The Cybernetic Atheist's Mission Statement

I occurs to me that I've not truly expressed my beliefs and what I hope to show the world in my blog.

Yeah, a blog.  Everybody and his donkey has a blog.  Not a big deal.

I really don't care.  This is MY blog, and I hope to tell the world what I think about just about anything that comes to mind.  There are, however, some issues that are more important and will (have been) blogged about more than others.

Separation of Church and State

Politics

Dominionism

Religion

Atheism

Harm from Religion

Spiritualism

Science and Technology

Apple, Inc. products and similar cool stuff

Weird stuff

Secular Humanism

Now, taking this one step at a time, here goes.

Separation of Church and State

I am an American citizen.  I have spent over 40 years of my life serving the United States Government and have taken two oaths to support and defend the Constitution.  One was military - four years, and the other the civilian oath for Federal Civil Service - 36 years, all of that at the FDA.

The Constitution has as part of its first Amendment the guarantee of religious freedom.  Two clauses, one to keep the government out of religious affairs, and one to keep religions out of government affairs.  Together, they protect all Americans from any one religion (or religious sect) from dominating the government and dictating religious affairs to the rest of the country.  A clause in the Constitution itself forbids any religious test of office, going further to protect us from religious influence.

It isn't perfect, as today's struggle to keep fundamentalist Christianity from overturning the US Constitution and creating a Theocracy is proof of.  (Yes, Dominionists really ARE trying to do that.)

I am opposed to that, and am avowed to do anything I can to support separating religion from public affairs.  The First Amendment provides excellent cover for religious folks to go to church and even practice their religion in the privacy of their own lives without the rest of us interfering.  It also guarantees them the right to associate with others of like belief.

The oaths I took obligate me to protect the rights of ALL Americans, religious and non-religious, and I WILL do that, but I will NOT support anybody forcing their religious practices on anyone who does not believe.  I will also not support anybody forcibly stopping people from believing in a god, either. 

Believe how you want, practice - or not - as you wish.  But you cannot use the power of the government - Local, State or Federal - to force your religious practices on the entire country.

Politics

I am pretty much an Independent.  I am registered in Maryland as a Democrat - mostly because that's the best way I see to use my vote.  I refuse, on principle, to vote for a Republican, until that party regains its senses and dumps both the religious loonies and the Tea Party extremists.  If they ever do, and become a viable party with sensible and competent leaders, then I'll begin looking at individual Republicans running for office again.

I support universal single payer health care, legalization of marijuana, reasonable limitations on firearm ownership, separation of Church and State, immediate measures to curb human contributions to climate change, a reasonable balance between human and animal habitation of our planet, strict control over our capitalistic economic system, including harsh prison sentences for economic leaders who endanger the system by emphasizing private gain, government programs to assist the unfortunate and the impoverished.

I am in complete support of full, free public education, from pre-school through four year University level.  There is nothing more critical to a functioning and healthy democracy than a fully educated and reasoning citizenry, and it is our obligation to future generations of Americans to see that they receive the full benefits of the best education this country can provide.  Nothing else is as likely to eliminate poverty than that.

I am in full support of full and complete equality of all human beings, regardless of race, sex, gender identification or sexual orientation.  Human rights are HUMAN rights, and no sub-classification by arbitrary label has the power to abrogate any of those rights, no matter what label that may be.

I also explicitly support the freedom of women to choose their own way when it comes to procreation.  Or the choice to NOT procreate.  They have the right to choose to carry a pregnancy to term or not, and in consultation with the physician of their choice, the right to end that pregnancy however is appropriate to their individual circumstances, should those circumstances demand it.

Dominionism

I have seen the evidence and firmly am of the opinion that the group known as Dominionists are determined to overthrow the United States government as a democracy and transform it into a theocracy.  I will publish and repost whatever information I see to bring awareness of them and their activities to public light, in an effort to persuade as many people as possible to oppose their lunacy.

Religion

I am a firm atheist.  I do not believe in a god of any kind, and believe that religions of all kinds represent some form of confidence game with the purpose of gaining political and economic power for whatever priestly or guiding group controls the organizations supporting worship of any particular god or gods.

While I do see the lack of evidence for a "historical Jesus" as lacking, which makes that historicity unlikely, I think that the more important point is that since there is no god, there can have been no son, so even if there WAS a man whose existence may have been overblown into legendary status, the claims of godhood cannot be true, by definition.  Ergo, stop bothering me with it.

Atheism

Being an atheist is similar to not believing in the tooth fairy.  The word defines something I DON'T believe in, not what I do.  There are other, more positive things that define my ethics and my moralities.

Harm from Religion

I believe that the widespread belief in religion brings harm to all mankind and retards our progress into the future.

It does so by causing people to filter reality through a false lens, altering their responses and making them do things which actively harm others as well as, often, themselves.  It causes people to make political decisions based on bronze age ethics and morals in an age where such practices have long been discarded as cruel and unusual, causing turmoil, dissension and violent political strife and, often, war.  It causes people to make claims on land based on ancient legends and stories backed by no more than books of dubious authenticity and provenance - claims which have roiled the entire globe with violence and untold turmoil for decades, with little possibility for any reasonable settlement.

It breaks up families, promotes child abuse, opposes public education and encourages people to blindly follow authorities who have no competence or ability to lead, and often, only lead to aggrandize themselves.

It encourages entire sects of people to disbelieve climate change based on a false sense of believing that god will somehow come back to repair the damage we have done.

Historically, it has encouraged its believers to kill those who do not believe the same as themselves, and many sects still do so today.  Many of these will kill apostates.

I could go on, but you get the gist of what I am saying.

Spiritualism

I believe that when human beings die, our personality dies with the death of the body, in which the personality resides.  There is no soul, no spirit.  No ghosts.  Yes, ghost stories may be fun, and scare the crap out of your younger siblings, but there is no basis for believing in their existence.

Spiritualism is, in short, something that resides within ourselves, and gives us the ability to improve the way we use our minds.  It helps us to balance ourselves, removing stress and tension and improving our mental state of mind.

It does not connect us to a greater power, nor does it make us one with the Universe.

Science and Technology

I believe that mankind will improve our standard of living, our health and our relationship with the rest of mankind as we learn more and more about the Universe, how it works and how our own biology works.  I encourage the continued activities of people the world over to invest in the continued and growing research and development of science and technology.

Apple, Inc. and all its products.

I love Apple.  I love its tech, I love its products.  I will occasionally talk about anything I see as cool that they  are coming out with.

Weird stuff

As knowledgeable about Science and the universe as we may be, any scientist will tell you that the whole point of science is to discover the things we do NOT know.  I like to occasionally explore the weird stuff that indicates things we may still be ignorant about.

Secular Humanism

I am at heart, a secular humanist.  This pretty much sums up what I feel.

• A conviction that dogmas, ideologies and traditions, whether religious, political or social, must be weighed and tested by each individual and not simply accepted on faith.

• Commitment to the use of critical reason, factual evidence, and scientific methods of inquiry, rather than faith and mysticism, in seeking solutions to human problems and answers to important human questions.

• A primary concern with fulfillment, growth, and creativity for both the individual and humankind in general.

• A constant search for objective truth, with the understanding that new knowledge and experience constantly alter our imperfect perception of it.

• A concern for this life and a commitment to making it meaningful through better understanding of ourselves, our history, our intellectual and artistic achievements, and the outlooks of those who differ from us.

• A search for viable individual, social and political principles of ethical conduct, judging them on their ability to enhance human well-being and individual responsibility.

• A conviction that with reason, an open marketplace of ideas, good will, and tolerance, progress can be made in building a better world for ourselves and our children.

Robert W. Ahrens

Rockville, MD

The Cybernetic Atheist

None of Those Ashes for Me

By Gary Berg-Cross

Valentine’s day, a day of visible love, was preceded by Ash Wednesday this year - a day of humbling, visible religious affiliation used to reminder believers of people’s “dependence on God.”

But there were a few things about this 40 day AW event trending differently from past ones. For one thing on the 2013 Ash Wednesday, some priests went  mobile with SUvs into neighborhoods to offer service in a fast-based culture. It’s part of the part of a national "Ashes to Go" movement that began with an Episcopal church in St. Louis in 2007. You can get ashes outside of a church now and train stations are popular. In Baltimore:

Leta Dunham got her breakfast order to go at a Roland Avenue Starbucks Wednesday morning: a grande triple skim latte in her cup and, on her forehead, an ashen reminder that we are all destined to become dust.

Dunham was among Ash Wednesday observers who took advantage of Ashes to Go, a service offered by area Episcopal and Methodist churches at more than a dozen spots around the city and nearby counties, The practice seeks to bring the Lenten season ritual to the people, rather than waiting for them to come to church.

Transit &  Metro stops around cities' morning rush hour now offer ashes (and a prayer can be thrown in).  It’s like blue law abandonment as reluctant acknowledgment that busy Americans have less time to frequent houses of worship. So there is worship outreach coming to where the people are.

 But as the Washington Post noted a counter trend too and it is more than time to go to a church but also a reluctance to be so showy about their religion. An article called On Ash Wednesday, some faithful appear reluctant to wear belief on their foreheads notes that more people seem to be uncomfortable with showing faith in what one person called “a pompous way.” As David Kinnaman, president of Barna Group and author of several books on young Christians, noted:

The trend also stems from a fear of oppression by a secular culture and partly from a personal challenge, said. In a society questioning the very truth of God, what do you really believe? In the past, evangelism didn’t have that high a standard; you were sort of signing people up for something they already were predisposed to accept, .. Today it’s about people asking: How does that translate into real transformation? When I wear something, what is this saying about me?”

 

It’s another small part of the growing, unaffiliated Nones phenomena that the Post seems to be picking up on and has been blogged on here. Indeed one might think of it as part of broad demographic & cultural change phenomena that political parties as well a media groups are positioning themselves for.  As one deeply religious person interviewed said it, she doesn’t talk a lot about her faith at work because “some people don’t want to hear it.”

Strategically this may be part of a quiet period that is an opportunity to get a reasonable message across.  What may be needed is less reactive confrontation (such as flashing a big red A on Ash Wednesday) from  some of us.  And we need to listen to see what topics are interested to the None community. Some thoughts along this line are found in a discussion of 'None' leaders chart a path for more political, cultural power for the religiously unaffiliated. It's something that Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association has picked up on as a thoughtful, strategic stance. 

Images

Ashes to go: http://www.argusleader.com/viewart/20130213/UPDATES/130213029/First-day-Lent-marked-ashes-go-

Pew Study on Nones: http://answersforthefaith.com/2012/10/09/pew-study-on-religion-in-america-now-20-are-atheist-agnostic-or-unaffiliated/

None Nation: http://secular.org/content/nation-nones

 

 

 

 

 

Evolution Education is Pushed a Step Back in Korea

by Gary Berg-Cross

OK, we have some progress in Norway, but a now step back in South Korea (SK). Nature magazine reports that South Korea has surrendered to creationist petition demands to:

"remove references to evolution from high-school textbooks claimed victory last month after the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST) revealed that many of the publishers would produce revised editions that exclude examples of the evolution of the horse or of avian ancestor Archaeopteryx.

The petition was spearheaded by independent body called the Society for Textbook Revise , which is an offshoot of the Korea Association for Creation Research. They won acampaign to remove mentions of the evolution of the horse and of the Archaeopteryx (as we know an avian ancestor from the late Jurassic period) from secondary school textbooks in May. They apparently used conflicting debates in evolutionary research on the Archaeopteryx's capacity to fly as support for its position. Revise is not done, they now want to remove excerpts on human evolution and references to Darwin's infamous finch research from On the Origin of Species.

The move has caught SK biologists off guard and they are alarmed saying that they were not consulted about the petition.

“The ministry just sent the petition out to the publishing companies and let them judge,” says Dayk Jang, an evolutionary scientist at Seoul National University.

We'll see what they do about the new drive. Until now the Nature article notes, the scientific community has done little to combat the anti-evolution sentiment. Says Dayk Jang:

“The biggest problem is that there are only 5–10 evolutionary scientists in the country who teach the theory of evolution in undergraduate and graduate schools,”

Having seen the fierce debates over evolution in the US, he adds:

" some scientists also worry that engaging with creationists might give creationist views more credibility among the public."

People commenting on the Korean phenomena make some interesting points. One is that Christianity in South Korea is a bit different because it is a mix of Western religion, along with older practice from Confucian philosophies that are built into their daily lives. So some are "Christian" on Sunday, but Confucian daily at home and perhaps at work.

Among the influences are a degree of Asian-Korean social conformity. So they conform to "modern" Western tradition of being Christian. It goes with a large capitalist trend. They may not be so Bible studying and believe much of what the it says.

In this they may be part of a modern tendency for their Korean version of unconscious "hivemind". This triggers upset at people like Dawkins and Stephen Hawking if they say that the God concept is unfounded. They don't need to read the source articles to have an emotional reaction. So evolution is attackable.

Sounds familiar in a way. It's System 1's Associative Memory and bias at work in modern culture - see the Blog on this. It still simplifies human thought and puts critical thinking in that familiar secondary role forcing us to re-actively catch up.

Video of Kahneman Talk on Knowing along with some Notes.

By Gary Berg-Cross

2002 Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman delivered the 12th Annual Sackler Lecture recently. See my earlier Blog on this.  Some interested parties may have missed this talk entitled "Thinking that We Know". You can see a review of the talk as well as a video of the entire thing at the NYT Review. If you don’t have time for that, the following are some notes from the hour lecture which touched on topics from his recent book (“Thinking, Fast and Slow”).

Kahneman started off in a commonsense philosophical manner talking about knowing. To know implies absence of doubt and true belief. But truth is a philosophical concept, and people disagree about what is true. There’s scientific truth that comes from a shared search for agreed and objective truth. This is the central mission of science. But in science just any belief is not part of the conception. It is possible for “true believers “ not to accept science as the way to truth. They argue that since some belief is central to science therefore it is just another religion.

We need to recognize this gap in ideas of knowing.

As a psychologist a starting point for Kahneman was a discussion of what we have learned from Psychology devised laboratory paradigms of reasoning, especially in natural/social environments.

Here he discussed 'dual-process' model of the brain & theories of reasoning . This is the distinction between 2 types of reasoning systems -  ‘System 1’ and ‘System 2’ processes.

System 1 is an older and FAST form of universal cognition shared between animals and humans. It is probably actually not a single system but a set of subsystems that operate with some autonomy. System 1 includes what people call instinctive or intuitive knowing and behaviors. Kahneman and others like to System 1 processes as those that are formed by associate learning ((associative memory is often called instinctive). They are probably the kind produced by neural networks. System 1 processes are characterized as rapid, parallel and automatic in nature and usually only their resulting product becomes consciousness in humans.

System 2 In contrast is a more recent evolutionary development and is often called deliberate. It is slow and sequential in nature, takes effort (cognitive resources). K asks "What is 13 x 27?" System 2 makes use of the central working memory system. This leads to 2 different ideas of rationality. we apprehend the world in two radically opposed ways, employing two fundamentally different modes of thought – fast and slow.

Kahneman’s earliest study was mentioned in the NAS president’s introduction and Karhneman cites it as evidence of System 2 thinking. Pupils dilate when we engage in deliberately thinking. Yes the eyes are the windows into the mind!

While we like to think of ourselves as deliberate thinkers we are often associative thinkers. But to be fast we think that networks of associations need to be activated. These are not necessarily logical and they provide some quick but biased interpretations and are afforded by other associations. This makes for a Blink knowing, but often a deceptive one.

Take an association to the work “bank” in "approach the bank". A quick interpretation might select a meaning by frequency of use. Then "approach the bank" means going towards a financial institution rather than a river bank. It could also be primed by a related word so if we hear “fish” and “bank” then river is a more likely association.
You’ll have to see the video to see how Kahneman woos the audience with his story about his wife’s phrase "sexy man" and what he felt he knew she said afterwards as “doesn't undress the maid himself.”

As shown by studies associative memory interprets the present in terms of the past. In effect we produces stories that make sense based on these past associations (“sexy and “undress” are related). A good story makes associative sense. And this happens on stock market. It’s not deliberate reasoning but sloppy associative. Stats for atctual analysis of the performance of fund managers over the longer term shows that investors do just as well when basing financial decisions to a monkey throwing darts at a board. There is a tremendously powerful illusion of expertise that sustains managers in their belief their results, when good, are the result of skill. Kahneman explains this as a bias and thus "performance bonuses" are largely awarded for luck or stacking the deck and not real skill at projecting the future.

At this point K started citing studies showing how our interpretations of the likelihood of things is often not logical. What is the overall probability of a flood in California. People say small. Bit if asked the probability of a Flood from an earthquake in CA, the probability is higher, even though the probability of such things such be part of the first probability. Why the illogic? It’s just a better story.

At this point K moved to the topic of what is a valid argument? Truth and validity get confused as shown in the example below”

• All roses are Flowers
• Some Flowers fade quickly

· Therefore some Roes fade…..while that seems possible it is not logically true.

This shows that we reason by associations back from conclusion. Correct order is important for valid inference but not associations.

Kahneman provided some examples on the synergy of associations and how the environment influences what we think. If you hold a pencil between your teeth, forcing your mouth into the shape of a smile, you'll find a cartoon funnier than if you hold the pencil pointing forward, by pursing your lips round it in a frown-inducing way you feel more disgust for the cartoon. K had fun with this story. See also Timothy D Wilson’s book Strangers to Ourselves.

Associative coherence and emotion work differently than logical coherence. For emotions that have fit and adhere. This is suggested by a Paul Rozin’s poison experiment (Rozin et al. 1990). In Rozin’s experiment participants are shown 2 empty bottles that are subsequently filled with sugar. The experimenter then shows the participant two labels, one saying ‘Sugar’, the other saying ‘Sodium Cyanide.’ After reading the labels, participants are more hesitant to drink from the bottle with the ‘Sodium Cyanide’ label even it has OJ in it. There is associaton-based discomfort with.

And associations with particular people works strongly too. What we associate with a person has a great deal with how we believe and how we feel.
Most ideas come from people we like. That is a social belief comes from emotional trust.

K mentioned AmosTversky’s socialcultural theory of attitudes. Social leaders may have attitudes on certain topics for arbitrary historical reason. But as likeable leaders they often can influence many attitudes.

Interactions between System 1 and 2 was a big part of K’s talk.

System 2 is used for control and may follow a series of rules. It partially monitors system 1. How it works is shown by the classic math problem: A bat and a ball together cost $1.10. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
Your intuitive system for association may quickly tell you that the ball costs 10 cents. That would be an easy solution, but it would also be incorrect but it is the choice of may even at MIT. Why? We are cognitively lazy. People who delay gratification as shown by a Psych test and have more self control do better on this type of problem. It is more System 1 control.

Scientists should be big System 2. After all they have to pass hostile reviews to get published.

Kahneman says one of his favorite examples of System 1 thinking is what happens when you hear an upper-class British voice say, "I have large tattoos all down my back. People who speak with an upper-class British accent don't have large tattoos down their back. It violates our associative knowledge. So the brain must be bringing vast world knowledge to registers that there is an incongruity here. It happens within three- or four-tenths of a second and it's the same response you'd get if you heard a male voice say, "I believe I am pregnant."

So association makes us ready to respond, but it comes with rigid expectations. An example was hearing that “Julie reads in year 4.
Then you get asked “What's here GPA?” Usually it is high.
It’s as if we have a distribution for each (GPA and reading) which gets mapped together. But there are too many intervening events to accurately predict this.

An example concerns airport insurance. During [the ’90s] when there was terrorist activity in Thailand, people were asked how much they’d pay for a travel-insurance policy that pays $100,000 in case of death for any reason. Others were asked how much they’d pay for a policy that pays $100,000 for death in a terrorist act. Turns out that people will pay more for the second, even though it’s less likely. Why” It’s a policy for an instance of terror vs. dying in general.
We pay more to the terror policy since we fear terror more than death.

this suggests that our associate story telling system 1 is usually in charge.
We like stories and how they sound. If we hear “woes unite foes” it is more persuasive aphorism than “Woes unite enemies.”

A lesson is to communicate to non-experts in a different way. Speak to their story with assoc coherence. This is a lesson for getting the Climate Change story understood. Also the source of the message has to be liked and trusted.
Global warming too distant and abstract so it will take trusted leaders to make the case and do it in associative language. Anecdotes are concrete and specific so they are preferred over facts.

Understanding Confirmatory Bias and Dead End Arguments

By Gary Berg-Cross

In her popular blog “General Myers and His Endless War on Error”, Sarah Hippolitus took on PZ Myers essay, Sunday Sacrilege: Sacking the City of God, for its deliberate and provocative vitriol. The argument is simple, telling people they are wrong in this way just doesn’t work and is perhaps counterproductive. Sarah cited Chris Mooney's essay, The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science, in which Mooney explains why berating people, such as religious conservatives who are emotionally committed to an idea, can make them defensively cling harder to their beliefs and biases. An in-your-face criticism raises emotions and people respond defensively overwhelming any chance at reason. Over the last 50 years of social and cognitive research we have learned a considerable amount of the general type of phenomena of how people frame and defend biases (bracketology being one area where “experts” are visibly wrong) and unsupported beliefs and how we rationalization our beliefs rather than use reason to arrive at opinions. I’ve written on this topic earlier in such blogs as “Rationalizing Irrational Choices: That $45 entree and presidential choices” and Boxing Ourselves In with Category Errors. We have come to a sad, but scientific understanding from a coordinated system of studies that we humans are imperfect reasoners. The fact is that the emphasis on rationality encouraged by Enlightenment thinkers is a noble effort, but difficult, and does not come easily in many circumstances. The modern parlance covering this is to talk about gut feeling that overwhelm and, in effect, reverse engineer our opinions. More recently the studies have focused on group differences in cognitive styles and the role of emotions, like fear, in these differences.

The scientific study of general phenomena of changing the minds of people with convictions, especially faith-based ones,  goes back a long way, but progress was made starting in the 50s. Stanford University social psychologist Leon Festinger summarized it succinctly based on a study of a UFO cult that was convinced the world would end on December 20^th 1954 (see“When Prophecy Fails”):

"A man with conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point."

And it wasn’t just odd folks that show biases responses. Experimental studies of experts, such as Physicians, show they are often biased in clinical judgments. Their expertise could be improved upon by simple statistical rules, a discovery that prompted some hope for things like artificial, expert systems to aid human judgment.But this human tendency gets enhanced when it interacts with factors like ideology,  frightening circumstances and cultural framing.

The more recent studies on differences of reasoning style, which I touched on in Epistemological Styles. There I contrasted scientific with theist styles. Scientific styles are cognitively taxing and require considerable cultural support for chained combinations of postulates that get tested by experiment. These may confirm a belief but also disconfirm it. It’s all part of a humbling style that values exploration of ideas with controlled observation and measurement, analogical models and statistical analysis of regularities of populations.Such methods have been applied to self-study processes by which small groups have moved the country  away from intellectual  processes to more of a conservative agenda in this  country (see for example Hacker and Pierson's work Off Center). Such conservative, social-political engineering reflect reaching people who prefer far simpler style . It is to be an idea advocate and largely focus on evidence to justify existing belief and gut feelings.Taken as a whole this tends to appeal to conservative minds more than liberal ones.

Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, discusses such things in his recent book The Republican Brain The Science of Why They Deny Science--and Reality. His finding is simply states: conservatives and liberals don’t just have different ideologies; they have different psychologies (aka epistemological styles) that help explain their fact and expert denying positions on such things as climate change and evolution. It’s not just that they don’t know facts it is that they have a tendency towards a confirmatory bias that reflects a preference to focus on evidence that supports existing belief. Another part of who conservatives are is their preference for ideas that bind groups together rather than “truth” in an objective sense. And one of the big factors driving conservative beliefs is their tendency to emotional, fight or flight responses. Eye tracking studies, for example, show that people who score high on conservative positions tend to track “threat” objects in an environment (a knife or gun – maybe a stranger). There’s survival value in such a tendency so one may imagine how such a tendency was selected in populations and later frozen into cultural values. Conservatives tend to be ready to be afraid and this can turn off the reasoning side of the brain.
You can see a good discussion of all of this on the recent Up With Chris Hayes, where Mooney and Jonathan Haidt, UVA moral psychologist & author of The Righteous Mind, discussed group differences. They agreed that liberals tend to be more open to new experiences, new data and convincing finds. As a consequence they tend to be more sympathetic to scientific process, and take their scientific findings more seriously. This is a tendency/predisposition and not a hard and fast thing in all circumstances.  The socially generated tendency of Conservatives, meanwhile, is that they just do it differently. Haidt explained:

“I want to fully agree with Chris that the psychology does predispose liberals more to be receptive to science; my own research has found that conservatives are better at group-binding, at loyalty, and so if you put them in a group-versus-group conflict, yes, the right is more prone, psychologically, to band around and sort of, circle the wagons.”

This is consistent with Sarah’s earlier argument about the reaction of believers to strong, mocking arguments. In conversations with conservative thinkers (as opposed to  liberal styles) we should be aware that they may not have the same regard for the Enlightenment’s style of rational argument. We are either fooling ourselves or just being a bit too rigid in our style. But we need not be quiet or withdrawn certainly in our own communuty, and we can use the new understandings that come from cognitive and social science to guide us. The value of framing (see my Framing Arguments: You say Flaming Atheists and I Say Non-Confrontational Humanist) 
is one tool we can use. Another is to recognize that individual reasoning is biased. We are often battling a strong confirmatory bias that repels facts and strict logic. What we need instead is get into a dialog to challenge our biases as well as others. Socrates was on to this a long time ago and its time to update that technique drawing lessons from the relevant science. Overcoming a reflexive conservative denial of the science of denial would be a big step. We need to get the word out on that.

The incomprehensible, everything good, god

By Mathew Goldstein

When I wrote, in my previous post, that theists argue for irreducible complexity in biology as evidence for god, I was not (of course) referring to all theists. So what about a god that is not to be found in biology, chemistry, or physics? Victor Udoewa, in his recent Huffington article titled "Does Science Make Belief in God Obsolete?", wrote "it is clear that science may make belief in a certain concept of God obsolete. But it is a hard task to make belief in every concept of God obsolete.". Seeking funding from the Templeton Foundation to promote his timeless and undefeatable version of theism, he asks: "What if there were concepts of God that had something to offer or add to the fulfilled? What if we had concepts of God based on creativity? On a positive definition of incomprehensible peace? On imaginative joy? On creative, problem-solving love?"

The god that is creativity, peace, joy, imagination, love, and other such general and positive capabilities, outcomes, feelings, and sentiments is a favorite gambit of liberal theists. Its strength is its weakness, in equal measure. There can be no evidence against this god nor can there be any evidence for this god. This god is claimed to be real but is defined as a fantasy. And that is why no one has any proper justification to believe in this god. Evidence is the proper foundation to justify beliefs about what is true or false regarding the reality of entities that are to be worshipped or otherwise asserted to really exist. Conservatives want evidence, but they don't respect evidence that contradicts their theism, so they tend to manufacture their own, alternative world "evidence". Liberals want to follow the real evidence, but they don't want the evidence to contradict their theism, so they tend to place their cherished theism out of harms way by defining their god to be beyond the reach of any possible evidence. Either way, it's the same failure, they are both failing to put the evidence first and follow it.

Is atheism a belief?

By Mathew Goldstein

John Loftus argues that "atheism therefore is not a belief ..." in a 7/22 post titled "Once Again, Atheism is Not a Belief Nor a Religion" on his blog Debunking Christianity. This is wrong. Atheism certainly can be, and often is, a belief. Also, implicit in this argument that atheism is not a belief, which is usually made by atheists on behalf of atheism, is a mistaken notion that having beliefs is bad. Belief is an essential means to an end and as such a belief can be wrong or right, justified or unjustified. However, belief as a phenomena has no intrinsic property of being bad or good.

Beliefs are the basis for our making our decisions. We plan for tomorrow because we believe that tomorrow will follow after today. Beliefs are a property of being human. Every educated adult has thousands of beliefs. We are arguably born with certain basic beliefs, a result of evolution giving us the means to navigate our world and survive to eventually become experienced, educated adults. We can't eliminate the phenomena of beliefs anymore than we can eliminate the phenomena of chemistry and physics.

Mr. Loftus appears to incorrectly equate beliefs with religion. I think it should be obvious that while religion is rooted in beliefs, many beliefs have nothing to do with religion. Mr. Loftus is correct when he says that atheism is not a religion. Indeed, modern atheism tends to have an anti-religion orientation. Serious followers of ancient philosophical Eastern religions that were initially atheistic have tended to add theistic beliefs to those traditions whereas today's atheists are probably going to be less likely to take such religious traditions seriously as having any special merit over more modern and competing philosophies that are better rooted in modern knowledge. But it doesn't follow that atheism is not a belief.

Atheists can, and do, believe that there are no gods. I don't think an insistence that everyone say we don't believe in gods and stop there is either realistic or proper, nor is doing that what atheism is all about. When the overall direction of evidence weighs in favor of a conclusion we shouldn't shy away from that conclusion just because by asserting a conclusion we are taking sides. There is nothing wrong with taking sides. Having a belief, as long as the belief is properly justified by the available evidence, is not a mistake, its not a problem. The mistake, in the context of holding beliefs, is not following the evidence, which is synonymous with having unjustified beliefs.

Having no belief where a belief is justified is thus also a mistake. The evidence always comes first, the belief is compelled from the evidence. We don't choose our properly justified beliefs. The evidence chooses our beliefs, all we can do is follow. If we find that the evidence is positively against X then it follows accordingly that we positively believe that X is false and we should say so. Refusing to take a position in the name of having no beliefs is not a way of upholding an ethical value. On the contrary, its the mirror image of the mistake of having a belief where no belief is warranted and is equally wrong.

People who don't take the disciplined approach of basing their beliefs in the overall evidence, people for whom adopting belief is a method of self-defining oneself, are going to be promiscuous in adopting beliefs. Anyone who embraces the notion that it is one of the highest virtues to rely on faith, and thus important to avoid being constrained by the evidence, is clearly taking a promiscuous approach to adopting beliefs. Taking such a promiscuous approach to adopting beliefs is a mistake simply because we have excellent reason to think beliefs not anchored in the evidence are most likely false. While it is true that we do define ourselves in part by our beliefs, it doesn't follow that we should adopt beliefs for the purpose of defining ourselves. On the contrary, it is a common, and big, mistake to adopt our true/false beliefs about how the world beyond ourselves functions for the self-centered, inward focused, purpose of self-definition.

We should be trying to hold our beliefs in proportion to the evidence, without bias, so that our belief is weaker where the evidence is ambiguous and our belief is stronger where the evidence is unequivocal. If we see no direction to the evidence with respect to answering a question then we should have no belief. Sometimes we need to make decisions, but the need to make decisions doesn't always correspond well with the availability of relevant evidence. So in those situations we may need to rely on intuition, on faith, and the like. Due to the misfortune of such necessity, we rely on intuition, as an inferior fall-back, to make decisions. As a practical matter, we are often operating with incomplete and/or ambiguous evidence. Also, the available evidence can be misleading. So some humility regarding what we know is called for. A common mis-perception is that atheism requires unwarranted certainty, when in fact atheism only requires that the overall weight and direction of the available evidence favor the conclusion that there are no gods.

It is common to refer to non-believing atheists as weak atheists and believing atheists as strong atheists. The terms weak and strong suggest a strength of conviction continuem, but this is more of an either one or also the other choice (believing atheists also don't believe there is a god, we just don't stop with that). I prefer the terms implicit atheist and explicit atheist. The non-believing atheist is an atheist implicitly while the believing atheist is an atheist explicitly. In practice, as demonstrated by Mr. Loftus's blog article, implicit and explicit atheists don't necessarily have any real disagreement about the overall direction of the evidence. Mr. Loftus actually states in his article that "the evidence is against that belief", he just isn't willing to acknowledge that when the evidence is actively against an assertion then we rationally believe the assertion is false, we don't normally or properly stop at merely refusing to believe the assertion, nor should we stop there.

Evolving Spring: Plant and Animal Vulnerabilities to Climate Change

Why do many of us believe that there is a serious problem heading our way called climate change? It's not a matter of blind faith. Like evolutionary theory it is an increasingly supported hypothesis based on a commensurate body of evidence. "Plants earlier bloom times hurting some creatures" reads the title of a recent Washington Post article by Brigid Schulte. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/plants-earlier-bloom-times-hurting-some-creatures/2011/04/08/AF42He4C_story.html. It goes on to describe field botanists' surprise that some flowers like “Dutchman’s breeches” and cut-leaved toothwort are blooming 2 weeks early. The culprit is global warming:

"Bloom hunters like Fleming, who for 40 years have been tramping through the woods, roaming along riverbanks and scrambling over rocky outcrops to document the first blooms of spring in the Washington area, worry that what they have been seeing is nothing less than the slow, inexorable shift of global warming.

They even have a name for it: season creep. And it’s happening all over the world."

Some causal evidence is experimental and comes from labs. A recent Science Friday show (http://www.sciencefriday.com/newsbriefs/read/200) made this point citing data from the University of Melbourne on the Australian common brown butterflies (heteronympha merope). They are emerging from their cocoons an average of ten days earlier than they did 65 years ago. The researchers attribute the butterflies’ early appearance to warming temperatures in the region. To test this they raised caterpillars of the common brown butterfly in a lab and then measured how quickly they emerged when exposed to different temperatures. The warmer the temperature, the earlier the butterflies took flight. They then used these measurements along with historic records of air temperatures around Melbourne, which rose about .25°F per decade, to predict when the butterflies emerged each year. Their predictions closely matched recorded observations. They concluded that:
"warming temperatures are coaxing the butterflies around Melbourne from their cocoons earlier each year, at a rate of about 1.6 days per decade."
(Photo by Flickr user Ibsut.)

The researchers believe the change in temperature is the result of human greenhouse gas emissions, not climate variability. A steady trend supported by 40 consecutive years of research at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory also shows a warming trend. Flowers are blooming a month earlier than just 10 years ago. This is not all good for them, since some bloom early enough to be killed off by a late frost. That's another part of the problem, a trend towards greater weather variability. That's something easy to intuit since things are changing to a new normal. See http://www.sciencefriday.com/blog/2011/04/2031/ for a long list of evidence for climate change.

Biological warning signs of change are numerous and easily documented since many cultures have finely tuned agriculture to depend on spring for a release from winter famine. Cultures like the Korean have long records of when the first cherry blossoms of spring arrive and there is a 300 year European record on when grapevines bloom since planting time is critical to a good harvest.

A summary graphic in the Post shows how many plant species in the DC area are"creeping earlier" into spring. Bad for us, and it also has worrisome consequences for the naturally evolved plant and animal world. Evolution has fine tuned seasonal timing for many species. Our local squirrel population is dependent on the nut harvest to get them through winter. They have a frantic winter breeding seasons where females are in estrus for just 8 hours, but it results in spring-born squirrel babies (March to May) when there is again a natural supply of food. But some species in the complex chain of interdependence have been unable to keep up when seasonal timing is off.

In Europe, the leaves of the English oak are coming out earlier and this is OK for some animals. The winter moth caterpillars that feeds on them are also coming out earlier. But the pied flycatcher birds that eat those caterpillars aren't year around residents. They are migrating north at that time. Now when they arrive, many of the the caterpillars have already turned into moths and have flown off. It's a delicate ecological balance and changed timing has resulted in a severe decline of flycatcher population in recent years.

In San Francisco, some butterfly populations like Edith’s Checkerspot butterfly are simply gone. With the gradual warming of Earth and ocean temperatures that has also shifted rainfall patterns, the leaves of the plantago plant come out earlier. The leaves, which the checkerspot caterpillar depends on for food, are already dried and withered by the time the larvae emerge.

It's a deadly problem for migrating and seasonally dependent animal species. Even the largest creatures alive on the planet are affected - giant trees like our redwoods. A recent study finds that declining fog cover on the California's coast could leave the state's famous redwoods "high and dry." Among the tallest and longest-lived trees on Earth, redwoods grow where the summer fog provides water. But the fog is diminishing and climate change seems to be contributing to this decline in a high-pressure climatic system that lingers on the coast. See http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/02/100215-redwoods-california-global-warming/+.

Plant evolution has produced wonders, but unlike animals, they can’t just get up and relocate. The speed of change is something that vast numbers of species may fall to. Something to think about amidst this year's blossoms.

Pascal's Wager

In my last discussion group I had someone come up to me at the end and announce that he was not an atheist. He then asked me if I had heard of Pascal's Wager.

My reply was that I had heard of the concept. I then went on to say that, “It is a finding of modern science that cognition is a function of the brain. When the brain dies cognition ends. There is no afterlife.”

This is my summary judgment of the scientific evidence to date. It does not logically prove anything beyond any possible doubt but the evidence does give me reason to say that the absence of an afterlife is scientifically proven. Perhaps we need a blog post on the nature of proof to expand on this distinction. For some reason those who wish to believe in the supernatural get away with asserting that logical certainty is the proof criterion to be used when analyzing the supernatural. For every other item of concern in our lives the proof criterion that we use is the balance of empirical evidence.

For those who have not heard of the term, Pascal's wager, let me give a thumbnail overview of what it means. The mathematician Blaise Pascal presumed that it was not possible to use reason to determine whether God existed or not. In the absence of such knowledge the presumption of the probabilities are assumed to be a fifty-fifty coin flip. He further assumed that belief in God had zero cost and that if God existed then a belief in him would result in an infinite life in Heaven and that the value of that afterlife would be infinite. The penalty for an erroneous disbelief in God is an eternity of misery in Hell, an infinite negative value. Obviously with such presumptions any rational person would bet on the existence of God by believing in him since there is no cost with a losing bet and an infinite reward with a winning bet. This is not a perfect recounting of what Pascal said but it does serve to frame the issues.

My exchange with this person brought a number of other thoughts to my mind. The first was what would God think, if he existed, about someone who had such a belief? He might think, “This person only believes in me because he looks a life as a series of gambles. He doesn't believe in me because my revelations produce anything that is good. His belief in me does not include any commitment to positive principles. The belief is solely made with expectation that eternal life will come from it.” My guess is that a jealous God would not be very impressed with this belief.

In actuallity belief in God entails an enormous cost. People spend time praying and going to church. They typically commit a fraction of their income to “God's work” and that amount can exceed the ten percent tithing mandated by the Bible. The surrender of critical thinking to assume something on “faith” is a cost that is for many of us simply beyond consideration.

Theodore M. Drange in an essay on Infidels.org lists other costs defined in the Bible for salvation. “One also needs to believe in God's son (Mark 16:16; John 3:18,36, 8:21-25, 14:6; Acts 4:10-12; I John 5:12), repent (Luke 13:3,5), be born again (John 3:3), be born of the water and of the Spirit (John 3:5), believe everything in the gospel (Mark 16:16), eat the flesh of Jesus and drink his blood (John 6:53), be like a child (Mark 10:15), and do good deeds, esp. for needy people (Matt. 25:41-46; Rom. 2:5-10; John 5:28-29; James 2:14-26).”

It is fair to say that many if not most Christians do not believe that a simple belief in God is adequate for salvation. There are other Christians such as the Universalists who think that everyone will go to Heaven regardless of belief.

I have asserted on many occasions that the symbol God has literally no explicit meaning. It is like the symbol X in an equation. One cannot know the value of X unless the rest of the equations is used to solve for a value of X. Likewise we can know nothing about the meaning of God unless we inquire concerning what is meant by the person using the term. There are literally thousands of different Christian denominations with different assumptions about the nature and properties of God. If God were real why would he/she be impressed by a belief that had no understanding of him/her. Beyond that there is an Islamic version of Pascal's wager. There is no reason to limit conceptions of God to ones that are Christian.

Even with the vanishing low probability of a supernatural personal God, there is also the possibility that such a God would look more favorably on critical thinking and use of reason to find beliefs and moral principles which make the world better for ourselves and others. Thus even if God were to exist the rewards and punishments might be reversed from those imagined by Blaise Pascal.

Thoughtful and Shallow Skepticism

As a boy I was lucky to read the work of Martin Gardner, a brilliant polymath, who was also a hero to “skeptics and science-minded people worldwide”. My skepticism was greatly influenced Gardner’s 1952 book Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (still in print) which was the classic, rational-empirical examination of pseudoscience and pseudoscientists. As Michael Shermer put it: "Modern skepticism has developed into a science-based movement, beginning with Martin Gardner's 1952 classic". It is worth noting that in 1976 Gardner became a founding fellow of CSICOP, now the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (SI), and was an original member of SI’s Editorial Board.

With Garner’s guidance as a base I am respectful of a thoughtful skepticism. But neither he or I view it as an absolute or something that protects us from false beliefs. Indeed increasingly I see Garnder’s disciplined, skeptical stance being replaced with a shallow version that is used to bash topics as diverse as Climate Change, Evolution (Teach the Debate) and Science itself. 

 Some of it is ideological in nature. So libertarians like Penn and Teller who are general skeptics apply shallow thinking to Climate Change. When Penn Jillette was asked whether he “still believed that man-made climate change is bunk, as he has said more than once, his basic answer was:

" I loathe everything about Al Gore, so since Gore has been crusading against climate change it must be garbage.” 

OK, so your loathing emotion means you don't have to examine data and rational arguments???

Both Penn and Teller are well-known libertarians, but also supporters of the libertarian Cato Institute, leaders in spreading doubt about global warming. It is humbling to see people considered both hard-nosed empiricists and skeptics giving way to ideo-emotions that encourage some pretty stupid stances. 
 

Another contributing reason, I suspect, for a shallower skepticism is a false idea of its role in Science. The basic scientific methodology requires any theory to be subject to refutation, and this creates a base skepticism for many people. People latch onto a nihilistic idea that everything should be refutable and people are being "scientific" when they take this stance even while ignoring the other aspects of a scientific stance (e.g. coherence, validation, etc.).

Dr. David Morrison (Senior Scientist at the NASA Astrobiology Institute) states it well when characterizing climate change deniers, “It is fine to be skeptical, but we need to be concerned when skepticism drifts into denial.” And such denial abounds in climate change despite a pretty prominent scientific consensus. This scientific consensus is combated by lots of misinformation/disinformation about climate change (published on the Internet), driven in part by eco-political and economic positions. 

I have a neighbor who sends me example of these things, perhaps in an effort to convert me. His self image seems to be of a powerful skeptic. But it usually takes me only Google minutes to find that the sources of his articles are people backed by groups and fronts for Exxon and allies. 

I have long wondered why he isn’t skeptical of such backings. When confronted, his “skeptical” response is a knee-jerk negativity - an appeal to the meme-idea that climate scientist receive money for their research and they are just milking the public for more support. He has a reflexive disbelief in the assertions made by climate scientists. He seems unaware of the role rationalism plays in Gardner’s skepticism based on a scientific view of the world. This is a rational skepticism that uses the tools of reason and critical thinking to follow the data wherever it leads. This thoughtful skepticism may start from a simple disbelief, but it qualifies and arms skepticism with an empirical stance; because assertions, no matter how commonsensical, require proof. Proof includes data that is rigorously investigated wherever it leads, which can be an increasingly messy picture for a while.

Clearly some topics like climate change are complicated and messy, but there is a broad consensus when one looks at the complete set. That is not to say that there won’t be surprises. Indeed what some future validated data supports may not be our original hunch, but something else entirely. It is just that these discoveries cannot be expected to follow a simple, ideological narrative. Simple, shallow skepticism’s does have this narrative appeal - it may be lulled into acceptance by being a good story. We often need a simple story that we communicate to others. This is a plus. We prefer stories with a connection to something familiar and comforting over a complex story even one that has a rational-empirical base. In climate change some simple but deceptive narratives include: ‘What we are seeing are “natural variations” caused primarily by variations in solar output’ or “The apparent increase in temperature is an artifact caused by the fact that much of the data are from cities, which are warmer than their surroundings”. Good stories, but not supported by (subsequent) analysis.

Stories that pass our skeptical filter may mature into climate hoax stories that provide a shallow skeptical identity that people happily try on and use happily. We saw this type of thing in the narrative that vaccines cause autism in children, something that seemed to have some data in back of it, but which turned out to be concocted. A publication earlier this month in the British Medical Journal accused Andrew Wakefield, the British researcher responsible for the controversial 1998 study linking MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccinations to autism, of falsifying data. The wheels of science may grind slowly but truth will out.

And of course from a secular perspective, we see simple, deceptive narratives in religious stories that provide comfort, structure, and cultural identity. Acceptance of these is a challenge for skeptics, but once accepted by the gullible they may offer fertile ground for the shallow forms of self protective skepticism. Often such religious stories intertwine as other shallow skeptical deniers support one another with a lacing of stories.

The simple doubts of confirmed curmudgeons and cynics can be a precious thing held firmly as part of their coping identity. It can be comforting. But a thoughtful skeptic can change his/her mind and not deny the preponderance of the evidence. Indeed there was an informal study done looking at sites of listed http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Skeptics_and_skeptical_organizations to see if there were climate change deniers on them. Turns out nary a one. 

Thoughtful skeptics are not climate deniers for the most part.

For more on skepticism see http://www.skepticnorth.com/2010/09/what-is-skepticism-week-1-curmudgeon-cynic-skeptic/ and http://greenfyre.wordpress.com/2009/08/27/skeptics-circle/