Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: being framed by Matt Nisbet

Nice post.

Idle thoughts:

Consider the irony of employing Lakoff in the backlash against uppity atheists. As you say, he's a "thoroughgoing materialist" who takes the stance that "The mind is inherently embodied." Using this to argue that nobody should write skeptical books with an intent to sell them is like saying, "You're very thoroughly right, but because you're so very correct, you have to shut up now."

I came to the psychology of public policy through Altemeyer instead of Lakoff, so my perspective might be a little different (not to say twisted; see Altemeyer's thoughts on Lakoff in the chapter 2 footnotes of the aforelinked book). A salient result of Altemeyer's experiments is that while we all react emotionally — instead of rationally — to things outside our experience, we all have our lines drawn at different points. Furthermore, while we all have the capability to hold dissonant thoughts simultaneously in mind, some people are better "doublethinkers" than others. These characteristics, among others, can be predicted fairly well from knowing the "RWA score," a measure of ones authoritarianism.

Taking Altemeyer's results as a starting point, I think it's fairly simple to deduce that "high RWAs" would see Richard Dawkins as a threat whether he adopted the tone of H. L. Mencken or that of Mr. Rogers.

We have often heard the charge that vocal skeptics of religion are "fundamentalist atheists," and many of us have pointed out the poor logic of the accusation. To focus on only one small point, skeptics have no holy text which they regard as inerrant: I personally have my gripes with The God Delusion, with Why People Believe Weird Things and even with The Demon-Haunted World. Not even writing from Sagans pen is sacred or sanctified! They are simply efforts we respect and enjoy, whose flaws we acknowledge — indeed, studying and debating those flaws is one way we improve our understanding and, thereby, ourselves.

This is one advantage of admiring humans instead of gods: one can hope to better oneself by learning from a human's mistake.

Nevertheless, there is one respect in which The God Delusion, for example, is like a holy book: people talk about it without reading it. Look at how creationists treat the works of any other scientist — quote mining is the rule of the day! How often have we observed that creationists imagine Darwin to be our prophet? What, then, could we possibly expect when a new text arrives? They treat the book not as a book, but as an icon; they contest not its arguments, but its image.

Hypothesis:

This is an inevitable consequence of the authoritarian personality. Any book popular enough to be noticed will receive the same response, its specific contents notwithstanding.

The "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" comment resonates with me. It was on my mind yesterday when I saw yet another media "discussion" on faith vs. greed and immorality. The faithful "good" vs. the secular "bad". And I just lost it for a moment, it was the proverbial straw. As an atheist, I am tired of being a punching bag for all that is wrong with society. Apparently, if we all just believe in the good, christian god all of our problems will go away.

I have been an atheist for many years. It's not something that I really thought about, it just was. Lack of belief in something does not mean "obsession" with something, it means simply that: lack of belief. So, I didn't think about it. And then came the moralists. The constant blather about christian this and religious that. The unremitting societal focus on religion. And then, this last shift, brought about by the ice cold, cynical political operators that are "running" this country. Suddenly, simply by not believing in GOD (not just any god mind you, it has to be the one and only "true GOD"), one is practically a terrorist. Apparently, I now believe in the wholesale slaughter of innocents (though I am no relation to Cheney/Wolfowitz et al), condone sex with children and animals, care nothing for my fellow man, live for money above all, and perhaps even partake in bizarre sacrificial ceremonies, all while hating America.

Don't believe me? Well, walk a mile in my shoes. It has been open season on non-believers for awhile. We're the one group one can wholesale verablly abuse, slander and threaten with violence and not face any repercussions.

I am a quiet atheist. I don't go around knocking on people's doors, and while handing them copies of tracts from the latest Dawkins publication tell them that if they're believers then their whole lives are worth nothing, that they will have no protection against bad things happening to them. That they're children will suffer. In fact, that the very act of their believing will invite horrible things in their lives. No, I don't do that. I don't lobby for the abolition of churches where people may go and practice whatever superstition they happen to follow. I don't demand that my next president renounce his religion before the country before taking office (and it better be good - no half-hearted renunciations). I don't demand that his cabinet do the same. I don't inquire of people what religion they follow, or if they have a religion, because I was taught that that is a rude invasion of privacy. It is not a litmus test to their moral fiber.

I pay my taxes. I work hard. I love my family. I'm kind to animals. I am solitious of the elderly. I give generously to charity. I obey the law. I believe in strong schools with a solid science foundation because it will help the future of this country to have an educated and open-minded population. That this is critical to a democracy. And to the security of our nation in an uncertain world.

But I am representative of the evil of secularism. I am proof of what happens to a "christian" country that allows secularism to seep into it's fabric. So go ahead, revile me. Tell your children that those who do not believe in your god are evil, rant away at your political fundraiser about how I'm destroying America. Gather all those crumpled dollar bills thrust into your hand by the fearful.

But don't expect me to be silent any longer. It's my country, too. Because I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more.

To Lori and Revere from a believer.... Stick to your guns and you both get an attaboy because you are Americans just like me. That is bounded first in the right to free speech and you keep singing as long and loud as possible.

I admire Lakoff and find his work very valuable but there is a lot more to research on framing, especially in the area of media influence.

The New Atheist Noise Machine is a successful frame device in that it certainly has drawn attention, which obviously is my objective. Second it translates immediately a major criticism of the Dawkins et al. books, apart from lodging attacks on religion, where is this all going? It has opened a space for discussion of atheism and critiques of religion but is that discussion productive? See more in my blog posts and the comments of other critics such as Shermer, Tavris, Kitcher etc.

I view the Dawkins et al. phenomenon as really just a product of the Freak Show of modern media, where news attention gravitates to the most polarizing and extreme of views whether it is Ann Coulter or Richard Dawkins. In either case, the actual discussion that goes on within this media coverage is not very valuable or high quality. Dawkins' book might offer a serious discussion but when it is translated in the Freak Show press, it is transformed into an alienating and balkanizing dichotomy of us vs. them, science vs. religion, which is not at all productive for solving pressing collective problems, whether it be climate change, poverty, or the future of science education.

And yes, Dawkins is responsible for how his message is translated and used by the media. By choosing his statements and catchphrases such as "child abuse" and "Neville Chamberlain atheists" he feeds the media beast, mobilizing the base, but also risks alienating everyone else.

Stand by for a lot more in print on these topics.

No, Matthew, YOU are a typical product of the "freak show of modern media", in which talentless hacks like yourself are provided with platforms for their content-free bloviations or worse yet, like you are hired to teach others how to bloviate (aka "the blind leading the blind".)

"Delusions are plentiful, even in science. It's that by and large religious delusions are harmful delusions."

This is the bit I'd be cautious about. To show that this particular flavor of delusion is most often harmful, it seems to me one must either engage in the expansio ad absurdum of attempted empiricism (Mao was worse than the Inquisition! Was not! Was too! Hitler believed in Jesus! Did not! Did too!...), or take it to be true without empirical evidence, "on faith," as it were. Neither alternative seems satisfactory.

I wonder if there is anything particularly troubling about saying the following, rather than some variant of the "religion sucks 'cause it's harmful" trope: (1) One can't show religious beliefs lead to more or less good in the world than atheism; (2) To the extent it's useful as a habit of mind to believe in evidence-based fact rather than in made-up stories, we might consider atheism to be a useful habit of mind; (3) Thus I expect all due respect from fellow human beings and no particular guff from anyone on account of being an atheist and publicly proclaiming that fact.

news attention gravitates to the most polarizing and extreme of views whether it is Ann Coulter or Richard Dawkins.

Just by using Ann Coulter and Richard Dawkins in the same sentence as equivalents you have destroyed any credibility you had.

Just thought I'd let you know.

So, Matthew, the Freak Show is the real problem. Then why don't you focus all your energies on the Freak Show instead of people who see real problems that the Freak Show spins out of control. The Freak Show feeds itself without your adding to the situation.

Remember, Matthew, the Freak Show is the problem. So, go frame the Freak Show for what it is and stay away from actual discourse that the Freak Show fouls.

The more Nisbet writes, the dumber he seems. The first "rule of holes" is, if you are in one, stop digging. So far Nisbet hasn't answered any of the criticisms of his anti-atheist rants, including those ably detailed by Revere. Perhaps he doesn't understand that the "New Atheist's" goals may not coincide exactly with his own, therefore what they say is not "productive".

Yet does this PR campaign reach beyond the base, convincing Americans to give up their collective "delusions"? Or does it simply create further polarization in an already deeply divided America?

Why is the word 'delusions' in quotes? What if the topic were the belief in Santa Claus. Would Nisbet consider that a delusion or a "delusion"?

We're all adults. Let's remember that gods are no more real than Santa.

The New Atheist Noise Machine is a successful frame device in that it certainly has drawn attention, which obviously is my objective.

I call that "trolling."

Second it translates immediately a major criticism of the Dawkins et al. books, apart from lodging attacks on religion, where is this all going?

Why, towards drawing attention, no doubt.

It has opened a space for discussion of atheism and critiques of religion but is that discussion productive? See more in my blog posts and the comments of other critics such as Shermer, Tavris, Kitcher etc.

Shermer could have made substantive points, but didn't. Instead he chose to babble about a "principle of freedom" to which he would merrily make science subservient. He quotes bits and pieces from King's "I Have a Dream" speech but elides Letter from Birmingham Jail. Like Stephen Jay Gould did with NOMA, he proposes a compromise between science and something he calls "religion", something which is not the religion which is causing us trouble.

Shermer says, and I quote,

A higher moral principle that encompasses both science and religion is the freedom to think, believe and act as we choose, so long as our thoughts, beliefs and actions do not infringe on the equal freedom of others. As long as religion does not threaten science and freedom, we should be respectful and tolerant because our freedom to disbelieve is inextricably bound to the freedom of others to believe.

So long as something happens which isn't happening in the world today, we should be "respectful and tolerant." Well, paint me with two coats of unimpressed.

Shermer also says,

Anti-something movements by themselves will fail. Atheists cannot simply define themselves by what they do not believe. As Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises warned his anti-Communist colleagues in the 1950s: "An anti-something movement displays a purely negative attitude. It has no chance whatever to succeed. Its passionate diatribes virtually advertise the program they attack. People must fight for something that they want to achieve, not simply reject an evil, however bad it may be."

Gee, the anti-smoking movement has been a horrible failure, hasn't it? Just like the effort to ban CFCs, now that I think about it.

Or were these also fighting for something to achieve — a pristine ozone layer and better health all round? Well, then, so too have the books shelved together as "The New Atheism" begat such a struggle, the objective of which should be obvious: the establishment of critical thought in the general culture.

News flash: I don't define myself by what I don't believe. Clear and explicit statements of non-belief in a particular subject do, however, sell — and with The Enemies of Reason, I'm hoping that we'll see the fame of atheism brought back to benefit the general cause of skepticism.

I gather, then, Nisbet, that you are saying that the media has an inevitable tendency to distort, and that Dawkins needs to ensure that the message gets through despite the distortion. I would suggest then that you describe what Dawkins' message is and what gets garbled or filtered out.

(Actually, I can already think of at least one thing that tends to get filtered out, namely the more Sagan-esque side of Dawkins.)

Richard Dawkins has apparently alienated Matt Nisbet. No loss there.

Thank you for writing this post revere. MCN doesn't like to respond to the commenters on his own website, but you somehow got him to respond here.

And I agree with natural cynic. If the real problem is the "freak show media," why is that not where he concentrates the most?

After listening to a Nisbet podcast and reading on the net various Nisbet writings I wonder this...

Has anyone ever significantly advanced their point of view in society by not raising hell, which seems to be your criticism of prominent atheists?

It's one thing to suggest a more profitable manner of moving a cause forward and it's quite another to merely want said cause to shut up because it makes some people uncomfortable.

Just curious.

And please forgive me for this rather unscientific question but there it is anyway.

I think the basic premise is that atheists should kiss christer ass so that christers won't throw a hissy fit.

If there is any truth to this, let's try turnabout-is-fair-play: Christers should kiss atheist ass so that athiests won't throw a hissy fit.

Does any part of that ring true? No? So the premise is false.

Atheists should slam christers for their lies, frauds, cheating, and general deceit.

What I dislike so much about Nesbit's frame is that it is am almost content-free, analysis-free, emotional reaction to the the tone of the arguments. In some cases, it isn't even the actual tone, but presumably the tone that Nesbit hears as it is regurgitated by the religious people who are so zealously, frothing-at-the-mouth angry about having their cherished beliefs described so unfavorably. He even gets a social scientist to tell us what we already know: this message completely pisses people off.

That Dawkins and Hitchens bother and incence people is obvious. They are pointing out that not only is religion most likely a totally inaccurate description of how the universe works, but that it's also potentially extremely harmful and therefore not worth the risk of keeping around.

Nesbit can fret all he wants about how that, but there is no way to frame that argument so it will be palatable to believers.

That said, nice post.

Man, that Shermer article skeeves me more and more the longer I think about it. What does it mean to say, "the principle of freedom stands above both science and religion"? Human ideals such as "freedom", no matter how lofty, do not constrain the physical phenomena of the Universe. As I said at Jason Rosenhouse's place, the facts of science would remain the same even if they were discovered by technicians in the employ of a totalitarian state. If one selectively cultures smallpox or bubonic plague in order to create a biological weapon, one is then doing science, even though one is working to deprive other human beings of their "freedom" (by depriving them of their lives). It's repugnant, but if it uses observation, reason and experiment, it's just as much science as is finding cures for these diseases.

Shermer must mean that we, as scientists and citizens, should curtail experimental inquiry, theoretical research and technological development in areas which threaten "freedom". Once you unpack the platitudes, this is a troublesome, not to say alarming conclusion! How would we implement such a programme of freedom preservation? Where is the cleaver brought down — on the theorists, on the experimentalists, on the engineers in industry? Who decides, and on what basis?

Suppose that the embryologists and the OB-GYNs got together and invented a way to gestate human embryos inside jars, with health risks (congenital deformities, say, or spontaneous abortion) as likely or even less so than those of viviparous reproduction. "Oh no!" goes the cry. "It's just like Brave New World. They're destroying our freedom!"

But then again, wouldn't such a machine allow families to have children with less impact on the mother's career? If it were made available as an economical option, rather than a mandate from the World Controllers, wouldn't the "Huxley device" enhance freedom, instead of diminishing it?

Such conundrums, of which this was just my off-the-cuff example, will become more frequent, not less, in the coming years. When faced with the social issues brought about by science and technology, we need analysis, not platitudes; open criticism, not commandments; Asimov, not Ayn Rand.

Natural Cynic,
I spend a lot of time engaging with the Freak Show. See the cover story I co-authored with Chris Mooney at the Columbia Journalism Review, where we call attention to journalists many these same issues, in the context of coverage of intelligent design creationism.

http://cjrarchives.org/issues/2005/5/mooney.asp

What Nisbet fails to understand and Blake in the comment above points out is that social movements NEED radicals. Social movements don't accomplish anything without them. Radicals provide an umbrella under which the moderates can function. Look at every single social movement in modern history; what do you see? You see radicals pushing the envelope.

Radicals perform a useful and necessary function in social debate. They draw attention to what's wrong with the current situation and propose solutions that get people talking. Without them, moderates like Mr. Nisbet aren't able to get their thoughts brought to the public forum, their thoughts end up being ignored because not enough people are looking for it. When atheists are in the closet, few Christians have any reason whatsoever to wonder what they're saying. Mr. Nisbet should be thankful to Dawkins, Harris and others for creating a situation where his opinions on the matter aren't lost to the apathy of the majority.

Yet does this PR campaign reach beyond the base, convincing Americans to give up their collective "delusions"? Or does it simply create further polarization in an already deeply divided America?

Hell, America needs more deep divisions. Polarization act #1 should be to split the Republican Party. Tear down Karl Rove's "Big Tent." Get the Goldwater fiscal conservatives away from the rabid, imperialist jingos. Show the folks who just want guv'mint out of their business how cruelly they have been betrayed by the neocons. Issue a new "Contract with America" and hit the bastards where it hurts.

Blake Stacey: "Or were these also fighting for something to achieve � a pristine ozone layer and better health all round? Well, then, so too have the books shelved together as 'The New Atheism' begat such a struggle, the objective of which should be obvious: the establishment of critical thought in the general culture."

But how do you expect the New Atheists to help establish critical thought when they aren't good examples themselves? We have Dawkins being too lazy to check his quotes on the Founding Fathers, which led to him quoting way out of context. A review from Ship-of-Fools by Stephen Tomkins catalogs other examples of intellectual laziness on his part, such as distortions on where MLK got his ideas on non-violence from, or one of Dawkins' statements on faith:

"Faith is evil," Dawkins tells us, "precisely because it requires no justification and brooks no argument." Whose faith? Not many I know. There are 12,000 members of the Ship of Fools discussion boards, where Christians are constantly probing the bases of their faith and revelling in, let alone brooking, argument. Is there evidence for Dawkins's statement, or are we just expected to take it on you-know-what?

If the goal is critical thought, then Hitchens is a millstone around the New Atheists' neck, just for his politics alone. If Ed Brayton can be believed, then he is partly to blame for Dawkins' historical errors. If the reviewers of Hitchens' recent book are to be believed, then he reported an urban legend of Orthodox Jews having sex through sheets as fact.

How do you expect the New Atheists to promote critical thought when they are such poor exemplars themselves?

If Christians were prone to applying critical thinking to their faith, they wouldn't be Christians.

For that matter, they wouldn't have faith, either. Faith and critical thinking are diametrically opposed techniques.

Even Hitchens can occasionally fix his mistakes.

You should see the email I got from my downstairs neighbor about it! I asked him, "Look, someone's told me this is an urban legend. There's a film about it, there's a book about it. How come only now, when I mention it in passing, does it suddenly become such an issue?" His email was wonderful—about three pages worth—including the possibility that some mad rabbi in some shtetl maybe did say something like that.

But I've changed it. It's not in the book now, not in the new editions. And I wish I hadn't put it in. It was absolutely in passing, and I didn't need it. When I think of the mikvah, and other Orthodox teachings about women, some of them very obscene, I could have made it much harsher.

People like Nisbet occupy much the same position in this debate as David Broder does in political "journalism". In neither case is anything of substance on offer, merely a reflexive insistence on splitting the difference between irreconcilable positions (neither of which they have made the slightest attempt to understand).

"Dawkins and Coulter"! Did you actually say, "Coulter and Dawkins" in the same sentence? What possible similarity could exist, what connection could be drawn between a respected scientist and excellent writer and a blond media bimbo??? You should be embarrassed. Just framing here.

J. J. Ramsey,

You make a decent point, but you lose it with the bit of tu quoque you invoke about Dawkins and co. not being "exemplars" of critical thought. The particular failings you mention might weaken the credibility of portions of their arguments, but it doesn't actually wreck the logic of the arguments themselves.

I do wonder, however, at how strong a case the "12,000 members" at Ship of Fools make for the prevalence of questioning faith in general. Twelve thousand is surely a drop in the bucket in comparison the the total number of Christians worldwide. How can we be sure that portion speaks as any more adequate a representation of faith than does the portion Dawkins singles out in his book? It doesn't quite add up, and sounds more like Tomkins tossing a bone to his audience than making an actual definitive statement. Surely, the existence of communities like Answers in Genesis and those forms of Christian 'thought' that even Tomkins notes with derision, count too?

Does Nisbet actually think he will inspire the panjandrums of the "New Atheist Noise Machine" to dial it back? Or that folks they might potentially motivate to quasi-outspokenness are going to retain wallflower status? It's like bailing the ocean.
Do religious moderates spend time, not merely disagreeing with, but actually telling the D James Kennedy's to "stifle yourself", ala Archie to Edith? Or do they understand it's pointless and save their breath for critiques on content?

No, but a lot of people will end up talking about Nisbet... which I suspect is precisely what he wants: attention.

Jared: "You make a decent point, but you lose it with the bit of tu quoque you invoke about Dawkins and co. not being 'exemplars' of critical thought. The particular failings you mention might weaken the credibility of portions of their arguments, but it doesn't actually wreck the logic of the arguments themselves."

Blake Stacey was pointing out that the New Atheists' positive objective was to promote critical thinking. It isn't a tu quoque to note that the New Atheists are undermining their own agenda by their behavior.

Furthermore, Dawkins, at least, has not done that good a job of presenting the arguments for atheism. He'll dispatch the cosmological argument fairly easily, but then flub the ontological argument, even though the weaknesses in that argument are well-documented (although what is available online is a bit anemic). When he argues against the Bible, his discussion of the Lukan census is so brief that it doesn't even pause to counter the bog-standard apologetics about Quirinius, etc., that a Christian could easily consult. His Ultimate 747 argument is also not very robust. The worst weakness of it is that it relies on the notion of "complexity" being well defined enough that a common working definition of it can be used for both God and the universe, which is rather like having a common definition of "complexity" for both the Grand Canyon and a cat. What is odd about all this weakness is that it is so unnecessary. Dawkins certainly has the resources of the Oxford library to help him make a robust case, but it's as if he is too contemptuous of his subject matter to devote attention to bulletproofing his work.

Jared: "I do wonder, however, at how strong a case the '12,000 members' at Ship of Fools make for the prevalence of questioning faith in general."

Prevalence is not the issue. Dawkins make the sweeping claim that faith "requires no justification and brooks no argument," and it only takes one counterexample to show a sweeping claim to be false. Even if one allowed for more wiggle room for Dawkins' words, it is not save to assume that the 12,000 Shipmates are the only ones questioning and arguing, rather than the tip of the iceberg, and that we are dealing with a drop in the bucket rather than a more substantial minority. Also, if believers uniformly think that faith requires no justification, why even bother with apologetics at all, which offers at least partial justifications for faith. I would remind you that Answers In Genesis is an organization devoted to apologetic defense of the creation stories of the Bible, so it is not as if apologetics is a small thing.

I support torture in the circumstances Harris outlines; he makes a compelling arguement. If a more compelling counter-agrgument is presented, I will change my position (and, I imagine, Harris would as well).

Great post Revere and it has sparked a lively discussion, to which,as usual I arrive late.

I agree with your objections to Nesbit's blogpost. I also agree with Nisbet that most of the media (and science blog) discussion of the 'controvery' is not very enlightening, though it may not be the media's fault in this case.

It is sad that our religious fundamentalists have adopted an agressive medieval sort of authoritarian biblical supernaturalism and use it to attack science and reason for political ends. It is also sad that in reaction, the 'atheists' and the 'brights' etc. have responded with the most vulgar and boring kind of 19th mechanical scientific materialism. The result is that the intellectual level of discussion rapidly spirals downward.

For example, consider the idea that many neurscientists have today (eg. listen to PZ's recent podcasts), that our conscious experience can be entirely explained by the electro-chemical blips of incredibly complex neural networks in our brain. There is a long tradition of such thinking that goes back to Hippocrates. In the current polemical environment, however, raising the possibility that there might be more to the human mind and that, in any case, no one has even come close to demonstrating exactly how blips in neural networks actual produce something like a simple, everyday insight, one is likely to be shouted down as a creationist or accused of populating the brain with ghosts. Indeed, I have had this experience on PZ's blog, where there seems to lurk an army of 'bright' goons ready to pounce on perceived 'heretics'.

The same thing happens of course if one wishes to suggest that religion, might, afterall, have something positive to contribute to human culture or that religion itself needs to and does change as human knowledge changes. There are wonderful (and still in print) discussions of this point by revered philosophers, especially James ('Varieties of Religious Experience') and Whitehead ('The Making of Religion'), whose books make the 'The God Delusion' et al. look like sophomore essays. Interestingly, these scientific philosophers, through often critical of religion, saw no ultimate conflict between religion and science.

So I would, at least, share Nisbet's desire to elevate the quality of the discussion of religion and science, perhaps to the intellectual level it had reached over a century ago.

Dawkins make the sweeping claim that faith "requires no justification and brooks no argument," and it only takes one counterexample to show a sweeping claim to be false.

There IS no rational justification for Christianity, yet people like those at Ship-of-Fools believe anyway. That's the point - faith by its nature abandons justification.

The people you describe aren't a counterexample. They don't care about the presence or absense of justification - they want the appearance of justification to increase social acceptance of their dogmas. They believed without justification, and no lack of justification will cause them to stop believing.

I support torture in the circumstances Harris outlines;

Then you are surprisingly shortsighted.

Here's the relevant quote from Harris's site (thanks for the link):

Liberal Senator Charles Schumer has publicly stated that most U.S. senators would support torture to find out the location of a ticking time bomb. Such ticking-bomb scenarios have been widely criticized as unrealistic. But realism is not the point of such thought experiments. The point is that unless you have an argument that rules out torture even in idealized cases, you dont have a categorical argument against the use of torture. As nuclear and biological terrorism become increasingly possible, it is in everyones interest for men and women of goodwill to determine what should be done if a prisoner appears to have operational knowledge of an imminent atrocity (and may even claim to possess such knowledge), but wont otherwise talk about it.

He has failed to take the possibility into account that people might lie under torture. It is well established that the vast majority of people will say anything to make the pain stop.

My argument for the limited use of torture is essentially this: if you think it is ever justifiable to drop bombs in an attempt to kill a man like Osama bin Laden (and thereby risk killing and maiming innocent men, women, and children), you should think it may sometimes be justifiable to water-board a man like Osama bin Laden (and risk torturing someone who just happens to look like Osama bin Laden).

No, it is not justifiable to kill a man like OBL. Of course not! I want to see him alive and well in the International Criminal Court, charged with incitement to and abetting of mass murder in about 2700 cases.

If you want pragmatic justifications for my opinion which I consider pretty obvious on ethical grounds, then remember: we are talking about people who want to die at the hand of the enemy. We are talking about people who would subsequently be venerated as martyrs, which is precisely counterproductive, because martyrs breed more martyrs. No, give them due process. Treat murderers like murderers. Treat common criminals like common criminals. Killing them in war would be chivalry; for all the stupidity of chivalry, they have not deserved that favor.

In the current polemical environment, however, raising the possibility that there might be more to the human mind and that, in any case, no one has even come close to demonstrating exactly how blips in neural networks actual produce something like a simple, everyday insight, one is likely to be shouted down as a creationist or accused of populating the brain with ghosts.

You're of course right that neuroscience is nowhere near finished.

But tell me a reason why we should think "that there might be more to the human mind". Tell me why chemistry can't be sufficient. Absence of evidence cuts both ways.

So I would, at least, share Nisbet's desire to elevate the quality of the discussion of religion and science, perhaps to the intellectual level it had reached over a century ago.

Huh? If Nisbet has any desire to elevate the quality of the discussion, he is going in entirely the opposite direction with posts like his "Atheist Noise Machine."

Blake Stacey: There is an inherent difference between having an "anti-something" campaign against religion and having one against smoking. In the case of smoking, the practitioners already know it is bad and agree that it is bad. The same can be said, in at least some instances, of environmental issues. The point is not just having a positive agenda, but to actively promote that agenda as a viable alternative after you have shown the weaknesses of the system you wish to replace, otherwise you are asking people to replace something with nothing. Heck, I won't argue against making noise, but it's only a place to start. It's almost mandatory that any movement make a lot of noise not only to be taken seriously, but to consolidate their position. I'm as mad as anyone, but once you've got their attention, doesn't it naturally follow that you will reach a point where you have to actually work things out? In the much cited comparison, the civil rights movement, lots of continued noise was eventually followed by diplomacy. And today there are surely many racists, but their influence has been minimized because over time the moral position of minorities has been stressed. As athesists/agnostics/freethinkers we have a much tougher row to hoe because there is no inherent support in religious dogma to that which actively denies it.

In your later post, you refer to Shermer's comments about freedom. Please forgive me if I'm wrong to assume that the only way to have freedom is to give freedom. It kind of goes with the definition. You seem to assume not only that all people should strive to be scientists and accept the scientific viewpoint, but that they should have this condition forced upon them. What the hell does freedom have to do with denying the "physical phenomena of the Universe?" Giving someone the freedom to bleleive what they want is not the same as giving them the right to tell you what to believe. I mean, come on, surely you have to admit that it's just not going to be possible to make everyone become what we call rational. As an atheist I don't believe that humans should be anything other than humans, as we have evolved to be. I don't believe that there is any cosmic or divine law that states what humans are "supposed" to be doing other than that. The scientists and scientifically minded people I know contribute certain things to the world, as do the superstitious people. In fact, I know quite a few people who fall between these extremes. If anyone thinks that the only worthwhile contributions to society are scientific truths, then you can all just go live on the Planet of the Robots where you will no doubt be very happy. Different people's minds work indifferent ways for very complex reasons and collectively contribute to what we call "culture," a structure that is certainly derived from principals of evolution. Collectively, we have the freedom to decide to work towards a better life and society for ourselves, or not. The Universe doesn't care. People living a thousand years ago found ways to be happy and productive even though they didn't understand the "physical phenomena of the Universe" any more than we do. I suppose you could argue that those people just didn't know any better than to be happy and productive, but the same can be said of us. Future generations will understand even more than us, as the necessary quest for knowledge continues, but that train is never going to pull into the station and stop, thus creating a perfect world of knowledge.

I have never got the idea that Nisbet's point was "splitting the difference" as Steve LaBonne called it. People can live together and agree to disagree, but they have to live together. The alternative seems to be domination, which is what the religious fanatics we are railing against are trying to do. Is that really what you want? World (or even country-wide) domination by atheists wouldn't wipe out superstitious thought anymore than domination by religion wipes out rationalism. This may be tough, but if you really want to instigate change, it's just not such a cut-and-dried, black-and-white issue when it gets down to the nuts and bolts. This is what the framers (sorry if that's a bad word) of our constitution understood. That's why we can not only speak out about our atheism but practice it openly and encourage others to do so. We will never, ever convince all the religious people to accept and live with us, and consider the fact that we are even now only protected by the tenuous force of law. But if you want to keep them from changing those laws, then you'd better start figuring out how to connect on some level, on any level, with the religious moderates who are not only a voting majority and tacitly support the extremists by default, but will eagerly see us as demons if told to do so.

The short version of all this? Okay, so they're WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Fine. So where shall we have lunch?

David Marjanović:

He [Harris] has failed to take the possibility into account that people might lie under torture. It is well established that the vast majority of people will say anything to make the pain stop.

Nobody learns from the Spanish Inquisition.

On another note, the supposed subtlety of James et al. has always left me rather underwhelmed. His "varieties" can hardly hold a candle to the construction of the surreal numbers or the emergence of Yang-Mills gauge theory from superstrings on coincident Dirichlet branes, let alone the detection of organic molecules in deep space or the sensation of holding a meteorite — a solid lump of metallic history 4.5 billion years in the making — in the palm of one's hand.

The more Nisbet writes, the dumber he seems. The first "rule of holes" is, if you are in one, stop digging. So far Nisbet hasn't answered any of the criticisms of his anti-atheist rants,

Agreed, on both counts. I'm singularly unimpressed with Nisbet. Especially when he paints others as having an unproductive debate, but seldom answers to criticism in person.

he refers to The New Atheist Noise Machine, a term much used to describe the Republican and neocon propaganda apparatus working through conventional mass media.

I didn't know about the US context of this term, but I'm not surprised since I have often complained about Nisbet's provincial outlook. Neither Dawkins nor Hitchens are US citizens. (Hitchens is multinational.) It seems Nisbet goes out on a limb to make non-US citizens alienated.

Which according to him is a part of the media "Freak Show":

And yes, Dawkins is responsible for how his message is translated and used by the media. By choosing his statements and catchphrases such as "child abuse" and "Neville Chamberlain atheists" he feeds the media beast, mobilizing the base, but also risks alienating everyone else.

Apparently Nisbet doesn't feel this responsibility himself.

David: "But tell me a reason..."

A different topic, but lets just say, instead of neural blips determining our thoughts, what if a thought (e.g. a strong belief, or fear, or a great desire)began to change the patterns of neural blips in the brain. 'We' might actually control our brains (though I think we rarely do), 'we' being something more than just our brain. I imagine that meditation or learning to play an instrument or to perfect an athletic activity might provide examples of this.

JJ Ramsey wrote:

Dawkins make the sweeping claim that faith "requires no justification and brooks no argument," and it only takes one counterexample to show a sweeping claim to be false.

That isn't a sweeping claim, it's a simple statement of fact that follows immediately from the definition of faith.

Caledonian: "The people you describe aren't a counterexample. They don't care about the presence or absense of justification - they want the appearance of justification to increase social acceptance of their dogmas."

That is quite a sweeping statement to be made about thousands and thousands of people who are not all of the same mind. So you presume that all those rank-and-file are all dissembling? I suppose you can do that, and strictly speaking, your explanation is unfalsifiable, since any sign of sincerity can be explained away as just more clever dissembling. Of course, your explanation doesn't account so easily for those who deconverted because they wanted justification and couldn't find it, or realized that their justifications were wanting when viewed more closely. I suppose you could argue then either that it was only the deconverts who were really seeking justification rather than pretending, or that the deconverts put sugar on their porridge, I mean, didn't really have faith.

Leni,
This is slippery ground since it depends on which definition of faith you mean. For some, one can only have faith in things that do not contradict common sense and reason. I would not be possible to have faith about something nonsensical.

Here again there is a centuries-long and sophisticated literature on faith and on the relationship between faith and reason that Dawkins just doesn't bother with.

mighty favog:

In your later post, you refer to Shermer's comments about freedom.

Only because Nisbet keeps bringing that article up and saying that it's worthwhile. I find it, for want of a better word, creepy, and I tried to explain how, although it doesn't look like I did a very good job.

Please forgive me if I'm wrong to assume that the only way to have freedom is to give freedom. It kind of goes with the definition. You seem to assume not only that all people should strive to be scientists and accept the scientific viewpoint, but that they should have this condition forced upon them.

What?

I was saying that it's bloody important to pay attention to scientific facts whenever social issues have a scientific or technological dimension. I don't think one can decide these issues entirely on scientific grounds — there's that Humean gap between "is" and "ought". To make an ethical judgment, we have to answer two questions: first, "If we do this, what will happen?" and second, "Is that good or bad?" Science helps us answer the first question — it's damn good at that — but it's not so great at the second (although I suppose it could help, say by telling us more about the different moral and ethical systems of cultures, through archaeology and anthropology, but it's still our choice to adopt those systems). This is not, I believe, a very controversial position.

What the hell does freedom have to do with denying the "physical phenomena of the Universe?"

Shermer says that the "principle of freedom" is some overarching thing which "encompasses both science and religion". Now, I happen to think that "freedom" as an attribute of religion is distinctly an Enlightenment thing; even if you don't think that religion is inevitably oppressive, it's still got a hefty backlog of cruel and bloody history to deal with. Saying that freedom "encompasses" religion really circumscribes your notion of "religion". That's a big, big issue, but Hell, let's leave it for another day, and focus on the "science" side.

I've been trying to figure out what Shermer's remarks could actually mean, and like I said, the more I tried to parse them, the less I liked what I was getting. Maybe I'm entirely mistaken, but it sure sounds like he wants us to stop doing experiments and stop inventing things whenever our discoveries or our inventions get in the way of "freedom".

My question, then, is this: who the Hell decides that sort of thing, and on what basis? Aren't there complications involved whose mere existence Shermer isn't bothering to mention?

As an atheist I don't believe that humans should be anything other than humans, as we have evolved to be.

One of the things we have evolved to do is to adapt.

If anyone thinks that the only worthwhile contributions to society are scientific truths, then you can all just go live on the Planet of the Robots where you will no doubt be very happy.

To repeat myself, I don't believe that.

J J Ramsey:

How do you expect the New Atheists to promote critical thought when they are such poor exemplars themselves?

I don't think any one individual are a perfect example of critical thought, nor do they need to. But it is easy to see that for example Dawkins or Dennett are better skeptics and analysts than most of those who criticizes them.

Ron:

no one has even come close to demonstrating exactly how blips in neural networks actual produce something like a simple, everyday insight,

To David MarjanoviÄ's comment I would add that the demonstration that biologically modeled neural networks can self-organize to have symbol-like representations personally impresses on me that showing the most basic requirement for abstract thought and communication is already done.

Torbj�rn Larsson:
"...biologically modeled neural networks can self-organize to have symbol-like representations personally impresses on me that showing the most basic requirement for abstract thought and communication is already done."

But then surely turtles are equiped with the 'basic requirement for abstract thought'. Perhaps a turtle could out-run Achilles but he can't play chess or even say a turtle haiku. Seems like something else is missing.

What Nisbet fails to understand and Blake in the comment above points out is that social movements NEED radicals.

Then the 'New Atheists' should be grateful that a man who abhors physical violence, and spends multiple paragraphs lending due consideration to those whose arguments he dismantles, has been mistaken for a radical.

Torbj�rn Larsson, OM: "I don't think any one individual are a perfect example of critical thought, nor do they need to."

True, but we still need good exemplars, even if they aren't perfect.

Torbj�rn Larsson, OM: "But it is easy to see that for example Dawkins or Dennett are better skeptics and analysts than most of those who criticizes them."

Whether that claim is true or not, Dawkins is still on the hook for his bad moves.

Ron: "But then surely turtles are equiped with the 'basic requirement for abstract thought'. Perhaps a turtle could out-run Achilles but he can't play chess or even say a turtle haiku. Seems like something else is missing."

Having the basic requirement for abstract thought does not mean being able to do abstract thought at the level of a chess player. If something is missing, it is probably things like sheer number of neurons, number of connections among them, etc., that is, a matter of degree rather than kind.

J.J
"If something is missing, it is probably things like sheer number of neurons, number of connections among them, etc."

I thought someone would say that. But you see there is just no real evidence that that is the case. If something isn't working there is no a priori reason for thinking that more of the same will work better (unless you're Bush). It may seem reasonable to you and you may have faith that it will turn out to be the whole explanation and I may doubt it with equal justification. All we can do is propose research strategies.

Blake Stacey:
In all honesty, thanks for replying and clarifying your points. Perhaps I was at least partly (whoa--"perhaps...at least partly?" *"As I've always said, 'there's nothing an agnostic can't do if he doesn't know whether he believes in anything or not!'"*) responding to your vitriolic tone, but now I get your point. When you said, "Human ideals such as "freedom", no matter how lofty, do not constrain the physical phenomena of the Universe....the facts of science would remain the same even if they were discovered by technicians in the employ of a totalitarian state" it hit me as is if you were saying empirical reality supersedes more nebulous concepts such as freedom. Which brings up another point, about bringing presuppositions to an argument. I can't see how you think Shermer's statement about freedom means curtailing scientific inquiry. His basic argument that "the principle of freedom stands above both science and religion" should imply nothing more than that freedom is necessary for both to exist, and as I pointed out, freedom for one and not the other is not freedom. You can always construct a situation to challenge a logical argument, and there will always be limits to freedoms. For instance, we would not consider religious freedom to include a person whose belief compelled them to sacrifice children to their weasel god, or freedom of inquiry to allow Joe Jerk to build bombs in his garage.

The crack about the Planet of the Robots was, I admit, my own knee-jerk reaction. I was getting a little off topic with regard to your points, and was generalizing a bit, but note that I addressed it to "anyone" and not you personally. It didn't really belong in my post, but you know how it is when you get on a roll. But still, judging from the comments I think there's some of those people out there. You know who you are.

Look, ma, we're communicating!

Don't hit me.

*five points for the reference, though I may have bungled the exact wording

Ron remarked

But then surely turtles are equiped with the 'basic requirement for abstract thought'. Perhaps a turtle could out-run Achilles but he can't play chess or even say a turtle haiku. Seems like something else is missing.

I commend Dennett's Freedom Evolves to your attention.

Ron: "If something isn't working there is no a priori reason for thinking that more of the same will work better"

No a priori reason, yes. However, if one knows how the systems in question work, then one can get an idea of how things scale up.

Ron wrote:

Leni,
This is slippery ground since it depends on which definition of faith you mean.

Not, it doesn't depend on which definition of faith you use. Some may be more egregiously and obviously wrong than others, but all share the quality of being unjustifiable.

For some, one can only have faith in things that do not contradict common sense and reason. I would not be possible to have faith about something nonsensical.

Just because it doesn't contradict what you already know doesn't mean it's justifiable. It just means it doesn't contradict what you already know. There are probably an infinite number of such things.

Here again there is a centuries-long and sophisticated literature on faith and on the relationship between faith and reason that Dawkins just doesn't bother with.

Perhaps Dawkins doesn't bother with it for the simple fact that it isn't germane to his argument. As has been pointed out perhaps a billion times, he doesn't need to consider the nuances of Astrology to call sort of faith unjustifiable either.

One thing that I continually find slightly offensive, and at least annoying, in this debate is the constant references to "American society". Not in the context of "In American society this, though the effect in Danish and Norwegian society might, of course, be that ...", but in a context where the whole discussion is framed as one about American society, specifically, should be addressed.

Obviously American society has the large population and cultural influence to affect us all, so it is important. But the fact remains that it is not the entire world, or even the entire developed world, that Scienceblogs has an international audience, and that some of the most prominent of the voices in this debate are not, or not simply, American. Dawkins is British. Hitchens is of British origin and only recently became a US citizen; he commands an international audience. Ayaan Hirsi Ali is now based in the US but retains social and intellectual roots in Africa and in Europe - her books are translations from Dutch. Michel Onfray, perhaps the most fiercely anti-theistic of the lot, is French, writes primarily for French speakers, and is not that comfortable with English. Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris, admittedly, are very focused on the situation in America in their latest books.

As an Australian, I have every reason to be worried about what goes on in America - a country whose social directions inevitably have an influence on ours - but I certainly don't see it as the be-all and end-all of the international debate about theistic religion's credibility. When Nisbet carries on about the balkanisation or polarisation of American society, he "frames" the discussion badly, because I immediately get an impression of him as parochial inexperienced. That may be unfair of me, but it's the impact of his words. Given that he writes in a way that immediately annoys me, rather than winning me over, I then wonder whether he has any of the competence in pubic relations (or whatever) that he claims to have.

There are several centuries' worth of texts on the practice of alchemy. How much of them need to be read before someone can learn about the nature of chemistry?

Not a one.

There are several centuries' worth of texts about how faith and reason are related. How many of those texts does Dawkins need to have read, mentioned in his writing, or even referred to before he could make a statement about the relationship between faith and reason?

I'll give you three guesses.

Blake, I'm sure you're aware that Harris is not advocating torture of the sort perpetrated during that splendid period of religious prominence, but I understand that the opportunity to turn that phrase (which, I confess, I found quite amusing) may have been too tempting to pass up. David, Sam Harris is quite aware of what has become, thanks to public discourse of late, common knowledge: people may lie under tortured. If it is not immediately apparent to you why this fact is inconsequential to the argument, Harris addresses it on pp. 197-198 of The End of FaithYour other comments shift from the ethics of torture to the ethics of killing, and this may be a point on which we fundamentally disagree. I would also prefer that we capture and try
Bin Laden, but should we find our only option is to kill him (if we ever manage to locate him, and if he's not dead already), I think we're perfectly justified in doing so. As to whether his "martyrdom" would create other "martyrs": perhaps, but only among those who have some sympathy for his cause in the first place (I doubt you or I would consider him a martyr and take up the scimitar for militant Islam as a result of his death). That Bin Laden and others like him may be happy to die for their "cause" does not diminish the extent to which many believe he is deserving of death, myself included--feel free to consider that a rare point of agreement between radical Islamists and me.

But then surely turtles are equiped with the 'basic requirement for abstract thought'. Perhaps a turtle could out-run Achilles but he can't play chess or even say a turtle haiku. Seems like something else is missing.

There are plenty of humans that can't play chess or compose haiku. Are they missing some essential property of the mind? Several animals have been shown capable of rudimentary forms of abstract reasoning - why should the bar be set at haiku or chess?

And what reason is there to assume that this "something more", the unknown mind-stuff, would only exist in humans and not turtles? To have an effect on our actions, it must have some way of affecting the matter the brain is made of. So why doesn't it work on turtle brain matter?

If something isn't working there is no a priori reason for thinking that more of the same will work better (unless you're Bush). It may seem reasonable to you and you may have faith that it will turn out to be the whole explanation and I may doubt it with equal justification. All we can do is propose research strategies.

OK, did you have some in mind?

I wonder how you would counter the vitalist argument, by the way? That there must be "something special" in living things that can't be explained merely by the arrangement of atoms?

Caledonian:

"There are several centuries' worth of texts on the practice of alchemy. How much of them need to be read before someone can learn about the nature of chemistry?

"Not a one.

"There are several centuries' worth of texts about how faith and reason are related. How many of those texts does Dawkins need to have read, mentioned in his writing, or even referred to before he could make a statement about the relationship between faith and reason?"

Let's see now. Books on alchemy have almost no bearing on modern chemistry, and are mainly of historical interest. Books on how Christians have tried to reconcile faith and reason, on the other hand, are useful for picking Christians' brains and understanding how the heck they even use the word "faith," or even if they are monolithic in its usage.

So, Caledonian, are you saying that Dawkins doesn't have to take into account how Christians use the word "faith" before he pontificates on what it means to Christians?

Christian apologetics are of as little relevance as texts on alchemy, and of far less interest. Faith is what it is, and no amount of sophistry can make the sophists a greater expert in that than anyone willing to think honestly.

We don't speak of faith when dealings with things that can be rationally justified. You resort to it only when confronted with things that are unjustifiable.

The argument about whether Dawkins ought to have read Christian apologetics assumes he has read less of it than the average Christian. But face a fact: there are many devout, even book-reading, Christians who have no notion who (for example) Augustine was, or why they should care. I will say again: Dawkins' sophistication in this area is below that of many scholars, but more than sufficient to educate the majority of book-reading theists.

Has Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens been to New Orleans? Have they thought to ask about the role of church groups versus atheists there in the recovery? Are all you amateur atheists really that dense? Would you really recommend that someone devastated by a natural disaster call up their local atheist society for assistance? What are they going to hear, "Sorry, you've been selected against." The voice of Dawkins and Hitchens and Harris is one of a collective failure to understand human nature, and must certainly track back to some bitterness (why are they all so bitter and caustic?) from childhood. As a group they are just plain embarrassing and little more than a flicker in the current psyche. Nisbet should probably find more worthy targets.

Rocky,
There were/are plenty of atheists who helped out in katrina. Just because they weren't part of some "organization" doesn't mean they were not there.
And plenty of the churchy people I know up here in Indiana think that NOLA should be left as is... not fixed.
There are equal amounts of charity and stinginess on both sides of the aisle. Too much in fact.

Sorry, dude, but i've been down there to NOLA repeatedly since Katrina and worked with the church groups, particularly presbyterians and baptists. tehy have save and improved countless lives. i've never heard of any atheist organizations helping there, and yes, you do need have actual organizations if you're going to make a difference. all atheists know how to do is sitting around in their underwear writing tirades against religion on blogs. a sad lot overall.

Rocky: Atheists don't have organizations of their own. We are part of civil society. Lots of people helped or tried to help there, not because of their church but because they wanted to help their fellow human beings. I'd gladly do that through a church if that was the best way, just as I'd do it any other way I could. In other countries they have other organizations. For example, in Palestine Hamas fills that function, in Cuba the communist party. Insofar as they help people, good for them. Insofar as they don't . . .

Rocky:
if you haven't noticed, church groups outnumber "atheist groups" in population by several orders of magnitude.

There was, however, a fairly large secular organization (at least in construction) that was involved in the Katrina reconstruction process. It's called "the government of the United States". Many atheists think it is random and inefficient to leave acts of recovery up to the whims of individual churches. As evidence, I would point to the complete failure to recover NOLA when born-again Xians are put in charge of the one institution, the Federal government, that has a legal mandate to do the job (and indeed has been funded adequately to do the task).

I would agree that churches are better at the PR task of sending in token efforts to give a little help here and there in a recovery effort. I personally don't think this approach to disaster management is terribly useful in the big picture.

I suspect the comment about "sitting around in their underwear" is a case of projection. Kudos for the clever insults, though.

Rocky wrote:

all atheists know how to do is sitting around in their underwear writing tirades against religion on blogs. a sad lot overall.

Oh hush, Rocky. You don't know what I do for my fellow humans any more than you know what I'm wearing.

Has Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens been to New Orleans? Have they thought to ask about the role of church groups versus atheists there in the recovery?

Those would be the church leaders that said Katrina was a punishment to New Orleans and/or the US? Yeah, some real compassion there. And last I checked, neither the Red Cross nor the US Army Corps of Engineers are church groups.

Geez Revere, I think you might have touched a nerve with this one.....

JJ Ramsey wrote:

Let's see now. Books on alchemy have almost no bearing on modern chemistry, and are mainly of historical interest. Books on how Christians have tried to reconcile faith and reason, on the other hand, are useful for picking Christians' brains and understanding how the heck they even use the word "faith," or even if they are monolithic in its usage.

Presuming one actually cares about picking their brains or or how they came to reconcile their beliefs with reality...

I can understand why you might think it's important, but I don't understand why you think it should be necessary. Also, as was noted above it's still faith no matter how an individual chooses to reconcile it. It doesn't change into "informed opinion" or "verifiable fact". It simply becomes, at best, a less obnoxious form of faith. In that sense, it is very much is monolithic.

. It's that the various writings of Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, PZ and now a number of others has opened up a space -- and a wide space, not a narrow one -- to talk about belief and non-belief in ways not possible before.

I don't see that this is true. I think that a space opened up on its own, and that Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, and PZ are exploiting it for personal gain.

If you look at it this way, the thing to judge the "new atheists" by is not whether atheist advocacy is occurring, but whether the atheist advocacy which is occurring is any good. It is my opinion that it is not, and that what is happening here is that a possibly brief historical window which has opened up for potentially legitimizing rationalism or nontheism in the public sphere is being squandered on the self-promotion of a handful of authors who, frankly, are not very good at what they are trying to do.

Of course, I have elsewhere called Hitchens a fascist, so that doesn't quite work for me. Since Sam Harris seems to condone torture, I doubt I'd agree with him on many issues, either.

Congratulations! You are capable of telling the difference between the enemy of your enemy and your friend. Alas, the "new atheism" fad, as a movement, is not with you on this one. And this is a big part of why, although it might turn out to be to some extent effective as a conversion drive for atheism, the "new atheism" is fundamentally incapable of advancing either rationalism or the actual situation of nontheists in America.

Leni: "It doesn't change into 'informed opinion' or 'verifiable fact'. It simply becomes, at best, a less obnoxious form of faith. In that sense, it is very much is monolithic."

You are working under the very wrong assumption that when Christians use the word "faith," they all use it in the same way and mean the same thing. When you have Kierkegaard talking about a "leap of faith" on the one hand, and other Christians arguing that "faith" is merely trust and not fundamentally different from "faith" in an ordinary person (e.g. having faith that a professor will come through on funding even though the deadline is tight), this assumption cannot hold much water. There are even Christians who wrongfully believe that Christianity is verifiable fact. There is nothing monolithic about this. About the only thing that the various definitions of "faith" have in common is that they have something to do with trust or allegiance, since that is what the Greek words for it originally meant. Whether that trust is presumed to be given based on a knowingly irrational leap or whether it is incorrectly understood to have a more solid basis depends on the Christians in question.

llewelly: "The argument about whether Dawkins ought to have read Christian apologetics assumes he has read less of it than the average Christian."

Not really. For one thing, one shouldn't assume that the Christians who read it are representative of the average Christian. That would be about as odd as expecting that the Republicans who pick up a copy of Al Franken's Lying Liars would be representative of the GOP rank-and-file. Most people don't seek out contrary viewpoints, and the ones that do are probably curious or wanting to knock down the opposition, or both. Those sorts of people may be more likely to be armed with apologetics.

Coin: "I don't see that this is true. I think that a space opened up on its own, and that Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, and PZ are exploiting it for personal gain."

You are probably right about the space opening up on its own. That's one of the things 9/11 did change, and Sam Harris would probably be the first to acknowledge that. I would not say that it is either fair or relevant to say that the so-called New Atheists are exploiting it for personal gain. They are quite entitled to pen their books and try to sell them, and it isn't as if anyone is forced to buy them. Offhand, I don't think PZ isn't even making a profit off of the new trend. He still has his day job as a professor and researcher. Furthermore, whether what they say has merit is independent of their motives for saying it. I suppose it is a bit odd to use C.S. Lewis in defense of them, but "Bulverism" comes to mind when I look at your objection.

You are probably right about the space opening up on its own. That's one of the things 9/11 did change

I don't think it had anything at all to do with 9/11, and indeed it didn't appear until a good five years after 9/11. I think mostly the space opened up because the degree of overreach by the theocratic religious right finally reached a sufficient degree of general absurdity. Really, look just at the sequence of events, it seems to me that if any one event touched all this off it was probably the Dover trial.

I would not say that it is either fair or relevant to say that the so-called New Atheists are exploiting it for personal gain... Furthermore, whether what they say has merit is independent of their motives for saying it.

Well, I don't think that the fact that they are exploiting it for personal gain makes what they're saying any more or less right. And except for the laughably transparent Christopher Hitchens, I of course can't at all claim to know what the motives of any of these people are. I'm not them.

If we're analyzing "new atheism" as a movement, though, I think it's quite relevant and important to analyze what the effects of this movement has been. Has it served to legitimize atheism or agnosticism in the public sphere, or promote meritful or effective arguments for basing behavior and public policy on rationalism over faith? Well, no. Has it served to establish or entrench rewarding careers for Hitchens/Dawkins/PZ as pundits/tv stars/bloggers? Well, yes.

Coin:

Has it served to legitimize atheism or agnosticism in the public sphere, or promote meritful or effective arguments for basing behavior and public policy on rationalism over faith? Well, no.

Well, yes, if "legitimizing" includes having best-sellers and special sections in bookstores, and discussion in the mainstream media, and generally a much higher prominence for atheism in the "public sphere". How else would you measure "legitimizing"?

And the real question is not how effective the New Atheism is, but how effective it has been relative to the "Old Atheism" that got along ever so well with everyone, even while religious fundamentalism rose to political and military power in the US and around the world. Given that accommodation hasn't seemed to work so well, why not give assertiveness a try?

JJ Ramsey wrote:

You are working under the very wrong assumption that when Christians use the word "faith," they all use it in the same way and mean the same thing.

Actually, no I'm not. I'm aware of the fact that it might mean different things to different people, I just don't think it ultimately matters for the purposes at hand. For a cultural anthropologist or religious historian it might, but for the purposes of this discussion (Re: Dawkins) it simply isn't relevant because the similarities far outweigh the differences.

I also said that it isn't relevant any more than are the subtle distinctions between the belief in astrological energy forces. Of course all astrologers don't believe the same thing in the same way, nevertheless they're all similarly unjustified. That one individual may be slightly less justified than another is not terribly important. Which is why I said I couldn't understand why you, in your criticisms of Dawkins, act as if it is necessary to know each and every case.

You seem to think, so far as I can tell by your repeated attempts to make this same useless point, that unless one cares about all the flavors of faith that there might be (an infinite variety, I might add) that one somehow is not capable of criticizing them.

When you have Kierkegaard talking about a "leap of faith" on the one hand, and other Christians arguing that "faith" is merely trust and not fundamentally different from "faith" in an ordinary person (e.g. having faith that a professor will come through on funding even though the deadline is tight), this assumption cannot hold much water.

Oh, I see. So the garden variety faith in god is a whole different thing than trust in friend who just so happens to be the magical, invisible, reborn Son of God.

Got it.

There are even Christians who wrongfully believe that Christianity is verifiable fact. There is nothing monolithic about this. About the only thing that the various definitions of "faith" have in common is that they have something to do with trust or allegiance, since that is what the Greek words for it originally meant.

You are egregiously understating the fact that what they have most in common is the object of said faith or trust-like "faithiness". It isn't your pal or your neighbor or mechanic, it's a deity!

So yes, having trust in your professor is decidedly different than having trust in your invisible, god-like, magic sky friend. These two things are far more different than having faith in god and having trust in his invisible human-born son are.

Whether that trust is presumed to be given based on a knowingly irrational leap or whether it is incorrectly understood to have a more solid basis depends on the Christians in question.

Yes, because trust in invisible magic sky friends is a nuanced thing that is different for each individual.

I'm sorry JJ, I think you're an earnest person and I apologize now for how short I always get with you, but god. fucking. dammit. How can you possibly argue this with a straight face?

The best you've got is that trust in an invisible friend is a more justifiable and nuanced position than faith in God? Sorry. But kinda it's the same thing.

That said, if you don't think Dawkins did a good enough why don't you write a better one? Clearly you know you could and you appear to speak their incomprehensible lingo. Perhaps you could succeed where Dawkins failed. I'm not being facetious either, for once.

Tulse: "How else would you measure 'legitimizing'?"

How about by whether people have a more positive view of atheists? So far, the New Atheists are generating notoriety, but that's the Freak Show at work, and that's not necessarily that helpful.

BTW, the idea that "Old Atheism" was accommodating doesn't take into account that aggressive atheism has been around for a while: American Atheists, FFRF, CFI, etc. And who are these "accomodationists" who have been so soft on the Religious Right?

How about by whether people have a more positive view of atheists?

How about actually providing evidence that this hasn't happened? And how about judging how well this approach has done over the very limited time that it has been around?

the idea that "Old Atheism" was accommodating doesn't take into account that aggressive atheism has been around for a while

So where does the New Atheist label come from? Surely you have to grant at the very least that this approach has been much invigorated over the recent few years

Why am I not surprised the Ann Coulter Equivocation came up again. There's more loathing, fear, hatred, and scorn on a single page of one of her novels than there is in the entire published work of Richard Dawkins.

Leni: "Oh, I see. So the garden variety faith in god is a whole different thing than trust in friend who just so happens to be the magical, invisible, reborn Son of God.

"Got it."

Um, no. I'm saying that there is a huge difference between

1) willfully trusting blindly, and
2) trusting based on reasons that aren't as solid as one thinks.

I would have figured that mentioning Kierkegaard would have been a big hint as to what I meant, since he is infamous (rightly or wrongly) for advocating a willful blind trust.

Leni: "Actually, no I'm not. I'm aware of the fact that it might mean different things to different people, I just don't think it ultimately matters for the purposes at hand."

Really? Let's see now. If I tell a Christian that faith is just belief without evidence, and the response I get is, "That's B.S., faith is trust, and here's the evidence that backs up my trust," then I have blundered the conversation right at the outset.

Leni: "The best you've got is that trust in an invisible friend is a more justifiable and nuanced position than faith in God?"

Sorry to be blunt, but how can you possibly offer so much straw?

Blake Stacey writes:

Man, that Shermer article skeeves me more and more the longer I think about it. What does it mean to say, "the principle of freedom stands above both science and religion"? Human ideals such as "freedom", no matter how lofty, do not constrain the physical phenomena of the Universe.

Shermer didn't say otherwise. As I interpreted it, he wasn't making a point about the universe, he was making a point about human society. He believes that a society that cherishes freedom, even the freedom to believe falsehoods and silliness, is the sort of society in which science (and, unfortunately, anti-science) flourishes.

Maybe I'm entirely mistaken, but it sure sounds like he wants us to stop doing experiments and stop inventing things whenever our discoveries or our inventions get in the way of "freedom".

I think you're entirely mistaken. I don't think he was implying anything like that.

JJ Wrote:

Leni: "Oh, I see. So the garden variety faith in god is a whole different thing than trust in friend who just so happens to be the magical, invisible, reborn Son of God.

"Got it."

Um, no. I'm saying that there is a huge difference between

1) willfully trusting blindly, and
2) trusting based on reasons that aren't as solid as one thinks.

Again, these distinctions are not relevant if your prime concern is the unjustified quality of faith in general. As it is for, I think you know, Dawkins.

Why? Because 1 and 2 are in this way largely indistinguishable. I feel most sorry for people of the number 2 variety, but they are still as unjustified as those in the number one category. Further, it's not as if they undertook the best possible study and came to the best possible conclusions they could have given the evidence at hand.

You know very well they didn't.

I would have figured that mentioning Kierkegaard would have been a big hint as to what I meant, since he is infamous (rightly or wrongly) for advocating a willful blind trust.

And I would have figured that you'd have gotten the point that it isn't relevant.

So much for "trustiness"!

Leni: "Actually, no I'm not. I'm aware of the fact that it might mean different things to different people, I just don't think it ultimately matters for the purposes at hand."

Really? Let's see now. If I tell a Christian that faith is just belief without evidence, and the response I get is, "That's B.S., faith is trust, and here's the evidence that backs up my trust," then I have blundered the conversation right at the outset.

Really? Let's see now. If I tell a Christian that faith is just belief without evidence, and the response I get is, "That's B.S., faith is trust in my invisible friend, and here's the evidence that backs up my trust (in my invisible magic sky friend!)," then I have blundered the conversation right at the outset.

Yes, I have. I've accepted invisible friends as worthwhile considerations.

Leni: "The best you've got is that trust in an invisible friend is a more justifiable and nuanced position than faith in God?"

Sorry to be blunt, but how can you possibly offer so much straw?

You said that faith in Christ was like trusting your professor. If you didn't want your position to be compared to a person talking to an invisble friend than you shouldn't have made the comparison of a person talking to their invisible friend.

Confidence is much different than faith, at least in the way it is normally used. If we know a person well, and we say we have faith that they will act in a certain way, what we usually mean is that we're confident in our projection of how they will act. 'Faith' is what we have when we're confident in our projection of the behavior of someone we don't know.

One is rational, one delusional.

Leni: "Again, these distinctions are not relevant if your prime concern is the unjustified quality of faith in general. As it is for, I think you know, Dawkins."

Trouble is, Dawkins, said something that made those distinctions relevant. If he had said,

"However one fleshes out the meaning of faith, it still involves trust, and the faith, or trust, if you will that people put in God is simply unmerited."

we wouldn't be having this discussion. As it stands, Dawkins wrote that faith "requires no justification and brooks no argument," which is simply not true for those who believe that their faith is justified by evidence and can be defended with argument. Dawkins' words don't become any more true just because you add the words "in their invisible friend" after the word "faith." The differences in the meanings of the word "faith" aren't even subtle. They make the difference between whether evidence is even a consideration or not.

Me: "Sorry to be blunt, but how can you possibly offer so much straw?"

Leni: "If you didn't want your position to be compared to a person talking to an invisble friend ..."

I wasn't fazed by you peppering your paragraphs with "invisible friend" or "sky daddy." I called your replies "straw" because they barely had a relationship with what I was saying at all. For example, you kept writing as if the word "faith" had a single meaning, even though multiple meanings of the word were under discussion. You were being evasive and using repetition of "sky daddy," "invisible friend," etc. as a distraction. Actually, the following is an especially good example of the latter.

Leni: "Really? Let's see now. If I tell a Christian that faith is just belief without evidence, and the response I get is, "That's B.S., faith is trust in my invisible friend, and here's the evidence that backs up my trust (in my invisible magic sky friend!)," then I have blundered the conversation right at the outset.

"Yes, I have. I've accepted invisible friends as worthwhile considerations."

No, your opponent is the one accepting invisible friends as worthwhile considerations. Your blunder is making an inaccurate assumption about your opponent and offering a Maginot Line argument as a result.

which is simply not true for those who believe that their faith is justified by evidence and can be defended with argument.

No. Gravity operates even for people who deny its existence. The belief of people about what their faith requires has nothing to do with what their faith requires.

You are intentionally confusing one's beliefs with the reality of the matter.

Caledonian, it is telling that you didn't quote me more fully:

"Dawkins wrote that faith 'requires no justification and brooks no argument,' which is simply not true for those who believe that their faith is justified by evidence and can be defended with argument."

I realize based on your activity in other threads that you like to use your own private definitions of words rather than deal with how they are used in practice. However, in the real world, words mean what the consensus of people who use them say they mean. If we are talking words in ancient documents, then they mean what the contemporaries and near-contemporaries of the document indicate that they meant. That goes for the word "faith" as much as it does the word "scientist". The belief of Christians as to what their own terminology means has everything to do with what their terminology means.

>The belief of Christians as to what their own terminology means has everything to do with what their terminology means.< - J.J.Ramsey

No; it has everything to do with their "beliefs," and nothing at all to do with "meaning."

No offence intended, J.J., but a remark this profoundly vacuous cannot possibly expect to simply be taken at face value, or to stand up to even the most cursory example of analytical scrutiny; "private language" arguments, offered in the public domain, would be immediately exposed as counterfeit. Or, to put it a different way, this is total bullshit. The sad part, as I see it, is that you already know that. Don't you?

Dylan: "No offence intended, J.J., but a remark this profoundly vacuous cannot possibly expect to simply be taken at face value, or to stand up to even the most cursory example of analytical scrutiny; 'private language' arguments, offered in the public domain, would be immediately exposed as counterfeit."

We aren't talking about a private language. The ways that Christians use the word "faith" is plenty evident from their own literature, their own web pages, their own conversations with themselves and others, etc.

>We aren't talking about a private language. The ways that Christians use the word "faith" is plenty evident from their own literature, their own web pages, their own conversations with themselves and others, etc.< - J.J.

Ohhhhh...I get it! If Christians happen to clandestinely co-opt a term that is commonly attributed a particular meaning in a more comprehensive culture, then the word that has been surreptitiously shanghied no longer is saddled with the responsibility of remaining intelligible, when it is used as an item of exchange between the Christians and the greater community? Yes? It becomes, instead, a Christian shibboleth; fully aprehended -- and its "true" meaning appropriately appreciated -- only by those who have been granted admission into the Christian religion? Do you also have a "secret sign," or a special handshake; one that is exchanged only by properly initiated Christians?

When you share the language, and you want to ensure that there is as little confusion as possible in any exchange that is important to fundamental understanding, then it is your responsibility to observe, and respect, the appropriate rules and conventions of that language. Speaking in tongues may be a fully recognized, and regular element of some Christian sects, but it doesn't mean a whole lot "out here."

Dylan: "Ohhhhh...I get it! If Christians happen to clandestinely co-opt a term that is commonly attributed a particular meaning in a more comprehensive culture, then the word that has been surreptitiously shanghied no longer is saddled with the responsibility of remaining intelligible"

First, there is nothing clandestine about it. Second, there is nothing unintelligible about the various takes that Christians have on the word "faith." If you don't like the fact that subcultures adopt secular words and modify their meanings, tough. It just means that (gasp!) you will have to pay a bit more attention to what the subcultures in question are saying and doing in order to understand them. Gee, what a concept. Taner Edis has been up to that task, and he is a physicist by training, not a religious scholar. I think you can manage to keep up. It's not like you are dealing with a secret club.

Leni: "Again, these distinctions are not relevant if your prime concern is the unjustified quality of faith in general. As it is for, I think you know, Dawkins."

Trouble is, Dawkins, said something that made those distinctions relevant. If he had said,

"However one fleshes out the meaning of faith, it still involves trust, and the faith, or trust, if you will that people put in God is simply unmerited."

we wouldn't be having this discussion. As it stands, Dawkins wrote that faith "requires no justification and brooks no argument," which is simply not true for those who believe that their faith is justified by evidenceand can be defended with argument.

People who believe their faith is brooked by evidence are full of shit.

Period.

Leni: "People who believe their faith is brooked by evidence are full of shit."

Or they have been snowed by apologists, or haven't otherwise learned how poor their evidence is.

Sorry for the late answers, I have had too much other stuff in my hands.

So FWIW:

Ron:

Seems like something else is missing.

There are degrees of ability in learning and communication, sure.

But you see there is just no real evidence that that is the case.

How does that detract from the discovery that neural nets can self-organize symbols?

JJ Ramsey:

Dawkins is still on the hook for his bad moves.

What hook and what moves?

Confidence is much different than faith, at least in the way it is normally used. If we know a person well, and we say we have faith that they will act in a certain way, what we usually mean is that we're confident in our projection of how they will act. 'Faith' is what we have when we're confident in our projection of the behavior of someone we don't know.

One is rational, one delusional.