Free will and fine tuning

By Mathew Goldstein

There is good reason to think that we do not have free will and that the fundamental constants of physics are not fine tuned. Some people defend theism on the grounds that both phenomena are evidence that naturalism is insufficient to describe or explain the universe. So the evidence that both are false assumptions has some significance in the debate over whether or not we should believe that there are no gods.

I will utilize biologist Jerry Coyne's definition of free will: When faced with two or more alternatives, it's your ability to freely and consciously choose one, either on the spot or after some deliberation. A practical test of free will would be this: If you were put in the same position twice — if the tape of your life could be rewound to the exact moment when you made a decision, with every circumstance leading up to that moment the same and all the molecules in the universe aligned in the same way — you could have chosen differently.

If we had free will then we would be self-aware of the action we have selected before we have irreversibly committed to that action. If our choices are unconscious, having been determined well before the moment we think we've made them, then we don't have free will in any meaningful sense. Scans of brain activity favor the latter scenario. First we irreversibly commit to an action and we become aware of which action we are taking only after the decision was made. For example, brain scans show that when a subject "decides" to push a button on the left or right side of a computer, the choice can be predicted by brain activity before the subject is consciously aware of having made it. We then convince ourselves post-hoc that we decided on our action after conscious deliberation. Thus, our feeling that we consciously choose may be a deeply ingrained and automatic self-deception, a trick our mind plays on us.

In his new book "Who's in Charge: Free Will and the Science of the Brain", neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga explains how the right brain hemisphere is driven by the senses and acts on an immediate, subconscious level. The left brain hemisphere applies a conscious after-the-fact reasoning that attempts to make sense of the actions that the subconscious mind has already taken. The left-brain's "interpreter module" is always at work inventing theories to "explain" what the right half of the brain has already "decided" on the basis of reflexive subconscious instinct.

Our intuition that we have free will is very strong. The concept of free will is fundamental to the way people assign meaning to their lives and is perceived as continuously being in play except when we are sleeping. But from a biological perspective, conscious self-awareness of actions came later in the history of life. Life originally selected among alternative available actions without self-awareness. So it makes sense that animals which later acquired conscious self-awareness still tend to make decisions prior to being self-aware of those decisions.

The premise of the fine-tuned universe assertion is that a small change in several of the dimensionless fundamental physical constants would result in a universe that cannot support life. The current standard model of particle physics has 25 freely adjustable parameters. However, the standard model is not mathematically self-consistent under certain conditions, so most physicists believe that it is incomplete. In some candidate replacement theories, the actual number of independent physical constants may be as small as 1. But, for the sake of argument, let's accept that there are 25 and that a small change to any single one of these constants makes the universe radically different.

Fine tuning can be cited as evidence for an intelligently designed universe only if the probability that the universe would be able to support life is tiny over the entire spectrum of all possible combinations of all possible values of all the constants. Even if the fine-tuning premise were true, there is theoretical evidence for a multiverse which provides a naturalistic explanation for fine-tuning. But is the premise true? Varying the value of just one constant while leaving all of the other values at their actual values may result in no other universe that can support life. Yet varying the values of all 25 constants simultaneously may result in many universes that can support life. The former result can thus be misleading, because the latter result, if true, would outnumber, and thus defeat, the former result.

Simulating universes while simultaneously varying the values of all 25 constants may be computationally very difficult, but several attempts have been made with a subset. Victor Stenger has simulated different universes in which four fundamental parameters are varied. He found that long-lived stars could exist over a wide parameter range. Fred Adams has done a similar study to Stenger, investigating the structure of stars in universes with different values of the gravitational constant, the fine-structure constant, and a nuclear reaction rate parameter. His study suggests that roughly 25% of this parameter space allows stars to exist.

So the free-will and fine tuning arguments may both be wrong. Certainly, both arguments have been premature in the sense that neither phenomena has been established to be true by the evidence. It is only very recently that we have acquired the tools to start to tackle the question of whether these two premises are true. The early results suggest both premises are false.

The Ledge review

The Ledge (2011)

Written and Directed by Matthew Chapman

Reviewed by Bill Creasy

Matthew Chapman is known in atheist circles as the great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin, and he is also a noted film writer and director. He wrote a book on the Dover, Pa., Intelligent Design trial, 40 Days and 40 Nights. He was a speaker at the 2007 AAI Conference in Crystal City.

His movie The Ledge received some publicity as an "atheist" movie, as the plot centers around a conflict between an atheist and a fundamentalist. But it is a serious, unusual independent movie with multi-faceted characters. It is not preachy, and the atheism is only one of several major plot points. Chapman described the movie as a thriller, and there is also a touching love story.

The movie begins with Gavin (played by Charlie Hunnam) on the ledge of a tall building, getting ready to jump. A police officer Hollis (Terrence Howard) tries to talk him into coming off the ledge. Gavin says that if he doesn't jump, someone else will die. Gavin tells him the story of why he is there.

Gavin met a married couple, Joe (Patrick Wilson) and Shauna Harris (Liv Tyler), living in an apartment across the hall. Later, the woman applied for a job at the hotel that Gavin managed, without knowing he worked there. Gavin's roommate, a gay man, said there must be meaning to this event, but Gavin, an atheist, scoffed that it was only a coincidence that she came to his hotel. But the relationship with the couple went quickly downhill when the four of them had dinner together and Joe, a Christian fundamentalist, prayed for God to forgive the abomination of homosexuality. Gavin (who was straight) was outraged, but he privately became sexually attracted to Shauna and decided to liberate her from Joe.

Gavin got to know Shauna. It turned out that all the characters were dealing with difficult personal problems. Joe, in particular, became born again to recover from addiction, but he had anger that was not far below the surface.

One could agree with the late Christopher Hitchens's way of thinking, that Joe was more dangerous because of his religious certainty of forgiveness and life after death. He admitted that he was an "Old Testament kind of guy." However, jealousy has been the cause of many murders, with or without religion. I'll let the audience make that decision.

The plot point that is not surprising to atheists, but which may be surprising to the religious, is the idea that Gavin could care enough about someone to consider sacrificing himself. In that sense, it is good publicity for atheists.

The film is rated R and it is available on DVD from Netflix.

This review was previous published in the January issue of WASHline.

A Freethinker’s Inspiration of Atheist Posters

By Gary Berg-Cross

I ran across some new atheist posters at the recent Humanlight celebration. What got my attention there was a poster of the Last Supper with Jesus replaced by the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM). I’ve heard there another poster with the disciples replaced by famous freethinkers – sort of like below I guess but structured around a table. I haven’t run into that one yet.

But the experience got me thinking about what might be a list of some of the best posters. You tube has a good start on this and more than one although if you go there you get a warning that the content has been identified by the YouTube community as being potentially offensive or inappropriate!!s just to represent freethinkers in some way, sort of a variation on the fish symbol.

Viewer discretion is advised, as they say.

Below are a few of the ones that grabbed my attention.

One type is is just to represent freethinkers in some way, sort of a variation on the fish symbol.

Another type is with Darwin in it. Side note, Darwin Day Feb 12 is here in less than a month and I hope the DC area has a good celebration.

Darwin gets into many posters, but so does the Last Supper theme. One shows imaginary figures.

As a side note I also like a take on OWS as a Christian assembly.

FSM makes an appearance again in a Sistine chapel creation poster.

I’m sure there are many good ones I’ve missed so perhaps readers will post comments on their favorites.

Some Notes from John Shook’s’ Talk - "The Psychology of Religion, the Sociology of Theology, and the Humanist Strategic Response".

by Gary Berg-Cross

John Shook, author of The God Debates has much to say about the
public critics of religion, but at a recent WSH MDC chapter his
topic was “The Psychology of Religion, the Sociology of
Theology, and the Humanist Strategic Response". The talk was
partially inspired by Dan Dennett’s Breaking the Spell and
the new research advances to the scientific study of religion. One
expression of the idea is to: “study religion as a natural
phenomenon, as carefully as you might study the trajectory of a
baseball or the embryology of the mouse”. Recently,
the Center for Inquiry (CFI) held a conference called "Daniel Dennett and the
Scientific Study of Religion: A Celebration of the Fifth
Anniversary of Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural
Phenomenon. " Shook interviewed Dennett as part
of this workshop and this talk represented an update to
some the thinking in Dennett’s earlier book. Three type of
scientific studies have emerged those of brain, Behvipr
(cognition) & Belief (e.g.commitment) – as shown in the Picture at the top of this
Blog. Group practices, such as ritual conformity, can be seen as
connecting the Belief and behavior making it “ meaningful
belief” for such things as existential coping.

Only a small portion of these from Shook’s talk are covered in
these notes (and non of Lee's great food/snacks is available, for that you have
to come to the meetings), but an important point of departure concerns the
question of why religious belief phenomena happens. Why are
there religions? <As many have suggested there are
many explanations of why religion exists: as an

• explanation for what we don’t understand;


• psychological reaction to our lives and surroundings; as an expression of social needs;


• tool of the status quo to keep some people in power and others out;
  


• focus upon supernatural and “sacred” aspects of our lives; and


• evolutionary strategy for survival.

The old story is that such belief is based on some mixture of
fear, ignorance and mistake. The new view is a bit
different and argues that religious belief naturally
develops as part of human cognition. This makes sense when
we consider human curiosity mixed with such things as
reaction to tragedy within small group. Groups must
develop habits of correct conduct so we see the eventual
purposes of churches for group support. Deep
evolution of communication in human species from 1-2
million years ago, which allowed simple rituals which
religion evolved from and builds on. We’re not
sure when more organized beliefs to support group
dynamics arose as what we now think of as religion, but
a working guess is between 50 -100,000 yrs ago when
biological anthropologists and others speculate that a
superior narrative ability arose as a systematization of
earlier animism & magic into one with priests and
other baggage - a position of early researchers E.B. Tylor & James
Frazer. The good news is that religious evolution and
transformation is a step towards more intellectual
discovery. But this means more than disproving older theories that are
wrong if it is to lead to secularism. Among the points made and
argued in John’s talk were:

Brain Studies:

There is no religion brain or modules but religious thinking uses existing modules..
No amount of research helps provide evidence forsupernasturalism.But believers like that we see differences in brain activity during meditation and other quasi-religious
activities. It is really not surprising that we get brain activity responses that correlate with a
variety of unusual experiences.

Some will appeal to the brain as a direct cause of religion. But there are no pure brains. Brains are connected and encultured. It co-changes with culture.

And brains won't do everything, there are limits to what it does in isolation

But to do this the beliefs must conform to older universalmoral intuitions and must be able to explain some things in Why are the Gods of this era like us? Human-like error helps

Belief commitment:
There are consistencies between belief systems.

But belief correlates with error, sacrifice and risk are
problematic for believers and their supporters. How do such
systems survive?

The idea is that there are benefits/yields to consistent social benefits that
outweigh the downsides. So religions get social payoffs for
trust in some beliefs and committed behavior. They can get
away with false positive because we are not killed for false
belief like believing in spirits as we would about a belief
of wolves being in the woods.

Such beliefs helps groups get though hard times when there
are no rational solution.

But to do this the beliefs must conform to older universal moral intuitions and must be able to explain some things in some fashion.

So religions tend to use slightly, but only slightly, unnatural beings, usually anthropomorphic, like Gods that have human like qualities.

Stewart Elliot Guthrie argues that “Religion is Anthropomorphization Gone Awry”

They may employ naive psychology that most people have like the idea of
a mind without body. These are simple narratives and as
noted before seem to part of the human makeup.

Cultural anthropology is making progress on real roots of religion in terms of social
functions, animism, totenismm, ancestor worship (assuming
common ancestors), and magic to deal with problems. These
older ideas seem to have been systematized several thousand
years ago especially as part of “urbanization”.

As the river valley civilizations arose religion evolved like language.

Cities required shared duties and religion helped pass through the crisis of having
unrelated people living there by increased inclusiveness and
commonality. A group of people from diverse previously small
tribes are brought together as part if early city life. They
may then learn new skills - they may now be easily replaced
so they must learn skills. To conform they must converge
dialects and start to dress alike. They start to eat the
same foods from the same sources and they endure the same
hardships of living in close quarters (meeting many new
people each day), drought, shortages, prevent cheating etc
(See picture below). It takes quite a bit of work
to indoctrinate kids into all of this.

So early cities became
religious to handle high density and its problems. The Gods of religion had to evolve. People had
moved so were gods far away of not? Now they became gods for all people to relate people of different kinship.

This phenomena was seen early in Egypt & Dowism, but was an obvious solution
happened all around the world and was not a unique idea as was later claimed as part of Jewish
tradition. It had apath and polytheism was intermediate stage explaining how gods are related. The trend is seen from 3000 - 1000 BC where monotheism wipe out polytheism as an aid to managing
great empires.

During this time politics controls religion getting a lid on all them to help
perpetuate empire. Theology evolves to try to enhance
devotion with higher values that serve empire and religion.



With a common god the new urban masses have to becomes
‘fictitious kin’ to get along and make city life work.
Organized religion arose in these circumstances to serve
these needs. One of the new ideas is of a commonality to
humans, We are more than individual but we are also unique. A soul idea helps
explain that so religions start selling the idea of immortal
soul. It makes us we feel good as we are more than a small cog in big wheel of
city and empire, but there is always a tension, Do we have a soul capable of being punished?

John mentioned the work
of Scott Atran [Anthropologist, University of Michigan; Author of In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion and Pascal Boyer as people who help us understand some of the transition.

One of the important contemporary lessons that John argued is that religious
belief collapses when given social support. Evidence of this
is Western Europe is one phenomena that worries American
fundamentalists and explains some of their urgent efforts to
gain cultural influence and diminish secular influence.

Sociology can't say what theological religions are adaptive
or natural. It may have been in long past, but with cultural
change has forced a theological position.

John finished on some lessons for Ethical Secularist and these are shown in the
picture below. Lessons for humanists include the idea that
naturalism by itself can't handle ethics and that we need a
philosophy for modern morality and secular social justice to
relieve stress.

There was a spirited Q and A that followed including:

• Can science prove religion wrong?

• Sam Harris argument that science can provide morality.

• Harris bridges it with normative principles.


• Naturalism can serve, but not prove an ethics.

• How enlightened self interest serves group interest in a consequentialist
  stance

• How control by
  narratives comes in and precedes powerful rational thought

• Anthropomorphism
  of god vs animals.
  

Secular attitude of founding fathers

Let sanity prevail among the candidates who are contesting for President post in USA. Here is link for details about founding father`s attitude towards religion;
http://www.alternet.org/story/153727/5_founding_fathers_whose_skepticism_about_christianity_would_make_them_unelectable_today?akid=8109.140959.zhAJsp&rd=1&t=2
Innaiah Narisetti

All Mixed Up: Perplexing Hyphenated Identity, 50-50 Concepts and Mixed up Ethnicity

By Gary Berg-Cross

Mary Bellamy recently noted her perplexity at the meaning of the words “Merry Christmas" in the context of mixed salad of multi-ethic, religious and racial society. Different people with different cultural-religious background interpret it differently. One may ask how religious is it or how American?

I was thinking of this of this multi-ethic, religious and racial context and perplexity while listening to Pete Seeger's song "All Mixed up" about how races mixed to give us a rich stew the English language. Then I read that Pat Buchanan has gotten into trouble for what seems like ethnic and racial charged views promoted in his new book Suicide of a Superpower. One of the chapters is entitled "The End Of White America." He's very worried about the mix of races (e.g. Black and White/Caucasian), ethnic culture with Nationality (e.g. American or Mexican). One can add a 3^rd category of religious identity (e.g. Christian or Hindu) as a broad category that is gets mixed into the discussion. We are used to checking these categories off on questionnaire along with age or gender as if they are unitary-atomic things. The categories can seem pretty clear captured in simple words but these denotations are simpler than the implied connotations that people have. As a result terms like American are often used in head spinning ways and allow us to talk past each other in conversations about things like identity & loyalty. To channel New Gingrich talking about Palestine and Palestinians, American is an invented nationality with many ingredients.

I recently wrote about vague language which is partly the reason we get perplexed about the concept of Christmas, but also identity. Differing concepts creep into the language that people use describe themselves (e.g. American, Secular Italian, or Christian Humanist). We can do a good deal of my head scratching about religious and non-religious people describe themselves, which is one part of 3 basic dimensions, but it probably easier to start with national identities which seem to bother some reactionary politicians/commentators like Buchanan and is a dog-whistle item in political campaigns.

One of the things that historically gets American conservatives off about nationality is the hyphenated American label phenomena – Italian-American, Irish-American, German- American etc. That hyphenation epithet seems to have come in vogue in the late 19^th century a surge of immigrants. World War 1 sparked a bit of consternation since German-& Irish Americans (i.e. Catholics) were big on U.S. neutrality in that war. This earned the enmity of former President Teddy Roosevelt. In a speech in 1916 before a luncheon given by Astor, TR "eschews" hyphenated Americans such as Italian-Americans, German-Americans and Jewish-Americans as being 50-50 Americans and the former colonel said:

"The effort to keep our citizenship divided against itself by the use of the hyphen and along the lines of national origin is certain to a breed of spirit of bitterness and
prejudice and dislike between great bodies of our citizens. If some
citizens band together as German-Americans or Irish-Americans, then
after a while others are certain to band together as English-Americans
or Scandinavian-Americans, and every such banding together, every
attempt to make for political purposes a German-American alliance or a
Scandinavian-American alliance, means down at the bottom an effort
against the interest of straight-out American citizenship, an effort to
bring into our nation the bitter Old World rivalries and jealousies and
hatreds "

There is a history to talking like this. It reflects the old melting pot hope of a majority identity and loyalty to a simplified, unified national identity. Well, as Mary noted, the fact is we live in more of a mutli-racial/ethnic nation now and the fact is that hyphenated groups abound. The melting pot aspiration of TR's time came under fire when it became apparent that the mainstream public had no intention of "melting" with (certain) "other" races and cultures or of giving up their historical religions. In the face of this fact subsequent immigration policies became restrictive based on race,but immigration ground forth to produce today's synthetic multi-racial-ethnic America.

Over time many have softened into tacit acceptance of what seems like a quasi-compromise. We have what is described as a tossed salad society where the racial ingredients remain somewhat recognizable distinct, but also leads to some identity vagaries.

To some, like Buchanan, there is no real agreement and we are drifting into danger down the road. It raises issues like loyalty. If your are Chinese-American or Mexican American to which label are you loyal too? Buchanan thinks the Mexican-American hybrid might eventually annex and take back the American West.

Nationality is only part of the problem of labeled identity, because there are other ways of identifying oneself. Usually in parceling out identity, as on a biographic form, we again use our 3 simple labels of seemingly independent categories of:

• Nationality/Country (US),
• Race (Negroid)
• Religion (Muslim).

So you can be a Negroid US citizen (say of Egyptian descent) and a member of the Muslim religion. Seems like a simple, atomic formula. Sort of like chemistry. We can switch the labels around to have Italians who are Catholic or make compounding distinctions. So we can construct Southern American of African descent who are Southern Baptist Christians. But there are some vagaries here. Not everyone fits into nice compound labels. In reality things get a bit fluid in the compound mixing of labels since there are dependencies between the concepts.

There are many things that can be seen in different ways. The Black-American category is too big a racial and ethnic grouping, and many of us don’t see a West African or Central African distinction. Biologists tell us that there are actually more historical genetic differences between groups in Africa than anywhere else in the world groups. But skin color tends to be used to overwhelm this deeper distinctions and we tend ignore the use of different languages and customs that might mark the difference. We do make these distinctions for Asian-Americans, so Chinese and Japanese are easily distinguished as is their language.

The religious categories can also be vague. As some one noted when discussing Christians in the Middle East :

"Yes, all Assyrians are Christians. But we are Christians in different ways, of course."

We can cite the usual major categories from Christian to Muslim to Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist etc. But as a Mormon can we agree that Romney is a Christian or just a Christian in a different way? Fundamentalists don’t see it that way and are concerned about the beliefs and values that Mormonism has imbedded into its culture.There is lots of baggage and stretching Christianity to accommodate Mormonism seems as dangerous to them as accommodating Mexican-American hybridization to Buchanan. It’s like the meaning of Christmas. It will change depending on which group is doing the interpreting.

Here is a final example where simple, atomic labeling yields to a complex of underlying . meanings . Does it make sense to say that one is an atheist Catholic? It doesn’t seem like it. I can be an atheist who is a White, English person, but atheist and Catholic are both in what seems the “religion” dimension with no overlap on the Venn diagram. Does it make sense, then to call a person an Atheist Jew then? I’ve heard several people describe themselves that way, but does it make any more sense than being a Protestant Atheist?

Here the perplexity seems to be about Jewish as a religion as opposed to an ethnic group label. When listing religious categories Jewish gets thrown into the mix with Muslim etc. Maybe we want to say the religion isn’t “Jewish” but Judaism. Then Jewish becomes an ethic identity label which relates to a mix cultural factors such as nationality, culture, customs, ancestry, language and beliefs.

Our simple categories have become all mixed in ethnicity and this is more generally true than we like to admit. It allows some flexibility, but probably some confusion. Maybe we want to allow atheist or secular Catholics. These would be folks who hold onto cultural and historical experience and celebrate Easter, like secular Jews celebrate Passover which has religious roots and ceremony. Machar (The Washington Congregation for Secular Humanistic Judaism) is perhaps an example of this hybrid. They may meet in a temple with religious culture and tradition evident and talk of humanist values.

It seems a mixed message and doesn’t appeal to me particularly, but perhaps that is a half-way house for transitioning people slowing out of a faith culture into a more secular stance, while keeping the comfits of cultural identity while waiting for a secular humanism with its own building and cultural tradition. This might mean a half-way, more Humanist type of Christmas season celebrate mixed with Humanlight. Or maybe this is all too mixed up and leads to that competition between groups to celebrate in their own way in the winter season. Hanukkah is a minor holiday in Israel but Jewish culture in America has what a Washington Post called The Christmas effect: How Hanukkah became a big holiday.

In part, as the article says, the importance of Hanukkah among American Jews is driven by its proximity (in the time dimension) to Christmas and the need to "resist conversion" to the alien Christian culture. No melting pot there. More of adding some new humanist ingredients to an existing mixed salad.

Maybe there are pluses to go along with the minus in allowing some hyphenation of religious/ethnic culture and a stance like atheism or secular humanism. It’s the old tossed salad rather than melting pot again where religious culture and tradition sort of remain in a form that hyphenates with an identity like atheist. Perhaps it is what atheists and theists talk about at Inter-faith meetings. It might lead to some compromise or perhaps it is just one of those unsatisfying compromises that is compromising. It takes us sideways and puts off the harder decisions about identity.

Theists' defense against atheism and human invention fails

By Mathew Goldstein

Sean McDowell and Jonathan Marrow wrote a book "Is God Just a Human Invention? And Seventeen Other Questions Raised by the New Atheists", published in August 2010, that claims to defeat the arguments for atheism and show that Christian theism is true. I have not read the book, instead I recently read a book review. Sometimes, reading a favorable book review is enough to conclude that the book fails to achieve its claimed objective. Why and how does this book fail to make a convincing argument against atheism, contrary to the enthusiastic book reviewer's assertions that the book succeeds? Let's take a look at some of the arguments from the book as cited by the book reviewer.

All people, including atheists, have faith in some things, therefore atheist attacks against religious faith are said to be mistaken. One trusts the unfamiliar pilot of a plane one boards; one has faith that the electrician properly wires your house; one trusts the cook at the restaurant where one eats, etc. The problem with this argument is that it is confusing our day to day faith in the behavior, skills, and good will of other people with faith in factual claims made by religions. It doesn't follow that because we trust pilots to not try to kill their passengers that we are justified in trusting that the angel Moroni communicated the wisdom of God to Joseph Smith as asserted by the book of Mormon.

Atheists are then accused of having blind faith in the ideas that the universe came into existence from nothing, that life emerged from non-life, and the human mind arose from mere matter. None of this is true. Atheists follow the opinions of the experts in cosmology, biology, and neurology: Cosmologists, Biologists, and Neuroscientists. These are the people who have devoted their time and efforts to studying and pursuing the evidence about our universe, life, and brains, including their origins. The evidence suggests that our universe contains a near balance of negative and positive energy consistent with its emerging from an unstable, initial "nothing". Nothing is in quotes here because the evidence suggests that absolute nothingness could be impossible, it exists in the minds of theologians but has no evidenced reality. The evidence suggests that the brain is a completely materialistic entity that is the sole source, together with its supporting body, of our minds. The evidence suggests that life emerged from chemistry and is entirely a chemical and physical process. These are, in fact, the conclusions favored by the available evidence. I, and most other atheists, are absolutely convinced that these are the conclusions that are the best fit with the evidence.

The authors of the book are then quoted as asserting "there is no inherent conflict between Christianity and science”. As evidence for this it is noted that most of the early pioneering scientists were theists. However, time passes and more evidence is accumulated. Today, more scientists are atheists than a hundred years ago. People hold inconsistent beliefs, so the fact that there are many people who hold two beliefs is not sufficient to establish that both beliefs are not in conflict.

The authors claim naturalism “ultimately undermines any basis for confidence” in nature’s order and the powers of reason. It is claimed that under a naturalistic worldview, there’s no reason to trust our reason or our senses; they were merely the result of blind Darwinian accidents. Again, this is false. Our reason and senses are effective precisely because they competitively evolved. To the extent animal reasoning and senses were less trustworthy they were out competed by animals whose reasoning and senses were more trustworthy. The process of evolution is thus not only accidental, it is also directional, it necessarily follows a path that "puts us in touch with reality", because the outcome is shaped by competition for survival. A tendency to walk over cliffs is not an outcome favored by evolution.

The authors defend the concept of miracles, “if a transcendent God exists, then it seems eminently possible that He has acted in the universe”. This if x then y is possible logic is sensible here. But we could just as logically say if not x then not y. While the authors seem to be impressed by the standard philosophical arguments for God, those arguments fail by the only criteria that counts, they don't reach conclusions by following the overall weight of the overall evidence. So the authors are mistaken to consider those various traditional arguments for god to be convincing. Arguing from one possibility to another possibility only makes sense when the evidence favors the first possibility.

The authors claim that Hume mistakenly presumes to know the uniformity of human experience prior to considering the evidence. Indeed, we should always start with the evidences. So do the available evidences favor the conclusion that the universe consistently follows a set of laws? Yes, very much so. Pieces of icebergs break off and fall down into the ocean, but equivalent amounts of ice don't jump up and attach itself to the side of the iceberg. Hume was correct regarding this "presumption" of his. Time has a clear direction from past to future because our universe unfolds uniformly according to fixed laws.

The authors then attack Hume’s argument that one should be skeptical about the improbable. “But surely it is perfectly reasonable to believe that an improbable event can occasionally occur”. No, that is not a reasonable conclusion for any particular imaginable event. Again, this depends on the evidence. We know that Royal Flushes in poker are both improbable and an occasional occurrence, while a human language talking donkey is not only improbable, but physically impossible and thus a never occurred fiction. Believing in any such tall tale events that violate the evidences regarding what is possible, a.k.a. a miracle, is, by definition, unreasonable.

The authors claim that there is not good evidence for macroevolution (changes from one species into another different species), only good evidence for microevolution (small changes within a kind). This is false. The evidence for evolution transcends this micro/macro distinction and is strong for both. Macroevolution is also an unavoidable logical consequence of microevolution.

The authors claim that a purely material reality cannot produce consciousness. Again, this is contrary to the evidence. The evidence that we have favors the conclusion that consciousness is an emergent property of purely material brains. Near death experiences are like dreams, we have lots of evidence that they are fictions, they reflect activity internal to the brain, not what it is true beyond the confines of the person. Intention and free will are not sufficient evidence for consciousness being immaterial. We literally don't have evidence that free will is anything more than an illusion, or that if it is in any sense real, that it is in that sense also non-material.

The authors note that atheism lacks an objective and perfect ground to issue objective moral commandments as well as the means to hold all moral lawbreakers to an account. But neither does theism. The authors claim that “In the theistic view, objective moral laws are grounded in the reality of a Moral Lawgiver." That is a circular argument, it fails to establish what are objective moral laws, or how that is determined. Citing the Christian (or Hebrew or Islamic, etc.) bible as the guide for "Morality" is untenable. Those documents are more distant from being a decent, let alone perfect, guide to moral behavior, or laws, than most atheists could write themselves. Furthermore, it is rather obvious that the content of these documents reflect the state of knowledge and attitudes of the people of the place and time where they originated. Again, the evidence strongly favors the conclusion that the only Lawgivers behind these documents are people.

The book reviewer concludes "They offer several of the leading arguments for Christian theism while toppling some of the most belligerent of the objections promoted by the New Atheists. They have written, with abundant care, to attain a thoroughness that is not often established in popular books. The wisdom and excellence with which each chapter is written makes this a crucial volume for the budding apologist’s library."

The arguments for Christian theism, and more generally for religious theisms, in this book, and in the many similar arguments found in other such books, are often seriously flawed, in conflict with the available evidence, and very weak overall. That books like these are popular is an indication that more debate regarding religious beliefs is needed. There is nothing belligerent, or impolite, or counter-productive, in arguing that everyone should believe in macroevolution, in abiogenesis, in global warming, in atheism, and generally in that set of conclusions which are best supported by the available evidence.

A Philosopher for our Times - John Dewey

By Gary Berg-Cross

John Shook will be talking Saturday Dec. 7^th at the WASH MDC chapter about "The Psychology of Religion, the Sociology of Theology, and the Humanist Strategic Response." As part of this we are likely to hear a bit about John Dewey and Pragmatism as evidenced by his recent book, John Dewey's Philosophy of Spirit by John R. Shook and James A. Good, published by Fordham University Press, in 2010.

John has woven together the threads of some of Dewey philosophical concepts and values into a poem.

A Philosopher's Faith
Inspired by John Dewey

My person returns to unwind all its threads,
Woven by language into the habits of heads;
An old wearied head must bow down one final eve,
But my lively thought shines in cloth I helped to weave.

Your gift by my leave is but some seeds yet to grow,
Whose value was found in times of need long ago;
Sow all of these seeds in our vast garden with care,
Protect and defend the greater harvest to share.

To view such swift change, see truths melt under new suns,
To watch how scared souls kept on refining their guns;
My nation was home despite such strife with no cease,
My freedom was here while humbly searching for peace.

By trial did I live, by more trial find my thought’s worth,
My death you will get if you conceive no new birth;
No life without doubt, for the best fail now and then,
No rest for my faith, that each new day tests again.

--John Shook

It’s fair to say that I’m a fan or John Dewey’s life and thoughts. I was dimly aware of him as one of America's premier "public intellectuals,". I had run into philosophic and pragmatic influence on progressive education, which served as a testing ground for some of his psychological-philosophical thinking.Some of that was readily available

“It was no accident”, he observed in Philosophy of education (see Middle works of John Dewey 1912-13, “that like himself many great philosophers had taken a keen interest in the problems of education because there was ‘an intimate and vital relation between the need for philosophy and the necessity for education.’ If philosophy was wisdom, a vision of ‘the better kind of life to be led’, then consciously guided education was the praxis of the philosopher. ‘If philosophy is to be other than an idle and unverifiable speculation, it must be animated by the conviction that its theory of experience is a hypothesis that is realized only as experience is actually shaped in accord with it. And this realization demands that man’s dispositions be made such as to desire and strive for that kind of experience.’ The shaping of dispositions might take place in various institutions, but in modern societies the school was the most crucial, and as such it was an indispensable arena for the shaping of a philosophy into a ‘living fact’ “(Dewey, 1912-13, p. 298, 306-7 quoted in JOHN DEWEY (1859-1952) by Robert B. Westbrook).

My formal education didn’t include much of Dewey’s thinking but his unifying concept critiquing the simple Reflex Arc concept. In his "Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896) paper, Dewey advanced a Functional School of Psychology by integrating his early Hegelianism with William James' recent take on evolutionary naturalism. Dewey's critique argues made the point that the idea of a stimulus based reflex arc account of human action fails because it contains an apparent logical paradox based on physical-mental dualism. What really is needed is an intentional level of analysis including feedback as the R of response affects the environment and changes the stimulus situation - see Figure on the left).

An "explanatory" account of animal or human action, he argues, needs to include this larger, intentional unit of analysis, which reconceptualized sensori-motor coordination.

Thus he added a cognitive, coordinating aspect that transcended and reformed old dualistic theories. A more thoughtful reflex arc provided the space and structure to reconceptualize stimulus-response behavior into a cognitive theory of habit. It emphasized active conceptualization and adaptive reconstruction as part of learning, an idea pursued in his experimental educational endeavors.

As a graduate student dating a Teacher’s College student at Columbia I got a bit closer to Dewey, whose name I could see along with other famous educators on engraved on the building. I had time later in life to select one of Dewey’s works as vacation reading and there I discovered that Dewey’s middle and later books were all on topics of interest to me (How we think ,1910, Democracy and education, 1916, Experience and Nature, 1925 etc.).

It was only more recently that I learned enough to see Dewey life and progression as a whole and understand how his early work and teaching in Psychology (e.g. pushing social theory beyond an instincts explanation) became an adjunct to his philosophy and work on broader public problems. His reconstruction idea for philosophy reflected his own life’s journey. When asked if he would update a book for a 2^nd edition he was known it say, “it will be a different book.” His ideas were always evolving.

Coming from an idealist background of Kant and Hegel, Dewey intellectual life was tempered by the pragmatist influence of Charles Peirce and William James. Trained in emerging experimental psychology Dewey constructed a natural philosophy in which vague concepts of mind were forged into more defined cognitive models. In these human thought was understood as instrumental practical problem-solving, which advances incrementally by testing rival hypotheses against experience in order to achieve the "warranted assertability" that grounds coherent action.

Dewey continually updated to his ideas in a search for truth and progress. The process of inquiry was central to his stance addressing the problems of society that consumed him. We can also say that he provided many good ideas to the modern Secular Humanism movement along with scientific/pan-objectiveness. In the 50s his voice could still be heard on cultural controversies and Dewey still provides a good model for the combined role of philosophy and philosophy to address the larger problems of society. Updated psychological models of human bias are one type of experimental result that Dewey might have appreciated and used to guide coherent action to make us a better society.