h/t to 300 Lutefisks!
In recent comments to a prior post, my friend Mike once again raised the issue of whether religion was compatible with science (or vice versa). With incredibly perfect timing, Bradley Monton (who I have identified in the past as one of my favorite atheists for his very open and honest views) authored a post that is right on point, Bias in academia. The post is relevant on 2 fronts: First, it addresses the issue of “bias in academia” (obviously a very appropriate title), this time referring to philosophy as opposed to science. His brief comments on this issue speak for themselves, so I suggest you head over there (when you’re done here) and read them.
Monton’s post was motivated by the introduction to a live-blog review of a debate between atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett, known for his pro-evolution, anti-religion views, and Alvin Plantinga, a well-known Christian philosopher who the author identifies as “one of the finest epistemologists of the last fifty years and one of the finest philosophers of religion since the Medieval period.” At the debate, Plantinga presented a paper on the issue of whether theism was compatible with science. Dennett was there to respond.
I was pleased that Plantinga opened by stating that Theism is not incompatible with science, it is incompatible with naturalism, a point that I’ve raised (it’s always nice to know that you agree with really smart guys). And, Dennett, for the most part, agreed. Of note, Dennett said:
Dennett appears to have behaved exactly like I would have expected him to, and in keeping with much of the science v religion debate that I’ve seen. Overall, he failed to address most of Plantinga’s points, and resorted to ridicule and insults (the comments tended to agree with the reviewer’s assessment). It makes you wonder why he even bothered to show up, except that it did illustrate the current state of the science v religion debate.
This should serve as a good introduction to my upcoming post, The Inane Atheists:
I’m beginning to think that the writers of Saturday Night Live are the only people in the country who really know what’s going on. The following clip is a good example.
And, if you didn’t see SNL’s Thursday version of Weekend Update, you’ve got to check it out. Truly profound.
among other things:
At least now I unerstand why I feel compelled to watch Nicholas Cage movies.
As reported by Harper’s Magazine, Charles Bernstein has proposed a poetry bailout, geared to restore the confidence of poetry readers. Bernstein said the following in a prepared statement:
As you know, the glut of illiquid, insolvent, and troubled poems is clogging the literary arteries of the West. These debt-ridden poems threaten to infect other areas of the literary sector and ultimately to topple our culture industry.
Cultural leaders have come together to announce a massive poetry buyout: leveraged and unsecured poems, poetry derivatives, delinquent poems, and subprime poems will be removed from circulation in the biggest poetry bailout since the Victorian era. We believe the plan is a comprehensive approach to relieving the stresses on our literary institutions and markets.
Let there be no mistake: the fundamentals of our poetry are sound. The problem is not poetry but poems.
…
As we know, lax composition practices since the advent of modernism led to irresponsible poets and irresponsible readers. Simply put, too many poets composed works they could not justify. We are seeing the impact on poetry, with a massive loss of confidence on the part of readers.
Whatever happens with the financial markets, let’s not let this warning go unheeded.
Thanks to John H at Confessing Evangelical for bringing this to our attention.
This is one of the funniest bits I’ve seen from SNL in a long, long time:
Ewen Callaway wrote an interesting little piece over at The New Scientist last week that’s actually kind of funny, if you don’t take it too seriously. The point of the article is to say that Darwin’s theory of evolution explains why people believe in superstitions. It’s nothing new, I heard this before: people believe in superstitions – including religion, I presume – because some superstitions help us to survive. The logic is a bit back-assward: essentially, if evolution is moving in a positive direction and superstitions have persisted, they must be beneficial.
Superstition is defined as the tendency to falsely link a cause to an effect. The article states:
The tendency to falsely link cause to effect – a superstition – is occasionally beneficial, says Kevin Foster, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University.
For instance, a prehistoric human might associate rustling grass with the approach of a predator and hide. Most of the time, the wind will have caused the sound, but “if a group of lions is coming there’s a huge benefit to not being around,” Foster says.
…
In general, an animal must balance the cost of being right with the cost of being wrong, Foster says. Throw in the chances that a real lion, and not wind, makes the rustling sound, and you can predict superstitious beliefs, he says.
The article goes on to quote Michael Shermer, the professional skeptic, as saying
“Our brains are pattern-recognition machines, connecting the dots and creating meaning out of the patterns that we think we see in nature. Sometimes A really is connected to B, and sometimes it is not,” he says. “When it isn’t, we err in thinking that it is, but for the most part this process isn’t likely to remove us from the gene pool, and thus magical thinking will always be a part of the human condition.”
Now, I really don’t think Darwinism has much to do with it, though I don’t have a problem with the concept that people make wrong cause-effect associations; I think this happens fairly often. However, primitave cultures, as far as I know, were less linear in their thinking than we are; the cause-effect principle is foundational to modernism. Foster has to back off a bit from his theory when talking about why superstitions still exist in today’s modern, scientific world: “My guess would be that in modern life, the general tendency to believe in things where we don’t have scientific evidence is less beneficial than it used to be.”
Now, here’s where it starts to get really funny:
However, Wolfgang Forstmeier, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute of Ornithology in Starnberg, Germany, argues that by linking cause and effect – often falsely – science is a simply dogmatic form of superstition.
“You have to find the trade off between being superstitious and being ignorant,” he says. By ignoring building evidence that contradicts their long-held ideas, “quite a lot of scientists tend to be ignorant quite often,” he says.
Like I said, I think people often make incorrect cause-effect associations, and I would expect that it’s more common if you expect to find a cause-effect association, making scientists prime candidates. I don’t really know… But, I can tell you this: no good can come from walking under a ladder.
