicates that when using the scientific method to produce models you have to include certain assumptions. The objective truth of those assumptions doesn't have to come into it.

Unlike the belief in god you don't have to "have faith" in the assumptions behind science to use the scientific method, you just have to see the utility of those assumptions in producing decent models for our subjective reality.

Maybe it is conceivable that you could only beleive in God when you are praying, or whenever else the assumption of God's existence is pragmatic or satisfying in some way, but in practice that is rarely the case.
posted by beegull at 2:45 PM on November 24, 2005

Gyan... I am beginning to see how my use of 'presupposes' is a problem, but I still think it is semantics. The scientific method having a preconception doesn't imply that a skeptic applying the scientific method has faith.

I'm not actually sure if the scientific method has a preconception or not. One could certainly formulate a definition that doesn't include the word 'presuppose'... To me it isn't important, the fact that the scientific method works is important - consider what I said about religion here.

(maybe I am saying the same thing as beegull just said... I'm not at all sure what Heywood Mogroot just said, I think I will re-read it...)
posted by Chuckles at 3:05 PM on November 24, 2005

beegull : "The objective truth of those assumptions doesn't have to come into it."

In terms of truth, they do. For pure utility's sake, maybe not.

We should all define 'faith'. I'll go first: a belief or which there is conceivably proof or disproof, but there isn't one currently. For something where there's no proof/disproof, 'faith' is a bad word, substitute with 'worldview' or 'framework'.
posted by Gyan at 3:06 PM on November 24, 2005

Reading this thread, I have to say that a lot of you guys, and to some extent the author of the article, are putting a lot of your thoughts in other people's heads.

First of all, I disagree with the first supposition mentioned in the post: human beings come into the world with a predisposition to believe in supernatural phenomena.
Not only does that not ring true with me as a regular person, as well as a student of Psychology, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science, but furthermore, Psychologists (and many other scientists) don't "discover" "facts," they build theories based on evidence, and to posit that statement as a "fact" is incredibly misleading.

For my own two cents, it seems that religion has always been an organization composed of and supported by people's hopes and superstitions. That is not to say there is no god, I wouldn't venture to argue that point. If belief in the supernatural is in fact due to some sort of psychological trait of humanity, it would simply be due to that part which has allowed us over the last 50,000 years to think abstractly and apply practical value to immaterial things. To attempt to put a point any sharper than that upon it is in my humble opinion folly.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 3:19 PM on November 24, 2005

Science's articles of faith.

religion's articles of infantilism

religion's embrace of infantilism
posted by pyramid termite at 3:33 PM on November 24, 2005

I guess in my own thinking there can never be any "truth", since all thought imposes a model on reality. In that case, faith is a belief in the underlying assumptions used to produce the model of reality.

Although there may be people who truly "believe" in the underlying assumptions involved in the scientific method, it isn't in any way neccessary to have that belief to not only use that scientific methods but to derive benefits from the models those assumptions produce, a big one obviously being technology.

It seems to me that alot of the benefits that people get from having God in their model of the world really do rely on a belief in God.

By the way, what are the underlying assumptions in science that can be disproven? The assumptions that I can think of can't be disproven, assumptions though they are.
posted by beegull at 3:37 PM on November 24, 2005

Science really isn't about truth at all. It's about description. There's no faith involved in description. You just test something and then report the result of the test. Science doesn't care if what the thing you tested was true or not. We could all be a butterfly's dream, but science doesn't care about that one way or another. It'll test the dream world just the same as a 'real' one, whatever that means.
posted by freedryk at 4:07 PM on November 24, 2005

freedryk : "Science really isn't about truth at all."

This is a modern resignation.
posted by Gyan at 4:11 PM on November 24, 2005

With which I agree, I add.
posted by Gyan at 4:11 PM on November 24, 2005

Something that is disproven is ejected from the body of science.

My favorite statement of scientific fact comes from Gould, that scientific fact, and by extension science itself, is a proposition that would be perverse not to provisionally accept.

When talking about religious beliefs, we get into Occam's razor and the null hypothesis that the universe, at our level of understanding at least, is a trillion^trillion dice rolls.

Faith comes into play in categorizing observations from mere chance to a supernatural causal agent; faith is the belief that there is more to life than chance, essentially, and that the connection to the spirituality of religion is something more real than just a mental state/affliction.

Science keeps Occam's razor and the null hypothesis close at hand, so it is very hard to catch it creating things that must be taken on faith.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 4:15 PM on November 24, 2005

Gyan: Why resignation? Truth is an emotionally loaded word. Are Newton's laws true? They work fine in 99% of the cases. Is special relativity "more true"? It's really the wrong set of terms to be discussing the subject. I'm sure science was originally about knowing the mind of God and all that, but the best science has always been purely descriptive.

I just object when people start treating science as another type of religion. I object to the science believers as well. Science does nothing to explain the world, and doesn't require belief to use. If anything, science requires doubt. There could certainly be a God; science has nothing to say on the subject, unless you can test it. It's profoundly materialistic, because that's all it applies to: materials.

I don't mean it can't be wonderful or tell us amazing things about how things work or reveal subtle patterns in the nature of the world around us. But what it reveals could all just be a statistical coincidence. A very low probablily one, but still... the long tail applies to reality as well.
posted by freedryk at 4:21 PM on November 24, 2005

Damn, should remember to read the preview.
posted by freedryk at 4:22 PM on November 24, 2005

Incidentally, my favorite quote from the article is:

"Dawkins goes on to suggest that anyone before Darwin who did not believe in God was simply not paying attention."

Amen. Reminds me of James Burke.
posted by freedryk at 4:29 PM on November 24, 2005

freedryk: the attitude that science is just description is a recent development (in overall timeframe).

freedryk : "Science does nothing to explain the world, and doesn't require belief to use. If anything, science requires doubt."

Belief and doubt are two sides of the same coin.
posted by Gyan at 4:37 PM on November 24, 2005

Belief and doubt are two sides of the same coin.

How so? One is taking the underlying assumptions of your model for granted, the other is questioning them.
posted by beegull at 4:46 PM on November 24, 2005

MeTa, by the way.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 4:47 PM on November 24, 2005

beegull : "the other is questioning them."

Within another model (of standards of proof & evidence).
posted by Gyan at 4:58 PM on November 24, 2005

Within another model (of standards of proof & evidence).

Well, within the overall model that makes up your own personal model of the world. Maybe you can only, practically, change some peices while keeping others static, but doubt would be a matter of seeing value in that change, whereas belief is more about seeing the value in the static parts of your model.
posted by beegull at 5:39 PM on November 24, 2005

The Christian thought process goes like this: we have free will and are meant to decide, in the face of ambiguity, whether to believe or not. Any empircal evidence of God's existence would end that ultimately important process (to Christianity) immediately, would remove the burden of deciding, and essentially bring the world as we know it to an end.

What a flawed thought process. Knowing if a god-concept existed would not preclude free-will. You would still have the choice of following that god-concepts rules or not. And I'd imagine that many people would choose not to follow if they knew, given the asshole that the Christian god-concept shows himself to be in the Old Testament.

This is as ludicrous as the whole "don't-test-god' excuse. I'm going to assert a whole bunch of fantastical claims, but the biblical god-concept forbids you to test him. How much more obvious of a con can you get?
posted by jsonic at 5:40 PM on November 24, 2005

beegull : "Maybe you can only, practically, change some peices while keeping others static, but doubt would be a matter of seeing value in that change, whereas belief is more about seeing the value in the static parts of your model."

My point is that doubt is itself predicated on beliefs. A Christian doubts atheism and believes theism. Vice-versa for atheists. True agnostics are rare.
posted by Gyan at 5:45 PM on November 24, 2005

My point is that doubt is itself predicated on beliefs

I think there's a 2nd axis you're missing -- interest/apathy.

One can doubt another's beliefs without holding these beliefs themselves.

A Christian doubts atheism and believes theism. Vice-versa for atheists. True agnostics are rare.

You can't "believe" in athiesm. This is the age-old lack-of-belief is NOT belief argument I guess.

As for agnosticism, that's just refusal to make a decision based on the available evidence IMV.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 6:20 PM on November 24, 2005

Who needs turkey tryptophan?
posted by Joeforking at 6:37 PM on November 24, 2005

You can't "believe" in athiesm. This is the age-old lack-of-belief is NOT belief argument I guess.

disbelief is not a neutral statement

As for agnosticism, that's just refusal to make a decision based on the available evidence IMV.

the available evidence doesn't say one way or another ... therefore, those who say one way or another are basing it on belief
posted by pyramid termite at 6:43 PM on November 24, 2005

disbelief is not a neutral statement

Actually, it is. Oxford defines 'disbelief' such that it encompasses both the lack of belief and the active belief in the negative.
posted by solid-one-love at 7:13 PM on November 24, 2005

Maybe I should take more time to communicate my point, which will save more time overall, but yeah, who am I kidding..

Heywood Mogroot : "One can doubt another's beliefs without holding these beliefs themselves."

Doubt is itself an action within a cognitive framework. One believes in a certain standard that defines what constitutes evidence; what constitutes sound reasoning..etc. So, if I doubt 'something', I'm saying that I believe in a certain (maybe unelaborated) framework within which I can't accept 'something'. I believe the contents of this very post, based on my expectation of what is sound reasoning. Everything is embedded in a context i.e. a matrix of cognition and perception. Even agnosticism is based on what counts as evidence. Strong agnosticism is based on reasoning about nature of experience and truth, and why the question can't be resolved.

Normally, I don't argue via drive-by shootings, but I'm just lazy today.

Heywood Mogroot : "This is the age-old lack-of-belief is NOT belief argument I guess."

Assuming law of excluded middle (God exists or doesn't), atheism i.e. lack of belief in God is equivalent to believing in lack of God. BTW, this grammar-based argument ('a' + 'theism' != 'anti' + 'theism') is a recent post-hoc rationalization, not "age-old". Read it recently in an article probably linked off A&L Daily.
posted by Gyan at 7:13 PM on November 24, 2005

the available evidence doesn't say one way or another ... therefore, those who say one way or another are basing it on belief

And the available evidence doesn't prove that leprechauns exist or not. However, this doesn't change the fact that the correct answer to "Do leprechauns exist?" is No. Invisible god-concepts are no different.
posted by jsonic at 7:32 PM on November 24, 2005

"the available evidence doesn't say one way or another ... therefore, those who say one way or another are basing it on belief"

A common formulation of agnosticism is that it's not possible to prove one way or another. I think it's very strange that of these three common beliefs about the nature of the universe with regard to a God (is, is not, can't know), this version of agnosticism is necessarily the most unlikely. Note that this is distinct from a belief that the knowability is practically unknowable in the same way that pretty much the nonexistence of anything is practically unknowable. The assertion of nonexistence is very hard to prove.

In this discussion it's important to be clear about some subtleties:

• Regarding the personal (R)elationship to this belief: implicit, explicit?
• Regarding the (S)ubject of belief: yes, no, undecided.
• Regarding the (K)nowability of the subject of belief: yes, no, undecided.

The typical contemporary empiricist-positivist atheist position on God is: RiS-Ku.

That's "implicit" on their personal relationship to this belief—which means that it's assumed as one of an infinite number of things about the universe which are necessarily implicitly assumed. All of us, I'd guess, implicitly assume the nonexistence of a twin of ours living on Jupiter. All of us, I'd also guess, implicitly assume the existence of ourselves. The belief itself is "not exist". And the knowability is "undecided".

The typical American theist position on God is: ReS+K+.

They've explicitly made a decision about their belief. They believe in God's existence. And they believe that God's existence is knowable. Note that a theist like this could also be RiS+K+.

The typical aggressive atheist position on God would be ReS-K+.

They might be ReS-Ku, which would be more reasonable in my opinion.

The typical person who describes himself as "agnostic" takes the position ReSuKu.

The typical person who is an aggressive agnostic takes the position ReSuK-.

A person who is totally indifferent to the question takes the position RiSuKu.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 7:40 PM on November 24, 2005

An article like this, whether it's well-thought-out or silly, isn't a reasonable weapon for atheists or theists to use in their endless battles against each other. But, of course, naturally they use it anyway.

It's possible that one day we'll understand the biology of religious feeling as-well-as we understand the mechanics of the bladder. At which point we'll be able to answer the question of whether God exists exactly as accurately as we can answer it now.

Presumably modern, intelligent, educated theists believe that religious feelings are "located" in the brain, just like all other feelings. And that this mechanism was implanted in us (directly or indirectly) by God. Atheists believe it's a fluke of evolution. Regardless, it's there and itl functions.

I can even imagine a theist (if I were a theist, I would, most likely, think like this) who believed:

(A) God exists.

(B) Through a lucky accident of evolution, I believe in Him. (I can imagine a universe in which God exists and people might have evolved in such a way that they couldn't conceive of Him or believe in Him.)

(C) There may be no causal link between God's existence and the fact that I believe in Him. (Of course, if I'm the type of theist who believes that every detail of the universe is part of God's plan, then there IS a connection between my belief and His existence, but the type of connection may not be obvious.)

It really sucks that people can only see such articles through the lens of their petty squabbles, because this topic is VITAL to understanding who we are and what makes us tick. The theists/atheists-are-stupid slant is just about the most boring way I can imagine anyone responding to it.
posted by grumblebee at 7:53 PM on November 24, 2005

It really sucks that people can only see such articles through the lens of their petty squabbles

Yes, because the wide-spread belief in invisible magical beings is of no-importance, and has no noticable effect on the world around us. What logical person would involve themself in such a petty affair?

A summary of your arguement:

(A) Regardless of what science discovers, theists can always fall back on the God-of-the-Gaps excuse.

(B) Since their god-concept might still be hiding under a rock somewhere, they will continue to feel justified in absolutely believing in its existence, not to mention continuing to claim that they know what it wants.

(C) Non-believers who point out the fallacious nature of such a worldview are equally an impediment to understanding how we really tick.

Can you spot the false equivalency?
posted by jsonic at 8:33 PM on November 24, 2005

[this (thread) is good]
posted by Optimus Chyme at 8:50 PM on November 24, 2005

And the available evidence doesn't prove that leprechauns exist or not.

may the gentry forgive me for saying this, but leprechauns are not metaphysically significant ... neither are pink unicorns

bottom line ... no one gets to claim, by proof, that they hold the default position here

bottom line ... those who express an opinion on this matter are expressing what they believe, not what they know

a little intellectual honesty would be refreshing ... but of course, that would remove most of the motivation for this endless debate, anyway

people are posting fpps like this just so they and their comrades can express their superiority over those "dumb" enough to believe ... there's nothing substantive to most of these posts ... it's the same old high school snarkiness ... it's the same old metaphysical circle jerk

people believe different things than you do and you'll never settle it, so just get over it

how many times have you seen religious people post fpps linking to sites that claim that non-believers have empty live, no morals, or any of the other nasty things that could be linked to?

i guess it's a question of who feels more secure and mature about what they believe

all i've ever asked for is a simple admission from some people ... that they don't KNOW

that's a lot to ask for, i guess ... have fun with it
posted by pyramid termite at 9:47 PM on November 24, 2005

Being spiritual doesn't mean being a-scientific. The two are different paths and while some may assert that there is no path but the scientific one, that is a personal preference more than a rational view.

As an example, the Buddhist view of the world places great emphasis on the condition of the observer. This is important since the object of observation is the conscious mind. This observation has no preconceptions nor goals. The aim is quite at ease with that of western science. That aim being to see what is there.

The difference from western science being what previously was called the "subset" of observation. Buddhism is not so much interested in how the planets and stars move as it in how the mind moves.
posted by stirfry at 10:07 PM on November 24, 2005

"that they don't KNOW"

While I completely sympathize with your complaint at the neverending "believers are teh stupid" posts, I don't think that you're right in demanding this. Re-read my earlier comment and pay particular attention to the parts regarding belief of non-existence.

The problem is that with a very, very tiny number of exceptions relative to those to which the rule applies, you basically can't know the nonexistence of anything. (The only exceptions are those required as a matter of deductive logic.)

This being the case, then this complaint of falsity would apply to not only the atheists, but certainly to you and everyone else with regard to a number of things we don't believe exist. So you basically have to concede the truly rigorous ground in this debate on this point because holding it in untenable.

What we're left with are degrees of doubt shading into degrees of indifference. In one direction, "indifference" applies to all the things that you've never thought to question the nonexistance of. In the other direction you have "doubt" that is functionally equivalent to nonbelief, e.g. Santa Claus.

An atheist who is determined to assert that God doesn't exist is asserting that the nonexistence of God is knowable in the same way as the nonexistence of Santa Claus.

When you object to calling a belief what is more rigorously called "doubt" you're really intending to make the claim that this possible nonexistence is closer to single-cellular life on Mars than it is to Santa Claus at the North Pole. You're objecting to the "hard" presumed nonexistence.

That's a valid objection, but it's not necessarily true as a matter of everyday language. If you insist that it is necessarily true you're open to the same complaint thrown back at with regard to many, many things you and I both know.

One lesson to be drawn from this comment of mine and the one earlier is that almost nobody is truly rigorous and truly consistent in arguing this debate, notwithstanding their claims to the contrary.
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 10:52 PM on November 24, 2005

may the gentry forgive me for saying this, but leprechauns are not metaphysically significant ... neither are pink unicorns

I see now. In order to have my invisible friend be taken seriously, I need to claim he is metaphysically significant. That way we'll know he's better than all the other, less-real, imaginary beings.

people are posting fpps like this just so they and their comrades can express their superiority over those "dumb" enough to believe

(-1, Persecution Complex) Pointing out logical fallacies is really about making the pointer-outer feel superior.

i guess it's a question of who feels more secure and mature about what they believe

Yes, the one thing we've learned from Intelligent Design, Anti-Gay Marriage Laws, and School Prayer is that the atheists are the ones who feel insecure about their beliefs.
posted by jsonic at 10:56 PM on November 24, 2005

Nice summation EB.
posted by jsonic at 10:58 PM on November 24, 2005

Doubt is itself an action within a cognitive framework. One believes in a certain standard that defines what constitutes evidence; what constitutes sound reasoning..etc. So, if I doubt 'something', I'm saying that I believe in a certain (maybe unelaborated) framework within which I can't accept 'something'. I believe the contents of this very post, based on my expectation of what is sound reasoning.

Sure. This cognitive framework we call 'science'. When I doubt a proposition I am finding it insufficiently supported to add my personal scientific body of knowledge.

I believe you're holding these statements equivalent:

1. I don't hold a belief in A.
2. I believe in not A.

to support this:

A Christian doubts atheism and believes theism. Vice-versa for atheists

I think I can offer a profitable clarification of what Doubt actually is. Perhaps Doubt targets the supporting elements of a belief, not the belief itself.

This would remove the reflexive nature of your above assertion.

Athiests doubt the supporting assertions of theism. Since "there is no A" is the default logical position, they can go home.

To say that Christians doubt the supporting assertions of atheism is meaninglessness, in that it is tantamount to saying that Christians doubt logic itself.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 11:06 PM on November 24, 2005

Knowing if a god-concept existed would not preclude free-will.

Ok, we have another demonstration of the circularity of all these discussions.

If what I think of as God were to manifest unambiguously in your presence, I believe you'd be left with no choice but to believe.

If what you think of as God is just a god-concept, an idea, a mere mental construct then yes, obviously you could take it or leave it retaining free will, as is already occuring.

As happens so often, where we start from determines where we end up.
posted by scheptech at 11:13 PM on November 24, 2005

people are posting fpps like this just so they and their comrades can express their superiority over those "dumb" enough to believe ... there's nothing substantive to most of these posts ... it's the same old high school snarkiness ... it's the same old metaphysical circle jerk
posted by pyramid termite at 9:47 PM PST on November 24

Point to a single fucking comment in this thread that does such a thing, please.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 11:16 PM on November 24, 2005