An old picture that has little to do with the topic, but kind of captures my mood today.
Sorry. No drawing for this week as I’ve been too busy taking care of my dog. But I did want to put something out there as food for thought:
Many of you have probably become aware of this study that has been making the rounds on the Internet. As much as I would love to agree with its conclusions, I’m glad to see that most people are rightly deriding as being rather silly. Gloating about this type of nonsense does no one any good, and just serves to close off discussion.
The easy response to any political or philosophical opposition is to simply call it ignorant or stupid. We all have this response in our weak moments, though, I think, most of us realize it fallibility. I, unfortunately, fall back to this response too often.
But really, the issue at hand is generally not lack of intelligence, but rather a flaw in methodology. In any controversial topic, you can often find both sides of the argument are using sound logic but still coming to radically different conclusions. Most likely this stems from one side beginning with a faulty premise.
What I mean is – stupid people can’t create the incredible logical twists it takes for them to deny reality so effectively. If you want an example of this, look at conspiracy theory forums. Or better yet, visit a fundamentalist Christian forum where people are arguing about End-of-Time prophecies. You will never see a greater display of mind-bending nonsense in your life.
Anyway, that is a discussion for another time. Really, I just wanted to address a few issues that seem to come up in the discussions surrounding the study.
Claim: Atheism is Not Rational
One thing that I saw over and over was people (conservative and liberal) characterizing atheists as being frightened, angry, or ignorant. All of these are fairly common derisions. Ray Comfort makes statements like this all the time. It’s inconceivable to him that someone could come to the conclusion that there is probably no god. Therefore, to his mind, atheists are not thinking rationally, but are denying the existence of God because they are angry – or some other emotional response. This is the kind of response that atheists tend to get from the fundamentalists.
On the other hand, more liberal theists and agnostics tend to characterize atheists as being just as ignorant or fundamentalist as the Pat Robertsons of the world. To their minds, the rational response is one that is less definitive in tone.
This criticism is bound to have a greater impact on someone like me. I recognize that the first thing that any intellectual should do is question their own thoughts and beliefs. I’m sure that all of you have had moments where you think that, with so many people believing the opposite of your views, the faulty reasoning must lie with you. But then, that is the beauty of logic – it’s not a popularity contest.
So, to me, this criticism does not hold much water. First off, I’ve never really met an intelligent person that I would characterize as a strong atheist – a “There definitely is no God!” kind of person. Most have been like myself – the “There probably is no God” kind. The idea is that any concept of god should start of as a null hypothesis. I suppose that this is semantics, but as every academic knows, you have to be sure that you agree on a definition before you can proceed.
I might as easily characterize myself as an a-leprechaunist. I cannot state definitively that there are no leprechauns anywhere in the universe, but that is not the point. The default setting should be “there are probably no leprechauns”. There are a number of reasons why we can make a statement like this – no leprechauns have ever been found, there is no current theory that could scientifically account for the evolution of such a creature, the cultural history of leprechauns as a folk-lore character is decently understood, etc. Now, by themselves, none of these reasons are sufficient proof for the non-existence of leprechauns (it is difficult to prove a negative, after all), but they suggest that it would be unreasonable to move away from the null hypothesis.
This is similar to how I relate to the concept of all supernatural entities, gods in particular.
And this is why I generally don’t like to characterize myself as an agnostic, or see that belief as being more rational than atheism. It is all about the default setting.
Claim: Skeptic are Close-minded
One consistent criticism of skeptics is that they are close-minded, unable to conceive of something beyond their limited experiences. But, again, I see this as a miss-characterization. Rationally-minded people follow the evidence as far as it goes. People who remain skeptical despite over-whelming evidence are deniers, and have moved away from science and reason. At the same time, when the evidence is stacked overwhelmingly against something, then to not be skeptical would be irrational.
People like Bill Maher sometimes strike me as being more contrarian than skeptical, following his ideology more often than his reason. He would see his beliefs as breaking from conventional wisdom and therefore more progressive and innovative. Most of the time he would be correct, of course. However, there are times when the consensus of experts is the most plausible answer. Maher remembers this when he dismisses the 9-11 truthers, but he forgets it when he discusses science-based medicine.
So who are the open-minded people and who are the close-minded? Am I being close-minded because I accept that the Holocaust happened and that people landed on the moon? These seem to be the most plausible conclusions based upon the evidence at hand. I would characterize the moon-hoax and Holocaust-denial people as the closed-minded ones. They anomaly-hunt – dismissing the mountains of evidence that conflicts with their views in order to focus on minute discrepancies or gaps in knowledge. This is the same thing that the Intelligent-Design people do. They do not really have a competent, testable theory of their own, so they focus on demonstrating perceived “flaws” in Theory of Natural Selection.
So, let’s say that I’m not close-minded in those instances, but am I then close-minded when I accept the scientific consensus for climate-change or for the efficacy of vaccines? Or when I remain skeptical of homeopathy and psychics? What about when I conclude that Loose Change and Zeitgeist are full of misinformation, wild speculations, and logical fallacies?
I’ve heard people state that it would be ludicrous to deny climate-change because the scientific evidence supporting it is overwhelming, and then (often in the same breath), state that Western science is too limited and close-minded to accurately study acupuncture.
Where does the difference lie? Are the Truthers and the Birthers really any different in their methodology?
When Jenny McCarthy is on Larry King claiming that doctors and researchers are under the control of Big Pharma, who is really being close-minded?
Conclusion
This argument about which position, in controversial topics, is the more intelligent one is really not productive. We should be more focused on the methodology. Which side is trying to eliminate bias and follow the evidence? Which side is really beginning with the most plausible premise?
If we can do that, then, perhaps, we can stop calling each other stupid and go back to calling each other “crazy” like we should have all along.
