Christians Must Denigrate Reason, Science and Evidence to Believe
I've said before that most Christians must denigrate reason, the sciences and evidence in order to believe. This just in, another Christian denigrates the sciences in order to believe. I've seen believers do this time and again. But with Paul Manata it is extremely blatant. So, let me get this straight Paul, just because the social sciences don't yet "have anything remotely approaching a scientific understanding of human society" we can dismiss what they do tell us about human society, eh? Until the social sciences "predict human behavior comprehensively and reliably" there is nothing at all we can learn from them, right Paul? Balderdash! Complete and utter foolishness. Oh but wait, faith demands foolishness.
29 comments:
What I find interesting, that John Pilbrow, a Christian colleague of mine, and a professor of physics, with qualifications very few can ever hope to attain, holds Christian faith and top level science at the same time. Your point does not actually make any sense.
Phil.
I actually didn't say anything, I linked to a post by someone who knows the field, while you do not.
Anyway, in your book, chs 1-3, you guys pretended that the social sciences did "have [something] remotely approaching a scientific understanding of human society".
So what do I care if you want to deny the overreaching claims of your book?
And dude, what's up with saying "Balderdash?"
Just find us one social scientist who thinks the social sciences have nothing to offer us unless it can "predict human behavior comprehensively and reliably."
Jim Manzi the author of that piece "is the founder and chairman of an applied artificial intelligence software company. He is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author of a forthcoming book about scientific knowledge and freedom."
This is obviously bunk.
John, who said "the social scientists have nothing to offer us?"
Re: Reverend Phillip Brown
What I find interesting is that Hector Avalos, an atheist professor of religious studies at my university with qualifications very few can ever hope to attain, holds Christian faith to be total bunk.
Now that our appeals to authority have canceled each other out, do you have anything of substance to contribute?
I think it's generally understood (in academia, not the blogosphere) that as the object of inquiry narrows (paradigmatically in, e.g., physics, and even mathematics) the conclusions become more certain, but less significant. In less secure fields, the most serious of which is probably cognitive psychology, then moving on to the more "social sciences," the object of inquiry either becomes enormously complex (e.g., the human mind) or becomes both enormously complex and extremely broad (e.g., "human society," which if seriously understood would require deep comprehensive knowledge in virtually all disciplines). Then you move on to even more speculative fields, such as some inquiry done in philosophy, or even literature. Noam Chomsky has remarked that, so far, we are likely to learn more about "human nature" from art and poetry than we are from the sciences.
This is why the overly dramatic and general claims of anyone using these fields for highly polemical purposes can be readily dismissed. Paul Manata's excerpt from some wacky person seemed to be trying to get at this, albeit poorly. However, I read it a couple of times searching for the views you attribute to the excerpt, in vain. A narrow quest, with a highly reliable result.
As i said over on the Triablogue site:
Piece by piece, bit by bit, brick by brick, human knowledge, whether it be through physics, astronomy, cosmology, anthropology, psychology, neuroscience, sociology and the expansive range of other human investigative activities, are building a comprehensive, rigorous and consistent base of understanding of the human condition, one which has so many more melding aspects than those that are disjunctive, as to leave theology, astrology, alchemy in the dust of antiquity. And this has happened largely over the last little while. And it is exponentially growing. We must look to controlling the neolithic evolutionary traces of our brain if we are to further the well-being of humanity in embracing the future.
Cheers
I don't think the Paul Manata quote you cite goes far enough to prove your point, but I think it's a point worth following through because over the years of being a Christian I certainly witnessed and regretably took part in a fair share of science bashing.
No. Christians accept the evidence (of the super-natural). It is the atheists who do not accept it, and who try to circumvent it in any way possible.
Jon Hanson, there was no "Paul Manata quote."
Reverend Phillip Brown said: "What I find interesting, that John Pilbrow, a Christian colleague of mine, and a professor of physics, with qualifications very few can ever hope to attain, holds Christian faith and top level science at the same time. Your point does not actually make any sense."
Evil Don the Pirate said: "Now that our appeals to authority have canceled each other out, do you have anything of substance to contribute?"
It wasn't an irrelevant appeal to authority, it was a counter-example intended to directly refute Loftus' ignorant claim.
Loftus didn't make his case against Paul either. Paul's pointing out what social science does and doesn't know in no way denigrates science.
Rev Phil,
What I find interesting, speaking as a physicist who knows lots of other physicists, some of whom are lifelong Christians, others who were Christians and became atheists, and a few who were atheists and became Christians... Not a single one of these people who remain religious are conservatives, and what's more, the majority of them aren't just liberal Christians, their faith is highly unorthodox. Most don't believe Jesus rose from the dead, for example.
In other words, by your standards, they probably aren't "real" Christians. John's point actually stands up pretty well.
I think a lot of them have black and white thinking disorder. They have to reject all science because some of it conflicts with some of their fairy tales.
Others compartmentalize. They believe in science, and the miracles of the bible are miracles *because* they break the laws of science. Everything else is just set aside as not pertaining to scientific method.
"What I find interesting, that John Pilbrow, a Christian colleague of mine, and a professor of physics, with qualifications very few can ever hope to attain, holds Christian faith and top level science at the same time."
I think it's been posted here before, but here are some relevant statistics. Interestingly, believers tend to point to these same stats to prove that science is compatible with religion.
scientist from the national academy of sciences, 1998:
believers, 7%
agnostic, 20.8%
disbelieve, 72.2%
In 1998, a study by Larson and Witham appeared on the leading journal Nature ("Leading scientists still reject God"), showing that of the American scientists who had been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, only about 7 percent believe in a personal god. Religious believers form about 40 percent of the less eminent scientists in America. In the United States, 7 percent of eminent scientists believe in God, while 40 percent of less eminent scientists believe in God.
The analyses of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Study 1) and the General Social Surveys (Study 2) show that adolescent and adult intelligence significantly increases adult liberalism, atheism, and men’s (but not women’s) value on sexual exclusivity."Kanazawa
Disbelief in God by Academics Discipline %:
Physics 40.8
Chemistry 26.6
Biology 41.0
Overall 37.6
Sociology 34.0
Economics 31.7
Political Science 27.0
Psychology 33.0
Overall 31.2
Re: Neal
Yes, it was an irrelevant appeal to authority. No one ever said a good scientist cannot be a Christian. I'm sure you've heard of cognitive dissonance. If not, look it up. Ask some of these Christian scientists if they test their religious beliefs with the same rigor they test scientific theories (or even at all). RPB's counter-example did nothing to refute John because it completely missed the point, and it's apparent you have as well.
Paul Manata,
Did you read and think through the article you linked to? I don't see how you could have. You appear to be accepting without thought what the author, Jim Manzi, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, says, perhaps as an article of religious faith, perhaps confirming existing biases you have. The article titled "What Social Science Does—and Doesn’t—Know" and having the curious subtitle, "Our scientific ignorance of the human condition remains profound" was published in the Manhattan Institute's quarterly publication, City Journal.
If you read other things by Manzi and other City Journal authors you immediately realize that none of that material is scholarly work intended to provide the reader with the means to understand and further research an issue. It is all ideologically driven opinion in the vein of Limbaugh, Beck and O'Reilly. "What Social Science Does—and Doesn’t—Know" is nothing more than a grandiose opinion piece lavishly ornamented with buzzwords, names of notable people, allusions to ideas from the sciences, and the author ostentatiously patting himself on the back.
From the Manzi quote you put in a different color with a gargantuan bold font, At the moment, it is certain that we do not have anything remotely approaching a scientific understanding of human society, it's clear you think you've hit the mother lode of science refutations, but I don't think you read, thought out and understood the article, the context in which it was written and published, who was its intended target audience, or just how fast and loose Manzi felt free to be with his claims and assertions about science. If we consider all these points we see that this article failed completely. Do you actually think the article had merit enough to convince anyone that the current state of social science is that deficient? Were you convinced by what it said, or did you simply quote mine it?
Manzi's article targeted, foremost, persons who support the Manhattan Institute, wealthy conservative free-marketeers, and he was fulfilling his duty to tell them what they insist on being told: you're free to make up whatever policies you want based on your own free market ideals since science can be ignored. Manzi's audience wants complete freedom to manipulate the system to their advantage, and they want the City Journal to supply them with justification for doing so. He ended his article saying, " ... we need to keep stumbling forward with trial-and-error learning as best we can." His audience sees the findings of social science as slowing their rate of wealth growth, so they want to feel good about rejecting it. Manzi warms their little hearts by putting in print - print they've paid for - exactly what they want to hear. He's proven nothing. He hasn't provided a valid argument or data to support his thesis. Worse, the article itself provides reasons to reject his claims.
From the onset, the author betrays his own propagandist's intentions. His chosen seminal example of social science's uselessness is economic forecasting. Americans hand over more than 70 billion dollars annually to financial advisors, very few of whom perform better than random guessing would acheive. Economic forecasting is no more science than is Creation Science, so Manzi starts out being dishonest. He's not writing to inform or otherwise educate. He's writing to satisfy a specific audience's desires, so if he thought he could pull it off, he'd latch onto astrology, tarot card reading, or divining from entrails. He only used economic forecasting because it stands as far as he dared be from an actual scientific discipline while still being certain his target readers could be bamboozled by his calling it science and his using words that sound sort of sciency. This is a man who obviously has no place making pronouncements about what science does or does not know.
Paul Manata,
Manzi tries to leverage the respect associated with the Nobel awards. But, in this case he wants that cheap and easy respect to work against the Nobel laureates since it tags them as members of the vilified group of the day, "scientists," and, that worst of the worst kind possible, "social scientists." This man is a shyster, pure and simple. By conflating Nobel physicists and Nobel economists he creates for his readers a false equivalency. In service to his audience whose biases and wishes are well-known -- remember this is not a reviewed journal -- he wants economists of every sort to serve as the strawman for science. Though social science is explicitly named in the indictments, the article's subtitle "Our scientific ignorance of the human condition remains profound," gives the reader permission to assign the strawman whatever role from science they choose. They need the latitude to reject science at will since the physical sciences play important roles in the processes, methods, and techniques of the social sciences.
Manzi explicitly draws all of science into his strawman's shadow when he says in the first paragraph, "Fierce debates can be found in frontier areas of all the sciences, of course." This is trivially true, but its insidious purpose is to permit him to burn anything he likes in the same flames that consume the strawman. Economic forecasting is not science, and Manzi knows its obvious failings will make it easy to set ablaze. The false equivalencies he has fabricated between economic forecasting and the sciences lets economic forecasting serve as kindling for all the rest.
Paul, this guy is gaming you and you are ripe for the con. Just how ripe are you for the con. Let me tell you.
Manzi tells us that he knows the social sciences are not actual sciences. He talks about transforming "social sciences into actual sciences." But, as he goes along, what we discover is that what he actually means to say is that the social sciences in academia are not actual sciences. Then, he goes on to applaud corporate social science as practiced at Capital One, a credit card company he had a hand in founding. He talks about how his company used the tools of experimental social science - he says, "By 2000, Capital One was reportedly running more than 60,000 tests per year" - to grow Capital One into a public corporation worth $35 billion.
So, which is it? Does social science work or doesn't it? If Capital One is using it, they clearly think it works. The tools and techniques they are using are exactly those taught in the social science departments at schools like Stanford, Duke, and Michigan, and those are the sorts of places Capital One would get their new social science employees.
The man is lying to you and the rest of his audience, and getting you to accept the lie. He tells you the social sciences are failures while he simultaneously cites Capital One as a shining case study of the success of the social sciences. So convinced is he that you will not see the ruse and that you will play right along, that he even rubs your nose in it as he gloats about how the experimental social sciences have revolutionized the way many decisions are made in business. You're his ideal reader. You're a schmuck and he knows it. You ignore every error and inconsistency because you want him to be right concerning the quote you lit up on your blog.
Paul Manata,
At one point he laments,
Unlike physics or biology, the social sciences have not demonstrated the capacity to produce a substantial body of useful, nonobvious, and reliable predictive rules about what they study—that is, human social behavior, including the impact of proposed government programs.
Think about this, Paul. He's telling you that academic social science programs haven't produced hard and fast predictive rules, while he brags about how Capital One's success has been due to the effectiveness of experimental social science at inducing changes in people's credit buying habits. He has a strong financial interest in the malleability of people's habits. He demands that human behavior to be both predictable and changeable. To debase science he demands that it do the impossible: find reliable models of human behavioral predictability. To let the markets run free, he demands that people be subject to the methods of corporate evangelism evinced through experimental social science used by Capital One, for one. Predictable or unpredictable? Which is it?
The question has to be asked: if Capital One has all the tools for fully knowing the affects of decisions on a large scale, why didn't they make us all aware of the current economic problems before they rained down on us?
Manzi says that in the social sciences,
The missing ingredient is controlled experimentation, which is what allows science positively to settle certain kinds of debates.
Lie. I have several statistician friends who do protocol design and data analysis in the social sciences and controls are one of the first considerations in every design. That has been the case in the social sciences for many decades. Manzi is lying, or he is so ignorant that he's not to be trusted.
The author wrote,
Over many decades, social science has groped toward the goal of applying the experimental method to evaluate its theories for social improvement.
Here you have a man who understands that any social program, from education to fighting homelessness, in order for it to work, requires money. He knows that. He also knows that he and his Manhattan Institute will do its part to cut all funding for any and all social programs whether for the VA hospitals or AIDS research. He will gladly use the power he has to make social programs fail, and, then, hide his culpability by pointing his finger at the program itself. He and his family don't need the social programs, but he and his corporate culture are certainly major contributors to the circumstances that cause many of our fellow humans to need them.
To underscore his own stupidity concerning science Manzi says,
To understand the role of experiments in this context, we should go back to the beginning of scientific experimentation. In one of the most famous (though probably apocryphal) stories in the history of science, Galileo dropped unequally weighted balls from the Leaning Tower of Pisa and observed that they reached the ground at the same time.
This guy's just slapping down words. If this was edited, the editor was as clueless as our author. Galileo did not live until many millenia after man began scientific investigations and experimentation. Man had been domesticating and applying selective breeding in plants and animals, making tools and weapons, harnessing fire, using science in hunting practices, using chemical and biological weapons, and using agricultural techniques such as irrigation for many thousands of years before Galileo. Manzi is talking out his ass. Is he really convincing you, Paul?
Paul Manata,
Mr. Manzi shows that he knows his audience are a bunch of idiots when he says,
And in everyday life, lighter objects often do fall more slowly than heavy ones because of differences in air resistance and other factors.
Often? Other factors? He probably inserted the sentence and was so enamored with it that he tried to rescue it with qualifiers. Hell, a friend of mine has a hot air balloon that, including the hot air, weighs about 7500 pounds, yet it rises. However, Manzi's readers don't care about details, do they, Paul? There is a general irrelevancy to much of what he says here.
See this from my perspective, will you? This man has an ax to grind. He wants to disgrace modern science, especially the social sciences, but rather than referencing some body of work that demonstrates their general failed state, he wants us to be impressed with Galileo and Aristotle and other non sequiturs like scurvy. None of what he says compels one to think of the social sciences as ineffective. Then, too, he offers up the word 'theory' as a sop to his envisioned ideal reader as he puts it in a scientific context while using it as a synonym for hunch or guess.
Paul, in this article, Manzi exposes himself as an ideological hack. He admits,
Crime, like any human social behavior, has complex causes and is therefore difficult to predict reliably.
But, still he insists that the uselessness of the social sciences lies in their inability to create reliable predictive models. All while one of his "complex causes" for crime is the great success of financial service corporations like his Capital One at leaving millions of people paralyzed by debt through their use of the optimal marketing practices derived from the experimental social sciences.
This silly man titled the article, What Social Science Does—and Doesn’t—Know: Our scientific ignorance of the human condition remains profound, and then played the propagandist game with his readers, most of whom, I'm sure, were, like you, Paul, highly appreciative for the game. But, the title only vaguely related to the content and when we compare his title to the what he said in the closing paragraph, we can feel his sigh of relief at having gotten in his 4000 words and being done with it. Here's that last paragraph:
At the moment, it is certain that we do not have anything remotely approaching a scientific understanding of human society. And the methods of experimental social science are not close to providing one within the foreseeable future. Science may someday allow us to predict human behavior comprehensively and reliably. Until then, we need to keep stumbling forward with trial-and-error learning as best we can.
Notice that the title mentions "human condition," but he ends talking about "human society" and "human behavior." Are we to think they are all the same things? This article never came close to establishing the premise set out in its overblown, overreaching, and overarching title. There's no reason to think Manzi did anything more than have some lacky scrounge up some social science statistics that appear to make his case which he then pieced together, adding filler with a few google searches.
If as he suggests corporate America has the antidotes for our social ills, then let them show us. If he has the answers himself let them be known and tested under conditions of full funding. Until such time, however, I'll let his great confidence and reliance on experimental social science speak for him. It tells us that he's made a lot of money from it.
Paul Manata,
It's sad that you were so taken in by this cad. I think it unforgivable that any thinking reader would accept this author's conclusion that the social sciences are a failure and boldly, colorfully, and in really big font concur with his assessment that At the moment, it is certain that we do not have anything remotely approaching a scientific understanding of human society, given his dishonest tactics and approach. He dishonestly equated economic forecasting with science though it is not. He tried to use the imagined equivalency to discredit the whole lot of the social sciences - you know, political science, anthropology, economics, archaeology, geography, linguistics, international studies, history, some forms of psychology. Realize he never said how it is that poor predictability in economic forecasting speaks badly of anthropology, but he did try to make the general claim. He then railed against some unfortunate crime statistics but still never told us how they discredit geography or history.
Here at DC you commented to John,
I actually didn't say anything, I linked to a post by someone who knows the field, while you do not.
No, Paul, not even close. Manzi does not even show that he understands what the social sciences are, and he's far too stupid to realize that economic forecasting isn't a science, or that discrediting economic forecasting has no affect on any of the other social sciences. You revere an idiot.
Thanks Russ so much. I thought the same thing. Paul Manata will use anything he can use to defend what he prefers to be true and this is exhibit "A"
@ Evil Don the Pirate,
The argument of the post was...
'that most Christians must denigrate reason, the sciences and evidence in order to believe,' and then John gave an illustration.
I simply state that this in my experience does not make sense since one of Australia's top scientists and probably the one of the World's most qualified scientists finds orthodox faith fine and compatible. Please see his recent paper on my blog.
So say that most Christians must denigrate science therefore is a null statement. Most Christians do not need to denigrate science as a highly trained scientists proves. Therefore John's statement does not make sense.
Thanks for your comment but you missed the point of what I was saying and Neal had it correct.
Phil.
No Phillip Brown, you're still missing the point completely. No one said a Christian can't accept the findings of science. You're setting up a strawman. Everyone is aware that many eminent scientists are religious. The argument is not that such people do not exist. It's that in their religious faith they denigrate the findings of science. This is not a difficult concept. When acting as a scientist they think in one way that requires conclusions to be based on evidence and reason. But in their religious faith they reject the need for evidence and reason and accept the tenets of their religion on faith. Again, ask your colleague if he tests the tenets of his faith as rigorously as he tests scientific theories, or if he even tests them at all.
"So say that most Christians must denigrate science therefore is a null statement. Most Christians do not need to denigrate science as a highly trained scientists proves. Therefore John's statement does not make sense."
Wait, wait...
I'm sorry...
"So say that most Christians must denigrate science therefore is a null statement. Most Christians do not need to denigrate science as a highly trained scientists proves. Therefore John's statement does not make sense.
When did the meaning of the word most suddenly mimic the definition of all?
The claim stands, Reverend. He said most, not all, and simply because one man can find faith and observe scientific principles at the same time doesn't mean that there aren't hundreds of thousands of Fundamentalists who think that the Earth is 6000 years old, or less.
@ Evil Don the Pirate, (If that is your real name ;-)
You said,
It's that in their religious faith they denigrate the findings of science...
When acting as a scientist they think in one way that requires conclusions to be based on evidence and reason. But in their religious faith they reject the need for evidence and reason and accept the tenets of their religion on faith.
My Reply,
Are you aware of what you are saying? The post title is that 'Christians Must Denigrate Reason, Science and Evidence to Believe.' You now argue that they do not denigrate science, they act on conclusions and evidence and reason, when doing science, meaning, they do proper science but in their religious faith they do not do this? This is not denigrating science at all. So your point is that Christian scientists do not denigrate science they just forget about it when they are a Christian. Clearly you do not understand the post. I suggest you re-read through it again and the comments carefully before commenting.
Phil.
@ Shane,
Thanks for the comment,
You said,
He said most, not all, and simply because one man can find faith and observe scientific principles at the same time doesn't mean that there aren't hundreds of thousands of Fundamentalists who think that the Earth is 6000 years old, or less.
My Reply,
Correct, it does not mean that at all, but it does not mean what John statement is correct. Did you notice that John gives no, evidence for his conclusion (very scientifically denigrating) just a personal isolated example. One which I countered with my own personal example thus rendering his point invalid. Just because one person in John's opinion denigrates science in his faith walk does not mean all do. Therefore the point is still null and it initially was.
Phil.
One more time Rev., and this is the last time, no one has ever said a Christian cannot be a good scientist. Not John Loftus or anyone else. But in order to justify their beliefs they must denigrate reason, science, and evidence because those beliefs have no basis in reason, science, or evidence. Christian scientists value reason and evidence when they're acting as scientists, then reject them when they are in church. The belief in the virgin birth, the resurrection, miracles, the holy spirit, and every other major tenet of Christianity are at odds with reason, evidence, and science. To value the scientific method when doing science then reject it when it comes to matters of faith is to denigrate science.
Here's a thought I expressed in another thread and I'm not going to try and find the exact quote, but here it is:
"IF God is real, then science is a part of his creation by default.
BUT...
IF science pierces through to the ultimate answers (it MIGHT, Christians; science isn't DONE finding out the truth of things), then God is still just a possibility, but not NECESSARY to the equation.
This is enough to bolster my atheism:
If GOD, then science;
If science, then (tiny) MAYBE God.
Get it?
Hi Russ
You recount, ..."Mr. Manzi shows that he knows his audience are a bunch of idiots when he says,
And in everyday life, lighter objects often do fall more slowly than heavy ones because of differences in air resistance and other factors."
But does Mr Manzi and his idiot audience realise that they live in a theistic vacuum? He and his audience are clearly living in a hermetically sealed thought bubble out from which they view the world.
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