Apr 22 2010
Demonizing “Big Pharma”
To be blunt up front – SBM is not apologetic about the pharmaceutical industry. We get zero funding from any company, and have no ties of any kind to “big pharma.” In today’s world I have to spend time making that clear, because despite the reality critics are free to assume and falsely claim that our message is coming straight from the bowels of hell (a.k.a. the pharmaceutical industry).
We promote science-based medicine and criticize pharmaceutical companies along with everyone else when they place other concerns ahead of scientific validity, or promote bad science, for whatever reason.
It has become fashionable, however, to not only criticize the pharmaceutical industry but to demonize them – and the term “big pharma” has come to represent this demonization. Cynicism is a cheap imitation of skepticism – it is the assumption of the worst, without careful thought or any hint of fairness.
A recent article by Martha Rosenberg is an excellent representation of the mindless demonization of the pharmaceutical industry – good for scoring cheap points, but very counterproductive. She essentially accuses big pharma of inventing diseases in order to sell their products.
The premise strikes me as profoundly naive – which diagnostic entities are considered legitimate diseases is actually a complex question that is debated within the medical field. Rosenberg acts as if diseases can be invented out of whole cloth and then imposed upon medicine by a pharmaceutical executive. It is a grand-conspiracy type of thinking which erodes under scrutiny.
After hinting at anti-vaccine leanings, she writes:
Now pharma is back to creating new diseases, patients, risks and “awareness campaigns” faster than you can say thimerosal (the vaccine preservative that started the backlash.)
No – thimerosal did not start the backlash, Andrew Wakefield demonstrably did, with the MMR vaccine that never contained thimerosal. Thimerosal was simply act 2, after the evidence failed to find a link between MMR and autism (and of course there is also no link between thimerosal and autism either). But Rosenberg acts as if the anti-vaccine movement is a justified backlash against the excesses of big pharma – nice historical revisionism.
The sad fact is, Rosenberg might have a kernel of a legitimate point if she did not come across with her anti-scientific conspiracy mongering. That is why such demonization is so counterproductive – it actually backfires and let’s pharmaceutical companies off the hook for their real excesses.
Harriet Hall, for example, wrote an excellent piece on osteopenia – (Osteoporosis Drugs: Good Medicine or Big Pharma Scam?) which takes a properly nuanced and balanced approach to such questions. Do we really need to be treating pre-osteoporosis? The evidence should ultimately guide us. What pharma is guilty of doing is jumping prematurely on the bandwagon of a questionable diagnosis because it is a new market for them.
I think the same is true of the drugs that are now approved for the treatment of fibromyalgia – a controversial diagnosis, to say the least. But here we see more complexity and nuance. The FDA requires that a drug be indicated to treat a disease – not a syndrome or symptom. So there is no drug indicated for treating neuropathic pain as a symptom – drugs have to be indicated for diabetic neuropathy or post-herpetic neuralgia.
This forces pharmaceutical companies to find a disease, even when they have a drug that can potentially alleviate a symptom. Fibromyalgia is the perfect example of this – the very diagnosis itself is mostly used as a garbage pail diagnosis for vague syndromes of muscle pain and tenderness with fatigue and poor sleep. But you cannot get FDA approval to treat vague muscle pain.
Meanwhile, doctors are struggling to understand these syndromes and come up with a proper system of labeling what we find. We don’t want to prematurely use the “disease” label, but we also need to recognize patterns of patient complaints. I prefer terms like “myofascial pain syndrome” because it says what it is without implying a specific disease.
But regulation exists in its own world, and the FDA demands a disease label. So we have drugs, which are likely fine for the symptomatic treatment of myofascial pain, indicated for a dubious diagnosis (at least as it is often applied) like fibromyalgia. But it is doctors that invented the concept of fibromyalgia, and we still debate about it.
Rosenberg, however, cuts through all this nuance and goes for the simplistic and cynical conspiracy theory – pharma “invented” fibromyalgia to sell its drugs. She writes:
Nothing proves pharma’s when-the-medication-is-ready credo better than the legions of people who have fibromyalgia now that Cymbalta, Savella and Lyrica are available to treat it.
This is more historical revisionism. Having lived, and practiced medicine, through the fibromyalgia controversy it is clear that what happened is fibromyalgia became a popular diagnosis for the common vague syndrome I described above. Much after fibromyalgia became a popular diagnosis, some pharmaceutical companies saw it as a potential market. Rosenberg therefore has it backwards.
What we do have to recognize is that, now that there are drugs indicated for fibromyalgia, those pharmaceutical companies that make those drugs are invested in the reality and popularity of the diagnosis. They may therefore seek to distort the debate in that direction.
Rosenberg also embarrasses herself by criticizing the notion that there is an epidemic of sleep disorders in our society – the evidence suggests that there is, and it is under-treated. She further goes after adult ADHD and adult autism. The alternative is that autism and ADHD are childhood diseases only and always spontaneously resolve by adulthood – a scientifically untenable, and even laughable, position.
She further completely distorts the notion of “treatment resistant” conditions. She misinterprets that fact that many drugs are initially approved for adjunctive (add-on) therapy. This is not because the notion of “treatment resistance” was invented by big pharma. It is partly due to the fact that it is easier to do clinical trials where a new treatment is added to an established treatment, rather than to prove equivalence as stand alone therapy. So pharmaceutical companies go after the low-hanging fruit to maximize their return on investment.
Also – some patients are difficult to treat, and when one approach is not adequate it is nice to have more options. Rosenberg somehow turns this into a negative.
Conclusion
Rosenberg’s approach to this complex issue is simplistic, naive, and conspiracy-mongering. She brings no useful insight to the discussion. She also demonstrates nicely the method of “demonizing” a convenient target – re-write history, white wash over all complexity and nuance, and cast everything into a maximally sinister light.
But further Rosenberg shows that taking such an approach is highly counterproductive. The pharmaceutical industry, like every industry, needs an effective watchdog to guard against abuse and excess. I also think they require thoughtful and effective regulation (although this question is difficult to disentangle from political ideology).
Rosenberg and other big pharma conspiracy theorists make ineffective watchdogs and critics, because their criticisms are paper thin and easily countered . By not recognizing the complexity of the issues involved, or making any attempt at fairness, Rosenberg is easily dismissed.
If I were a conspiracy nut I might even suspect that people like Rosenberg are actually fronts for big pharma, used to create a straw man of criticism that they can then easily knock down to show that all criticism is weak and invalid.
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325 Responses to “Demonizing “Big Pharma””
Pardon the vaguely Godwinian tone, but I can’t help but think it: Thimerosal started the backlash in much the same manner as the Jews started the Holocaust: It was there, was convenient to blame, and as one of those dirty, scary “chemicals” it was easy to foment hatred against it.
Seeing pharmaceutical companies as actively evil is so…stupid. They’re out to make a profit, as substantial a one as possible, but it’s not like they’re developing drugs specifically designed to kill people in sneaky ways. Companies do all sorts of short-sighted, harmful and profit-before-people things, but they also make nearly every thing we need to live in the world (or, in the case of unprocessed foods, ship it to where we live in the world). They are a necessary presence in the world that affords a high standard of living, cheap computing, delicious and convenient (but often unhealthy) food, off-the-rack clothing, cars and the fuel to drive them, and the drugs that treat our diseases. If Rosenberg gets an infection, who makes the antibiotics? If she gets cancer, who makes the monoclonal antibodies? If her lover gets impaired penile blood flow, who makes the sildenafil? Drugs have side effects but they also improve our lives (by preventing death, alleviating symptoms, or in some cases simply making things a little easier, more interesting or more fun – I’m looking at you caffeine, alcohol and sildenafil) and the companies that make them are profit-making entities, not saints, but that’s why we have doctors prescribing them, not pharmaceutical reps.
I’ve been toying with what I think is an interesting idea – rather than public institutions accepting funds from companies, it would be better to have the funds pass through a third-party entity (i.e. a government agency) so the taint of influence is less. Let the NIH stand firmly between researchers and private funding so new drugs can be tested more fairly. Drug company wants to test their new molecule, they have to give the money to the government, who will run a peer review panel to decide who should run the study, and prohibit all contact between the entities. The research needs to be done, the drugs need to be developed, but the negative aspects of the current system (direct contact and influence between drug companies and researchers) need to be limited as much as possible. Wonder if it would work…
Could you please add information about who Martha Rosenberg is and where this article appears?
I thought that Cymbalta and Lyrica were already existing anti-depressents and/or anxiety drugs that were adopted for use for fibromyalgia, and are approved by the FDA for that use. Both have proven to be effective for symptoms of fibromyalgia. Not sure how Ms. Rosenberg could find fault with that.
Sorry – I forgot the link. It’s there now, and here it is also: http://www.alternet.org/story/146471/8_invented_diseases_big_pharma_is_banking_on
And yes – Cymbalta and Lyrica were already approved for other indications. Fibromyalgia in both cases was an added indication.
What is the difference between a syndrome and a disease? Is it a merely the lack of knowledge or discovery of the underlying cause? Or is it an ambiguous classification that is the medical equivalent of “we’re not sure WTF this is”?
I’m confused because there are some well syndromes whose cause is understood: AIDS, Down syndrome, Marfan syndrome, etc. While others are yet mysterious like SIDS.
They’re not any less serious than diseases for the people suffering from them.
The FDA requires that a drug be indicated to treat a disease – not a syndrome or symptom.
What is the reasoning for this?
Martha Rosenberg probably missed the controversy in the investing community about the approval Lyrica for Fibromyalgia. Each drug is watched carefully and speculated upon. A debate about the validity of Fibromyalgia occurred in the business pages. Businesses don’t want that kind of controversy. It’s just not clear cut — financial incentive can either encourage careful choices in pharmaceuticals, or succeed in putting total crap on the market (see Claritin, which is barely better than placebo but makes tons of $).
The term “disease” refers to a specific pathophysiological entity.
The term “syndrome” has multiple uses. It can refer to a disease that a host of signs and symptoms, and is often used particularly in genetic diseases where “genetic syndrome” has a specific use. But it can also refer to an identified set of signs and symptoms that tend to occur together, prior to a specific disease being identified. In many cases, a syndrome can be many diseases all with similar manifestations. So it’s confusing.
The FDA takes the most conservative approach. You cannot even approve a drug for MS or epilepsy – you have to go for relapsing remitting MS or adjunctive treatment of adults with partial onset epilepsy. There is some justification for this, as these entities do respond differently to medications, but it is important to realize they take the most narrow approach.
Dr. Novella said:
Another term that has been proposed is “medically unexplained physical symptoms (MUPS)”, as discussed in “Evaluation and management of medically unexplained physical symptoms.” (Neurologist. 2004 Jan;10(1):18-30.).
Peter Conrad discusses this issue at length, in a reasonably Fair and Balanced Way, in The Medicalization of Society (JHU Press, 2007). There is no question but that pharmaceutical companies have invented and promoted diseases. The ontological status of numerous disease entities is most certainly debatable, particularly but not exclusively psychiatric diagnoses. And there are plenty of cases where the pharmaceutical remedies for the invented diseases have ultimately been found harmful.
E.g., menopause is not a disease and hormone replacement is not the remedy.
That doesn’t translate into a blanket indictment of the industry, or of all pharmaceuticals, but they aren’t in business for their health, or yours. They are in business to make money, and they have shown repeatedly and incontrovertibly that ethics mean nothing to them. That’s why we have an FDA.
Advocates of science based medicine, more than anyone, should be screaming this from the rooftops, not disparaging it.
“The alternative is that autism and ADHD are childhood diseases only and always spontaneously resolve by adulthood – a scientifically untenable, and even laughable, position.”
I disagree strongly that that is a laughable position. With respect to ADHD, I believe the behavior associated with that diagnosis is typically the type of behavior that changes in individuals as they mature. Granted, it’s not smart to assume such behavior always resolves in adulthood, but I don’t think its laughable to think ADHD is a childhood disease. At least, I wouldn’t laugh in someone’s face for saying such a thing.
Okay, you disagree with Rosenberg that austism/AdHD can be adult disorders, that insomnia is not a real problem, and think that instead of “inventing diseases” big pharma is “jumping on the bandwagon too soon” for a quick profit. I agree that she oversimplifies but…
It seems odd to me that the skeptical movement is mostly limited to being skeptical of alt med, psychics, ghosts, and religion. Why can’t one be skeptical of government or corporations? For example, that article said some pretty shocking things about asthma drugs. I have no idea if this true but I would think if it was, it’d be covered on a site calling itself science based medicine. While alt med is certainly influential, I can’t tell they have the power or pull of the pharmaceutical companies to actually kill a good number of people with their products (like vioxx). I’m totally against crap like “dreamwater” but I’m skeptical that so many people who can’t sleep at night need pharmaceuticals. What’s the right balance?
I can just imagine if there were more watchdog doctors guarding within the system, those like Crislip who refuse to take bribes, how influential that would be. I’d love to see an sbm 2 take on these issues within the system rather than limiting their criticisms to the outsiders. Both are needed I think.
Iow, agree with cervantes. Do other countries with universal health care have this problem?
“It seems odd to me that the skeptical movement is mostly limited to being skeptical of alt med, psychics, ghosts, and religion. Why can’t one be skeptical of government or corporations? ”
I’m skeptical of all of those, including skeptics. I’m skeptical of invented diseases, and skeptical that some diseases are invented. Meds like Vioxx, and estrogen replacement therapy have risk benefit ratios. In some people the benefits may, and still do, outweigh the risks. I am very skeptical that they are bad for everyone. As, I believe, Aristotle once said, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.”
“Having marketed adult diseases like depression, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia in 4-year-olds to death,…”
That’s right. Big Pharma invented these – or at least the notion that they’re serious enough to pay attention to. The ancient Greeks didn’t describe melancholia and mania after all; it was Eli Lilly.
Schizophrenia in 4 year olds? Puh-lease.
… though some schizophrenias probably are a neurodevelopmental disease and as such there might well be manifestations in childhood – but still!
She’s a crank. There is no evidence of logical thought in any bit of that article. Its function then is (a) to reinforce the beliefs of those on the anti-medicine/science/logic side of things, and (b) to cause rational people to to ignore/invalidate everything she says – even that which might hold some truth (somewhere deeeeeeeep within).
I do in fact have some disquiet about the drug companies. The latest thing that’s bugged me is that quetiapine here in Australia is now licensed for schizophrenia, and acute treatment of mania, maintenance treatment of bipolar disorder, recently bipolar depression, an nooooow unipolar depression, and generalised anxiety disorder. Well excellent. I don’t have to think any more; I’ll just give everyone quetiapine. The marketing unfortunately reflects my facetious statement, and every pill is presented as a panacea.
Also, a disturbingly large chunk of the studies showing the 2nd generation antipsychotics to be useful in mood disorders are not just sponsored by the companies – but performed by them. The psychiatric literature is in a mess.
Doesn’t make it any more rational or useful to demonise “Big Pharma” though
Zoe said “It seems odd to me that the skeptical movement is mostly limited to being skeptical of alt med, psychics, ghosts, and religion.”
Some have criticized self-labeled “skeptics” as “pseudo-skeptics” who practice a type of asymmetrical skepticism; for example rather than a truly skeptical perspective, (agnostic or doubting), the pseudo-skeptic consistently takes a denialist stance against certain ideas. “The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved.”
http://www.anomalist.com/commentaries/pseudo.html
There’s a book I’ve got on my “to read” list called “Don’t Get Fooled Again” by Richard Wilson. Here’s a brief review of it http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/oct/11/richard-wilson
“Confusingly, many of the people we ought to be sceptical of pretend to be sceptics themselves. The giveaway, as Wilson nicely shows, is that their scepticism is asymmetrical: no evidence is ever enough for someone “sceptical” about anthropogenic global warming (an example not included in this book), and yet they are remarkably credulous about any alternative factoids that might seem to support their own view.”
“Some have criticized self-labeled “skeptics” as “pseudo-skeptics” who practice a type of asymmetrical skepticism; for example rather than a truly skeptical perspective, (agnostic or doubting), the pseudo-skeptic consistently takes a denialist stance against certain ideas. “The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved.””
Now that is true. I’ve said on here before that an extreme skeptic is a denialist. Are people who “don’t believe in” AGW skeptical or denying? What about homeopathy- skeptical it works or denying it works? I have no medical background but time has taught me to be cautious of anybody who a)is a little too passionate/ unbiased about their cause (not tha passion or idealogy is always bad) or b) somebody who can’t tell you what it would realistically take to change their minds (falsification) or c) pulls an “us vs. them” routine. That applies to the big pharma is always evil arguments too.
weing:
“Meds like Vioxx, and estrogen replacement therapy have risk benefit ratios. In some people the benefits may, and still do, outweigh the risks. I am very skeptical that they are bad for everyone. As, I believe, Aristotle once said, “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.””
I agree with you, but how do you know that ratio if the company is cooking the data for monetary profit? Or if all the researchers are being paid by the company?
The giveaway, as Wilson nicely shows, is that their scepticism is asymmetrical
But often asymmetric scepticism is all that is required. If someone says they can read minds, then if they fail to read mine I will pretty much automatically discount them. I will largely ignore any evidence they can read others, by assuming it is either biased or false. I will not go to the bother of actively investigating it.
That is because an unlikely idea needs more than just present some evidence.
no evidence is ever enough for someone “sceptical” about anthropogenic global warming
Works both ways. Some are persuaded easily of AGW, because it suits their mindset (anti-Industrial, anti-Western, desire to sell CO2 credits, whatever) and are not interested in even the slightest evidence to the contrary.
If you claim only that only the other side is asymmetric, it is often merely a sign that you are too. Because you feel that it’s so “obvious” that no-one can doubt it.
On the whole, therefore, I think the concept of claiming the other side is not sceptical enough is a waste of time. Each issue needs to be proved on its own merits. There is no “cookie cutter” amount of scepticism.
Zoe237,
You wrote “It seems odd to me that the skeptical movement is mostly limited to being skeptical of alt med, psychics, ghosts, and religion. Why can’t one be skeptical of government or corporations?”
There is actually a very large wing of the skeptical movement that is libertarian; who are generally very skeptical of the government. I know Penn and Teller, Michael Shermer, Brian Dunning, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, and some of the people from the CSI seem to have libertarian leanings, to varying degree.
I think most skeptics I’ve interacted with, even the non-libertarians, are skeptical of the government and corporations (we just aren’t into unproven conspiracy theories). Libertarians are usually more skeptical of the government, and liberals of corporations, but I don’t think most are as unskeptical of these groups as you seem to think.
“The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved.”
IMHO not true, scepticism is not solipsism, there are facts out there, the earth is like a ball and the heart pumps the blood. No doubt here. Facts are the keystone.
Surely skeptism needs to be informed by the progress of science. When the Greek mathematician Eratosthenes estimated the circumference of the Earth by the shadows cast by the sun at different locations perhaps the first evidence was provided that the earth was round. It would remain appropriate to be skeptical about such a theory of the round earth; an agnostic approach was fully acceptable. But as the weight of scientific evidence for the curviness of the earth overwhelmed us as time progressed, through the hundreds of thousands of observations using many different methods of observation. it would be ridiculous to maintain that agnosticism. The same goes for refuting creationism, homeopathy, and the paranormal. Yes we never have absolute certainty about the lack of validity of these phenomena but in practice it becomes a waste of time to maintain a skeptical agnositc position. It is time to move on.
…the trouble is as a society are we ready?
“I agree with you, but how do you know that ratio if the company is cooking the data for monetary profit? Or if all the researchers are being paid by the company?”
As the great Reagan said “Trust, but verify.” One of the first things I do is to check the financial disclosures of the authors. Yes, you may get scumbags like Wakefield who won’t disclose their ties. That’s why one study doesn’t cut it. Just because a company stands to make a profit, doesn’t mean the research is cooked. I remember the PROVE-IT study, that showed that the sponsoring company’s drug was inferior. They published it. I can just imagine the board meeting they must have had about it.
“but that’s why we have doctors prescribing them, not pharmaceutical reps.”
um…well…er…
(perhaps if they ban pharmaceutical company sponsoring of CME events and visits to doctors surgeries…)
“I’ve been toying with what I think is an interesting idea – rather than public institutions accepting funds from companies, it would be better to have the funds pass through a third-party entity (i.e. a government agency) so the taint of influence is less. Let the NIH stand firmly between researchers and private funding so new drugs can be tested more fairly. Drug company wants to test their new molecule, they have to give the money to the government, who will run a peer review panel to decide who should run the study, and prohibit all contact between the entities. The research needs to be done, the drugs need to be developed, but the negative aspects of the current system (direct contact and influence between drug companies and researchers) need to be limited as much as possible. Wonder if it would work…”
I can see two potential problems with this idea, WilliamLawrenceUtridge. The first is that there is no guarantee that the NIH or any other intermediary won’t be just as influenced by political and business concerns as the researchers themselves. It becomes especially likely to happen if you make any single organization the “authority” on a subject, to which all others must defer for their regular activities. That kind of power concentrated within one organization makes that organization a natural target.
The second issue that could arise involves the added layer of administrative and government costs for taking on that responsibility. This is a practical concern, particularly if the proposed intermediary is a government-funded organization. Depending on the political and economic climate, the organization could easily suffer from political influence, lax oversight, or a sudden slash in its funding.
Distributed and varied systems do exist already that vet research and weigh the influence of corporations. There are government intermediaries, market relations, and – most importantly – the open forum of comments, ideas, and critical analyses. It is a hodge-podge, and far from perfect. There are aspects of the system that certainly are in need of reform, perhaps some that might even use the method you described. But I’d be extremely concerned if only one agency could dole out research funding.
“It seems odd to me that the skeptical movement is mostly limited to being skeptical of alt med, psychics, ghosts, and religion. Why can’t one be skeptical of government or corporations?”
There definitely is not a dichotomy. As mentioned in other comments, most people who call themselves skeptics also have considerations about companies and government.
The reason you may not hear about these issues as much is that skeptics of those institutions have long had a large public forum in which to analyze and counter-argue. The press has historically remained relevant by capitalizing on the expertise of skeptics of governments and businesses.
They haven’t done the same with scientific, religious, or a few other issues, though. There are understandable reasons for that, but it’s been undeniably damaging to the public, who have not been kept abreast of the traditionally “academic” pursuits.
Scientists and other researchers are, if anything, late to the game of public education. So that’s where we see what gets called the “skeptical movement.” Really, it’s a democratization of knowledge and ideas that was once provided only to a relatively small subset of the population.
That, I think, is the movement’s angle on politics. The people who are finding a voice at the moment are not generally those with a concentration of knowledge about business or government, because those topics already had wide public recognition and distribution. And the scientific skeptics narrow their public discourse to topics with which they have deeper experience.
That’s probably why it seems that bulk of the deliberation is limited to certain subjects. And I think that’s a fair way for skeptics to proceed. No one can be an expert on everything at once.
@BillyJoe
Yes, I agree, and Mistakes Were Made makes this point – even tiny tokens like pens, post-it notes and free samples have a significant, measureable effect on the behaviour of physicians. CME events, visits with practitioners, free copies of articles or whole journals, all have the potential to bias people. Even worse, people don’t realize they are being biased. The effect is subtle, insidious, and ubiquitous throughout all of humanity. I wish I had an answer too! Having unbiased information would be one way, that way you could ignore the pharma rep and CME credit in favour of actual, reliable research that hasn’t been massaged, fished, or hidden in a file drawer somewhere. A (government) clearing house, in which drug companies deposit funds and sample pills, and researchers apply for access to them to run trials, all anonymized and all preregistered so negative studies can be reported. You’d still have drug companies that go straight to universities to try to bribe, you’d still have CME courses, lobster dinners with powerpoint presentations about the wonders of Pfizer’s new wonder drug, but hopefully you could offset that to a certain extent with more reliable info.
Those paragons of scientific medicine Scrubs and House both had episodes touching on this, and made the point well – Big Pharma will do a lot to get there drugs prescribed, including hiring only hot representatives to stroke the balding heads of ageing doctors. Not quite illegal but certainly tainted. But if we’re going to complain about it, might as well try to come up with some solutions, even if they’re tentative and not perfect. The only answer I see is better information that more easily reaches the doctors.
The whole “big pharma is evil” knee-jerk reaction irritates me. The pharmaceutical industry is a necessary entity, not an evil one. Inevitably you need a company to manufacture any good and provide most services. An a priori assumption that any entity is good or bad, should or should not be listened to, is solely beneficial or solely evil, is just stupid. The only reasonable path is a combination of regulations, reliable information and buyer-beware.
And on a somewhat related tangent, the alt medies that criticize big pharma for their corruption while ignoring the fact that their supplies are also made by companies, and ones that do not bear any burden of proof, also annoys me.
Mark P: If you die during heart surgery will you deny that it works for others?
I don’t claim that any “side” is more asymmetric than the other. By definition, a “side” is asymmetric. The only non-asymmetric stance is an agnostic stance. Now I’m certain someone will chime in with “but if you don’t stand for something you stand for nothing” or “if you’re not with us you’re against us”. Those are opinions, based upon binary thinking.
“By definition, a “side” is asymmetric. The only non-asymmetric stance is an agnostic stance.”
So you are for the agnostic side? But surely there must be some things that you can know.
“But surely there must be some things that you can know.”
Cogito ergo sum!
Dubito ergo sum! would be better.
agnosticism isn’t solipsism. yes there are “knowable” facts, but proving and adhering to objectivity is difficult.
Sides: in medicine the relevant sides are reality vs fantasy. Fantasy has its place, but that place is not medicine.
If you want to assert that 30% of “reality” is probably “a completely novel paradigm that is beyond our ken at this stage of humanity’s cognitive evolution,” fine.
That part of your “real” human body that is beyond your ken at your stage of your cognitive evolution can have “real” human medicine that is also beyond your ken at your stage of your cognitive evolution. Personally I would call that fantasy, but as long as the fantasy medicine is only to treat the fantasy body, then it’s six of one and half a dozen of another.
But the part of my real human body that I am aware of and that participates in a perceptible way in my existence requires real medicine that has detectable effects and outcomes that I am aware of.
Alison: I guess you’re speaking to me as you’ve used my percentages. But you forgot the 30% to scientific theory. I am not denying that scientific medicine has its place. I am just doubtful that it is a panacea.
“SBM is not apologetic about the pharmaceutical industry”
I am wondering if you meant to say that “SBM is not an apologist for the pharmaceutical industry.” That would fit in better with the rest of the paragraph.
I tend to agree with you about Martha Rosenberg. I think she is advocating a particular point of view and trying to fit the facts to her point of view.
Wales, I didn’t forget. This is what you said:
“If I had to bet on what is the basis of reality I would bet that scientific theory has it 30% right, spiritual theory has it 30% right, and the remaining [40%] of the pie is composed of A) a creative, integrative synthesis of ideas from those two realms or B) a completely novel paradigm that is beyond our ken at this stage of humanity’s cognitive evolution.”
What you mean by “reality” or “having it right” is obscure, but you obviously mean something concrete because you are able to be very specific in your numbers.
By “reality,” do you mean me? Do you mean that 30% of my weight is made up of particles described by physics, 30% of my weight is my immortal soul, and 40% of my weight is a completely novel paradigm that we can’t even imagine? That interpretation makes sense, because you are describing measurement error. For instance, if physics can only account for 24 kilos of me then there are 56 kilos that have to be accounted for by some other, non-physical theory. The error is completely measurable and allows you to generate the kinds of percentages that you proposed. Especially if you happen to know that the average immortal soul also weighs about 24 kilos, leaving 32 kilos of me that need to be accounted for by a non-physical, non-spiritual paradigm.
If current physics generated this kind of error, then I would be completely justified in thinking that I needed something more than current physics to account for my existence. However, as far as I am aware, physical theories account for all 80 kilos of me down to the microgram. There is no need to invoke any other kind of theory. Do you know something about measurement error with respect to people that I don’t… and that nobody who actually studies people knows has noticed?
Or by “reality” do you mean… what? The sum of things that can be detected (like people) and undetectable things (that by definition, nobody is aware of, not even you)? That’s fine, but since medicine treats that which is detectable (people), the other stuff is irrelevant to medicine. (And if it’s undetectable, what makes you think it’s probably 70% of reality?)
Perhaps you mean that “dark energy” is spiritual and “dark matter” is another paradigm. Current physics can describe these things, it knows they’re there, but it doesn’t completely know what they are. But if that’s what you mean, you have your percentages wrong. As far as we can tell, what we’re calling dark energy is 74% of the total mass-energy of the universe, dark matter is 23% and ordinary matter is 4.6%. Still irrelevant to medicine, because medicine is practiced by doctors on beings made of ordinary matter, not by astrophysicists on galaxy clusters.
If you are talking about undetectable things that have no bearing on anything we can know about or understand or describe or perceive, then on what basis do you call these things “reality” and not “fantasy”? What do you think reality means, and in what way is that definition useful and helpful?
Could someone please describe the potential influences pharmaceutical companies have on CME events? My wife (IM/Peds) attends these once a year for several days at a time. In reviewing the itineraries, I don’t remember noticing anything that would signficantly affected.
Thank you, Steven, for this comprehensively intelligent post!
I am with you on all points.
Fibromyalgia:
I was diagnosed with this 10 years ago and was essentially bed-ridden. Rheumatologist after orthopedic specialist after physiatrist pronounced gloomy prognoses. Life was bleak. Medication didn’t work and often made things worse.
Finally, I visited a physician who actually knew how to order and read lab work. First she noticed that my red blood cells were enlarged, among other things. Flipping through the weighty stack of my medical history, she concluded, with a bit of disgust: “How could all these physicians have missed these basics?” Good question. What has helped me the most to regain health and energy? Magnesium, coenzymated sublingual B vitamins, and more aerobic exercise.
Big Pharma:
“Gina Pera wants to inject your fetus with medication!”
Actually, no I don’t. But in my years as an advocate in the ADHD community (in person and online) and author of a popular book on adult ADHD, I’ve taken some amazing Internet-based hits over the years. (Fortunately, these have lessened as time goes on.)
Like you, Steven, I’ve taken not one cent from “Big Pharma” — though the opportunity was there. The attacks came merely because I tried to set the record straight on the medications used to treat ADHD. There is enough stigma around this condition; we don’t need to add to it by letting dangerous myths about truly life-changing and even life-saving medication go unchallenged. (And in my experience, the biggest pharma/psychiatric diagnosis critics are renegades from psychiatric care.)
At the same time, we are experiencing a huge backlash against these medications, which only feeds the paranoia and alleged muckraking, especially among the we-love-personal-narratives-crowd and alleged journalists out to score an easy bestseller. Why? Because of sloppy, careless prescribing. The stories I hear on a daily basis leave me incredibly saddened; so much opportunity lost.
Two books that typify the Big Pharma is Bad phenomenon are:
Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs http://tinyurl.com/2g47ch6
Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness
http://tinyurl.com/252ffz7
(The links point to my reviews. Check out the comments to see prime examples of Kill the Pharma Messenger Syndrome. Moreover, see the many accolades from reviewers who should know better; do our liberal arts friends partake in ANY science education these days?)
Moreover, the prescribing physicians often don’t know how to assess a person for other health challenges that affect cognition — metabolic issues, food allergies and sensitivities, neurotransmitter precursors and catalysts (amino acids, vitamins and minerals, etc.)
This medication myopia among physicians only adds to Pharma Fear. Healthcare reform? We must start with the physicians.
In the last few years — perhaps coincidental with a more realistic economy — the froth seems to be settling around ADHD in particular. And while those two titles above opened with a splash, their current Amazon ranking is 564,000 and 167,000, respectively; my book is currently 2,300, almost two years after publication. Truth will out. Eventually.
Thanks for your blog. I appreciate the time you put into thinking about and writing about these issues.
Gina Pera, author
Is It You, Me, or Adult A.D.D.?
http://www.ADHDRollerCoaster.org
While I fully agree that it is easy to go overboard on criticising the pharmaceutical industry, and I agree with most of your assessment of the paper, it seems to me that occasionally you may have veered too much in the opposite direction…
The pharmaceutical industry has not exactly a stellar record; just consider Marcia Angell’s “The truth about the drug companies” and there is plenty there to justify a lot of their bad reputation. Just one of the examples she gives, which was also the subject of a peer-reviewed paper (1), that of the marketing strategies around gabapentin, raises red flags all over the place.
As for the industry creating new diagnoses or extending current definitions, there is also documented evidence of that, a whole issue of PLoS/Medicine was dedicated to discussing disease mongering (2).
So, all in all, I’d say that your criticism of the paper was as exaggerate (in the opposite direction) as the paper itself…
Cordially,
Ken
(1) Steinman MA, Bero LA, Chren MM, Landefeld CS. Narrative review: the promotion of gabapentin: an analysis of internal industry documents. Ann Intern Med. 2006;145(4):284-93.
(2) http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/browse.action?field=date&month=4&year=2006&day=11
Alison: Let’s examine your example of weight. We are composed of atoms. The atom is about 100,000 times larger than its nucleus. One analogy is that if the nucleus is ping pong ball size, then the electrons would be orbiting approximately 1 kilometer away. Of course the concept of “orbiting electrons” is a simplification of the electron probability cloud. How do we account for the “reality” of all that empty space between electrons and nucleus at the atomic level? How does that empty space contribute to your 80 kilos?
“I am not denying that scientific medicine has its place. I am just doubtful that it is a panacea.”
I’ll tell you right now that it is not a panacea. Whoever told you it was, lied to you. I hope it wasn’t one of us. Are you looking for a panacea? There’s a lot of sCAM artists claiming to have it. They are also lying.
Thanks for your honesty Weing. No I don’t believe there are any panaceas.
Wales on subatomic particles:
“How does that empty space contribute to your 80 kilos?”
I’m not a physicist, and there’s probably something to do with gravitons that I’m missing, but as far as I know, it doesn’t.
Physics describes the orbitals, the electron, the “empty” space and my weight. As far as I know, there is no need for a non-physical explanation of my body. Phyisics explains it quite well. Much better than 30%.
I am not aware that my immortal soul explains any of this. And I don’t know what medicine needs an unimaginable paradigm to explain.
I am real, and medicine really addresses the real things I need it to.
What is real that science can’t — by definition — address? How do you know it’s real?
What do you mean by reality? What non-scientific methods do you use to distinguish reality from fantasy?
I cannot and have no desire to condense my beliefs about reality into a blog-sized report. Even if I could, this is not the appropriate venue and I doubt that anyone here is interested.
What is beneath the apparent reality we see everyday? How do you explain quantum nonlocality, and other quantum weirdness? Most scientists (physicists included) just shrug and sheepishly reply “no one understands quantum physics”. Science has not yet been able to answer all the questions about physical matter, how can science possibly prove that physical matter is all that exists?
If you’re saying that science can explain away all the mysteries of life, I disagree. Perhaps it’s just that many people don’t see any mystery, that’s fine too. Bye for now.
BTW, Alison said: “I am real” – No one said you were not.
wales,
I was giving myself as an example of something that is real. I am also an example of something to which the practice of medicine applies, and I can see the correspondence directly.
I was hoping that you could give me examples of other things that were real to which science does not apply, but which are relevant to medicine.
First, I am not a Skeptic. I majored in Philosophy and the one thing I took away from that is that you can be perfectly logical and perfectly wrong because you didn’t get the facts right. IMO, science uses objective, controlled experiments to determine facts and then applies logic and reason to arrive at conclusions. It is far from perfect and it never completely eliminates errors, mistakes or personal biases, but it comes much closer than anything else man has thought up and it has brought civilization out of the Dark Ages into the Modern Era. The huge benefits to mankind are especially obvious in scientific medicine, something not much more than 100 years old. I think I may be older than most of you and I actually remember a bit of the bad old days and have known many people who actually lived in them.
My education and life experience have taught me that when I have the resources and the situation is serious to look at the evidence, the primary sources and also to listen to and weigh what experienced experts have to say. I use that criteria to evaluate everything like approved drugs and “alt remedies”. I don’t have a double standard. However, most of my energy is devoted to trying to expose alt. med. rather than drug companies for several reasons the biggest of which is that alt med is trying to replace scientific medicine with the system used in the dark ages, belief-based medicine, fantasy medicine – a religion or philosophy about health and wellbeing based on faith rather than on consistently reproducible test results. IMO, that represents a huge danger to humanity and to each and every human being. To make matters worse and more dangerous, few in the general public realize that and that is exactly the way that alt medders want it, some because it is so very good for their businesses, others because they are ignorant or deluded and don’t know the difference themselves.
Homeo remedies and dietary supplements are sold side by side in pharmacies with OTCs. Most consumers don’t know the difference. Neither do they realize that a lot of AM therapies are not evidence-based because there are so many celebrity MDs with excellent scientific credentials promoting them in the mainstream media as if they were.
Most people on the other hand know very well that drug companies are businesses, huge businesses, out to make money. Compared to alt. med businesses they are highly regulated. Both the mainstream and scientific media continually expose drug companies whereas the mainstream media often fawns on alt. med.
To attempt to expose either business requires research and knowledge. I don’t have the time to research every possible abuse so I have to focus. My focus is dietary supplements, a topic which is also very personal for me.
There are several public interest groups, some quite powerful like Public Citizen, who carefully follow the pharmaceutical industry trying to keep them honest, or relatively honest, and trying to warn the public when they catch them being dishonest.
Lawyers watch drug companies like hawks too and are ready to pounce with lawsuits if they feel that they are engaging in dangerous or illegal behavior. Lawyers do not watch alt companies anywhere near as closely. For one reason many alt practitioners and companies don’t have funds lawyers can locate if they win cases against them. When people are injured by alt remedies and therapies, the victims often don’t make the connection, see the cause of the effect, because marketers have convinced them that the stuff is natural and therefore harmless. Those who do realize that they were injured, or relatives who realized their loved ones were killed, often won’t sue because they blame themselves for being stupid or else they wait too long and the statute of limitations expires. I know this because I’ve worked with victims and their lawyers.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but my ranting about alt medders and not drug companies doesn’t mean that I think drug companies are wonderful. It just means that I have to pick my battles. So I go after alts because: I think that by trying to replace scientific medicine with fantasy medicine that they are endangering all of us far more than drug companies; this is were I have the most expertise; and, there are lots of powerful individuals and groups watching and exposing drug companies but very few doing that with alts.
Actually, I usually prefer to see groups and individuals focus on the problems with either alt. med. or scientific med. because I think that when the same groups or individuals go back and forth between the two that many laypeople come away with the erroneous impression that there is not a fundamental difference between AM and scientific med. They don’t realize that AM is rejecting science and trying to bring us back to the Dark Ages, something which IMO is far more dangerous than the evils of the drug companies.
I don’t know how well I’m expressing any of that. Most of you write so much better than I do.
wales on scientific and unscientific realities:
“What is beneath the apparent reality we see everyday? How do you explain quantum nonlocality, and other quantum weirdness? Most scientists (physicists included) just shrug and sheepishly reply “no one understands quantum physics”. Science has not yet been able to answer all the questions about physical matter, how can science possibly prove that physical matter is all that exists?”
Ok, so if I understand you correctly, quantum physics is science, but the explanations of quantum physics are mostly non-scientific, for instance a spiritual immortal soul or an unknowable paradigm.
How will we determine that 30% of the explanation of quantum physics is spiritual? Will physicists postulate the existence of something to explain their data that they will call “spirit”? That can’t be what you mean, because that postulated something will by definition be scientific, not non-scientific.
Perhaps very spiritual people will meditate and agree that 30% of quantum physics can be explained by meditation. That would be properly non-scientific. But this still doesn’t work. If physicists can’t incorporate this spiritual finding into quantum physics, then it’s not an explanation; if they can, it’s science.
Or perhaps you are just saying that there’s no reason to think that any particular thing is understandable. That anything you don’t believe anyone understands has a 70:30 likelihood of being fundamentally inexplicable.
Fair enough. But does “fundamentally inexplicable” mean that we need a further, non-scientific account for it, or might it mean that we have completely understood it?
The number 1, for instance. It pretty much has the status of an axiom. We don’t look for explanations of 1, we use 1 to explain other things. Does that mean that 1 needs to be further explained in terms of spirituality and unknowable paradigms? Or does it mean that 1 doesn’t need more understanding than we give it?
In what way would a spiritual understanding of 1 contribute to the practice of medicine? And how would we know that this spiritual understanding of 1 represented something real?
Or maybe you just mean that human brains probably can’t manage the 70% of the fancy math necessary to describe the universe. You wouldn’t be the first person to harbour this suspicion, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you were right.
In that case, you and I share the same conception of reality, but what you refer to as “spirituality” and “unknowable paradigms” I refer to as “really hard math.”
That might be something we could agree on, but then we run into a problem. 200,000 years ago there don’t seem to have been people around who could have understood modern chemistry. Does that mean that modern chemistry was spiritual reality 200,000 years ago but physical reality today? If my dog doesn’t understand chemistry but I do, does food have a real and spiritual effect on her body and a real and scientific effect on mine? What does using the word “spiritual” to refer to anything not-understood add?
wales, I’m really trying to understand what you are trying to tell us. What do you mean by reality?
wales on mystery:
If you’re saying that science can explain away all the mysteries of life, I disagree. Perhaps it’s just that many people don’t see any mystery, that’s fine too.
Perhaps I would understand you better if you could give an example of a mystery that 1) you know could never be explained by science and 2) you know is real. I personally feel I have an example of such a mystery (note “feel,” not “know”). I’m just wondering what your examples are.
I don’t even understand what you mean when you say “that’s fine too.” If I saw someone walk through a wall, and you were with me and said no, that person walked through a door in the wall, I would want to know more. How come you see a door and I don’t? What can I learn by understanding the difference between what we perceive?
Basically, aren’t you curious about why other people don’t always see mysteries where you do? I’m certainly interested in why you see mysteries where I don’t. I think this discrepancy is extremely interesting and an opportunity to learn.
Gina, alts seem to insist that everyone who disagrees with them does so because they are paid by by someone bad. I think some may actually be crazy or naive enough to believe that that is the only reason anyone would possibly disagree with them. Others do it because what you say is bad for their business. They don’t have evidence to show that you are wrong so they attack you personally in an effort to distract listeners who they hope will dismiss what you say because they don’t trust you rather than realize that they, the alts, haven’t presented any evidence indicating that you are wrong.
I’ve been accused many times of being funded by “the medical establishment, the drug cartel and the government”. I’ve been telling my accusers for years to please, please, please give me the names and contact #s of anyone who will pay me to say what I say because I can use all the help that I can get. So far I haven’t been given one name but the accusations continue.
http://rosemaryjacobs.com
I strongly agree with the opinion of kencamargo above.
While you accuse Ms Rosenberg of oversimplification and you ask for complexity and nuance, you then oversimplify in the opposite direction.
“The FDA requires that a drug be indicated to treat a disease – not a syndrome or symptom.” I respectfully ask on what authority you make that claim?
Browsing in http://www.centerwatch.com/drug-information/fda-approvals/ , I find plenty of entries that look like
Botox (onabotulinumtoxinA); Allergan; For the treatment of upper limb spasticity, Approved March 2010
Exalgo (hydromorphone hydrochloride) extended release; Alza; For the management of moderate to severe pain, Approved March 2010
Silenor (doxepin); Somaxon Pharma; For the treatment of insomnia, Approved March 2010
Gelnique (oxybutynin chloride); Watson Pharmaceuticals; For the treatment of overactive bladder, Approved January 2009
Evamist (estradiol); Vivus; For the treatment of moderate to severe vasomotor symptoms due to menopause, Approved July 2007
It appears that the FDA does indeed license drugs targeted at symptoms rather than diseases. Or do all of the indications listed meet your criteria for “a specific pathophysiological entity”?. And of course many drugs and other products have been licensed over the years for the purpose of contraception, and normal fertility does not qualify as a disease. Pregnancy prevention is absolutely an important health goal for many people, but it is not disease treatment. (And manufacturers do not have to hide behind wording like “for the prevention of postpartum sepsis associated with frequent pregnancy”).
As for osteopenia, the pharma industry did not just jump on a bandwagon, they built it from scratch. Can you find an example of a pre-existing desire from within the medical community to identify individuals with sub-optimal bone density? That bandwagon would have been parked out behind the shed on the back forty if the pharma industry didn’t give it wheels and a spiffy coat of paint.
It may be an overstatement for Ms Rosenberg to claim that diseases are “invented” or “created” by marketers. However, it is certainly true that many “conditions” are elevated by marketing hype into disease states (at least as perceived by the lay audience) for the specific purpose of expanding potential markets.
I have no doubt that as individuals, the vast majority of people in the pharma industry (as well as medical devices, etc) are primarily interested in promoting health and helping other people. But the reality is that the corporate entities are primarily interested in generating profits. And that is just as true of the corporate entities that promote alternative treatments. And they are sometimes the same entities.
In an ideal world, the path to maximum profit would coincide with the path to promoting maximal health. But not on this planet.
Alison: Your long thoughtful response deserves a better response than I have time for now. I will think on it and try to get back this weekend.
@Rosemary — You wrote:
“I’ve been telling my accusers for years to please, please, please give me the names and contact #s of anyone who will pay me to say what I say because I can use all the help that I can get. So far I haven’t been given one name but the accusations continue.”
haha! Love it! Yes, please! Would love to have financial backing for my “agenda.”
Yes, I agree: Vested interests can contribute to the “denial” — such as certain branches of psychoanalytic therapy. For example, even those in allied fields — Christopher Lane, author of that Shyness book I referenced and an historian, of all things — seem personally invested in retaining the interesting personal narratives offered by psychiatric patients. But surely these people deserve better fates in life than entertaining their therapists!
One of my readers wrote to say that, after 6 years of intensive psychotherapy, he finally learned about ADHD and demanded that his psychiatrist prescribe medication for him on this proviso: “That you still come to therapy each week and we talk about books or movies, something interesting.”
g
@wales
“Science has not yet been able to answer all the questions about physical matter, how can science possibly prove that physical matter is all that exists?”
368 years of science and we end up with a dicey answer! I think the currently accepted scientific proof in physics is that there is no physical reality beyond the probability distributions that can be accurately described with the equations of quantum physics (no hidden local variables by disproof of Bell’s inequality). Perhaps it is better to ask, “how can science possibly prove that there is anything beyond the play of the dice?”
I heard of a guy who after 6 years of psychotherapy was brought to tears by what his psychiatrist said. “No hablo ingles.”
Something I’ve found interesting is frequently those who condemn “big pharma,” for many of the reasons Ms. Rosenberg describes, often praise the natural supplement industry for their commitment to natural health, wellness, and healing–as if the bottom line of the natural supplement industry is rooted in anything more than dollars and cents.
Wolfy,
Ben Goldacre, in his book “Bad Science” mentions a certain part owner of a big altmed company who spouts on about the evils of “Big Pharma” but whose own company is 30% owned by a large pharmaceutical company.
They apparently know where the money is thank you very much.
BillyJoe: It doesn’t surprise me in the least. The bottom line of industry is to make a buck; doesn’t matter if its auto, financial, “big pharma,” or naturo-ceutical BS.
“It all makes perfect sense, expressed in dollars and cents, pounds, shillings and pence.” –Roger Waters
wales
“What is beneath the apparent reality we see everyday? How do you explain quantum nonlocality, and other quantum weirdness?”
Firstly, quantum weirdness such as entanglement and uncertainty do not make an appearance at the macroscopic level. Therefore any mystery that you might see at the microscopic level of quantum particles does not affect macroscopic world of everyday experience.
Secondly, regardless of these apparent mysteries, experiments in quantum physics based on the assumption that everything is physical are the most predictable and accurate of any field of science. So, where is there room for any supernatural agency? The supernatural just fails to show up anywhere in any of their experiments!
Thirdly, in the face of the above, there is not even any need for a supernatural assumption let alone any reason to assume it. It’s like not being able to find your keys and assuming that it is possible that a supernatural agent has whisked them away and they will never be found. There is no reason to assume that, just as there is no reason to assume supernatural agency in the explanation of entanglement and uncertainty.
“Most scientists (physicists included) just shrug and sheepishly reply “no one understands quantum physics”. Science has not yet been able to answer all the questions about physical matter, how can science possibly prove that physical matter is all that exists?”
Absolute proof is difficult. However the pertinent question is: Is there any reason to believe in the non-physical. There absolutely is not. Science assumes that everything is physical and there has never been any counterexample. That is actually reason enough to not beleive in the non-physical.
wales,
rosemary said: “I majored in Philosophy and the one thing I took away from that is that you can be perfectly logical and perfectly wrong because you didn’t get the facts right.”
In science that translates as: you can be perfectly logical and perfectly wrong because you didn’t get the *assumption* right.
The assumption of science that everthing is physical or that everything has a physical explanation has, without exception, not been wrong for hundreds of years. Not a single instance of a non-physical explanation ever. Why should we believe that it will be any different in the future?
wales,
JMB said: “368 years of science and we end up with a dicey answer! I think the currently accepted scientific proof in physics is that there is no physical reality beyond the probability distributions that can be accurately described with the equations of quantum physics (no hidden local variables by disproof of Bell’s inequality). Perhaps it is better to ask, “how can science possibly prove that there is anything beyond the play of the dice?”
Of course, that’s just the microscopic world of quantum particles. In the macroscopic world of everyday experince, we have deterministic newtonian physics. For the very fast, we have relativity theory and for gravity we have general relativity.
At each level we have how questions that remain unexplained:
Quantum: how can entanglement and uncertainty be explained.
Newton: how can inertia be explained.
Special relativity: how can the constancy of the speed of light be explained.
General elativity: how can the distortion of space and time by mass be explained.
In none of these how questions has the supernatural ever risen up out of the observations of these phenomena as an explanation for any of them.
Really, it is time to put the supernatural/non-physical/immaterial assumption to rest.
“In none of these how questions has the supernatural ever risen up out of the observations of these phenomena as an explanation for any of them.
Really, it is time to put the supernatural/non-physical/immaterial assumption to rest.” from BillyJoe.
“Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the ‘old one’. I, at any rate, am convinced that He does not throw dice.” from Albert Einstein, in a letter to Max Born.
JMB,
Are you interpreting Einstein as saying that there is a supernatural explanation for quantum phenomena? (Little ghosts driving around the electrons, perhaps?) I’ve never heard that interpretation of this very famous quote. I understand him as saying that there must be a physical, deterministic explanation underlying quantum probabilities, and that’s the interpretation I’ve always seen elsewhere.
I second Alison’s comment. Also Quantum mechanics works. It allows you to use a cellphone, computer, etc. It’s weird, but it does the job when you apply the knowledge from it.
I believe Einstein was stating his intuition was that quantum mechanics was an incomplete theory. Science is by (Galileo’s) design devoid of supernatural/religious beliefs in arguments, hypotheses, and explanations. That does not mean that inspiration and underlying assumptions are devoid of belief systems, they are just not expressed in scientific literature (but may be expressed in personal communication). Einstein was inspired by his belief to search for more equations to complete quantum theory.
A scientific statement is devoid of religion. That does not mean that the inspiration for the statement was devoid of religion. It does mean that for the statement to be accepted as scientific, there must be a way we can devise an experiment to test the statement, and that the observations from the experiment may support or reject the statement, and that those observations can be observed by multiple different observers regardless of their bias.
“God does not play dice with the universe” is not a scientific statement, the EPR paradox was a scientific statement.
Science doesn’t need religion, but it cannot answer everybody’s thirst for knowledge. If you are never tempted to ask “why?”, then you can accept the answers provided by science as complete. When a scientist asks “why?”, then they may be inspired to advance science further.
Science may disprove statements made by religious leaders, but I don’t think that science can prove that it is the only source for knowledge.
“Evil” is a religious notion, I’m not sure it applies here if we’re dealing in reality. The question is whether Big Pharma trustworthy and ethical – not in comparison to Big sCAM or other industries but according to the guidelines it’s meant to follow and based upon the actions of the major big pharmaceutical companies. Does this handful of extremely powerful international organizations promote science or pseudoscience within their own practice and in regards to how they try to influence government and academic policies regarding science and research? Do they try to conflate science with industry to try to pretend that anyone who critiques them is against scientific medicine?
@Allison
“Are you interpreting Einstein as saying that there is a supernatural explanation for quantum phenomena? ”
In some ways, Einstein was saying that there is a supernatural explanation for everything. Science progresses when we can discover how some of those supernatural explanations work. Through scientific discovery, we convert a supernatural explanation into a natural explanation. They are little ghosts to our misunderstanding minds until we discover the equation(s) that makes them natural.
BillyJoe was asserting that arguments about supernatural/religious beliefs never arise from scientific observations or explanations. IMHO, that is by Galileo’s design. That should not be taken as proof that there is no God. The design is a consequence of trying to separate the kind of knowledge that can be gained from religion from the kind of knowledge that can be gained from science (and avoid persecution or oversight by papal authority).
If you decide that, science has not yet shown us any proof of God so there cannot be a God, then you are making a leap of disbelief. Science has not come close to knowing even a small fraction of the universe. Is it possible for science to disprove the existence of God before we know everything in the universe? Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that we can never know everything about the universe. Therefore, can science ever disprove the existence of God?
Science is practiced in big pharma in their research labs. The marketing and lobbying arms practice pseudoscience. Is that any surprise?
Sorry about being so off topic again, but there is an interesting corollary about big pharma and big medicine. When the pharmaceutical company is small, its direction is dominated by the pharmaceutical scientist. As the company grows, marketing becomes more important. When it becomes big pharma, the pharmaceutical scientist is outnumbered by the marketers, lobbyists, and lawyers. Then the direction of the company drifts, and the science gets lost in the pseudoscience and avoidance of liability.
There are many economists that argue that medicine can become more economically efficient by morphing from a cottage industry into a big company industry. However, medicine will likely lose its direction much the same way big pharma has.
JMB on knowledge:
“The design is a consequence of trying to separate the kind of knowledge that can be gained from religion from the kind of knowledge that can be gained from science.”
Can you give an example of knowledge that can be gained from religion?
JMB on the limits of science:
“[C]an science ever disprove the existence of God?”
Science cannot disprove the existence of anything. Not Russell’s teapot* and not god. You know that, so I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at.
What I am trying to get at is what people are thinking when they say that science can only explain part of reality; that there are parts of reality that are beyond the scope of the scientific method.
If we allow that observable things are within the scope of the scientific method, then the part of reality that is outside the scope of science must be unobservable. What does it mean to assert that unobservable things are “real”?
By choosing to define as “supernatural” anything that you personally do not understand you don’t add anything to our understanding of the world; that definition certainly doesn’t carry the status of an explanation. From the point of view of a virus, everything would be supernatural including itself. Yet we, not being viruses, can observe viruses and use the scientific method to develop effective anti-virals.
*“If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is an intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.”
— Bertrand Russell, 1952
Fifi, “The question is whether Big Pharma trustworthy and ethical – not in comparison to Big sCAM or other industries but according to the guidelines it’s meant to follow and based upon the actions of the major big pharmaceutical companies.”
There is a question as to whether or not Big Pharma is trustworthy and ethical? I didn’t think so. I thought that the vast majority of people realized that it is not for the reasons already stated.
I also thought that some readers falsely assume that many people here frequently target alt med in their debunking because, for various reasons, they want to give Big Pharma a free ride, when that for me personally, and I suspect for all of the others as well, is not the case at all.
Evil may have started as a religious concept but I seriously doubt that there is anyone today, religious or not, who does not believe that evil exists to varying degrees. One of the main things most expect their governments to do is to regulate businesses in an effort to keep them honest and ethical because they know that wherever there are humans there will be some only out for their own good willing to harm others to attain it.
“Can you give an example of knowledge that can be gained from religion? ”
I don’t want delve too much into different theologies, so a generic question to search for knowledge from religion would be, “Do you keep on living because you are afraid of dying, or because there are people you love and want to show your love to?” Another could be, “when your father/mother died, had you reached some understanding between the two of you about your life together.”
“Science cannot disprove the existence of anything. Not Russell’s teapot* and not god. You know that, so I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at. ”
The question that I was addressing was, what would it take for science to disprove the existence of God? My argument is that answer must come from philosophy outside of science. Until science can achieve complete reduction of uncertainty in the universe, it cannot answer that question. Ultimately, if you say that science disproves the existence of god, you are using some philosophic method, not a scientific method.
“By choosing to define as “supernatural” anything that you personally do not understand you don’t add anything to our understanding of the world; that definition certainly doesn’t carry the status of an explanation. ”
It doesn’t add to our understanding of the world, it just becomes a motivation to study more. Einstein was motivated to search for more equations in quantum theory because he would not accept the prevailing theory as complete, he felt that there were laws governing nature created by God that had not yet been discovered.
“What does it mean to assert that unobservable things are “real”?”
Feelings are real, but we can only observe the effects of feelings in others.
“that there are parts of reality that are beyond the scope of the scientific method.”
When we work with a patient, the patient wants to know that they will get better, or avoid bad consequence, when they follow our advice. The information we have from medical science is in the form of probabilities, 50% will get better, 5% will avoid death. Although our ability to make better predictions and prognosis will improve in time, it will ultimately be limited by chaos. The knowledge we need as physicians is how to prepare the patient for either eventuality, and when the outcome becomes apparent, how to help the patient cope with what has become real.
When you are faced with a decision about whether to have screening mammography beginning at age 40 or 50, science can tell you that 1 in 1904 women will be saved by a screening mammogram beginning at age 40, and 1 in 1330 will be saved by starting screening mammography at age 50. Science cannot tell you when to start, it is your value judgment that determines when you start (if at all).
JMB: Thanks for your succinct summary of what I was trying to articulate with all my wordiness: “Science doesn’t need religion, but it cannot answer everybody’s thirst for knowledge. If you are never tempted to ask “why?”, then you can accept the answers provided by science as complete.” And “What I am trying to get at is what people are thinking when they say that science can only explain part of reality; that there are parts of reality that are beyond the scope of the scientific method.”
JMB also said “A scientific statement is devoid of religion. That does not mean that the inspiration for the statement was devoid of religion.”
A good example of this is Copernicus. From “The Non-Local Universe: The New Physics and Matters of the Mind”: “The placement of the sun at the center of the universe, which seemed right and necessary to Copernicus, was not a result of making careful astronomical observations. In fact, he made very few observations in the course of developing his theory, and then only to ascertain if his prior conclusions seemed correct. The Copernican system was also not any more useful in making astronomical calculations than the accepted model was, and in some ways, much more difficult to implement. What, then, was his motivation for creating the model and his reasons for presuming the model was correct? Copernicus felt that the placement of the sun at the center of the universe made sense because he viewed the sun as the symbol of the presence of a supremely intelligent and intelligible god in a man-centered world. “
Here is another interesting Einstein quote, which seems to indicate that at the very least Einstein acknowledged some sort of holism rather than reductionism with regard to consciousness. I love his phrase “optical delusion of consciousness”.
“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”
Letter of 1950, as quoted in The New York Times (29 March 1972) and The New York Post (28 November 1972)
There are several Einstein quotes referencing god. It is widely acknowledged that Einstein was referring to “god” in the larger sense of a creator/designer, not as a personal god. Even so, it is witness to a brilliant but humble personality who did not believe that science has all the answers.
JMB on spiritual motivation:
“Einstein was inspired by his belief to search for more equations to complete quantum theory.”
Einstein was inspired by his own aesthetic preferences to search for more equations to complete quantum theory. He attributed his aesthetic preferences to the Old One, but it doesn’t follow that religion offers a better explanation of quantum theory than science does.
JMB on religious knowledge:
[A] generic question to search for knowledge from religion would be, “Do you keep on living because you are afraid of dying, or because there are people you love and want to show your love to?” Another could be, “when your father/mother died, had you reached some understanding between the two of you about your life together.”
You don’t need religion to be either afraid or unafraid of death. What religions tell us about the afterlife is not knowledge, it is fantasy or projection. (It’s possible that there is a religious projection that happens to be accurate but we don’t know that.)
You don’t need religion to love, or to endure suffering on behalf of your young: birds and mammals generally appear to do both without the benefit of a holy book. Attachment and sacrifice are not knowledge, though people may benefit from the insights of their forebears who have also loved and sacrificed; these insights may or may not be passed down in the form of religion, and that which is passed down in the form of religion may or may not be beneficial.
The accommodation people reach with their parents is not religious knowledge. It can be achieved with or without religion; religious people may or may not reach it.
Your examples seem to flow somewhere between insight and good feelings. They don’t go anywhere near suggesting that religion can offer better explanations of the physiology of sleep than science can.
JMB on proving a negative:
“Ultimately, if you say that science disproves the existence of god, you are using some philosophic method, not a scientific method.”
I don’t think science disproves the existence of god, just as I don’t think it disproves Russell’s teapot. However, science does better when it rejects the god of the gaps and instead seeks to find out what really is there in the gaps.
“What does it mean to assert that unobservable things are “real”?”
Feelings are real, but we can only observe the effects of feelings in others.
Do you require the supernatural to have or to explain feelings? Or are feelings explicable by what we know about the brain and evolution?
I don’t see how anything you have said supports wales’ claim that probably only 30% of reality can be explained with the scientific method and that some supernatural means are required to explain the remaining 70% of reality.
“When you are faced with a decision about whether to have screening mammography beginning at age 40 or 50, science can tell you that 1 in 1904 women will be saved by a screening mammogram beginning at age 40, and 1 in 1330 will be saved by starting screening mammography at age 50. Science cannot tell you when to start, it is your value judgment that determines when you start (if at all).”
Is your value judgement spiritual, or an unknowable paradigm? Is it fundamentally impossible to describe how someone arrives at a value judgement? Science can certainly help you gather different kinds of information to help you decide when to start. (How much does it cost? What is the NNH to compare to the NNT?)
The knowledge we need as physicians is how to prepare the patient for either eventuality, and when the outcome becomes apparent, how to help the patient cope with what has become real.
Yes. That knowledge is gained in many ways, most observational. Observing yourself; listening to people who have been through similar experiences in the past; listening to people who are going through them now; watching other people help patients; reading or hearing about effective interactions. And so on. People are more or less empathetic and more or less able to translate this information into effective support. But there’s nothing supernatural about it.
*** *** ***
When I was at my most depressed, I wished I had a religion that could tell me that my suffering had meaning. To suffer pointlessly seemed worst of all. But religion doesn’t necessarily help. People who are depressed stop taking pleasure and comfort from the things that had pleased and comforted them before. That includes religion. Now that I am much less depressed, my experience of suffering has made me more compassionate. I am still not religious. Even if I had believed that my suffering was pleasing to god in some way, and taken comfort from the thought, that wouldn’t have made it true.
Religious people often believe that they are compassionate because they are religious. But religious people have been observed to lack compassion, feeling that suffering is a private issue between the sufferer and their god. Atheists may be compassionate because they know that suffering has no meaning and they know that there is nobody else to alleviate suffering: if suffering is to be alleviated, they must do it themselves.
When I attended an evangelical Christian high school, we were repeatedly told that religions were not equivalent. Yes, all religions come with similar codes of behaviour to make community life possible, but that’s just decoration. That’s the secular part of religion, an add-on. The codes of behaviour are true and important, but what makes Christianity a religion, and the only true religion, is not the behaviour codes but the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I thought that was a pretty impressive insight for evangelicals to have.
wales,
When you say that science can probably only explain 30% of reality, that 70% of reality probably needs an unknowable supernatural explanation, you really mean that science is not yet complete and that people need to be compassionate and aware of their small place in the universe?
I’m glad you explained yourself, because I see absolutely no link between what you said and what you meant. And I don’t think any poster here disagrees with what you mean.
Also, I was the one who said, “What I am trying to get at is what people are thinking when they say that science can only explain part of reality; that there are parts of reality that are beyond the scope of the scientific method.”
wales,
Copernicus was a religious man like virtually all men of the 14th and 15th centuries. Whether he was a particularly religious man compared to his peers I don’t know. The point is that it is irrelevant. If he was not religious he might have found inspiration elsewhere. As it was, religion was the pervading ethos and that is where he found his inspiration. The other point is that we have come a long way in 500 years and religious ideas are no longer tenable.
Einstein was not religious in the ususal sense. He used the word religion purely as metahpor. He certainly rejected the personal god as you say:
“I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”
His god was a sort of god-in-nature or pantheism:
“A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.”
As for the quote about consciousness, I think you have misinterpreted it. He is simply saying that, if the world is to survive, we need to focus our attention away from our own and our immediate family concerns and onto the whole global community and the natural environment. It has nothing to do specifically with consciousness or religion. Here is the complete quote:
“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.”
Alison: No, I don’t think I meant exactly what you think I meant. That is a start, but not the whole story. I think it’s impossible to carry on this conversation with blog comments, for me anyway. As with all subtle subjects, even lengthy explanatory comments are subject to misinterpretation. I am always amazed at how I spend considerable time trying to articulate clearly and then someone misinterprets what I am saying. I think this is a universal problem, or perhaps speaks to my lack of writing skill.
BJ: See, you think I misinterpreted Einstein, I think you did. Anyway, the Wikipedia Einstein entry is replete with Einstein quotes on religion, personal vs. cosmic religion, religion and science, god, etc. Einstein also expressed a distaste for “fanatical atheists” who he believed were just as bigoted as their fanatical religious counterparts. There is so much misunderstanding and misinterpretation about what is meant by religion and spirituality, and those words trigger so many emotions.
wales,
I think it’s extremely common to have a hard time conveying what one means when ones own thoughts aren’t clear to oneself. We can have strong feelings that something must be right, but have trouble explaining our intuition in words because it is based on emotion, not thought. When things that are so obvious to us remain frustratingly opaque to our interlocutors, it’s often a clue that we need to rethink and do some more work on our own logic.
It can be the opposite, of course; our interlocutors could be the ones who are so stuck in ideas that are so obvious to them that they can’t hear. Which is what makes dialogue and the effort to listen so crucial, for everyone. We never want to be the ones mistaking intuition and emotion for thought, and it can be really hard to tell the difference.
Alison: I think it’s difficult to convey thoughts even when they are clear. My thoughts are clear to me. Thanks for the free head shrink though.
To say that Einstein’s “brand” of religion/spirituality (cosmic, not personal god) is acceptable and that the personal god type of religion is not acceptable is just another example of personal judgment; one group imposing its “truth” on others.
If I were somehow forced to choose I would lean toward the Einstein cosmic “brand” myself, but I don’t think that necessitates doing away with the other types of belief in which people take comfort.
I’ll play devil’s advocate for a moment. Say for example that science had proven there is no spiritual reality (as Billy Joe believes). In this scenario the “personal god” religions have been proven to be simply an “opiate” (which I do not feel that I or anyone else is qualified to judge) so we dispense with all religion, it is now illegal. Shall we also dispense with other forms of human “opiates” such as recreational and medical mind altering substances?
In Victor Stenger’s book “God: The Failed Hypothesis” he argues that science has ruled out the possibility of a personal god.
JMB,
Sorry for this long post.
“I believe Einstein was stating his intuition was that quantum mechanics was an incomplete theory.”
Einstein did not believe in the roll of the dice. In other words, he did not believe in the probability that seemed to be inherent in quantum theory. He proposed that there must be “hidden variables” that would transform that probability into deterministic cause and effect. He was wrong. Probability is real.
“Einstein was inspired by his belief to search for more equations to complete quantum theory.”
Einstein was inspired by what science had already revealled of, to quote his words, “the marvelllous structure” of the world and the mysteries that still remained to be solved.
“Science doesn’t need religion, but it cannot answer everybody’s thirst for knowledge. If you are never tempted to ask “why?”, then you can accept the answers provided by science as complete. When a scientist asks “why?”, then they may be inspired to advance science further.”
The scientist asks “how?”.
There may be no reasons for how things are.
In other words, “why?” questions may be irrelevant.
“I don’t think that science can prove that it is the only source for knowledge.”
Science is the only source of reliable knowledge. Can it prove that it is the only source of reliable knowledge? Perhaps not, but it’s been doing a pretty good job of eliminating the opposition for the past several hundred years.
“In some ways, Einstein was saying that there is a supernatural explanation for everything. “
Einstein did not believe in the supernatural:
“Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of Nature…a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced…by a wish addressed to a Supernatural Being.”
“I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.”
“What I see in Nature is a magnificent structure that we can comprehend only very imperfectly, and that must fill a thinking person with a feeling of “humility.” This is a genuinely religious feeling that has nothing to do with mysticism.”
“Science progresses when we can discover how some of those supernatural explanations work. Through scientific discovery, we convert a supernatural explanation into a natural explanation. They are little ghosts to our misunderstanding minds until we discover the equation(s) that makes them natural.”
In Australia we would call this a “Claytons” supernatural. Claytons is a brand of beer without any alcoholic content: “the beer you have when you’re not having a beer”! A Claytons supernatural would be a supernatural you have when you don’t have a supernatural.
“BillyJoe was asserting that arguments about supernatural/religious beliefs never arise from scientific observations or explanations. IMHO, that is by Galileo’s design. That should not be taken as proof that there is no God. The design is a consequence of trying to separate the kind of knowledge that can be gained from religion from the kind of knowledge that can be gained from science .”
Yet above you said that science converts supernatural explanations into natural explanations. So how is this not saying that science can disprove religion/god? But now you want to separate supernatural explanations (religion) from natural explanations (science) into separate magisteria. History has shown that you were right the first time.
“If you decide that, science has not yet shown us any proof of God so there cannot be a God, then you are making a leap of disbelief. “
Science and logic has shown that the only tenable god is the non-interventionist deist god, and logic tells us that such a god is unnecessary. It replaces one unanswered “how” question: “How did something arise from nothing?” with another unanswered “how” question: “How did the deist god come to be?”
“Science has not come close to knowing even a small fraction of the universe. Is it possible for science to disprove the existence of God before we know everything in the universe?”
Probably not? But do we need to? Science and logic has shown that the god hypothesis is an unnecessary hypothesis. Why is the god hyothesis so important to you that you are demanding that it be treated differently to all other useless hypotheses which go the way of Ockham’s razor (especially coinsidering that we are talking here of a non-interventionist deist god who doesn’t help us, doesn’t save us, and doesn’t reward us).
“Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that we can never know everything about the universe.”
The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is part of a modelling of quantum physics that, in experimental tests, gives the most reliable of any results in physics. In other words, the result of this “uncertainty” are completely predictable. The “unknown” you are talking about is perhaps better characterised as “counterintuitive” – a word that simply means that it doesn’t corresponds to our everyday experience. We can’t expect it to.
“a generic question to search for knowledge from religion would be, “Do you keep on living because you are afraid of dying, or because there are people you love and want to show your love to?” Another could be, “when your father/mother died, had you reached some understanding between the two of you about your life together.”
Why are these religious questions? How does religion aswer them satisfactorily as opposed to, say, secular humanism?
“Ultimately, if you say that science disproves the existence of god, you are using some philosophic method, not a scientific method.”
But you can use the scientifically backed philosophical assumption that everything is physical or has physical causes. It sounds circular but it is sort of circular like “survival of the fittest” is circular. The underlying philosophy of science consists of its only assumption: everything is physical. As long as everything continues to be explained in physical terms and as long as nothing is shown to have a supernatural explanation – and nothing has – then the results of science continue to confirm its underlying asssumption that everything is physical.
“Einstein was motivated to search for more equations in quantum theory because he would not accept the prevailing theory as complete, he felt that there were laws governing nature created by God that had not yet been discovered.”
Well, Einstein was looking for “hidden variables” to explain away the probability inherent in quantum physics. He was wrong. There are no “hidden variable”. “God” does roll dice. So, if he was motivated by a belief in god, god let him down badly.
“What does it mean to assert that unobservable things are “real”? “Feelings are real, but we can only observe the effects of feelings in others.”
There is a physical explanation for emotion. It consists of, amongst other things, hormonal changes and changes in neuronal activity in the brain. No supernatural element has ever been detected to explain emotions so we continue to assume that emotions are physical.
“When you are faced with a decision about whether to have screening mammography .. science can tell you that. Science cannot tell you when to start, it is your value judgment that determines when you start…”
What is your “value judgement” based on? Science tells us that everything at the macroscopic level is deterministic. Your genetic code is deterministically inherited from your parents (together with any mutations that were either deterministic or caused by probability wave of decay of radioactive particles). The development of your brain and body was determined by the interaction of your genetic blueprint and your environment, which includes the physical and social environment in which you found yourself. All the inputs from the environment have been filtered by your sense organs and further filtered into short term and long term memory, both of which determine, together with your present filtered sensory input to determine the responses you put out today, right now. Including what you call your “value judgement”.
Science all the way down. It just doesn’t feel like it because the output (”value judgement” in this case) is connected in an extremely complex and multilayered way to the all the parameters that have determined it.
Harriet,
“In Victor Stenger’s book “God: The Failed Hypothesis” he argues that science has ruled out the possibility of a personal god.”
The Theistic God is a failed hypothesis.
The Deistic God is an unnecessary hypothesis.
Really, what is left of the god hypothesis.
And then what is left of religion.
“The marketing and lobbying arms practice pseudoscience.”
I disagree. I think marketing is a science. It is also very effective. And not just with pharmaceuticals. I think that we, as physicians, are fighting a losing battle against marketing. We have only a few minutes with the patient to advise regarding eating, smoking, etc. The patient is exposed to marketing by all sorts of manufacturers between our visits. It’s a wonder any of them follow our advice.
Regarding religion. God is outside the purview of science, and therefore, science cannot say anything about her existence. It’s simply a waste of time. Just because someone uses the word God in conversation does not mean they are believers. I’ve heard many atheists say, “OMG”.
wales,
It wasn’t a head shrink. It was writing advice. If anyone’s writing isn’t clear, it strongly suggests that their thoughts aren’t clear.
If you cannot communicate your thoughts clearly to your own satisfaction, it’s a suggestion that your thoughts may not be as clear as they feel to you. That doesn’t mean they are wrong.
wales,
“BJ: See, you think I misinterpreted Einstein, I think you did.”
Yes, but the truth is that you did.
“Einstein also expressed a distaste for “fanatical atheists”"
I have no interest in converting anyone, but I believe in stating what I believe to be true, regardless of religious sensitivities.
“There is so much misunderstanding and misinterpretation about what is meant by religion and spirituality, and those words trigger so many emotions.”
Yes, I think we should think natural v supernatural. Or the expanded natural/physical/material v supernatural/nonphysical/immaterial.
Einstein believed in natural explanations. His “religion” or “spirituality” consisted of awe in the face of nature as revealed by science and the mysteries still to be unfolded:
“A knowledge of the existence of something we cannot penetrate, of the manifestations of the profoundest reason and the most radiant beauty – it is this knowledge and this emotion that constitute the truly religious attitude; in this sense, and in this alone, I am a deeply religious man.”
weing,
“God is outside the purview of science, and therefore, science cannot say anything about her existence.”
The non overlapping magisteria concept is dead.
Long live science!
BillyJoe on failed hypotheses:
“And then what is left of religion.”
Buddhism? Judaism?
Many modern Jews say that whether God exists or not is irrelevant, that the practice of Judaism is what’s important. Many Buddhists also claim Buddhism as a practice and not a set of absolute beliefs in supernatural events and beings.
While none of the useful practices of religions depend on the reality of a personal or impersonal god to be useful, in practical terms a community of practice can be helpful. Physical exercise is good for us with or without a god, no matter where we live, but we’re less likely to actually get it if we live in the suburbs and drive a car. It takes a lot of personal discipline to go to the gym, and not everyone does.
Meditation, self-reflection, fasting and community engagement are good for us with or without a god, no matter where we live, but people with a religious community are much more likely to actually do these things. The american civil rights movement of the fifties was centred on churches and inspired by the Hindu non-violence of Ghandi.
Alison: Again, I did express my thoughts to my satisfaction. I was misinterpreted.
Harriet: Arguments for atheism abound. Proof?
BJ: We can cherry pick Einstein quotes all day long: “The highest principles for our aspirations and judgments are given to us in the Jewish-Christian religious tradition. It is a very high goal which, with our weak powers, we can reach only very inadequately, but which gives a sure foundation to our aspirations and valuations.” On religion and society, in Out of My Later Years (1950), p. 27.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein
BillyJoe and Alison – Regarding religion – I often find myself in agreement with you, but on religion I think I either must differ or possibly that I misunderstand you.
Historically, many great minds (and small ones as well, I’m know) from various religions have written observations on the human condition, ethics, finding meaning in the face of despair or even coping with every day nuisances, etc. While I would not ever recommend taking any writings as “truth” I think to label these efforts as “untenable” or not useful on the grounds that is does not advance scientific knowledge or that one premise of those writing is not factual, is to ignore a broad swath of very compelling human history and thought.
But then I am a mixed media artist who uses found objects, so I am quite happy with picking through junk to find something useful.
On supernatural – Why would a god be supernatural or non-scientific rather than just not-discovered yet? If there was a god(s), would they in fact not be a part of nature that called for an expansion of the laws of physics and science? God-Yenti, for me, the same.
Tangentially from the tangent –
Someone asked about an example of something that is mysterious that could not be explained by science now or in the future.
I’m terrible at fill in the blanks, but I was reflecting on this. My example is not supernatural, only a mystery.
Why only us? Here we are on this lush planet populated by I can not say how many forms of life and yet there is no solid evidence (I think) of such life elsewhere. We believe it is possible, but isn’t it kinda amazing all of those stars, planets, etc out there for so very, very long a time and we have seen no direct evidence of something built, no evidence of developed life? Maybe it is not so amazing considering how far away everything is…but pretty mysterious. I think.
Which leads me to my next tangential thought. Exactly how far can science take us in discovering knowledge. What is our brain capable of? Recalling Einstein and his search for a unified field theory as well as string theory, which seems to be quite difficult for even people in the field (could be wrong here) makes me wonder if our knowledge is becoming increasingly specialized and understandable to fewer people. Will there be a point were the advancement of knowledge is slowed or halted by our brains individual abilities to comprehend or remember information? Will an increasing specialization cause an insurmountable disconnect between specialties causing us to miss the connections needed to make new discoveries? Is this already happening?
Also since we are quoting Einstein I had to share my favorite.
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.”
Einstein also said: “Everything that the human race has done and thought is concerned with the satisfaction of deeply felt needs and the assuagement of pain. One has to keep this constantly in mind if one wishes to understand spiritual movements and their development.” So where does that leave the “ignorant” masses after we do away with religion? Are antidepressants going to replace religion/spirituality?
Science picks out those arguments for which there is a test that should settle the argument. This discussion is a good example of an argument in which we may not be able to reach agreement, because it is not something to which we can apply scientific method. It is still an interesting discussion.
My only point was to say you can be a scientist and still believe in God. You must invoke logic with Occam’s razor, or some other philosophy to conclude that there is no God. Ultimately it is your choice of disbelief or faith, not a matter of science. I am not trying to influence anybody’s choice. I am not trying to prove there is a God.
In regards to whether quantum theory is complete, stay tuned, Einstein might still prove correct.
In regards to how deterministic we can become in medicine, there are limitations in our determinism based on various theorems in mathematics and iterative procedures. The biggest limitation on determinism is the unpredictability of human choice.
One other factor about knowledge that we have not discussed is information/entropy/uncertainty. While we may have many equations that are very accurate in predicting measures observed in experiments, we do not much information about the universe, much less our own world. You must have both information on the current state and equations of the operators governing the change in state with time to have complete knowledge of a system. Most of our discussions have focused on the scientific discovery of those causal relationships, and the percentage of those things that we observe that can be explained by our scientific discovery. The percentage of information that we have that would be required to approach determinism, is infinitesimal.
“All the inputs from the environment have been filtered by your sense organs and further filtered into short term and long term memory, both of which determine, together with your present filtered sensory input to determine the responses you put out today, right now. Including what you call your “value judgement”.
HeHe – BillyJoe, do you have a algorithm for that? Cause today it’s cold and rainy and the weather report said “warm and sunny”. Sure a “value judgement” is created by our organic brain and the environment. But that organic brain is an incredibly fast system that learns on the fly. I think it going to be a long time before science can give us any accurate representation of how a person is feeling that is better than self-reporting.
But we can look to how science based medicine today operates for some insight into that. What is one of the most reliable sources of knowledge when a doctor wants to know how much pain a patient is in? To ask the patient, they might also ask the patient what kind of pain they are having, sharp, burning, dull, etc…I have to wonder when science will provide a more reliable tools than self-reporting for that, because the neo-natal units will snap that tool up.
Also, I haven’t seen anything in JMB’s comments that indicate support of supernatural beliefs. Philosophy is not supernatural. Ethics are not supernatural. I only see an indication that he believes that science is not the best or most reliable tool for every problem.
“Harriet: Arguments for atheism abound. Proof?”
Atheism to my mind is a lack of belief in gods, (a-theism =”without theism”) not a belief that there is no god. A subtle difference, but one I think is important. And of course you should know that it is up to theists to show evidence for the existence of their gods, not the responsiblity of non-theists to prove gods don’t exist. I don’t believe Santa is real, but I can’t prove he doesn’t exist. I don’t define myself as an asantaist because it doesn’t make sense to define myself in terms of belief or nonbelief in a being that all the evidence indicates is imaginary.
Stenger thinks a personal god who answers prayers and performs miracles has been ruled out by science. That hypothesis is simply incompatible with a huge body of evidence. Read his book.
Wales “So where does that leave the “ignorant” masses after we do away with religion?”
I genuinely don’t believe that you could do away with religion any more than you can do away with love. Perhaps worship may take a direction over time…different Gods, different afterlifes, same impulse.
Michele I agree, besides it’s been tried (Russia, China, France during the Revolution….)
Harriet yes I didn’t mean to say proof of atheism, I meant proof that a spiritual reality does not exist. I already read Dawkins and didn’t see any proof, does Stenger have any original arguments?
What I find disturbing about Billy Joe’s comments is not that he is an atheist, he is entitled to his beliefs, but that he thinks he is “right” and others are “wrong” and “ignorant”. This kind of black/white, right/wrong attitude carried to extremes is the ultimate cause of the atrocities committed in the name of religion and nationalism. Religion, science and government have usefulness, which is why they are still around, but they are all subject to “hijacking” by those who want to act destructively. (Of course I am not implying that Billy Joe is one of those destructive individuals.)
“Are you interpreting Einstein as saying that there is a supernatural explanation for quantum phenomena? (Little ghosts driving around the electrons, perhaps?) I’ve never heard that interpretation of this very famous quote. I understand him as saying that there must be a physical, deterministic explanation underlying quantum probabilities, and that’s the interpretation I’ve always seen elsewhere.”
My (very limited) understanding is that Einstein was clearly wrong about Heisenberg and quantum mechanics. The rumor is that Neils Bohr responded to the “god does not play dice” quote by saying “Albert, stop telling god what to do with his dice!” (although I don’t think he actually said it).
Eistein was clearly not a theist and attempts by religionists to prove him such annoy me.
I’m not sure who I agree with here, parts of BJ and Alison and Michelle. I do not believe that science has all the answers, but mostly because of the failings and biases of scientists rather than a fundamental flaw in the process itself. I do not believe there is any personal god, am agnostic, and yet I believe that things like love and memories and fear cannot be reduced to mere brain waves and neuron exchanges. Or at least, if they are, we will never be able to sort it out. I think Dr. Novella argues the opposite, but I am not convinced, any moreso that I am that the “divine calculation” is possible. I have more confidence in the complexity of evolution and the human mind than I do machines. You don’t need a personal god to believe there is more.
RE: life on other planets/unsolvable mysteries. My feeling is that astronomers feel that there probably is other life (because of the vastness of the universe), while biologists say probably not (because of the extremely unlikely conditions needed to evolve any life, not to mention intelligent life that is capable of communicating and around at this point in our time). Interesting that Carl Sagan’s SETI project is put in the same category of pseudoscience of acupuncture and chiropractor by Michael Shermer’s “Borderlands of Science.”
micheleinmichigan on the existence of god:
“Historically, many great minds (and small ones as well, I’m know) from various religions have written observations on the human condition, ethics, finding meaning in the face of despair or even coping with every day nuisances, etc. While I would not ever recommend taking any writings as “truth” I think to label these efforts as “untenable” or not useful on the grounds that is does not advance scientific knowledge or that one premise of those writing is not factual, is to ignore a broad swath of very compelling human history and thought.”
I don’t think I ever said otherwise. I just said that the useful part is not the part where there’s an eternal tyrant yelling at you. One of the most useful concepts I have ever learned is that of grace: that I am held to a standard of perfection, that I will fail, and that I am forgiven and loved anyway. While I learned it from reading the Sermon on the Mount and the works of St Paul, the premise that we don’t actually deserve what we have and we don’t have to has gotten me through some pretty dark days.
I like the conclusion of the Book of Job that some things just suck and we shouldn’t try to attribute meaning to them. In the book this conclusion was announced by God speaking out of the whirlwind, but the conclusion is valid anyway.
If the insights of religious people were absolutely dependent on belief in a god, they would be suspect. I don’t find the traditional christian belief that God sends us bad things to try us at all compelling. It doesn’t seem to be adaptable to non-theistic philosophy – and I suspect it’s even bad theology.
On the subject of possible alien intelligent species, Stephen Hawking has some interesting thoughts in his new documentary which are summarized here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36769422/?GT1=43001
The relationship among science and skepticism and religion or non-religion/atheism is an awkward one at best. It continually intrudes on discussions of other topics, but it seems in the last month or so to have taken on renewed life, perhaps helped a bit by the discussion on SGU a few weeks ago. I have some more extensive ideas I plan to express but haven’t had time yet to give them the clear and careful exposition they deserve.
Real Soon Now! (
)
In the mean time, I enjoy perusing your comments on the subject.
It also seems to be a popular subject on the podcast Point of Inquiry. I noticed they had a recent episode featuring Victor Stenger, which I haven’t listened to yet:
http://www.pointofinquiry.org/victor_stenger_taking_a_stand_for_science_and_reason/
I did recently listen to the podcast featuring J. J. Altizer, one of the theologians who articulated the “Death of God” theology. I didn’t agree with much of what I heard, but I found his ideas to be challenging and worthy of some consideration.
http://www.pointofinquiry.org/thomas_j.j._altizer_the_death_of_god/
I have two questions for Billy Joe:
1) Where are the published results of rigorous, controlled, repeatable empirical testing proving theories about the non existence of a spiritual reality? Without the “beef” these theories and arguments amount to philosophical speculation, not scientific fact. The old saw “where’s the beef?” comes to mind.
2) If religion/spiritual beliefs are so detrimental to humanity, why hasn’t natural selection eliminated them by now?
Harriet,
“Atheism to my mind is a lack of belief in gods, (a-theism =”without theism”) not a belief that there is no god. A subtle difference, but one I think is important.”
Some refer to strong and weak forms of atheism
Weak atheism is a lack of belief in god because there is no evidence that he exists.
Strong atheism is an active disbelief in god because there is evidence that he does not exist.
“And of course you should know that it is up to theists to show evidence for the existence of their gods, not the responsiblity of non-theists to prove gods don’t exist.”
The first task of the believer is to actually define god.
It is actually difficult to define god in such as way as to make him untouchable (and refutable!) by science and logic. What is usually left is some form of invisible non-interventionist god. In effect we are reduced to a defintion of god which very few people actually believe in or want to believe in! After all what’s the good of a god who doesn’t provide us with an afterlife!
“I don’t believe Santa is real, but I can’t prove he doesn’t exist. “
Again, a definition would be useful.
Once defined, it is easy to see how both logic and science can disprove most, if not all, the presumed attributes of Santa.
wales,
“1) Where are the published results of rigorous, controlled, repeatable empirical testing proving theories about the non existence of a spiritual reality? Without the “beef” these theories and arguments amount to philosophical speculation, not scientific fact. The old saw “where’s the beef?” comes to mind.”
You still don’t get it.
It is the *assumption* of science that everthing is physical.
That is the philosophical part.
Now here is the practical part:
You can see all around you how far this *assumption* has taken us. Everything you use every day is practically al the result of science working on the basis of that *assumption*.
The longer that all phenomena continue to be shown to have natural explanations and the longer supernatural explanations remain conspicuous by their absence, the more confident we can be that everthing is physical.
Supernatural ideas make their appearance only outside of science in the minds of the hopeful. And, once defined, these supernatural idea can be shown via logic and science to be false.
“2) If religion/spiritual beliefs are so detrimental to humanity, why hasn’t natural selection eliminated them by now?”
First of all I have not made that claim.
But if you are asking: Some believers interpret their religion in such a way that it certainly does lead to behaviour that is detrimental to humanity. Suicide bombers for example. Others interpret their religion in ways that are advantageous to both themselves and others. There are others who don’t make a difference. Mixed bag really.
But “why hasn’t natural selection eliminated them by now?”
Well, let’s just say that you could ask that question only if you don’t understand evolution.
michelinmichigan,
“HeHe – BillyJoe, do you have a algorithm for that? Cause today it’s cold and rainy and the weather report said “warm and sunny”. Sure a “value judgement” is created by our organic brain and the environment. But that organic brain is an incredibly fast system that learns on the fly. I think it going to be a long time before science can give us any accurate representation of how a person is feeling that is better than self-reporting.”
Yes, isn’t evolution marvellous!
And, yes, no simple algorithm. A complex interviewing mutlilayered web of interaction is more like it. And it’s not going to be written down any time soon. Yet there is no reason to believe there is anything but natural cause and effect operating inside the brain.
…hey, that was interweaving, not interviewing
BillyJoe on disproving the existence of a spiritual reality:
“It is the *assumption* of science that everthing is physical.
That is the philosophical part.
Actually I would take the proposition that everything is physical as a null hypothesis, making it a scientific part of science. It’s theoretically possible to discard this null hypothesis if the data require it.
So far the data have not required it.
1) “It is the *assumption* of science that everything is physical.
That is the philosophical part.” Exactly, we’re back to “assuming” with no proof. You have just confirmed that the entire premise of science is based on a presumption which is accurate because so far there has been no scientific disproof. Of course this is a foregone conclusion, as the scientific method is applicable only to physical entities…..tautology anyone? Science assumes only physical existence, and the scientific method can test only physical entities, so it can never prove or disprove the existence of a spiritual reality. So believers and atheists alike rely upon unprovable theories to support their beliefs. I wouldn’t be so critical of the “new atheists” if they would stop pretending they have magically transformed their philosophy into a scientific fact.
2) “let’s just say that you could ask that question only if you don’t understand evolution.” Nice attempt to transform your non-answer into my lack of knowledge. Try enlightening me.
This is becoming repetitive.
Alison – “I don’t think I ever said otherwise. I just said that the useful part is not the part where there’s an eternal tyrant yelling at you.”
Regardless – I don’t think you said otherwise – I think I inferred it from your statements
“I am real, and medicine really addresses the real things I need it to.
What is real that science can’t — by definition — address? How do you know it’s real?
What do you mean by reality? What non-scientific methods do you use to distinguish reality from fantasy?”
“What I am trying to get at is what people are thinking when they say that science can only explain part of reality; that there are parts of reality that are beyond the scope of the scientific method.”
Probably I was taking these comments out of the context of the discussion with Wales and applying to my own personal questions. But, based on your comment to me and your most recent comments, I think I understand your point of view better now.
I think for my part some of my misunderstanding is based on some comments (sorry, not sure whose) that use the concepts of science and natural/physically/biologically interchangeably.
So I have been (perhaps mistakenly) inferring a kind of logic that goes something like this.
if science=natural,
then not science=supernatural.
To me this is a false dichotomy. The study of science is the study of the physical world, but understanding that physical world will not give us all the answers we need in all cases. So science may someday understand the physical mechanisms that the brain uses to come to an ethical decision, but that understanding may not help us to make an ethical decision. Is that ethical decision real? Is a concept real? Nether is supernatural (by my definition).
BillyJoe – One of the things I like about science is that it generally does not seek to disprove things. It only looks at ideas as ‘more likely, less likely’ and follows the route of the more likely.
I find myself disturbed at the notion that the non-existence of anything (God, Santa, Teapots in space) can be presented as “truth” in a scientific way. To me “truth” is a mental devise that often blinds people to new evidence when it arrives. As human’s, I think we have an unfortunate tendency to see 30% as not likely (or likely), 1% as barely possible and .000001% as impossible. I prefer science sticks to 30%, 1% and .000001% – more promising – less promising-facts and let the truth take care of itself.
wales – regarding evolution
I will take a shot at an explanation. Natural selection does not eliminate non-desirable traits. It only allows naturally occurring traits (mutations) to propagate more often. So a non-desirable or not obviously advantageous genetic trait may be present within any species as long as that trait does not prevent a certain number of the individuals within that species from reproducing.
How religion relates to evolution is a very interesting question being discussed in evolutionary anthropology. I wish I had time to add more, but alas, I’ve had my SBM fix for the morning. I will have to wait until I’m jonesing again this afternoon.
oh no! not the moderation demons. There will be a comment posted by me at 10:11am that (supernaturally) will appear upthread at some unforeseeable time in the future. Read it. Don’t read it. I am practicing a mindful awareness that I can not control the moderation process or life itself.
The question isn’t really whether the big pharmaceutical companies that dominate the industry are unethical and promote pseudoscience, we know they do because they get caught doing it with regularity. The question is how influenced by big pharma doctors are (or by Big sCAM). The “pharma shill” gambit which is equivalent to the “CAM shill” gambit…both sides have their simplistic, unidimensional cardboard cutouts they’re fighting against rather than dealing with the complexity of reality. It’s the taking of sides, rather than simply trying to discern the truth and going from there, that creates these kinds of simplistic gambits.
“It is the *assumption* of science that everything is physical.”
Not really. I think the only assumption science makes is that we have a shared external reality that is consistent enough to study with the scientific method. Science will readily follow anywhere the evidence leads. If anything nonphysical had any detectable effects on the physical world, science could study those effects. But then they would be part of the natural world and not really “supernatural.”
Michele: “Natural selection does not eliminate non-desirable traits.” Right. So if religion is detrimental (a Dawkins supposition, not Billy Joe’s, my apologies) then atheism should confer a reproductive advantage, which should lead to more atheists and fewer believers, eventually phasing out religion entirely. Only history has not borne this out. The world population has doubled in the past 50 years, from about 3 billion to over 6 billion, with an estimated 70-90% practicing religion of some sort.
Another thing I don’t get about the “new atheists” who promote “atheist pride” (i.e. Dawkins, parading around London in a bus bearing the slogan “There probably is no god, so enjoy life” or some such evangelical message). These “new atheists” are obviously enjoying the camaraderie and support of consorting with their fellow atheists, of belonging to a group where they all hold the same philosophy about life, yet many of them (under the Dawkins model) want to deprive “believers” of that pleasure and support by doing away with religion because of its “dangers”.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jan/06/atheist-bus-campaign-nationwide
Why anyone should be “prideful” about their philosophical/religious beliefs or disbeliefs is beyond me, be they staunch believers, agnostics or staunch unbelievers. I’ve always felt that public displays of this sort are exhibitionistic and in bad taste. Well time to run. Hopefully there will be more interesting comments from others later.
Another possibility: what if religion offered an evolutionary advantage to early human societies but is no longer advantageous in our modern world?
Anything’s possible Harriet, but I am not convinced without proof.
Sorry for another long comment but I am fascinated by this subject. I’ll take a break after this one. A few comments were made earlier in this thread about writers being annoyed by theists trying to co-opt Albert Einstein. I see from the UK Guardian article I cited in my last post that the athests are doing the same thing. “Organisers unveiled a set of quotes from public figures – including Albert Einstein, Douglas Adams and Katharine Hepburn – who have endorsed atheism, or at least expressed scepticism about a Creator.” However, in addition to stating that he was not a theist, Albert Einstein clearly stated that he was not an atheist.
The Dawkins troupe just takes another page from the playbook of the party they criticize. It is interesting that both “sides” want to claim dear Albert as their own.
Einstein quotes: “You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth. I prefer an attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.”
And
“I’m not an atheist and I don’t think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand these laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations. I am fascinated by Spinoza’s pantheism, but admire even more his contributions to modern thought because he is the first philosopher to deal with the soul and the body as one, not two separate things.”
I got a chuckle out of this from the UK Guardian article “Atheists in Australia have fared badly with their campaign. Attempts to place slogans such as “Atheism – sleep in on Sunday mornings” on buses were rejected by Australia’s biggest outdoor advertising company, APN Outdoor.”
Harriet Hall “Another possibility: what if religion offered an evolutionary advantage to early human societies but is no longer advantageous in our modern world?”
what? we might evolve out of religion AND our little toe? Someone must put a stop to this evolution thing, now!
Since I’m listening to James Brown, I have to point out, without religion, sin is so much less attractive…that might give it some sort of evolutionary advantage.
Wales – “I’ve always felt that public displays of this sort are exhibitionistic and in bad taste.”
Oh dear, so not a big fan of gay pride, the garden club or the VFW either, I guess?
I shouldn’t even start on MargiGras – exhibitionistic and in bad taste? You say that like it’s a bad thing.
Bad taste can be amusing, but not so much when paraded around by scientists pretending they have found scientific proof refuting something that is irrefutable. I guess I expect/expected more of someone like Dawkins. As Einstein said, “I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth.” I think some “painful acts of liberation” are best worked out in private, at least by certain public figures. But I’m sure I am in the minority, most enjoy the spectacle.
Bad taste can be amusing, but not so much when paraded around by scientists pretending they have found scientific proof to refute something which is irrefutable. I guess I expected more o fDawkins. Einstein calls the “crusading spirit of the professional atheist” a result of the painful process of liberation. I believe some forms of painful liberation should be worked out in private, especially by public figures in science. There’s a fine line between the psychological rite of “breaking the fetters” and misstating scientific fact. But I am sure I am in the minority, most enjoy the spectacle.
@Harriet Hall on 26 Apr 2010 at 12:29 pm in response to “It is the *assumption* of science that everything is physical.” Harriet replied ‘Not really.’
Yes, it is the fact of science that we cannot study that which has no physical manifestation.
“Yes, it is the fact of science that we cannot study that which has no physical manifestation.”
What is the difference between ‘no physical manifestation’ and ‘no manifestation’?
“What is the difference between ‘no physical manifestation’ and ‘no manifestation’?”
Hallucinations? Perception? Emotional response? An insult may have no physical manifestation, but still have plenty of repercussions to the individual experiencing the insult. Faith/belief, the reasons for them, and the results of them, are largely based in the mind, a person’s past experience, and interpretation/perception.
“Yes, it is the fact of science that we cannot study that which has no physical manifestation.”
So research psychology has no business being studied as a science?
And the Albert Einstein quotes- beautifully stated!
wales
Thank you for saving me from my stupid use of supernatural/natural. I was just trying to avoid falling into the trap of any specific belief system. The analogy from the Einstein quote of the child in a library would have saved me from the connotations of the supernatural.
BillyJoe
“Science is the only source of reliable knowledge.”
Neither mathematics (including mathematical logic) or Orcam’s razor is science. Do you deny that they are reliable sources of knowledge? They are not observable. And where would science be without mathematics?
One more thing, what we can observe is dependent on our senses and our instruments. Our scientific instruments have greatly extended what we can observe. Science is limited to what we can observe. That does not mean that in the future we will not have a new or more powerful instrument that can extend our observations and science. The are many things that we will be able to prove real in the future that we cannot prove real now. How can you decide, now, what is real and what is not without a crystal ball telling the eventual limit of the power of our instruments (although, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle may be considered the eventual limit). The scientific method does not restrict the possible discoveries in the future, it only can be used to settle an argument for things that we can currently observe. Science is limited, and limiting. It is the best paradigm to base technology on. However, our knowledge is not limited by the paradigm of science.
wales@:
“A few comments were made earlier in this thread about writers being annoyed by theists trying to co-opt Albert Einstein. I see from the UK Guardian article I cited in my last post that the athests are doing the same thing. “Organisers unveiled a set of quotes from public figures – including Albert Einstein, Douglas Adams and Katharine Hepburn – who have endorsed atheism, or at least expressed scepticism about a Creator.” However, in addition to stating that he was not a theist, Albert Einstein clearly stated that he was not an atheist.”
I was the one who said that about Einstein. I agree with you. I’ve read Dawkins and Hitchens and others and still find that being sure about anything is antithetical to science.
Regarding the discussion of “in the past there has never been anything non-physical detected” thus it is logical to conclude that nothing non-physical ever will be detected in the future, I think a lesson on deductive versus inductive logic is in order. That’s why I’m an agnostic rather than an atheist:
http://www.nakedscience.org/mrg/Deductive%20and%20Inductive%20Reasoning.htm
Here are a few comments by nobel laureate physicists expressing dissatisfaction with the limitations of a “science-only” reality. I find these quotes cheering. But of course that’s because they coincide with my own beliefs.
Wolfgang Pauli: “Contrary to the strict division of the activity of the human spirit into separate departments – a division prevailing since the 19th century – I consider the ambition of overcoming opposites, including also a synthesis embracing both rational understanding and the mystical experience of unity, to be the mythos, spoken and unspoken, of our present day and age.”
Erwin Schrodinger: “The scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives me a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really dear to our heart, that really matters to us.”
Wales “So if religion is detrimental (a Dawkins supposition, not Billy Joe’s, my apologies) then atheism should confer a reproductive advantage, which should lead to more atheists and fewer believers,”
Possibly yes, possibly no. My understanding is some detrimental traits die out, but only if they are detrimental enough to keep the species from reproducing.
A trait could be considered generally detrimental by human kind, say the trait of violence, but still be naturally selected, violence eliminated competition. Also, a trait may work in some environments and not others. Spider’s in the rainforest where food is plentiful, live in colonies. Spiders in the desert where food is scare are highly competitive and territorial.
As to evolutionary anthropology and religion. I have heard a couple of theories. Religion aids group cohesion and/or religion acts as a enforcement mechanism of social rules. I tend to believe that religion is also a bi-product of our questing, storytelling minds, two traits that have their obvious evolutionary advantage.
As to atheist parades, I was being tongue in cheek, but my general belief is that folks who feel like parading, should, as long as it’s peaceful. I am also not wild about proselytizing, but only in the case were I can not get away. I don’t want to be preached at when I’m at work or on a plane, train, at the theater, etc. But if someone wants to march up the street (with their required permit) singing “The Old Rugged Cross or Hey Dude there is no God.” then that’s fine with me. If I don’t like it, I can leave. But, I don’t feel I need to be protected from ideas that I disagree with 24/7.
Michele: I agree with you about parades and I certainly don’t feel the need to be protected from ideas. What I object to is the parading falsely being done in the name of “scientific proof”. Having spent 25 years in LA and San Francisco though, spectacle does wear thin over time.
Oh, I just had to point out (the?) one example of religion and a natural selection disadvantage. The Shakers. From an evolutionary standpoint chastity is not advantageous.
lkregula on non-physical manifestations:
“Hallucinations? Perception? Emotional response?”
They are all physical. They are creations of the physical brain, possibly in response to a physical stimulus (e.g. light or sound). Emotional response in particular is very easy to detect by an outside observer: involuntary muscular contractions; skin conductivity; pulse and blood pressure; EEGs; hormone levels. EEGs, a relatively crude measure, can even be used to determine which of three items a person is thinking about. Definitely physical. Nothing supernatural there. We do not need to postulate ghosts or fairies to understand what a hallucination is.
lkregula on non-physical manifestations bis:
“So research psychology has no business being studied as a science?”
Case in point. Physical manifestations are the domain of research psychology. Checklists, interviews, behavioural observations, fMRI. Whatever. These are all physical things.
“They are all physical.”
We now know they are, but what about before we had EEG’s or other instruments to measure brain activity? There was a (fairly significant) time where people were studying emotions and perception before that technology. The science of research psychology existed before the technology did. We can study things that we don’t know to have a physical manifestation, and we can study things that don’t have a physical manifestation.
Your example of interviews as a physical manifestation? Really? I’d hardly call self report measures reliable. Ever heard of lying?
JMB: “The analogy from the Einstein quote of the child in a library would have saved me from the connotations of the supernatural.”
But the supernatural is exactly what we’re discussing. If science can only describe 30% of reality and the rest of reality requires some combination of the supernatural and something else to describe it, what is this proposed “rest of reality” exactly? I have gotten the physiology of sleep (a physical phenomenon well within the domain of science, nothing supernatural required here); attachment (can be studied scientifically); philosophy (which is not empirical science, but neither does philosophy require us to postulate the supernatural to explain how philosophy could exist); religion (this is not knowledge)… everyone drawing a blank.
Nobody here who is claiming that there are some domains of knowledge about the real world to which science cannot contribute has been able to propose a single real thing that is not physical, that is imperceptible, undetectable, has no manifestations, and for which the supernatural offers a superior account. (For one thing, if something is imperceptible, undetectable and has no physical manifestations, how do we know it’s there to need an explanation of any kind?) If nobody can give an example of something explained better by the supernatural, I’m really not sure why someone would be confident that most of reality is supernatural.
There’s a difference between saying that science is incomplete (of course it is, that’s why scientists exist), and that the scientific method could not, even under the most ideal circumstances, explain or describe any given part of the real world and that the supernatural offers a superior account for those things science does not describe well today. We don’t know what dark matter is? Must be fairies! We don’t know absolutely everything there is to know about cancer? Must be fairies! I don’t know exactly how much I weigh? Must be fairies! Today’s medical science can’t cure everyone all the time? Must be fairies!
Would science be improved, would knowledge accumulate more quickly, if we included the fairy hypothesis in every experiment? How would we even do that? What would a fairy explanation look like? How would we know whether we needed to look for fairies, gods, demi-gods or totemic spirits?
RE mathematics, yes, it’s knowledge and no, it’s not a physical substance though it has physical correlates. But does the supernatural improve our understanding of math? Does math have religious correlates?
If all we need is to bring a sense of wonder to the universe, my understanding is that’s exactly what scientists (and mathematicians) do. They practice science because they have a profound sense of wonder that inspires them to dedicate much of their lives to learning more and to learning how little they know. Einstein is a charismatic figure but hardly unique in this respect.
lkregula on physical manifestations:
“Your example of interviews as a physical manifestation? Really? I’d hardly call self report measures reliable. Ever heard of lying?”
I didn’t say it was reliable. I said it was something that research psychologists study. Research psychologists do not study ether, today or 100 years ago. They study things they can observe.
Alison, I don’t see anyone saying that faeries are the answer to everything, I see people saying that there are some things that science can’t answer. Why do people fall in love? Science may explain the hormonal stuff, but not the actual “why”. Why do individuals stay in abusive relationships? Why this person and not that person? Why this put up with infertility or annoyance in a mate? What about art? Why is the Mona Lisa revered as such a great painting? What makes Brahms so popular? Why did anyone ever listen to N’Sync? Do you really think that science can explain every minutiae of the human experience?
“I didn’t say it was reliable. I said it was something that research psychologists study. Research psychologists do not study ether, today or 100 years ago. They study things they can observe.”
I never said they study aether, I said that self report measures can be wrong. If one can observe a hundred million people’s reports of talks with god, would you believe it? No, you wouldn’t, but it would be an observable measure by your standards, and how are you going to show that those hundred million people are lying?
“If science can only describe 30% of reality and the rest of reality requires some combination of the supernatural and something else to describe it, what is this proposed “rest of reality” exactly?”
I don’t know who made that claim but it seems preposterous. First of all science tells us that baryonic matter makes up only about 5% of the universe and we have just barely begun to describe that. The scientific approach is the most useful tool we have to understanding it. If you wish to use imaginary ie supernatural approaches to reality, that is fine. We will judge you by the results you produce. I will stick with science.
“Do you really think that science can explain every minutiae of the human experience?”
Most definitely, yes. If you think that science somehow diminishes for me the beauty of a rainbow, sunset, song, or a beautiful woman, then you are sadly mistaken.
“If you think that science somehow diminishes for me the beauty of a rainbow, sunset, song, or a beautiful woman, then you are sadly mistaken.”
I never said diminishes, I said explains. An explanation doesn’t have to diminish.
“An explanation doesn’t have to diminish.”
Agreed. My misunderstanding.
weing on the ability of science to describe only 30% of reality, the rest of reality requiring some combination of the supernatural and something else to describe it:
“I don’t know who made that claim but it seems preposterous.”
wales made it. This is the full quote:
“If I had to bet on what is the basis of reality I would bet that scientific theory has it 30% right, spiritual theory has it 30% right, and the remaining [40%] of the pie is composed of A) a creative, integrative synthesis of ideas from those two realms or B) a completely novel paradigm that is beyond our ken at this stage of humanity’s cognitive evolution.”
This is what I’ve been complaining about. This statement is supposed to sound broad-minded but is meaningless.
Part of the problem with my use of the analogy of supernatural/natural is the susceptibility to the criticism that I am using supernatural explanations for those things I cannot find natural explanations. That is not the case. If something happens that we do not understand and appears to be supernatural, and you ask me how it happened, then I would say we do not yet have a scientific explanation, I would not venture a supernatural explanation. If something happens that we do not understand and appears supernatural, and you ask me why it happened, then I might try to compose an answer based on my experience in philosophy and/or religion. I do not try to explain how things work with supernatural concepts, that is a historic mistake. What I am doing is classifying the type of question, and then determining what paradigm will work the best to yield an answer.
If patients ask me why something happened, I tend to answer the question as if they asked how it happened. If they persist in asking why, then I know it is time to address the illness, not just the disease.
You can be a atheist, and still use nonscientific paradigms for knowledge. Even BillyJoe professes a belief in Occam’s razor, which is a heuristic that cannot be proven by math or science. Therefore, part of BillyJoe’s knowledge is not based on science or logic.
Mathematics tends to be proven by formalized derivation. Science tends to be proven by reproducible observation. Beyond math and science, we cannot determine whose knowledge is right and who is wrong. (We can still judge a persons actions as being right or wrong.) We can only choose based on faith. If somebody thinks being smarter will determine who is right or wrong in an issue beyond math and science, then good luck. Better arguments may win an argument, but does not determine who is right or wrong. There is a reason Einstein was so humble as to compare himself to a child in a library. But you don’t have to be a genius to be humbled by how little we know. Technological progress does not equate to the breadth of our knowledge.
Finally, I will try again to make the point. If we are to have complete knowledge of a system, we must have both the knowledge of the equations that govern the transition from one state to the next in a given interval in time, and the information about the current state. The scientific paradigm focuses on causality, the equations that tell us what the future state will be given the information of the current state. Obtaining the information to reduce the uncertainty of the current (or previous states if we need to establish a trajectory), is not part of the scientific process. Information is part of the process to complete our knowledge. Science alone cannot result in complete knowledge. If I drop a box on your foot, science will tell you the formulaes to predict how fast it will be going when it hits your foot, and the kinetic energy of the box when it hits your foot. You would have had to measure the weight of the box and the distance it falls to tell you what you really want to know.
JMB,
I agree with everything you say… except the bit about Occam’s razor and information.
If you want to know the weight of the box and the distance the box is falling you’re going to have to use applied science to obtain that information. You might need to know the centre of gravity of the box and how it’s going to rotate when it lands.
Occam’s razor is a scientific heuristic but it’s not knowledge about the world in the sense that it will tell you if something is true or not. You must know that yourself when you tell someone they have X problem because of Y predisposing factor and they are satisfied. They aren’t looking for more explanations because they don’t need them (Occam’s razor at work) but you happen to know that their problem is vastly more complicated because you know a lot more about bodies. (Occam’s razor fail.)
You seem to be arguing against the idea that human science can know everything about everything in the universe simultaneously, which I don’t think anyone proposed. On one end of the scale there is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle and on the other end – while we’re getting very clever with astronomical observation techniques, there will always be a limit to what we can see from here. And while it would not be possible to know what everyone on the planet weighs simultaneously (even if an alien race were to issue us all digital scales wirelessly connected to the mothership and programmed us all to weigh ourselves at 12h00 GMT there would be limits, and that is quite a bit of observation to interfere with the results) there is no reason to think that we could not know any given person’s weight using applied science, or that our lack of knowledge is a gap that requires spiritual theory to explain. Saying that we require spiritual theory to explain the gap, or that we need to keep our minds open to the possibility that spiritual theory explains the gap, is senseless.
You also seem to be arguing against the idea that if it isn’t a testable scientific postulate we don’t need to think about it, which again is something I don’t think anyone proposed. If I gave that impression I apologize.
The idea I am arguing against is that it could somehow make sense to say that 70% of reality is undescribable using the scientific method (not undescribed right now, but totally out of scope) and requires spiritual theory to account for it.
The universe is big. If the 70% of reality refers to the moral significance of human compassion, we are giving our feelings an awful lot of weight in the grand scale of things.
My assumption has been that the proposed 70%-of-reality-is-supernatural figure refers to some Chopra-type theory of reality, but I haven’t checked. Lots of people believe Chopra makes sense. They think The Secret is an accurate description of how things work. They think The Celestine Prophecy is true. For these things to be true descriptions of reality, the universe would have to be a very supernatural place.
wales, have I been on the wrong track about this?
BillyJoe: “It is the *assumption* of science that everything is physical.
That is the philosophical part.”
Wales: “Exactly, we’re back to “assuming” with no proof. You have just confirmed that the entire premise of science is based on a presumption which is accurate because so far there has been no scientific disproof.”
The evidence has been accumulating for over 500 years!
So far one hundred percent physical explanations and not a single supernatural explanation in sight.
How certain do you want to be?
Do you still give flat Earth any credence?
“Of course this is a foregone conclusion, as the scientific method is applicable only to physical entities. Science assumes only physical existence, and the scientific method can test only physical entities,
You wish!
So, if someone claims they can levitate a plate off the table, you think science can’t test that claim? If someone claims a miracle happened, you think science can’t test that claim?
“so it can never prove or disprove the existence of a spiritual reality.”
As I said before, define your spirituality and we’ll what science can and cannot disprove
michelinmichigan,
“BillyJoe – One of the things I like about science is that it generally does not seek to disprove things. It only looks at ideas as ‘more likely, less likely’ and follows the route of the more likely.”
So you haven’t discounted the Flat Earth theory yet?
You still think the Earth might be the centre of the universe?
“I find myself disturbed at the notion that the non-existence of anything (God, Santa, Teapots in space) can be presented as “truth” in a scientific way.”
On the other hand, I’m disturbed by the notion that science has to seriously entertain ideas that people completely make up out of thin air. Does science serious need to entertain the notion of Santa, an idea that parents thought up to entertain their children? Or teapots in space that were thought up to show how ridiculous the idea of having to disprove god is. Those teapots have to be defined so that they are undetectable in any way. Similarly when you define god in such a way that he is completely undetectable, you end up with an entity that no one believes in. How that is not a disproof of god still escapes me.
Harriet,
BillyJoe “It is the *assumption* of science that everything is physical.”
Harriet: “Not really. I think the only assumption science makes is that we have a shared external reality that is consistent enough to study with the scientific method.
Fair enough. It seems to me it amounts to the same thing. The underlying philosophy of science is Materialism, the other choices being Dualism, and Idealism. To entertain the supernatural is to stop looking. Science keeps looking…for physical explanations (including within claims of the supernatural).
“Science will readily follow anywhere the evidence leads. If anything nonphysical had any detectable effects on the physical world, science could study those effects. But then they would be part of the natural world and not really “supernatural.””
I couldn’t agree more.
wales,
“Dawkins, parading around London in a bus bearing the slogan “There probably is no god, so enjoy life” “
I hope you similarly deride the religious adverts that presently appear on public transport.
I got a chuckle out of this from the UK Guardian article “Atheists in Australia have fared badly with their campaign. Attempts to place slogans such as “Atheism – sleep in on Sunday mornings” on buses were rejected by Australia’s biggest outdoor advertising company, APN Outdoor.”
So you’re in favour of censorship.
Well, good on you wales.
I trust you’d also chuckle when theists have to pull down their adverts.
“scientists pretending they have found scientific proof refuting something that is irrefutable. I guess I expect/expected more of someone like Dawkins.”
Dawkins does not put himself in the category of “disbelief in god because there is evidence that god does not exist”. He has been quoted as saying that he is merely leaning towards that view but he doesn’t see it as absolutely proven.
JMB,
BillyJoe: “Science is the only source of reliable knowledge.”
JMB: “Neither mathematics (including mathematical logic) or Orcam’s razor is science. Do you deny that they are reliable sources of knowledge? They are not observable. And where would science be without mathematics?
Fair enough.
Let’s just say that maths and logic are the hand-servants of science.
In any case I have mentioned both previously in relation to science and, here, I meant only to distinguish science from “other ways of knowing”.
“Even BillyJoe professes a belief in Occam’s razor, which is a heuristic that cannot be proven by math or science. Therefore, part of BillyJoe’s knowledge is not based on science or logic.”
Ockham’s razor is not a belief, it is a sort of practical principle. An exercise in house-cleaning. For simplicity’s sake, do not burden yourself with unnecessary assumptions.
I’m not going to take ten pairs of underpants on an overnight hike. Sure I may get lost and need every last one of them but, hey, it aint gonna happen.
Alison:
“Nobody here who is claiming that there are some domains of knowledge about the real world to which science cannot contribute has been able to propose a single real thing that is not physical”
And ain’t that the truth.
And that includes god. Otherwise someone please define god in such a way that he is not susceptable to scientific investigation and, at the sane time, is something more than a hand full of people actually believe in.
BillyJoe – I missed the part where I said “seriously entertain”. I believe I suggested that science should follow the most likely route. Do you disagree with that?
JMB:
I thought you’d like this article on the science of medical decision-making, in this case evidence-based theories.
http://mdm.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/28/6/829
BillyJoe on extra underpants:
“Sure I may get lost and need every last one of them but, hey, it aint gonna happen.”
You might, and you’ll discover that you need them as soon as you get lost. As long as you’re not lost, one pair of underpants is just fine.
Same in science. As long as your bare-bones hypothesis continues to explain data, you don’t need the extra ones. Once you stop being able to explain data you go back to your luggage and start repacking your hypotheses.
The advantage of science over travelling is that in science it’s never too late to go back and revise the hypothesis. When you travel it’s perfectly possible to become stranded without access to underpants!
Of course, that’s always the problem with true believers – they’ve got one set of rules for Others that they don’t apply to themselves. A simple ad on a side of a bus that lightheartedly essentially says “there’s no god so enjoy yourself” is treated, well, like blasphemy and all kinds of religious leaders rush to impose their religious beliefs upon everyone else in secular society. They’re attempting, once again, to control secular society and the cultural discourse so their assertions and attempts to control us can’t be questioned. Do the major religions advertise? They sure do, some even have door to door salesmen. Yet apparently both believers of various stripes and religious officials think it’s okay when they do it but nobody else should. Why are they so upset by these simple ads? Because they’re satire and if you point out that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes and his willy is waving about in the wind then it damages the illusion religion creates. It’s a slightly milder version of threatening to kill people who show pictures of Mohammed, not that Christian Fundies don’t kill people and believe it’s righteous too.
Fifi – yes. It’s not about the feelings of people who would like to believe in a god or a sentient universe; it’s about what’s true. And willies waving in the wind!
Anyone else: If you don’t subscribe to Steve Novella’s blog, this post is relevant to the discussion of fantasy vs reality. http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/?p=1885
So I guess I’m missing why is it imperative that one close one’s mind to something that has no evidence to recommend it? Why is it imperative that one believe that the non-existence Santa, God and ESP is the “truth”?
The way I see it science and medicine do not work by deciding what can is NOT possibly be true and then disprove various other unlikely things until they have come to the answer. (could be wrong here.)
SBM (and science in general, I presume) starts with the most likely cause of the complaint. As an example, chest pain may be heart attack, acid reflux, etc. Does the doctor have to know the “truth” that it can not be a demonic possession, a toe injury, or chi misalignment?
So I guess I’m asking what is the advantage of knowing that something doesn’t exist over knowing that something is far less possible or that there is no or little evidence for something?
Also, as a safeguard, how does the human mind make the distinction and communicate to others the lines between no evidence, little evidence and rare evidence, through the spectrum, when deciding these truths?
Alison – “Nobody here who is claiming that there are some domains of knowledge about the real world to which science cannot contribute has been able to propose a single real thing that is not physical, that is imperceptible, undetectable, has no manifestations, and for which the supernatural offers a superior account.”
I know this is going to be annoying, but I guess I’m unclear on your premise and this is probably only because I’m reading from my viewpoint, not wales.
So I will say, yes, everything has some sort of physical manifestation that can be observed. I have to add, some of those observations can be so indirect as to very unreliable. One can observe the physical components of thought, but that will not give you much information on the actual thoughts. Regardless, I see your point. But I feel like the point where I am not understanding is the distinction between science observing, contributing and answering.
Because everything has some sort of physical manifestation, science can observe everything (within it’s limits of tools for observation). Because of it’s observations science can contribute to many things. But, there are many questions that science can not answer. As JMB said you will not find proof in ethics, art, philosophy, etc.
I understand that you are not saying that science does answer everything (I think?) only maybe one doesn’t need the idea of the supernatural to answer these questions(?).
“Because they’re satire and if you point out that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes and his willy is waving about in the wind then it damages the illusion religion creates.”
Love the image,
I was going to say that I’ll have a no willy waving clause in my parade permit, but I forgot The Naked Mile, where UofM students would run naked through the streets to celebrate the end of winter semester. But there is no theistic-atheistic affiliation.
micheleinmichigan,
For me the important distinction is not between what couldn’t possibly be true and what is definitely true, but between fantasy and reality.
Fantasy is making shit up. That’s it. Somebody sits around and decides that it would be really cool if they could control the universe with their minds, so they write the Secret. They have no evidence, no reason to think it’s true other than it would be nice if it were. Fantasy.
Defining reality is more complicated. It has to do with consensus, which I think of as that which can be explored using the scientific method.
Unless there is a reason to think that I can create everything I want just by thinking about it, that notion is just clutter. There’s an infinite quantity of shit that can be made up. There’s no reason to rank it in order of probability. Some shit that is made up turns out to be true, but if there was no context for the idea at the time somebody fantasized it, it’s not helpful.
This started with wales’ statement that there were different “sides” in science and that the only honest position is that of the agnostic who does not take sides.
My position is that the only “sides” in science are fantasy and reality. If you are just making shit up, I don’t have to pay attention to your ideas. If you have a basis for your ideas then we have something to talk about. Anthropogenic Global Warming is not a “side.” It’s a falsifiable theory. It’s either true, not true, or partly true and that has nothing to do with what I think about it. It’s not about making friends or waging wars. It just is. (Or is not, as the case may be.) (Of course it is, but that’s not what we’re talking about.) Reality is the only “side” we need.
wales appears to believe that science can be right some of the time, but it’s more likely that making shit up that couldn’t possibly ever be verified is right more often. This is proposed as the honest, scientific, agnostic point of view.
“SBM (and science in general, I presume) starts with the most likely cause of the complaint. As an example, chest pain may be heart attack, acid reflux, etc. Does the doctor have to know the “truth” that it can not be a demonic possession, a toe injury, or chi misalignment?”
I think the doctor should be aware that demonic possession and chi misalignment are examples of making shit up. They shouldn’t be on the differential at all. Toe injuries are probably very low on the differential but could have a legitimate place there.
If there’s a reason to think that there is such a thing as a demon, and that it’s definable, then sure, put demons on the differential. Until then, they have as much place there as èopinjk and vwugby or even ;sèaèc,hadtuiru.
“The advantage of science over travelling is that in science it’s never too late to go back and revise the hypothesis. When you travel it’s perfectly possible to become stranded without access to underpants!”
Then again, you can wash the underpants in the sink, the disadvantage of science backtracking is “Whoops, we did thousands of surgeries that resulted in sleep apnea and we just found out sleep apnea is worse than we thought”
Yeah, now I’m just being a curmudgeon.
micheleinmichigan on parsing Alison Cummins:
“I understand that you are not saying that science does answer everything (I think?) only maybe one doesn’t need the idea of the supernatural to answer these questions(?).”
Bingo!
“So I guess I’m missing why is it imperative that one close one’s mind to something that has no evidence to recommend it? Why is it imperative that one believe that the non-existence Santa, God and ESP is the “truth”?”
Because “truths” belong in the realm of ideology, and science has to be set up as an ideology (instead of the tool that it is) in order to compare it to, say, the ideology of a given religion. Once you’re comparing two ideologies, then you can engage in the fun of us-versus-them thinking, use your ideology to castigate the other side and use your ideology to prove your superiority. If one admits that science is merely a tool, it has limitations.
What’s my prize?
You get to stay at my place next time you visit Montréal!
(This invitation actually extends to all the commenters here. Really. You’re all so smart and civilized. Contact me through my blog. I have a guest room.)
Oh, one last thought for me on the evolution, religion, science theme. There is a high possiblity that it is a crock, but it’s rattling around in my head.
The relationship between the productivity of science vs. religion and the possiblity of replacing scientific thought with religion thought gives rise to the question, ‘is that a good idea?’*
If one can accept the premise that both religion and science are human constructs that have evolved to fulfill certain human needs, then one must ask are those needs the same? I would say not. I would say that religion was constructed to: give a feeling of certainty to an uncertain existence, to maintain social cohesion and to enforce desirable codes of conduct. Science was constructed to gain knowledge, to control our environment, our health, etc.
If I believe that humans change their tools to meet their needs (as they have with both religion and science), that leads me to wonder what would happen if humans were convinced to replace science with religion. Would they be able to resist the temptation to change the scientific method to give certainty where none exists, maintain social cohesion or enforce social codes of conduct? Is that what we want of science?
to replace religion with science, that is.
Alison – cool! that’s much better than a toaster and right back at you on the smart and civilized front.
Michele- Very interesting thought train! The misuse of tools is not such a great idea. Science doesn’t provide certainty any more than a hammer fixes a stomach ache, and religion doesn’t provide knowledge any more than a a hard drive cures Alzheimer’s.
Wales is like every logical fallacy and misunderstanding of science rolled into one big ball.
I mean come on:
“I meant proof that a spiritual reality does not exist.”
Also we should prove the pink invisible monkeys don’t live on the moon.
You believe there is a spirituality you need to prove it.
The He sues Einstein as some sort of bases to make theological arguments. Falling into the ‘Hey,, he is really smart about subject A, therefore I can take his opinion on subject B out of context and use them as a bases for my belief.”
Wales doesn’t even grasp the fact that Science is a way of thinking about the universe. He also seems to lack the ability to grasp the fact that if something has effect, it can be measures, quantified and put into a logical thought..aka Science.
He seems to think unknowable unknowable and that people need to prove negatives.
Well I just tried to wade through all these comments quickly.
Alison: you lost me somewhere back when you mentioned Chopra and the Secret. Knowing these are widely espoused/derided by certain individuals but not knowing much about them I don’t know how they relate to anything I have said. You keep trying to understand a comment I made about what I believe science can definitely say about the basis of reality. I admire your persistence, but I think I explicitly stated a while back that I have given up on explaining my take on reality on a blog. It is my take after all, and I don’t intend to persuade anyone else to my point of view, least of all staunch materialists. Since you stated that my comment was meaningless, perhaps you should leave it at that. I am content to be in your “meaningless” category with the likes of Wolfgang Pauli and others who “make stuff up”.
Billy Joe: I find adverts for religion and atheism equally repugnant. As for censorship, I interpreted the Australian item as more of a corporate decision against a money losing proposition, even though the ad was an appeal to hedonism by “sleeping in”. Hadn’t thought of it as censorship, but you may attempt to put words in my mouth if you wish.
Sorry can’t contribute more, been busy, as well as following the engrossing unfolding Goldman Sachs congressional hearings. High drama. Talk about “making stuff up”…….
Oh yeah, Geekoid: “The He sues Einstein as some sort of bases to make theological arguments.” You haven’t been paying much attention. I have made no theological arguments of any kind.
“Alison: you lost me somewhere back when you mentioned Chopra and the Secret. Knowing these are widely espoused/derided by certain individuals but not knowing much about them I don’t know how they relate to anything I have said.”
Yeah, I never asked you. I realized I was making assumptions, so I thought I could at least make them explicit. I haven’t read them either, but my understanding is that they attribute a level of conciousness to the universe as a whole that can interact with the consciousness of an individual.
No, you don’t have to persuade me of your point of view, but you aren’t being very helpful to people who simply want to know what it is. Especially when you come onto a blog, hint that you have a point of view that we could benefit from, and then say it’s too private to explain.
Sounds like you believe I made a sales pitch for agnosticism. If so, it was completely unintentional. I guess we are all enthusiastic about our own points of view. I did make a pitch for trying to overcome binary thinking, which I thought was helpful. I believe I started this conversation with a recommendation to read a book called “Opposable Mind” in response to DG’s comment that someone’s head might explode from holding opposing viewpoints.
wales on sales pitches:
“Some have criticized self-labeled “skeptics” as “pseudo-skeptics” who practice a type of asymmetrical skepticism; for example rather than a truly skeptical perspective, (agnostic or doubting), the pseudo-skeptic consistently takes a denialist stance against certain ideas. “The true skeptic takes an agnostic position, one that says the claim is not proved rather than disproved.””
“Sounds like you believe I made a sales pitch for agnosticism.”
You are correct, that is the conclusion I drew.
I was quoting the paper I cited. But with regard to skepticism in general and the “skeptical” movement, yes, I do think the agnostic stance is more objective and balanced than much of the “skepticism” I have seen. Of course just standing in the middle doubting both sides rarely makes for good blogging. Taking a stance and developing an argument is more likely to attract commentary.
With regard to religious agnosticism, I made no pitch, simply stated my preference.
Just because someone chooses not to share their beliefs, does not mean they are agnostic.
We would not replace scientific knowledge with religious knowledge. If there is a disagreement between religious knowledge and scientific knowledge, the the scientific knowledge is correct. Science and religion gives us answers to different questions, not the same question. Science claims any domain in which observations can lead to an agreement between observers.
The difference between questions addressed by science and religion is not a novel argument. I am following more or less the arguments made by Galileo (considered the father of science) about the relationship of science and religion.
SBM is not science, it is the art of practicing medicine with understanding of medical science. The practitioner is bombarded with so many claims that different choices are based on science, that we must learn how to be skeptical of those claims. The faculty of this site shares with us their concepts and methods that they use in the skeptical review of those claims, and we benefit by learning from their example.
The use of Galileo and Einstein in arguments of the relation of science, religion, and skepticism is not an attempt to prove religion, it is an attempt to prove that you can be a scientist, and still have religious beliefs.
In a fairly restricted definition of complete knowledge, I would define complete knowledge of a system as that which would allow us to answer a specific question correctly. If the question is, “When I hold out this ball, and release my grip, what will happen?”, then all that is necessary for complete knowledge is the concept of gravity. If the question is, “will it rain tomorrow?” then complete knowledge will require both computer models based on scientific study as well as a very large set of wide ranging weather observations as data input to allow a (sometimes) accurate prediction. Traditionally, we describe the equations used in the computer models as the scientific concepts. The data we collect to input into the model may be collected by scientific instruments, but that data used is not considered part of the scientific process. IMHO, I offer that in the question of predicting the weather we must use scientific concepts, as well as data collected for input (not a scientific process), to arrive at a complete knowledge.
Thank you Allison for the reference. That used to be my area of interest in research, although I published more on the issues of data compression (that was where the money was for the chief of the department). In some ways, I wonder if the emphasis on “evidence based” is just a way to appeal to those who dole out the federal grants. It has always been, ‘evidence based”. I guess if MDM adopted a more formal framework like the Cochrane Collaboration, then MDM might get more notice. But the Cochrance Collaboration comes out with papers that sound like policy making scientific studies (which the current healthcare reform wants), as opposed to, lets improve the quality of medical decisions, which is the focus of MDM. When Clinton proposed healthcare reform, we were excited that perhaps MDM would come to prominence because it could improve the quality and efficiency of medicine, but it was never even mentioned in the proposal. MDM seemed to whither away after that. Now the focus is “should we pay for that test when the evidence of efficacy is weak?”, rather than, “what is the most efficient and accurate way to diagnose appendicitis in a given case”.
BillyJoe,
“Let’s just say that maths and logic are the hand-servants of science. ”
I think mathematicians, statisticians, and logicians might view scientists as unsophisticated and needing help to get their thoughts straightened out. I don’t think they view themselves as handmaiden’s of science. But if you have grant money, they might be happy to help you out.
Math and science are two methods of gaining knowledge in which there is a proof available in the method. Math can be used separate from science, and proof can be obtained without science (in most cases). Science requires some minimum math to result in a proof.
Religion does not require or provide proof (in spite of what its current leaders may say), it only requires faith.
JMB,
I should have used a smily.
Still I think what is needed is maths and statistics savvy scientists skilled in logic.
Maths can have proof independent of science but then maths tends to be divorced from reality. And science does require math to result in proof but then those proofs tend to be grounded in reality.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with pure maths, it’s just that you can’t beat believers around the head with it.
“If there is a disagreement between religious knowledge and scientific knowledge, the the scientific knowledge is correct.”
So, in what sense is there religious knowledge?
In the beginning there was only religious “knowledge” (sorry, I’m going to use scare quotes) and all “knowledge” was encompassed by religion. Then there was science. And, as time passed and science knowledge increased, whenever science knowledge disagreed with religious “knowledge”, science knowledge was acknowledged to be correct. And, consequently, religious “knowledge” decreased.
In what sense, then, could you say that religious “knowledge” that was eventually superceded by science knowledge actually knowledge in the first place? And, in what sense, and on what basis, can you say that what remains of religious “knowledge” today can really be called knowledge.
“Science and religion gives us answers to different questions, not the same question. Science claims any domain in which observations can lead to an agreement between observers.
The non-overlapping magisteria argument. Well, it doesn’t rub.
Whenever science and religion disagree, science is correct. How does that gel with the NOMA argument. And, please, what questions are open to religion and simultaneously closed to science?
“The use of Galileo and Einstein in arguments of the relation of science, religion, and skepticism is not an attempt to prove religion, it is an attempt to prove that you can be a scientist, and still have religious beliefs.”
Firstly, I still think you’d be hard pressed to describe Einstein as religious in the sense most religious people describe themselves as religious. The vast majority of religious folk believe in an interventionist god. Einstein clearly did not, and he expressly said so. So, to my mind, there is little to be gained by religious folk in quoting him.
Secondly, sure you can be a scientist and have religious beliefs but I cannot accept that this is not at the sacrifice of cognitive dissonance. Some scientist just cannot give up the faith into which they were born even when their science keeps nodding no at every turn.
“I offer that in the question of predicting the weather we must use scientific concepts, as well as data collected for input (not a scientific process), to arrive at a complete knowledge.”
Data collection is not a scientific process! Well, I’ll be damned. On the other hand, it certainly aint a religious process, and that’s for sure. So, come on scientists, mathematicians, statisticians, and data collectors, let’s get it together! With one loud voice now: “There is no
…god damn!
wales,
Of course I don’t think you’re in favour of censorship, I just think you should stop acting like one. Who cheers when anyone’s point of view is being denied a fair hearing?
‘But with regard to skepticism in general and the “skeptical” movement, yes, I do think the agnostic stance is more objective and balanced than much of the “skepticism” I have seen.”
Well, standing on the fence certainly requires good balance, but the correct position is rarely halfway between two opposites.
wales,
Of course I don’t think you’re in favour of censorship, I just think you should stop acting like someone who is. Who cheers when anyone’s point of view is being denied a fair hearing?
‘But with regard to skepticism in general and the “skeptical” movement, yes, I do think the agnostic stance is more objective and balanced than much of the “skepticism” I have seen.”
Well, standing on the fence certainly requires good balance, but the correct position is rarely halfway between two opposites.
Alison,
“You might, and you’ll discover that you need them as soon as you get lost. As long as you’re not lost, one pair of underpants is just fine.
Same in science. As long as your bare-bones hypothesis continues to explain data, you don’t need the extra ones. Once you stop being able to explain data you go back to your luggage and start repacking your hypotheses.
The advantage of science over travelling is that in science it’s never too late to go back and revise the hypothesis. When you travel it’s perfectly possible to become stranded without access to underpants!”
How can I disagree.
Except to say that there are bushwalkers that get lost and bushwalkers who do not, and this bushwalker does not get lost.
Alison,
“Fantasy is making shit up”
Okay, I’m dropping my “making things up out of thin air”.
Religion is just people making shit up.
God is just people making shit up.
IN the beginning there was a god for every damn thing that couldn’t be explained. Then there was a god of the gods that ruled over all the lesser gods. Gradually the lesser gods dropped off as scientific explanations usurped their role. Eventually only the god of gods remained. And this pile of shit (I’m blaming you, Alison!) was adorned with the emporer’s clothes of religion.
Why should science have to disprove the shit that people make up? That was Russell’s point with his teapot. It’s just ridiculous to have to disprove something that’s set up to be nondisprovable. Once you strip god of all the bits that science can disprove, you end up with an undisprovable core god that no one believes in.
If that’s what you mean when you say that science cannot disprove god, then I’m not going to argue.
…okay, my last response lingers in moderation.
Goddamn, no one going to read it.
I don’t think there is such a thing as religious knowledge. I think they call it revelation. Religious theories, if you want to call them that, or claims, are not falsifiable. If they are not falsifiable, they do no belong in science.
And in what way is religious knowledge, “knowledge” at all?
There are mystics who are very good at doing cool things with their brains so they can experience the world in particular ways. I don’t think they typically talk about what they experience in terms of knowledge so much as immanence – and the irrelevance of knowledge.
BJ said: “Of course I don’t think you’re in favour of censorship, I just think you should stop acting like someone who is. Who cheers when anyone’s point of view is being denied a fair hearing?”
Since when is paid advertising about “a fair hearing”? It is likely that the Australian outdoor advertising company got a more lucrative advertising contract with a profitable enterprise. So far, atheism hasn’t been that profitable, except for those who write books about it in the name of science. I didn’t see any reference to censorship in the Australian advertising blurb. Buses only have so much advertising space, and the advertising company will choose the most lucrative contract, which will likely be with the most profitable business enterprise having the largest advertising budget. I live in a large metro area and all the buses are covered with ads for new movies, banking institutions and cell phone companies. Haven’t seen any ads for theism or atheism.
Interesting idea though, advertising as a “fair hearing”.
wales,
First you need to get your facts straight. The advertising company weren’t going to lose out financially by running ads for atheist organisations. They declined to run them because they thought they would be too controversial.
“Since when is paid advertising about “a fair hearing”?”
When they have no problems accepting money from christian churches promoting god and religion but decline money from atheist organisations promoting the opposite view. APN is also the largest outdoor advertising company by a large margin, so their rejection is tantamount to the atheist organisation being effectively silenced.
Heres is how the conservation went:
And here’s the view of some reasonable christians:
(Discalimer: I haven’t been able to determine whenther Carole Cusack is a christian or simply has an academic interest in religion.)
BJ: Well of course they should have a right to advertise. I am all for free speech. My point was that the UK Guardian blurb I cited did not say that the Australian ads were rejected due to controversy. You are quoting someone or something as proof, but you don’t identify who or what.
On the other hand, some people want to ban McDonald’s Happy Meal toys…….what’s next?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/04/no_toys_in_happy_meals_calif_c.html
Wieng regarding Religious Knowlege – whether you believe that there can be religious knowlege would depend upon which meaning of knowledge you select.
Merriam-Webster – Knowledge
“1 obsolete : cognizance
2 a (1) : the fact or condition of knowing something with familiarity gained through experience or association (2) : acquaintance with or understanding of a science, art, or technique b (1) : the fact or condition of being aware of something (2) : the range of one’s information or understanding c : the circumstance or condition of apprehending truth or fact through reasoning : cognition d : the fact or condition of having information or of being learned
3 archaic : sexual intercourse
4 a : the sum of what is known : the body of truth, information, and principles acquired by humankind b archaic : a branch of learning”
That could be a long discussion the ends up with “oh, I was talking about a different knowledge”
I think most of us are looking for 3.
BillyJoe
“And, please, what questions are open to religion and simultaneously closed to science?:
“Why?”
Galileo argued that spiritual questions are open to religion, and closed to science.
Thank you, micheleinmichigan, for bringing up the issue of definitions. If someone is to define knowledge as that which we can prove, then there is no knowledge that can be gained from the study of art, literature, philosophy, or religion.
I am guilty of using a restrictive definition of science, but I think it is one that fits the skeptical spirit of SBM. By defining science as the process of developing a theory, designing an experiment to test it, and relying on results than can be reproduced, then it becomes easier to weed out pseudoscience.
I also used a restrictive definition of knowledge in the term, “complete knowledge of a system”, but I did define it for that restricted frame of reference. I did not mean to imply it was a definition for general use.
I should have said, developing a plausible theory.
JMB,
BillyJoe: “And, please, what questions are open to religion and simultaneously closed to science?”
JMB: “Why?”
Why what?
BillyJoe – Some might say that if you never get lost, you are not challenging yourself. Well, actually, my sister and BIL would say that. But, they also say “cotton kills”.
Weing – then perhaps the religion of Tantra would be able to offer some knowledge.
I didn’t know Tantra was a religion. I always thought of it as a practice that leads to a religious experience.
The belief that science can answer all the “why”questions is scientism. Here’s Michael Shermer in praise of scientism http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-shamans-of-scientism
“First, cosmology and evolutionary theory ask the ultimate origin questions that have traditionally been the province of religion and theology. Scientism is courageously proffering naturalistic answers that supplant supernaturalistic ones and in the process is providing spiritual sustenance for those whose needs are not being met by these ancient cultural traditions. Second, we are, at base, a socially hierarchical primate species. We show deference to our leaders, pay respect to our elders and follow the dictates of our shamans; this being the Age of Science, it is scientism’s shamans who command our veneration. Third, because of language we are also storytelling, mythmaking primates, with scientism as the foundational stratum of our story and scientists as the premier mythmakers of our time.”
I understand Shermer is attempting to transform the pejorative term “scientism” in this essay. But I didn’t know followers of scientism had “spiritual needs”…….what does Shermer mean by “spirit”?
Karl Popper criticized ’scientism’ as the notion that “science gives us certain knowledge and might even be able one day to give us settled answers to all our legitimate questions.”
weing –
I had to google it, actually. Apparently, some say religion, some say spiritual path. I wouldn’t know. I’m from the Midwest.
weing,
That’s why I asked JMB “why what?”. Which “why” questions are open to religion but closed to science? The ones Shermer outlined are actually closed to religion and open to science. So, which “why” questions? I can’t think of a single one myself.
BTW, I don’t think Shermer means anything religious or otherworldly by “spirit”. He is trying to usurp the word from religion, like Dennett tries to usurp the word “freewill” from religion. In my opinion, it never works because the religious just think you’re agreeing with them.
Same with Einstein. The religious are always referring to Einstein as religious even though his meaning of “religious” is so far removed from their idea of religious as to be unrecognisable. In my opinion, he should not have used the word.
Why?
I’ll take a stab at it. Why is it okay or not okay to use a kidney from a prisoner executed for murder to save a life?
And no using how science will tell you if it works.
Why are there laws of nature?
There are many different varieties of religion. You must let Einstein’s words speak for himself as to whether he is a theist, atheist, or agnostic. You cannot use your perception of religion to define if another person’s view is religious or not. Einstein’s words just does not match your idea of religion. Science must be impersonal, because it requires that different observers can observe the same thing. Religion, art, literature, and philosophy can be personal, with no one having the exact same view.
It is neither okay nor not okay, and it’s not a question that either science or religion can answer.
Science will help us balance the costs and benefits, medically, economically, politically, psychologically. Science will also tell us that it’s up to us to balance them.
Religion can do a few things.
It can offer us different theoretical scenarios to make the basic one more complex. The basic situation is the same, but now … both the murderer and the kidney recipient came into the world with karma and will take karma into their next lives. Or … they were both created de novo by a creator god who wants us all to love him while we suffer. Or … they were both created de novo by a creator god who wants us all to love and forgive eachother. We still have to decide what we are going to do, but now we are taking fantasy into account in addition to the here-and-now. Religion is not giving us an answer and the different hypotheses about our origins are not knowledge. (However, religion might tell you that the conditions of your afterlife depend heavily on getting the right answer. This is not knowledge either.)
An important thing religion can do is give us ways to come to peace with ourselves (or with one another) when we do things we aren’t entirely comfortable with. We can experience or offer forgiveness; we can make offerings; we can decide we are entitled to anything we want because we are privileged. Religious people know that these things work for human beings because they do work for human beings. Atheist psychotherapists can help us get to the same place.
There is a kind of backwards religious thinking that tells you what the outcome is so that you have to choose the premises that will get you there. For instance, the book of Genesis is literally true, so we must disbelieve in evolution no matter what the evidence is. This thinking doesn’t impress me much. It can seem to work though in this example: Do I want to live in the kind of world where kidneys are taken from executed prisoners to save lives? What premises must I accept to rationalize my answer? These premises then become truth.
The thing is, existentialist philosophy gets us there much more quickly. You need to make a choice, so make one. Deal with the consequences. In this version you don’t work backwards to figure out what premises you need to rationalize your answer. You work forwards to take responsibility for outcomes.
Religions typically come with sets of stories that we can look to for analogies, but we don’t need a religion to have stories. Religion might tell us who the hero is in the story, who is on the right side, so we can try to make decisions that are sort of like those of a given hero. But we’re generally pretty good at identifying our own heroes even without the benefit of God announcing the good guys and bad guys as they step into the ring.
Finally, religion can remove the need for thought about things that are too complicated to come to a meaningful decision about. An individual in the community can be designated the person most in touch with The Spiritual Answers that are beyond the rest of us and we can just do whatever this person thinks is best. We don’t need religion for that either. We abdicate complicated choices all the time, leaving them to a designated committee or The Invisible Hand.
Religion does not give us a correct answer. It can makes the question and the answer more or less complicated by introducing fantasy elements and it may give us coping rituals that are particularly powerful if our parents and grandparents used the same ones. But there is no specific religious knowledge that answers the question about kidneys and executed murderers.
Alison, after my limited training in psycotherapy, I can unequivocally state I would rather find peace in art, literature, philosophy, religion, or riding my motorcycle.
Existentialism can lead you many ways quickly, including to religion by a “leap of faith”.
Thanks for the discussion, I’d better go for awhile.
micheleinmichigan,
“BillyJoe – Some might say that if you never get lost, you are not challenging yourself.”
If you get lost around these parts, you have the whole of the SES looking for you and lots of media exposure telling everyone what a bad boy you’ve been for tackling something obviously beyond your capabilities and putting the lives of those trying to find you and pull you out at risk.
I never get lost.
JMB,
“Why are there laws of nature?”
That is a question religion can answer???
I dunno, multiverse is a stretch with only a single piece of uncomfirmed evidence for it, but, if I had to choose between a multiverse and god….
“You must let Einstein’s words speak for himself as to whether he is a theist, atheist, or agnostic. You cannot use your perception of religion to define if another person’s view is religious or not.”
I have tried to do just that, but I just wish he had been more explicit. My best guess is a deist.
“Einstein’s words just does not match your idea of religion.”
Neither do Einstein’s words match the popular concept of religion and belief in a personal god. That was completely out of the question for him.
JMB on psychotherapy:
“Alison, after my limited training in psycotherapy, I can unequivocally state I would rather find peace in art, literature, philosophy, religion, or riding my motorcycle.”
After my limited torture by psychotherapy, I can heartily agree. I should have said, “even a psychotherapist….”
Does religion help you find peace in a way that art, literature, philosophy and riding your motorcycle do not?
BillyJoe “That is a question religion can answer???”
You are changing the goal posts. You asked “what questions are open to religion but not to science?” You did not ask what questions religion could give a correct answer to. I am saying that questions that have no answers or which aren’t provable, are out of the realm of science. Why? because, if you find an answer to one of these questions with science, you have misused science to do it.
There are many such questions. Some of those questions can be left unanswered, but other, you must make a choice and as Alison pointed out, then figure out how to live with it. When I observe people, I find that whether they turn to something like psychotherapy, religion, nature or social contact has a lot to do with how their mind works and what they find compelling…not correct or incorrect. If they are a functioning human being who is not doing more harm than average, then their religious answer was just as good as their answer arrived at through psychotherapy.
Alison – Yes, I think we have a similar view on religion. IMO – Religion has no supernatural knowledge that makes the right choice. It is only a series of compelling lessons and mental devices that guide someone’s choice. But I think of religion as a sort of social/anthropological history showing what may have worked for people in the past. I also know that doesn’t mean it will work, now or in the future.
I also tend to think of the world, as we observe it, as a fantasy that we have created to survive. Those lovely crab apple trees outside. My eyes and senses evolved to tell me “fruit tree good”. Beauty is a functional fantasy. A hero created today by some current standard of good is as fantastic as a hero created 2000 years ago. FiFi mentioned evil upthread. Was evil created by religion or did people just include the concept of destructiveness, cruelty and greed when they created their religions? The thing about stories, beauty, delight, fear, they are often more compelling than reason. I know that can be a bad thing, but it also can be a good thing too. Even when reason leaves us temporarily due to stress or temptation, those emotional responses may stay.
Arrk-there’s a quote about this…”There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours.” – Arnold Bennett – Playwright. The wonders of google.
But, I don’t think that religion is for everyone by any means. To me, individuals seem to have “belief” needs ranging from intense to not at all. But, that’s just one of my pet ideas, I have no proof.
well, MY eyes and sense didn’t evolve, to be exact our species eyes and senses evolved.
MY eyes have recently evolved to discourage reading, obviously an adaptive response to middle-age telling me I need to exercise more. How’s that for shredding the concept of evolution.:)
micheleinmichigan on goalposts:
“BillyJoe “That is a question religion can answer???”
“You are changing the goal posts. You asked “what questions are open to religion but not to science?” You did not ask what questions religion could give a correct answer to. I am saying that questions that have no answers or which aren’t provable, are out of the realm of science. Why? because, if you find an answer to one of these questions with science, you have misused science to do it.”
No, he’s not changing the goalposts. Neither science nor religion can tell you whether to accept a kidney from an executed prisoner. Science might be able to tell you why natural laws exist but religion most certainly cannot. Because neither of these are examples of questions that religion qua religion can answer, they are by definition not examples of questions that are in the religious non-overlapping magisterium.
Religion can help you cope with choices you’ve nade that you aren’t comfortable with, but to the extent that the coping methods are specific to religion, they are based on fantasy. Fantasy is not knowledge. To the extent that they are not specific to religion… um, they aren’t religion. They are stories, or practices, or feelings. But not religion.
Systems thought vs Story thought:
“To ask why a character happens to be right and good when everyone else isn’t is a strange question to story thought. He’s good and right because he wants to be, and they all don’t want to be. Specific characters are to blame.”
Perhaps relevant.
http://meteuphoric.wordpress.com/2010/04/23/systems-and-stories/
“No, he’s not changing the goalposts. Neither science nor religion can tell you whether to accept a kidney from an executed prisoner.”
I’m beginning to think this is one of those times where my viewpoint is so different than the person I’m conversing with that our minds are just not going to meet in the middle. I am probably to blame, since it’s not unusual for me. I get the “what the heck are you talking about?” look alot.
Anyway, I think I see what you are saying. Neither science or religion has an answer, so the question is closed to both.
But, my rationale is this. If science answers, it has defied it’s internal structure and so is no longer science. If religion answers, it has been consistant with it’s inner principles (just making shit up, as needed) and it is still religion. Therefore, unanswerable (unprovable) questions are open to religion and closed to science.
For what it’s worth. But, I accept that I may have entered a dark neck of the woods with no one else in sight in this rationale.
I took a peek at the story vs system post. Interesting, but it was slipping of my brain like water off a desert. I may have to try again another time.
Um, ok. I propose as a provisional definition of religion: “Making shit up and deciding to believe it.”
Does this work for you?
If I were being picky it would be “making shit up (with history and possible insight into human instinct) and deciding to believe it (or parts of it, as needed).
But generally, yes that works for me. And if you (possibly/probably) think that’s strange, then you’d just have to know how important “making shit up” is to me.
If you define art as any drawn/pasted together/performed work, then you are just not very discerning. If you define religion as made up shit, then you are not very discerning (or just playing at being provocative, lesson learned from Dr Tuteur).
Most would say the method for gaining religious knowledge is through the study of what others have written in the past, as well as discussion.
“That is a question religion can answer???”
I think there have been many good religious answers to that question, from the writings of one who believed in a personal God, Thomas Aquinas, to the brief analogy from one who believed in an impersonal God, Einstein.
“Does religion help you find peace in a way that art, literature, philosophy and riding your motorcycle do not?”
I can find peace from the bottled up emotions of acting professionally by riding my motorcycle, art, or literature (I haven’t studied much philosophy lately, but sometimes I think physicists like to practice philosophy). If I need peace with the grieving of from the loss of family, then I need to find peace in religion.
So we agree that Jenny McCarthy’s conviction that vaccines are shit is a religion, and therefore answers questions outside the scope of science and expands the field of human knowledge?
It’s possible to make shit up that offers insight into the human condition without believing it. (Kind of like the invisible string that suspends ballet dancers can be an effective image even if you don’t actually believe there is a string.)
And as Fifi points out, it’s possible to make shit up that distorts the human condition.
Vaccines are the province of science. Any religion trying to supplant the scientific process is pseudoscience (and not very well thought out religion). Jenny McCarty seeks peace about her child’s condition. I feel sorry for her that she put faith into pseudoscience. She is clinging to an answer she thought she had found (possibly with the help of her pediatrician). One reason not to put faith in any scientific concept is that it can be proven wrong. You can put faith in scientific method because God has created a universe (or multiverse, if you prefer) with rules we can discover. Or, you can just choose scientific method because it gives you lots of neat technology, and leave faith out of the choice.
micheleinmichigan,
The problem with religion is that it starts with the answers. So the ready made answers have to be somehow fitted to the questions. That is exactly the wrong way of course. Science, on the other hand, starts with the questions and progresses relentlessly towards the answers.
If you say that there are questions that have no answers, you need to do the seemingly impossible and prove that those questions do, in fact, have no answers? Otherwise, how do you know they have no answers? Again, science goes the right way about it. Science assumes there are answers to all questions and goes about looking for them.
Sure there are questions that presently have no answers. And, yes, we have to live with that fact. But, there are very few unanswered questions where a possible way towards an answer cannot be seen. The laws of physics and the universal constants are examples of this. We don’t have the answer. But there are ways in which answers to both questions could possibly be found. It could turn out that the universal constants are mathematically constrained to have to be the values they have. And the existence of a multiverse could circumvent the problem of the laws of physics.
I think what you may be saying is that “answers” people find in religion help them live happier lives. Well, if they live happier lives, and harm no one, with the ready made “answers” of religion, that’s fine. But, when I talk about answers, I’m not talking about “answers” that make people happy, I’m talking about truthful answers. If religion’s ready made “answers” are true they are only true by chance. Science seeks to remove or reduce the element of chance.
You mentioned evolution. In effect, we like and hate things because we evolved to like and hate them, more or less, because there is a survival advantage in doing so. Good is necessary because we often have to rely on help from others to survive. Evil is necessary because sometimes we need to kill competitors and prey in order to to survive. This hopefully gives you a clue as to how science can help answer ethical questions for which religion has only ready made, wrong, incomplete, and often out of date, “answers”.
“”There can be no knowledge without emotion. We may be aware of a truth, yet until we have felt its force, it is not ours.”
Good quote. It is wrong to think science is a cold-hearted beast. Most scientist are passionately involved with their work. That’s how they get their results. But there is another side to that coin. There also has to be a dispassionate analysis of the results. And, unfortunately, most answers turn out to be wrong. Those who stick with their passionately derived conclusions despite evidence to the contrary are what we call pseudoscientists and cranks.
I like Alison’s extended definition of religion: Making shit up and choosing to believe it. There’s no problem about making shit up. That’s called fantasy. Enjoy it. It’s the choosing to believe the made up shit as if it’s real that is the problem.
But generally, yes that works for me. And if you (possibly/probably) think that’s strange, then you’d just have to know how important “making shit up” is to me.
JMB,
How is religion not made up shit.
History tells us that is so. Don’t understand how waves are formed? Answer: Neptune. Don’t understand how hurricanes form? Zephyrus. Whence these lesser gods? The one true god. Waves and hurricanes get explained and so the lesser gods fall by the wayside, leaving the one true god. The one true god. Except there’s thousands of one true gods. Every one with a ready made set of rules. Religion. A thousand one true religions.
A thousand bits of made up shit.
Relying on what others have written in the past is just adopting their particular made up shit. That is not truth. What about all the others and their made up shit. Why is their made up shit any less true than your made up shit. Or any less wrong.
Thomas Aquinas and the personal god? The personal god is dead. Look at history. Many gods give way to the one true god, but take your pick. Look at the bible, or the torah, or the koran, take your pick. The bible? Written hundreds of years after the event, historically inaccurate and factually wrong. And self contradictory. Flayings. Stonings. Slavery. Genocide. Morally bankrupt.
“You can put faith in scientific method because God has created a universe (or multiverse, if you prefer) with rules we can discover.”
So, when all the lesser gods have been put to rest, and the holy books have been burned, the one true god rises from the ashes as the answer to the question: “how did something come from nothing?”
Science has been finding simplicity in complexity for 500 years. From the complexity we see around us today to the simple beginnings in the big bang. But, at the start of it all, you place god. How about…um…I don’t know…yeah, that’s it!….how about I DON’T KNOW.
You can live with that can’t you?
“Or, you can just choose scientific method because it gives you lots of neat technology, and leave faith out of the choice.”
There is faith in science also. Faith that the scientific method brings results. This faith is grounded in the fact that science is self-correcting through the peer review process. We can see it in action. And we see the results everywhere around us. Not blind faith in a fantasy. That’s reserved for religion.
…sorry, the last paragraph in my response to micheleinmichigan is a quote from her post that I forgot to delete.
“In effect, we like and hate things because we evolved to like and hate them, more or less, because there is a survival advantage in doing so. Good is necessary because we often have to rely on help from others to survive. Evil is necessary because sometimes we need to kill competitors and prey in order to to survive. This hopefully gives you a clue as to how science can help answer ethical questions for which religion has only ready made, wrong, incomplete, and often out of date, “answers”.”
BillyJoe – Do you think that religion functions independent of evolution? How many groups of human’s have existed without a religion? Do you genuinely believe that religions started with the answers? Do you believe that those answers are consistent throughout time? Have you studied religion? I’m beginning to feel like someone is telling me that birds don’t need their colorful feathers only because they don’t understand the function of the colorful feather.
“This hopefully gives you a clue as to how science can help answer ethical questions for which religion has only ready made, wrong, incomplete, and often out of date, “answers”.
Martin Luther King, Mahatma Gandhi were their methods ready made, wrong, incomplete or just out of date? And yup, in my book, they were just making things up and deciding to believe it (within the influence of evolution and history).
I think BillyJoe you could take a more scientific look at religion. You are writing like a scientist who sees that algae is unsightly and decides it’s worthless without analyzing it’s place in the eco-system.
I think most people would say it’s a real leap to call Jenny McCarthyism a religion. Just because fuzzles are blue, does not make all blue creatures fuzzles.
As to distortions, fantasies distort, our facts distort with an emphasis on what is known or more easily understood. We are never looking at a true picture. Our brain is picking and choosing constantly based on it’s own criteria. We are no more in control of it than we are our heart valves.
Someone might believe that science will bring them to a better ethical answer than religion will. I see no proof of that, only conjuncture, basically, making it up and deciding to believe it.
Back when many people had the religion incorporating Zeus and Neptune, science wasn’t in much better shape. If you dismiss religion because of all the mistakes made in the past by different religions, then why don’t you dismiss science for all the mistakes made in the past? Your answer will be that science incorporates a process to correct itself. Is it not possible for religious beliefs to be corrected over time?
Mistakes in religion has resulted in some very bad consequences in the past and present. Science now has the power to result in some very bad consequences, and has in the recent past and present. If you reject all religion because of genocide, then why not reject science because of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? At least you can use the test of consequences for evolving religious thought. You cannot change science because we have used it for warfare and environmental disasters. Will science alone prevent us from making those choices that will result in bad consequences?
If you put your faith in science, then you are failing to heed the warnings about making science a religion. I think we will more likely survive if we reach a balance of religion and science. I would still suggest that we shouldn’t answer questions of faith with science, and we shouldn’t answer questions about the physical world with religion.
Jenny McCarty put her faith in science, and probably found some peace by campaigning for something to end autism. Unfortunately, the causal link was wrong, which must result in all the turmoil she originally felt coming back to disrupt the peace she had found.
I have never suggested that either science or religion can answer all questions, even when they are combined. There will always be, I don’t know. I am not driven to religion because I can’t accept, I don’t know. Even with my own religious beliefs, I don’t know. But I have faith and I am not so worried when I don’t know.
In regards to the multiverse, since I am a pathetic amateur physicist, I would offer these interpretations. Multiverse refers to the idea of different dimensions that we are not capable of directly sensing. The speculation is that universal constants may vary depending on where you exist in the fifth (or higher) dimension (nice tie in to the hippies and LSD). With variations in the universal constants, the other universes may look quite different than the one we can directly observe. If string theory with eleven dimensions correctly predicts multiverses, then there is likely to be some physical law that transcends the multiverses. Then we are still back to the question, why is there a law of physics that transcends all multiverses?
In support of the theism of Einstein’s statement that God does not play dice with the universe, I would often the following mix of religion and science. Schrodinger’s wave equations are the result of interactions between the particle nature of energy and matter, and the wave nature of space-time-gravity. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is a reflection of the Nyquist sampling limitation based on the frequency of the space-time-gravity wave. The wave particle duality observed in the double slit experiment is the result of the wave function of the clock associated with the particle, with the interference of the waves of the clock through two slits, resulting in the distribution of the location of the particle (a particle is bounded by its own time space, until it is interfered with). Observation has an effect on the distribution of the particle because we cannot eliminate having a second particle travel in the same experiment (to communicate information), thus changing the interference pattern of the time-space-gravity clock of the first particle. Wave function collapse is the result of imposing a second (or higher number) of clocks on the clock of the entangled particles (which do share coherent clocks). The interference of clocks results in the first observed property being coherent, but the others become incoherent because of interference. Therefore, reality does exist beyond the observer, so there must be a God, personal or impersonal.
I think I have abused this blog space too long. So I had better sign off of this argument. Somebody else can have the last word. Hopefully, there are no quantum physicists or quantum chemists following this discussion, or I will take a lot of heat.
JMB,
The point of my very brief recounting of the history of religion wa to support the view that religion has always been “made up shit”. Made up shit for stuff that people didn’t and don’t understand – before science came to the rescue. Religion has advanced only in the sense that it has been forced to give up shit that has been proven to be false by science, and often decades and centuries too late. What’s left is still “made up shit”. There is no proof of god, and there almost conclusive proof that he does not exist. Certainly the personal interventionists god who promises heaven and threatens with hell has been completely discredited. This is the basis of most religions and religion falls with it.
Apart from god based religions that depend on revelation, there are those that depend on mysticism, which means that so called enlightened individuals sit around making shit up but admitting that it’s them and not god who’s to blame.
And I’ll add again that the morals and ethics contained within their holy books bear no resemblence, for the large part, with the mortals and ethics that people live by today. Moral and ethical people do not stone adulterers, they do not keep slaves, they do not kill their sons and daughters for disobedience, they do not show their obedience to god by sacrificing their only son.
You misunderstood my meaning of multiverse. Sorry I though the context would make it obvious that I meant the idea that rather than just our single universe there is a multiverse consisting of and almost infinite number of universes each with it’s own set of physical laws and constants. Ours, then, is the one (or one of several) universes with the physical laws and constants that is conducive to the evolution of intelligent life. If this multiverse exists – and, as I said, there is only one piece of unconfirmed evidence for it – we can explain the problem of the laws of physics and the constants being what they are. It’s just the anthropic principle.
As for quantum physics: I am not a physicists, but what I do know is that there is no effect from the observer. That is a common fallacy that seems too hard to break despite the fact that the reason for the error is so straight forward that is a travesty that the idea even got a hearing in the first place. The observer has absolutely no effect on the outcome of an experiment in quantum physics. Period.
Also the wave/particle duality consists purely of the fact that quantum “wavicles” seem to travel as waves and interact as particles, and this is counterintuitive because our everyday experience does not encompass the world of quantum physics just as it does not encompass the high speed world of relativity where time and space contract and dilate to keep the speed of light constant in all reference frames.
Also, there is absolutely no need to mix religion in with science. In fact, it is an error. The two are incompatible. Science has been busily eliminating religion – not as its purpose but as its unintended consequence – since its inception five hundred years ago. All that remains is how something arose from nothing and what happened during the first 10^-42 seconds of the universe’s existence. You can posit god if you wish but history is against you. Science continues to assume a physical cause and continues looking for such a cause. Hey, it’s worked so far!
Finally, the fact that science has wrecked havoc in the form of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is not a discomfimation of the truth of science but a direct confirmation of it, however sorry the lesson. And what we actually do with our scientific question is a moral and ethical decision which is not informed by religious dogma in its mutitiude varieties, but by science-based morals and ethics such as secular humanism with its abiltiy – like the science on which it is based – to change according to the evidence.
micheleinmichigan,
It seems to me you are not arguing for religion as such, but for religion getting up to scratch. I, on the other hand, suggest we ditch the lot and start from scratch. Too much baggage. Well, not from scratch, because secular humanism has been around a few decades now. Secular humanism is just ordinary human beings, unfettered by religion and dogma, thinking about how we can best live together and resolve ethical issues whilst being properly informed in this process by the scientific evidence.
It’s not good versus evil. We are good and evil because of our evolutionary past. That is a fact we need to come to terms with and somehow overcome. Dawkins called it “the tyranny of the genes”. Individual genes want to survive and they have made alliances in the form of, amongst other things, human bodies. Now human bodies, through the evolution of self consciuousness (thank you genes!), can overcome the dictates of the genes that gave rise to us. But first we must understand them. On that basis we can move forward.
That is, of course, just one example of science informing ethics.
Choosing between this and religion is a no brainer in my opinion.
I think that JMB may have been hinting that the loss of a family member can be too much to bear without the possibility of a reunion in the afterlife. Neither art, philosophy nor secular humanism offer this option. (Interestingly, the New Testament quotes Jesus as explicitly denying this possibility, so strictly speaking neither does Christianity.)
micheleinmichigan,
“It seems to me you are not arguing for religion as such, but for religion getting up to scratch. I, on the other hand, suggest we ditch the lot and start from scratch.”
BillyJoe – Although I have a lot of beliefs, I don’t have a religion, so I can’t change mine. Unless you believe that you can have a religion of one, in which case mine is changing constantly. I believe that alot of harm has been done in the world by trying to give other people a “better” religion. So I don’t try to do away with religions or convert people to a “better” one, even if it is secular.
But, I believe I have a human right and responsibility to demand a standard of behavior of all people. So if a religious (or other) organization is pushing something I think is wrong I say it and try to put pressure on them to stop it. If they are doing good I give them credit and see if there is something I can learn from that.
It is beyond me how one can peaceful co-exist and be productive with people of a different belief system without looking at that belief system, seeing it’s positive attributes, how the culture may be dependent upon that belief system and trying to understanding how it is an expression of human development. I’m not saying it’s not possible, but I don’t see how to do it,myself.
As to Secular Humanism. I don’t know alot about it, but from what I do know, I agree that’s a very good approach. I attended (once) a Universal Unitarian Church that could be considered to have a secular humanist approach. Bit too far to drive, it wasn’t my husbands cup of tea, and I’m not much of a big group kind of person, so we didn’t go back.
Also, I am by nature easily bored. I think some people say great things about “diversity” because they should. Mostly I see all the variations of religions, spirituality, science as really cool. So, I think I said before, my views are kinda self-indulgent. But, for me it’s like visiting a rain forest, only you can pick and choose whether you want a long colorful beak and a short fanning tail…you don’t have to just watch. It’s outside my keen that people can see that and think, everyone should just have black feathers with a red spot and a chisel beak (so, everyone should follow science, or this religion or that religion, philosophy, etc).
But of course, I usually keep this train of thought to myself, because it’s quite patronizing and kinda offensive to many religious groups.
And also weird. I get alot of “looks”. So it’s not too surprising that you and I don’t see eye to eye on this.
But, I appreciate that you and JMB and Alison have taken the time to discuss it with me. It’s been a very thought provoking conversation, for me. Thanks!
I apologize, I’m not trying to have the last word, I just can’t quite shut up.
BillyJoe,
“The observer has absolutely no effect on the outcome of an experiment in quantum physics. Period.”
Try,
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v391/n6670/full/391871a0.html
for a scientific article (you can read the abstract for free).
Otherwise, try google “Copenhagan interpretation”, “dual slit experiment”, “Schrodingers’s cat”, “many world’s interpretation”, “observer effect physics”, “EPR paradox”, ad infinitum.
In my amateur interpretation, I propose that observation effects and superposition of states relates to differences in time-space-gravity between particles that are moving relative to one another. So if you do not like observer effects and superposition of states postulated in most interpretations of quantum theory equations, then you can come over to my side… and along with Einstein, assert that God does not play dice with the universe.
“The two are incompatible.” In many religions, science is the way of discerning God’s natural laws. Thomas Aquinas (a saint in the Roman Catholic church), may have correctly speculated about both evolution, and that time did not exist before Creation (or the Big Bang, or Big Bubble in the Multiverse sense). They are not incompatible in many religions, they may be incompatible in your belief system.
Allison,
“I think that JMB may have been hinting that the loss of a family member can be too much to bear without the possibility of a reunion in the afterlife. ”
The afterlife is something that I don’t know about, and am not worried about. I am on the correct side of Pascal’s wager – which interestingly enough, I found the comment that it was the first formally published use of decision theory. It was more about… when they died, can we look back and say that their life had meaning (other than contributing to the surviving population genome).
michelleinmichigan,
“But, I appreciate that you and JMB and Alison have taken the time to discuss it with me. It’s been a very thought provoking conversation, for me. Thanks!”
I thank you all, Michelle, Billy Joe, Allison, wales, and weing, for the interesting discussion. I apologize to SBM for using your blog space, and besmirching your scientific reputation with the JMB interpretation of Quantum Physics and Relativity.
I promise I will shut up now.
Such eloquent farewells. I’ll sign off by quoting those more articulate than myself.
“All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.” Albert Einstein
“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.” Andre Gide
Yes, I’d like to add thanks to wales and weing as well (and the Acadamy)
. Thought they were gone, but in case they check back.
JMB,
Regarding the effect of consciousness:
The extract you reference does not make the situation clear, but I suspect that the view expressed is no different from mine – which is the scientific view, not the discredited pseudoscientific “quantum consciousness” view. But I’m not paying to find out.
The fact is that the phrase “the observer” is simply a synonym for “the detection device”.
That’s it.
And it’s not my opinion, it is a fact.
In the double slit experiment, if the detection device at the slits is turned off, a interference pattern is seen. If the detection device at the slits is turned on, a scatter pattern is seen. The result is completely predictable. Having set up the experiment, the experimenter can drop dead for all it will matter to the outcome of the experiment. Or he can try as hard as he likes to alter the result with his mind but it will not change the completely predictable outcome of the experiment.
The Observer plays no role in quantum physics.
Consciousness plays no role in quantum physics.
The mind plays no role in quantum physics.
Those are the facts.
The quantum consciousness, change-reality-with-your-mind crowd has simply translated “observer” literally and manufactured a whole industry based on that misconception.
Here is a reference which I just found by googling and for which you don’t need to pay:
http://www.colorado.edu/philosophy/vstenger/Quantum/QuantumConsciousness.pdf
The quantum reference starts on page 7, but the whole article is worth reading. It discusses Einstein’s ideas as well.
BJ: Still promoting “your” truth as “the” truth I see. Why can’t you just admit that there are different opinions among physicists on these matters? Stenger is notable for his materialist philosophy, and so brings his own biases to bear in his 1992 paper. It appears “true” to you because it coincides with your own materialist viewpoint.
Rosenblum and Kuttner, authors of “Quantum Enigma”, Richard Conn Henry of JHU and Anton Zeilinger of The University of Vienna are just a few of those whose opinions differ from Stenger’s on the observer issue and the nonlocality (or quantum entanglement) issue in quantum physics.
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_reality_tests/
http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bell-theorem/#3
Moderation kicks in, well I posted my final response to Billy Joe, hopefully it will pop up soon.
A lot has happened in the world of physics since Stenger’s 1992 paper. Zeilinger’s work has been noted of late.
http://www.quantum.at/news/detailview/article/7/anton-zeilinger-receives-wolf-prize-in-physics-201-1.html
Here’s another interesting interview with Zeilinger.
http://www.signandsight.com/features/614.html
Here’s an excerpt from that interview:
“Entanglement – we should imagine this as…
…there is no way of imagining it. The Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger coined the term in 1935 and also said that the twist in the phenomenon of quantum physics is that it forces us to bid farewell to all our dearly held ideas about the world.
Help us do this!
When two particles collide like billiard balls at a quantum level, then they are immediately linked or “entangled”. Neither of the two particles has a clearly defined position or a clearly-defined momentum: location and speed are uncertain, as we say.
Heisenberg’s famous uncertainty principle.
Exactly. But then I can go and measure, say, the momentum of one of the entangled particles. By way of this measurement, the momentum which was previously uncertain can now be determined. The peculiar thing is that in the same instant, the second particle also gains a clearly-defined momentum. No matter how far away it is.
Albert Einstein called this effect “spooky action at a distance”
Right. But the truly strange is yet to come.
I can’t wait.
The result of my measurement of the first particle is completely random. There is no way of predicting it, on principle. But as soon as I have the result, I can deduct the momentum of the second participle.
So I can accurately measure the momentum of the second particle, even if it is hundreds of billions of kilometres away.
Theoretically yes. The effect has so far been proved across a distance of a hundred kilometres. The amazing thing is that there can be no exchange of information between the two particles. They react absolutely in synch, although they could never know anything of each other’s existence. You can think of it as two dice far away from each other that always land on the same number, without there being any kind of mechanism which connects them. Absurd!
Uncertainty, coincidence, spooky effects – doesn’t it make you dizzy sometimes?
It’s all pretty crazy. The spooky effect at a distance is a process outside time and space that even I can’t really imagine. But I believe that quantum physics tells us something very profound about the world. And that is that the world is not the way it is independently of us. That the characteristics of the world are to a certain extent dependent on us.
That almost has a New Age ring.
You have to be careful not to be cubby-holed. I mean it’s like this: an experimenter can determine through his choice of measuring equipment which physical size becomes reality. Take a particle with an uncertain location and an uncertain velocity. When you look at it through a microscope and locate it, the particle gives you an answer: “Here I am.” That means, the location becomes reality at that moment. Beforehand, the particle had no location at all. With the choice of the measuring equipment we’ve had a major impact on reality. But the answer that nature gives is completely random.”
Well that last comment posted before my previous one. Stay tuned.
This may be a duplicate, if so sorry. BJ: Still promoting “your” truth as “the” truth I see. Why can’t you just admit that there are different opinions among physicists on these matters? Stenger is notable for his materialist philosophy, and so brings his own biases to bear in his 1992 paper. It appears “true” to you because it coincides with your own materialist viewpoint.
Rosenblum and Kuttner, authors of “Quantum Enigma”, Richard Conn Henry of JHU and Anton Zeilinger of The University of Vienna are just a few of those whose opinions differ from Stenger’s on the observer issue and the nonlocality (or quantum entanglement) issue in quantum physics.
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_reality_tests/
http://henry.pha.jhu.edu/The.mental.universe.pdf
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bell-theorem/#3
wales,
We’ve been through this before.
There is nothing that I would argue with in your Zeilinger links and nothing in those links refutes what I have said.
If you disagree, please analyse the quotes below the dotted line and show me how they refute “observer=detector”.
—————————————————
From this Zeilinger link:
http://seedmagazine.com/content/article/the_reality_tests/
(In brackets are my comments)
“Quantum mechanics fundamentally concerns the way in which we observers connect to the universe we observe. The theory implies that when we measure particles and atoms…”
(Note the ambiguity between observe and measure)
“We do not observe the tiniest bits of matter, nor the forces that move them, individually through our senses.”
(what does this say about what is meant by observe)
“The properties that define particles—mass, spin, etc.—are also thought to exist before we measure them.”
(measure? observe?)
“Before a measurement those states exist in superposition”
(here it’s measure, not observe)
“Heisenberg discovered the uncertainty principle, which placed a fundamental limit on certain measurements. Pairs of specific quantities are incompatible observables; momentum and position, energy and time, and other measurable pairs cannot be known together with absolute accuracy.”
(ditto)
“every measuring device affects what it is used to observe”
(a measuring device used to observe! – what could be clearer?)
“when one electron’s momentum is measured, the value of the other’s is instantly known and the superpositions collapse.”
(here he decided to use the word “measure”)
“It didn’t matter if particles might affect one another over vast distances, or that particles had no observable properties before they are observed.”
(but here he decided to use the word “observe”, get the picture?
“photons should have measurable polarizations that exist before they are measured.”
(back to “measure”)
“Though they could never observe it, the polarizations truly did not exist before being measured.”
(and back to using both again)
“In space there is enough distance to exclude communication between the detectors (humans), , and the lack of other particles should allow most entangled photons to reach the detectors unimpeded.”
(here “humans” are “detectors”)
“The reason we see our world as we do is because of what we use to observe it. The human body is a just barely adequate measuring device. Quantum mechanics does not always wash itself out, but to observe its effects for larger and larger objects we would need more and more accurate measurement devices. We just do not have the sensitivity to observe the quantum effects around us. In essence we do create the classical world we perceive..”
(I really do hope it is getting clearer now)
———————————————
Nowhere in that link to Zeilinger, is there any nonsense about mind over matter, quantum consciousness, creating reality with our minds.
As Zeilinger says (paraphrasing), the experimenter decides which quantity to measure, but the quantum decides what value it will have.
The quantum world is weird, but it’s not stupid.
BJ said “The quantum world is weird, but it’s not stupid.” Well we agree on something, I doubt if the “quantum world” is “stupid”, but perhaps humans are a bit dense in understanding it (except of course for those who think they have it and its implications nailed down).
You have hand-picked a few comments from the Zeilinger interviews with which you agree. I assume then that you do not agree with these comments by Zeilinger?
From the 2008 Seed interview cited above:
“But on the quantum level we do have to give up realism.”
And this from the 2006 interview cited above:
Interviewer: But just now you spoke of a world that exists independently of us.
AZ- That’s right. But this world is not directly ascertainable or describable. Because every description must be done in terms of the information, and so you inevitably get into circular reasoning. There’s a limit we can’t cross. And even a civilisation on Alpha Centauri can’t cross it. For me that’s something almost mystical.
Interviewer: In your last book you wrote: “Laws of nature should make no distinction between reality and information.” Why?
AZ: We’ve learnt in the natural sciences that the key to understanding can often be found if we lift certain dividing lines in our minds. Newton showed that the apple falls to the ground according to the same laws that govern the Moon’s orbit of the Earth. And with this he made the old differentiation between earthly and heavenly phenomena obsolete. Darwin showed that there is no dividing line between man and animal. And Einstein lifted the line dividing space and time. But in our heads, we still draw a dividing line between “reality” and “knowledge about reality”, in other words between reality and information. And you cannot draw this line. There is no recipe, no process for distinguishing between reality and information. All this thinking and talking about reality is about information, which is why one should not make a distinction in the formulation of laws of nature. Quantum theory, correctly interpreted, is information theory.”
Zeilinger does make the interesting point that American physicists do much less philosophizing about the meaning of quantum mechanics than European physicists. I think the American viewpoint is more pragmatic, “shut up and calculate” as coined by David Mermin. I find the European search for meaning much more interesting.
BTW Billy Joe, upon further thought, it is becoming more clear to me, as you had hoped. It is clear that you cannot see the forest for the trees. You separate and splice sentences in these two comments from the Zeilinger interview. In your zeal to differentiate between “observer” and “measurement” you miss the point entirely:
“photons should have measurable polarizations that exist before they are measured.”
and
“Though they could never observe it, the polarizations truly did not exist before being measured.”
But when they are read together, in the context of the entire article, they say something rather mysterious is going on. Here are the full sentences:
“The only assumption Leggett made was that a natural form of realism hold true; photons should have measurable polarizations that exist before they are measured.” and then the results of the experiment : “Though they could never observe it, the polarizations truly did not exist before being measured.” Leggett’s assumption of “natural realism” was violated by the experiments. Where does that leave “natural realism”????
Don’t you see how your extreme reductionism (i.e., splitting apart comments and taking them out of context) “creates” the reality you want to see?
Correction, make that ” in your zeal to focus on the meaning of “observe” and “measure”…..” I understand that you were not trying to differentiate. That’s what I get for talking on the phone while typing. But that does not change the points I have made. You don’t find it odd that “objects” don’t have properties until they are “measured”?
wales,
“You have hand-picked a few comments from the Zeilinger interviews with which you agree.”
I picked all the comments form the article that relate directly to the “observer = detector” question. That was my intention since you are denying it and offered Zeilinger up in support. I was trying to demonstrate to you that Zeilinger does not support your view. Of course he does not do this directly because the article is not about that specifically but I have demonstrated that he uses the words “observe” and “detect” interchangeably, meaning that observe = detect. His reference to a “human detector” was particularly pleasing.
“I assume then that you do not agree with these comments by Zeilinger?”
I have no argument at all with what you quoted from Zeilinger. I don’t know why you should think so.
Of course we have to let go of realism at the quantum level (and only at the quantum level). That’s the meaning of Heisenberg Uncertainty. Quantum particles do not have a specific position before they interact. But how does this relate to the “observer=detector” question?
And he said “almost mystical” not “mystical”. I do think he should drop the word “mystical” altogether especially since he doesn’t really mean it (almost mystical =/= mystical). It just causes a particularly biased reader to mistake what he is saying. It’s like Einstein when he use sthe word god and christians think he is talking about their god.
“You don’t find it odd that “objects” don’t have properties until they are “measured””
It is weird. When I said the quantum world is not stupid, I was referring to the stupid misunderstandings that people who don’t have a clue about quantum physics make. Like when they think that experimenters using the word “observe” means that we can alter reality with our minds, rather than what they actually mean which is simply to “detect”.
Anyway, you are determined to stick with your misunderstanding.
As I said, we’ve been through this before. I don’t think I’m going to make any difference this time around.
Complementarity principle, not quantum consciousness.
BJ: I just think it’s interesting that you believe I have the misunderstanding, not yourself. In the world of binary thinking, someone has to be “wrong”, because some things are just not possible, correct?
I assume you believe that physicists Henry Stapp and Roger Penrose are barking up the wrong tree as well? Far greater minds than mine have not dismissed out of hand the possibility of some kind of quantum effect of consciousness.
wales,
A quote form Steven Novella’s most recent article which I believe is relevant here:
Thanks BJ. There are many ways to abuse science. One way is to espouse philosophical speculations as if they were “scientific facts”, ala Dawkins and his “proof” that god doesn’t exist.
As physicist Heinz Pagels said in “Perfect Symmetry”: “We can have confidence in the provisional truth of scientific knowledge. But we must distinguish carefully between scientific knowledge and those world views of reality which, although consistent with our scientific knowledge, represent extrapolations that go beyond it.” Note the use of “provisional truth” rather than “absolute truth”.
Dawkins bases his god hypothesis on the “extremely low probability” that god exists (deistic or theistic god). Physicist Roger Penrose has calculated the probability that the big bang would have happened just the way it did , leading to our universe and life on our planet as 1 in (10^10)^123. Sorry for the awkward notation, don’t know how to implement the superscript format here. As Penrose says “If I were to put one zero on each elementary particle in the Universe, I still could not write the number down in full. It is a stupendous number.” Highly improbable events seem to be the basis of our existence.
When it comes to questions of ultimate truth, as we were discussing, I am less interested in consensus than in possibilities.
From Max Jammer’s “Einstein and Religion”: In 1929 sociologist Harry Elmer Barnes suggested “that the time has come for science to give a new definition of God,”. J. Murphy informed Einstein that in the course of public discussion of this remark, “the general contention of the preachers was that the introduction of God into scientific discourse was quite out of place; for science has nothing to do with religion.” In 1930 Einstein commented that in his opinion “both attitudes [that of Barnes and that of the preachers] disclose a very superficial concept of science and also of religion.”
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wales,
If you look at what the actual physical evidence shows, there is no role for consciousness in quantum physics. It’s only when certain physicists interpret the evidence that they come up with a role for consciousness. And then it requires extrapolating beyond the evidence to find consciousness determining reality. In other words, it’s pure fiction. Made up stuff.
As I have said before, if you disagree, please reference an experiment in quantum physics that demonstrates that consciousness influences the result of the experiment. Then, if you can fulfill this minimum requirement, please link to an experiment that demonstrates that you can use consciousness to actually determine the outcome of the experiment.
You won’t be able to do so, because there is no experiment that does this. So then you have to ask yourself: why? The answer is that it’s all just hot air. It’s all just interpretation and extrapolation by certain physicists with an axe to grind. Nothing more.
I’ll be happy to do so BJ, as soon as you have done the same for your “scientific proof” that god doesn’t exist. (As I already asked you to do repeatedly.)
If the physicists who speculate on the matters of consciousness (and at least they are intellectually honest enough to state that they are speculating, unlike some other famous scientists speculating on matters of spirit/god) are “making stuff up” then I don’t mind being in their company.
You also don’t appear to mind being in the company of scientists who “make stuff up” regarding scientific proof of the non-existence of spirit/soul/god.
BJ: On April 20, on Harriet’s “Nine Breakthroughs” post, I said there was no tangible, scientific proof of a spiritual reality.
You responded with this on April 21 “Of course, then there is proof of non-existence, but let’s not spoil a good delusion.”
I still haven’t seen your “proof” of non-existence. I won’t hold my breath.
BJ: Here you are again on April 23 “I’m sorry, but god, in any meaningful sense of that word, has been disproven. This is not a delusion. It is a scientific and logical fact.”
Proof of the “scientific and logical fact” please.
BJ said “It’s all just interpretation and extrapolation by certain physicists with an axe to grind.” Substitute “scientist” for “physicists” and you have an apt description of a person who used to be my favorite evolutionary biologist – Dawkins.
The answer then is no?
BJ: Answer to what?
Remember, it is you who claimed scientific proof for your hypothesis, yet failed to produce that proof. I have claimed that their is neither proof nor disproof for the philosophical speculation of physicists and for the existence of a spiritual reality.
I am fascinated by the speculation of some physicists on the nature of reality, especially those honest enough to admit they are speculating. Consensus and herd mentality don’t matter to me on this subject, it’s all speculation.
BJ: Back on April 26 I explicitly asked you for proof of your hypothesis. “Where are the published results of rigorous, controlled, repeatable empirical testing proving theories about the non existence of a spiritual reality? ”
Your answer contained yet more opinion, no facts or proof. Turning the tables and demanding some sort of “proof” from me when I have stated all along that these matters are not provable by scientific means is a lame strategy.
And by the way, I disagree with your claim that “Everything you use every day is practically al the result of science working on the basis of that *assumption*” (The assumption being that everything is physical.)
The thing that I use most, the thing that filters my awareness and knowledge of all other things, is consciousness, and that has proven to be a very slippery subject for scientific proof.
wales,
“Answer to what?”
Can you link to a single experiment in quantum physics that demonstrates that consciousness influences or is essential to the outcome; and, then, having fulfiled that minimum requirement, can you link to a single experiment in quantum physics that demonstrates that consciousness can actually alter the outcome?
Without this physical evidence, there is no basis for the claims for, or speculation about, quantum consciousness.
This is becoming extremely tiresome. I have made no claims to proof of anything, on the contrary I have explicitly stated repeatedly that all hypotheses about the existence/non-existence of spirit/god are speculation.
You however made a strong statement that it is “logical and scientific fact” that “god has been disproven”. Proof?
[...] Medicine discusses “Big Pharma,” and explains the FDA regulations that require drugs to “belong” to a disease… something that I didn’t previously [...]
wales,
“I have made no claims to proof of anything…”
I didn’t say you did.
But you have been seriously considering the hypothesis that consciousness affects events at the quantum level and, conversely, you have been seriously considering the hypothesis that quantum events play a role in consciousness.
Valid hypotheses are not pulled out of thin air. Valid scientific hypotheses must be based on prior scientific research. In other words, there must be scientific research that leads you to think that these hypotheses is worth considering and exploring. I am simply asking you what scientific research the above two hypotheses are based on.
What reason do you have to take those hypotheses seriously?
“You however made a strong statement that it is “logical and scientific fact” that “god has been disproven”. Proof?”
I was trying to avoid addressing this question again because it is allowing you to avoid the question we have actually been addressing here (the meaning of “observer” in quantum physical experiments).
But I will answer as I have done before: In order to answer your question, I first need you to define “god” for me. And, as I have hinted before, the specific and detailed definition of your chosen “god” will contain the seeds of its own destruction. So far, no one has offered a definition.
Nevertheless, I would rather address the validity of the consciousness->quantum and quantum->consciousness connection as this is what we were discussing at this point.
wales,
As an example, here is a simple discription of the double slit experiment:
It’s necessarily simplistic, but one key point is that quantum entities, like photons, travel as waves and interact as particles.
Detectors off:
A photon travels as a wave towards the barrier and passes through both slits as a wave. The part of the wave that passes through one slit interferes with the part of the wave that passes through the other slit as they travel towards the photographic plate. When it reaches the plate the interaction with the plate causes collapse of the wave into a particle which causes a dot to form on the plate. The result of millions of these photons passing through the experiment is an interference pattern.
Detectors on:
A photon travels as a wave towards the barrier. As the wave passes through the slits it interacts with one of the detectors (the only way a detector can detect the photon is to interact with it). The result of the interaction is that the wave collapses into a particle situated at the slit where it is detected. It then continues towards the photographic plate as a wave originating fromn that slit. There is no other wave to interfere with it on its way towards the plate. When it reaches the plate, the interaction with the plate causes the wave to collapse into a particle which causes a dot to form on the plate. The result of millions of these photons passing throught the experiment is a scatter pattern.
The only time consciousness entered this description, is when the experimenter chose to switch the detectors on or off. Once that decision is made, the consciousness of the experimenter is irrelevant. Beyond that point, the consciousness of the experimenter cannot change the pattern into something other than what is determined by whether the detectors are switched on or off.
It is quantum interaction that causes collapse of the wave function, not consciousness.
It’s as simple as that. Of course there are more complicated experimental setups (single detector double slit esperiment; the delayed choice double slit esperiment) but it all boils down to the same thing. Once the experiment is set up, consciousness is irrelevant to the outcome.
Consciousness is not an essential ingredient in quantum interactions and they cannot change the outcome of quantum interactions.
And, finally, quantum interactions can play no role in the genesis of consciousness, because they have no effect on macroscopic systems like the brain.
Last chance.
….this topic is about to fall off the front page!
BJ: You and I will never see eye to eye on this. Experimental results are results. Odd, mind-bending results like those found in quantum physics require interpretation, at least that what many eminent physicists believe, and I agree with them.
I have read too many subtly different interpretations of the double slit experiment by physicists to conclude that yours is the only possible or the correct version. Henry Stapp’s interpretation in “Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer” (2007) is one that I find particularly interesting, check it out sometime.
As for the imaginary division between the microscopic and the macroscopic, as Einstein said “But the macroscopic and the microscopic are so inter-related that it appears impracticable to give up this program [of basing physics on the “real”] in the microscopic domain alone.” (as quoted in Mindful Universe).
It’s been fun. Adios.
PS: as for this “as I have hinted before, the specific and detailed definition of your chosen “god” will contain the seeds of its own destruction.” I don’t have a specific and detailed definition of god.
wales,
Aren’t you even a teensy bit curious about the meaning of quantum results? BillyJoe asks you a straightforward question. He understands his question, he understands his answer to it, and he is prepared to discuss your answer to it.
You make no attempt to answer and do not even demonstrate that you understand the question. You wave him off, responding that smarter people than you disagree with Billy Joe and you like these smarter people’s answers better.
Aren’t you curious about how BillyJoe diverges from these smarter people, and why? If you like these smarter people’s answers better, wouldn’t you like to be able to identify the point of divergence? Wouldn’t you rather be able to show BillyJoe where he is wrong? Science is not a matter of opinion. If BillyJoe is wrong, you can explain why. BillyJoe will then agree with you. Science is cool that way.
wales,
Do you have a nonspecific and undetailed definition of god?
I already know Billy Joe’s opinion, he has explained it several times. I already know why Billy Joe diverges from some other opinions, it starts with his philosophical “assumption” that everything is physical. There are philosophies leaning more toward the materialist end of the spectrum of reality, and philosophies leaning more toward the idealist end of the spectrum of reality, with both scientists and non-scientists at either end. I lean toward the idealist, Billy Joe leans toward the materialist. We differ in our philosophical opinion. I have neither the time nor the inclination to continue repeating different versions of the same philosophical discussion. Regarding quantum mechanics, of course I am interested, which is why I continue to read books and papers on the subject. I have read philosophical treatments of the double slit experiment (and other quantum weirdness) by both scientists and philosophers leaning toward materialism and those leaning toward idealism. For me the materialistic extreme leaves too many question unanswered.
The materialist assumption is simply the beginning. We assume that everything is material until proven otherwise. Scientists spend their time trying to prove otherwise. That’s just how science works and it has nothing to do with underpinning philosophies.
“Scientists spend their time trying to prove otherwise.” Really? I was under the impression that scientists (most anyway) do not spend their time trying to prove the possibility or the validity of the immaterial. Most work under the assumption that the material is all that exists and that all questions will eventually be resolved by material solutions. Some mathematicians are perhaps different, those devoted to pure mathematics and Platonic ideals anyway.
I disagree that science has nothing to do with underpinning philosophies. Science is grounded in the philosophical assumption that observable material subject to empirical methods is the basis of reality.
Sorry I broke my promise, but I ran across this recent physics reference that I thought BillyJoe might find interesting.
Just to state my position, I am not a physicist, I know very little about quantum physics, and it is worthless for me to be one to argue about what it means. I would point out that IMHO the scientific conclusions in physics are the equations. Interpretations of those equations bears more than a passing resemblance to philosophy. I think arguing about quantum consciousness is more like arguing about philosophy. In my original statement, I was not referring to quantum consciousness, but superposition and complementarity. Superposition and complementarity are observations that must be addressed by the different interpretations.
So here’s a quote from an interesting peer reviewed article, I have no idea of how prestigious the journal is.
“We anticipate that our paper will be a starting point for experimentally addressing fundamental questions, such as the role of life and consciousness in quantum mechanics. ”
The reference,
New J. Phys. 12 (2010) 033015
doi:10.1088/1367-2630/12/3/033015
Toward quantum superposition of living organisms
Oriol Romero-Isart1,4, Mathieu L Juan2, Romain Quidant2,3 and J Ignacio Cirac1
1 Max-Planck-Institut für Quantenoptik, Hans-Kopfermann-Strasse 1, D-85748, Garching, Germany
2 ICFO-Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques, Mediterranean Technology Park, Castelldefels, Barcelona 08860, Spain
3 ICREA—Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, E-08010 Barcelona, Spain
The URL,
http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/12/3/033015/fulltext
Enjoy.
By the way, my definition of God is, the Creator.
Unless I find another interesting reference, I will refrain from abusing this blog space.
Rats. One other thing I forgot to throw in. I think the basic assumption of science is causality, not physicality. Physicality smacks of Euclidean geometry, how we classically experience reality.
wales,
In the beginning there was only philosophy. Philosophers divorced themselves from reality and just “sat back in their armchairs” and thought about how things must be. The problem was that every philosopher had a different version of what must be. Obviously, they couldn’t all be right. Philosophy then spawned science. The idea was to build up some verifiable facts upon which the various philosophical ideas would rise or fall. Philosophy must now start with the scientific facts. It must account for the facts as derived by science and show areas in which further scientific research might prove useful.
So, unless there is a scientific fact that suggests a role for consciousness in quantum processes, all the philosophising about quantum consciousness is all just sound and fury signifying nothing. How many versions of quantum consciousness have you come across in your reading. They can’t all be right. In fact, they’re all wrong as far as we can tell – because there is no fact of the matter on which they are based.
It is telling that you cannot, after all the reading you’ve done on this topic, point to a single experiment in quantum physics that suggests a role for conscious. Even after outlining for you the classic double slit experiment, you are unable to tell us where exactly it is that consciousness plays a role.
JMB,
“I think the basic assumption of science is causality, not physicality.”
Better tell the quantum physicists, then, that their probabilistic particles are not part of science.
And what about supposed supernatural causes?
The natural/physical/material assumption is the working assumption of science. This is because it is possible to prove that phenomena have natural causes (for example the natural cause of thunder has been proven, displacing the supernatural idea that thor’s clapping hands are the cause). But it is not possible to prove that phenomena have supernatural causes (some just choose to use it as a default position when a natural cause has not been found). Therefore is seems reasonable to make the natural assumption because that’s the way of progress, whereas the suprenatural assumption is the end of enquiry.
Billy Joe: “Philosophy must now start with the scientific facts. It must account for the facts as derived by science and show areas in which further scientific research might prove useful.” The philosophy of science and quantum theory that I have read and continue to read is primarily written by physicists. So much for your “armchair” theory. My failure to cite specific experiments is no more a “failure” of the theory than is your failure to cite specific experiments disproving the existence of a spiritual reality. We both have theories, not directly supported by any empirical evidence.
JMB: I used to think the same thing about causality, but after reading Mario Bunge’s “Causality and Modern Science” I have a different opinion. Bunge explains how causality itself is subject to trends in science and that the randomness and nonlocality found in quantum theory have changed the concept of causality, starting with physicists and slowly spreading throughout the sciences and social sciences. In the preface to the fourth edition he comments on changes in the concept of causality from classical physics through the discovery of quantum theory to the present: “When this book first appeared in 1959 most experts believed that causality was a dead subject. In fact, it was widely believed that the quantum theory had killed the hypothesis that every event is caused by a preceding event.”
This was rather surprising to me. I believe that the concept of material realism is the foundation of the sciences, more so even than causality.
wales,
You should try reading what is written.
Quote from me: “In the beginning there was only philosophy. Philosophers divorced themselves from reality and just “sat back in their armchairs” and thought about how things must be.”
Your response: “The philosophy of science and quantum theory that I have read and continue to read is primarily written by physicists. So much for your “armchair” theory.”
So how did you miss the introductory phrase, “In the beginning”?
But, hey, if the shoe fits…
Unless you can show evidence for a role for consciousness in quantum physics it is, as I said, all sound and fury signifying nothing no matter who spouts it.
The invitation is still open though.
“My failure to cite specific experiments is no more a “failure” of the theory than is your failure to cite specific experiments disproving the existence of a spiritual reality.”
Quantum consciousness is not a theory.
It is an unscientific hypothesis (meaning, it has no basis in scientific fact) and without a shred of evidence in support.
For the sake of argument I will concede that the non-interventionist deistic god is one of those undisprovable supernatural hypotheses. I am happy with that in any case.
I did not miss your introductory phrase. It was rather biblical and I could not discern what time frame you referenced with “in the beginning”, so I skipped on to the next subject.
BJ: You habitually make sweeping pronouncements that upon close examination prove to be inaccurate. “Quantum consciousness is not a theory. It is an unscientific hypothesis (meaning, it has no basis in scientific fact) and without a shred of evidence in support.”
Regarding the idea of the possible role of consciousness in quantum theory, there’s plenty of science behind it, be it hypothesis or theory.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/qt-consciousness/#Rel
Oops, I meant to cite this paper
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0312/0312115.pdf
Ah moderation raises its ugly head. Oh well.
wales,
“Regarding the idea of the possible role of consciousness in quantum theory, there’s plenty of science behind it, be it hypothesis or theory.
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0312/0312115.pdf“
Seems you didn’t read this part of your linked paper:
“rather than using the observers conscious response as the dependent variable, we use the early brain responses as measured by EEG. These early responses cover a period where the observer is not yet conscious of the quantum event.”
So the experiment described in this article could not possibly show that consciousness can affect quantum events.
In addition, the Hall experiment which stimulated this experiment did use consciousness, and it demonstrated that consciousness had no effect on the quantum events:
“The results of this experiment were precisely at chance…It was concluded that the experiment does not provide support for the hypothesis that it is the interaction with consciousness that causes the wave packet to collapse.”
Better luck next time.
Ah yes, mea culpa, I’m becoming very lazy at searching for web citations for you. Most of the support for the consciousness hypothesis comes from books I’ve read, though I have cited a few. But after all, we’re only discussing “ironic science” anyway, to use a phrase coined by John Horgan. All in good philosophical fun.
So, it’s your turn BJ. For weeks you have evaded providing any proof of something you claim has been scientifically proven. Where’s your scientific evidence for your ironic hypothesis? You also made a statement to the effect that any definition of god, theistic or deistic, would contain the seeds of its own destruction (which sounds ironically like biblical prophecy). JMB gave an example of his belief of god as creator. Let’s go one step further and assume god the creator merely set up the big bang and left all the rest to “nature”. How does one disprove the hypothesis of a non-interventionist creator god?
Oh the moderator gods, they are interventional beings! Let us bow down before them and perhaps they will relent.
Ah yes, mea culpa, I’m becoming very lazy at searching for web citations for you. Most of the support for the consciousness hypothesis comes from books I’ve read, though I have cited a few. But after all, we’re only discussing “ironic science” anyway, to use a phrase coined by John Horgan. All in good philosophical fun, right?
So, it’s your turn BJ. For weeks you have evaded providing any proof of something you claim has been scientifically proven. Where’s your scientific evidence for your ironic hypothesis? You also made a statement to the effect that any definition of god, theistic or deistic, would contain the seeds of its own destruction (which sounds ironically like biblical prophecy). JMB gave an example of his belief of god as creator. Let’s go one step further and assume god the creator merely set up the big bang and left all the rest to “nature”. How does one disprove the hypothesis of a non-interventionist creator god?
BillyJoe,
The following quote from the paper,
http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0312/0312115.pdf
“The results of this experiment were precisely at chance…It was concluded that the experiment does not provide support for the hypothesis that it is the interaction with consciousness that causes the wave packet to collapse.”
comes from the discussion of the preceding Hall experiment and the conclusion from the previous experiment. That quote was the statement of Hall’s conclusion and is included under the header,
“1.2 Hall’s experiment” (introduction)
not the header,
“5 Discussion”.
Under the header, “5. Discussion”, the following statement can be considered the conclusion of the current author’s (Bierman) experiment,
“The results of these experiments do support a solution of the measurement problem that gives a special status for conscious observation in the measurement process.”
The author of the current experiment “improved” Hall’s experimental design to fix some of the discussed weaknesses in the previous experimental design. One of the reported weaknesses was that the second observer’s response depended on the second observer becoming conscious of the quantum event, thereby causing collapse of the wavefunction. Since the intent was to measure the effect of the consciousness of the first observer, the measurement would have to be obtained before the second observer consciousness could also cause collapse of the wave function. That is the meaning of the quote,
“rather than using the observers conscious response as the dependent variable, we use the early brain responses as measured by EEG. These early responses cover a period where the observer is not yet conscious of the quantum event.” The experimenter wanted only the consciousness of the first observer to have an effect on the wavefunction collapse.
Perhaps we should agree to discuss this on some physics forum, if the discussion really needs to continue. But we might end up looking like Th1Th2 to them.
JMB: I like your suggestion to take this to a physics forum. I sometimes follow this one, and here they are discussing what causes collapse of the wave function. Some think it’s best to just shut up and calculate and not interpret “meaning” to physics, others not so much. They seem to be receptive and friendly to neophytes, as long we they announce themselves as such.
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=244597&page=4
If you’re interested in Henry Stapp’s papers, here’s a link
http://www-physics.lbl.gov/~stapp/stappfiles.html
JMB: If you’re still reading, this is a very thorough examination of the Copenhagen Interpretation, including Stapp’s correspondence with Heisenberg.
http://www.physics.princeton.edu/~mcdonald/examples/QM/stapp_ajp_40_1098_72.pdf
I fear Billy Joe has nothing to say, no proof to offer. I’ve thought long and hard about which book I would recommend to Billy Joe that might give him some insight as to how and why some scientists and non-scientists can believe in something other than scientific materialism. Bernard d’Espagnat’s “On Physics and Philosophy” is the most comprehensive explanation of the strangeness of quantum theory and its implications that I have read. He also gives a clear explanation of why most working physicists shy away from discussing (at least publicly) the implications of quantum mechanics for our concept of reality. It is a long book, but it is well written for educated laypersons.
Thanks to sbm for tolerating the long digression from the topic here.
@wales,
Thanks for the references. I’m still trying to work through them. I’ll probably just watch for any more discussion in the Physics Forum.
wales,
“How does one disprove the hypothesis of a non-interventionist creator god?”
You must have missed where I said that, for the sake of argument, I am happy to accept that the non interventionist deistic god is nondisprovable.
But consider:
- a god whose absence is no different from his presence is a god not worth entertaining.
- as someone once said, “a claim made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence”
- existence of such a god does not say anything about the existence or non existence of an afterlife.
- simplicity is explained by complexity which is the reverse of a scientific explanation.
- such a god has no explanation and cannot have an explanation.
- such a god is indistinguishable from a technologically advanced alien which begs the question of where did the alien come from. Ditto god.
JMB,
“Since the intent was to measure the effect of the consciousness of the first observer, the measurement would have to be obtained before the second observer consciousness could also cause collapse of the wave function. That is the meaning of the quote”
I understand what you are saying and I agree.
However, I was confident that wales did not and, of course, he did not as his subsequent post shows. I think it’s disingenuous to link to a paper that you don’t understand and probably haven’t actually read – except perhaps for the heading and conclusion – and expect someone else to plough through the details to criticise it.
The actual criticism of the paper is more along the lines of criticism of any research that sees significance in anomalies. It’s about as useless as the PEARS research that purported to show that consciousness has an effect of random number generators. We are talking here about effects that just reach statistical evidence and that, if repeated, might show the reverse, who knows, and who cares. It’s just noise.
Even homoeopathy will show an apparent effect about 4% of the time.
BJ: Nice list of opinions. I read that paper a few years ago. Too lazy to re-read it for your sake. Try some of the books I cited. Takes a little more effort though, huh?
Where are your papers by the way?
The point of citing that paper was, if you read through the comments again, is that there are scientists studying the possibility of a consciousness/quantum link. You had made a sweeping statement that there is “no science whatsoever” behind the hypothesis/theory. I have made no claims to be “right” about any of this, merely shown that there are physicists who take it seriously. My stance is that, like the god hypothesis, it will never be proven/disproven.
You however have made a statement that god has been scientifically disproven. You now concede that a creator god cannot be disproven, though your opinion is that such a concept is worthless. So for the “sake of argument” as you say, why don’t you divulge your “scientific proof” that any other type of god does not exist? Be specific now, opinions are merely opinions.
wales triumphing over BillyJoe:
“You now concede that a creator god cannot be disproven, though your opinion is that such a concept is worthless.”
BillyJoe has said this over and over from the beginning. This is not a last-minute attempt to escape when cornered. You appear not to be a careful reader.
I probably am becoming a sloppy reader of BJ’s entries, they are so repetitive. But Alison you need to sharpen up your reading skills as well. Billy Joe did not concede the impossibility of disproving a creator god until three days ago. What he has been saying, “over and over again” is that by all definitions god has been scientifically disproven.
BJ stated god was proven non-existent on April 20 and 23. On May 8 he went so far as to say that any definition of god has been disproven. “And, as I have hinted before, the specific and detailed definition of your chosen “god” will contain the seeds of its own destruction.”
It wasn’t until May 12 that he conceded a creator god could not be disproven. I keep asking the same question, for proof of BJ’s statement that “I’m sorry, but god, in any meaningful sense of that word, has been disproven. This is not a delusion. It is a scientific and logical fact.” Of course if we acknowledge that the word “meaningful” is completely subjective, BJ can still wiggle out of his statement.
BJ keeps moving the goal posts. So I am moving along with him, looking forward to his “scientific proof” that a personal god does not exist. (Peer reviewed journals please.)
Also, on the use of “meaningful” BJ seems be saying that a creator god cannot be “meaningful” in any way to anyone. I think that is a mistaken assumption.
By the way Alison, you have a strange idea about “triumphing” in this discussion. It is not about who is right or wrong, it will most likely never be proven/disproven that a spiritual reality exists. The reason for my insistence in this discussion is that BJ seems to think that something unprovable has been disproven, in other words, that he is right and those who differ with him are wrong. My point all along has been that there is no proof of right or wrong in this matter.
BillyJoe on the non-interventionist creator god:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=4792&cpage=3#comment-50034
Science and logic has shown that the only tenable god is the non-interventionist deist god, and logic tells us that such a god is unnecessary. It replaces one unanswered “how” question: “How did something arise from nothing?” with another unanswered “how” question: “How did the deist god come to be?”
That was April 25th. I believe he has made this point in other, earlier threads as well.
I see your point. I skimmed that long post as it wasn’t addressed to me. But it still doesn’t jibe with BJ’s claim on May 8 that any specific definition of god is disprovable. So BJ conceded prior to three days ago that a creator god is tenable, yet he subsequently made a statement that ANY definition of god carried the seeds of its own destruction. I guess we were all supposed to have remembered his qualification from last month, assuming we read that post.
What about scientific disproof of other definitions of god, a personal one for example? Still haven’t seen any proof of that.
wales,
On the other hand, I’m still waiting for the link to an experiment in quantum physics that demonstrates that consciousness can alter the outcome. This would only be the starting point of course. Because, what most proponents of quantum comsciousness claim is that consciousness is an essential element in wave collapse.
You are right that I have not read their books. Give me a reason to do so because, as it stands now, it seems it would be a complete waste of time and effort. I have read articles from proponents of that point of view and have found the question not worthy of further exploration. There are only so many hours in a day. I’m not going to read a book on energy medicine either.
For me, quantum consciousness has all the hallmarks of pseudoscience. Prove me wrong. Find that one experiment that proves that consciousness can effect the outcome. Results that just reach statistical significance do not count I’m afraid. In a hundred throws, I can throw seven or eight heads in a row. That does not mean I am psychic.
“What about scientific disproof of other definitions of god, a personal one for example?”
You are asking me to write a book.
The disproof of god is not a simple one, but I have sketched the outline of such a disproof before. Maybe you missed it. The actuall full disproof with all the evidence presented would take an entire book if not several books. An analogy is evolution. I cannot write down the full proof of evolution but I could give an outline of what such a proof would look like.
But, consider this, it took only one line of evidence for Darwin to come up with his evolutionary idea, which then took over twenty years to flesh out and another century and half for many others from many different fields of science to establish as scientific fact.
So, whilst you’re asking me to write a book about god, all I’m asking you to do is to provide that one piece of evidence that would convince me to take quantum. consciousness seriously.
“You are asking me to write a book” The complexity you claim is required to disprove a spiritual reality can also be claimed in defense of proving such. Besides, books have already been written, but they boil down to opinion, not fact.
Max Born said “The belief that there is only one truth and that oneself is in possession of it, seems to me the deepest root of all that is evil in the world.” Max Born, from Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance, 1964
And Born said this of his good friend Einstein “he had no belief in the Church, but did not think that religious faith was a sign of stupidity, nor unbelief a sign of intelligence.”
I do not ask you to write a book, I ask for honest acknowledgment that your opinions about metaphysical matters are opinions, not scientific fact.
To clarify, as I have said before, proof of evolutionary theory doesn’t disprove a spiritual reality. It only disproves a particularly literal interpretation of certain religious texts.
“It is not about who is right or wrong, it will most likely never be proven/disproven that a spiritual reality exists.”
I disagree. This will be proven one way or the other. After crossing over the event horizon, ie, death.
Weing you are correct, unfortunately those who cross the event horizon don’t seem to be able to reliably communicate their findings to the rest of us (at least not in a scientifically provable manner).
Again, my point in pursuing this conversation is that I believe science cannot answer all the important questions. Like Max Born, I believe that “There are metaphysical problems, which cannot be disposed of by declaring them meaningless. For, as I have repeatedly said, they are “beyond physics” indeed and demand an act of faith. We have to accept this fact to be honest. There are two objectionable types of believers: those who believe the incredible and those who believe that “belief” must be discarded and replaced by “the scientific method.”
The two types of believers, the religious fundamentalists and the militant atheists, have something in common here. They both have what I consider to be facile and over-simplistic answers to what are metaphysical questions.
I also like what Born says about physics and philosophy ““I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., abut space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics). It has taught us new methods of thinking (complimentarity), which are applicable far beyond physics.”
And about the limitations of the scientific point of view “It is true that many scientists are not philosophically minded and have hitherto shown much skill and ingenuity but little wisdom. “
wales,
“I do not ask you to write a book, I ask for honest acknowledgment that your opinions about metaphysical matters are opinions, not scientific fact.”
They are based on scientific fact, just like evolution is based on scientific fact. Same process.
So, it comes down to this: do you go with the scientific facts derived through the scientific method or do you go with intuition and what you would like to be true.
“proof of evolutionary theory doesn’t disprove a spiritual reality”
It’s one cog in the machine that powers a steamroller.
“I disagree. This will be proven one way or the other. After crossing over the event horizon, ie, death.”
That is called begging the question.
“do you go with intuition and what you would like to be true.” This describes your extrapolation of scientific fact into metaphysical conjecture.
wales,
“There are metaphysical problems, which cannot be disposed of by declaring them meaningless. For, as I have repeatedly said, they are “beyond physics”
Go ahead knock yourself out, but if a god is claimed to intervene in nature then that is a scientific claim and amenable to scientific investigation, whether you like it or not.
“The two types of believers, the religious fundamentalists and the militant atheists, have something in common here. They both have what I consider to be facile and over-simplistic answers to what are metaphysical questions.”
The truth is rarely somewhere around the midpoint between opposites. Again, whether you like it or not. If the evidence points to one of the extremes, then it points to one of the extremes and that is the fact of the matter. I don’t understand your insistence on the correctness of the average. It’s where the evidence leads that is the correct position.
“I also like what Born says about physics and philosophy”
Again, it is not about what you like, but where the evidence leads.
“I am now convinced that theoretical physics is actually philosophy. It has revolutionized fundamental concepts, e.g., abut space and time (relativity), about causality (quantum theory), and about substance and matter (atomistics). It has taught us new methods of thinking (complimentarity), which are applicable far beyond physics.”
I don’t understand why you find this nonsense appealing.
Physics IS the relativity theory and physics IS the quantum theory. Going beyond the physics is philosophy. They are not the same. And this is fine, provided the philosophy is still based on the physics and that you use it to further your scientific inquiry, to show useful paths for science to follow.
The problem comes when you believe the actual philosophy.
“And about the limitations of the scientific point of view “It is true that many scientists are not philosophically minded and have hitherto shown much skill and ingenuity but little wisdom.”
In my opinion, wales, you are far too fond of quoting famous physicists. They are often misquoted or quoted out of context and often the nuance is lost in the quotes. And they are not infallable. Some are long dead and haven’t the advantage of our present state of knowledge.
“This describes your extrapolation of scientific fact into metaphysical conjecture.”
I have no interest in metaphysical conjecture.
The disproof of god is a book. I’m sorry I can’t present it.
“I have no interest in metaphysical conjecture.” Your actions speak louder than your words.
Or should I say, your words speak louder than your claimed intention.
“Some [physicists] are long dead and haven’t the advantage of our present state of knowledge.”
Actually Born’s comments are from 1964, post-atomic age. As J. Robert Oppenheimer’s doctoral advisor this comment from Born is illuminating: ““The practical applications of science have given us the means of a fuller and richer life, but also the means of destruction and devastation on a vast scale. Wise men would have considered the consequences of their activities before starting on them ; scientists have failed to do so, and only recently have they become conscious of their responsibilities to society.”
But I get the point BJ, you prefer to read today’s shining stars, not yesterday’s. Stick to your Dawkins, it’s trendier.
I don’t “stick” to anyone.
As I said before, Dawkins is excellent on evolutionary biology, passable on religion, and not recommended on medical matters.
And I don’t know what you mean by my metaphysical conjectures. Perhaps you could supply an example.
…and, of course, still no hint of a quantum experiment that demonstrates that consciousness has an effect on the outcome.
“And I don’t know what you mean by my metaphysical conjectures. Perhaps you could supply an example.” You claim that god has been disproven, but you have no proof. You claim that the proof is a book, that no one has written. Sounds like metaphysical/philosophical conjecture/speculation to me.
Yawn.
…and, if someone asks you to prove evolution, you would do that how?
You ask me to present here the entire disproof of god but you can’t provide me with just one link to a quantum experiment that demonstrates that consciousness has an effect on the outcome.
But you claimed proof for your hypothesis. I did not claim proof for mine.
Billy Joe, we have very different ways of viewing the world. It’s been an interesting conversation, but I don’t know that either of us can gain from its continuation. Your comment regarding books written by physicists about the possibility of quantum consciousness: “You are right that I have not read their books. Give me a reason to do so because, as it stands now, it seems it would be a complete waste of time and effort. I have read articles from proponents of that point of view and have found the question not worthy of further exploration.”
If you provided me with a list of your “proof” books, I might add them to my reading list, if I haven’t read them already. I have already read a considerable amount on evolutionary theory, most of Dawkins, including his atheist tome. I try not to close my mind to possibilities.
BJ: Start with something easy, try “The Undiscovered Mind” by John Horgan. It is not based on physics.
“It is not based on physics.”
Apparently not:
A quote from John Horgan,
“It’s at that point, where science ends, mysticism might be able to give us the answers that we can’t get through science.”
Yeah right.
Apparently he’s experimented extensively with psychedelic drugs to search for truth through mysticism. Still, that was 7 years ago after writing his book “Rational Mysticism”
BJ: I suspect you would find any excuse to justify why you should not read something that runs counter to your beliefs. Not very scientific of you. Regarding Horgan, journalists have been known to do strange things in the name of research and gathering empirical evidence. I find most of Horgan’s work, including “The End of Science” to be well researched and very readable. Are you suggesting that dabbling in recreational drugs negates his AAAS awards and his excellent work for Scientific American?
Since you’re concerned about mental impairment caused by recreational substances, I assume Christopher Hitchen’s self-professed alcohol problem would make you critical of his atheist writings? According to Wikipedia, Hitchens welcomes being criticized for drinking “’because I always think it’s a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem.’ Perhaps Horgan would feel the same way about your comments.
BJ: I suspect you would find any excuse to avoid reading something that runs counter to your beliefs. As for Horgan, journalists have been known to do strange things in the name of research and gathering empirical evidence. I find most of Horgan’s work, including “The End of Science” to be well researched and very readable. Are you suggesting that dabbling in recreational drugs negates his AAAS awards and his excellent work for Scientific American?
Since you’re concerned about mental impairment caused by recreational substances, I assume Christopher Hitchen’s self-professed alcohol problem would make you critical of his atheist writings. According to Wikipedia, Hitchens welcomes being criticized for drinking “’because I always think it’s a sign of victory when they move on to the ad hominem.’ Perhaps Horgan would feel the same way about your comment.
Let me clarify in order to understand where you’re coming from. Is it Horgan’s empirical research or his search for the unknown that you find objectionable? Either stance seems to be unscientific.
Or perhaps you object to the two words “rational” and “mysticism” being combined to coin a phrase. As they say, don’t judge a book by its cover. Perhaps this Sam Harris essay will make you feel better.
http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?page=harris_25_6§ion=library
wales,
“Perhaps this Sam Harris essay will make you feel better.”
Sam Harris is a mixture of sense and nonsense.
Fortunately he is mainly makes sense, especially when he speaks about religion, and in this quote from the article you linked to:
Okay, “extraordinary experiences of happiness” is perhaps a little over the top. I would call it simply an extraordinary insight.
But here is his nonsense:
And here:
I mean really, wales, you have to read your authors more critically than that. Harris is also of the opinion that parapsychological research has produced postive results. Well, sorry, no it hasn’t.
As for Horgan, my point was not that his drug use negates his opinions – where did you read that into my post? – but that he seems to think he can obtain great insights from altered brain states induced by psychedelic drugs. Get off the grass! A scrambled brain is a scrambled brain. No insights, just nonsense taken way too seriously. Most who indulge in drugs are honest enough to admit that it was just a big mistake.
BillyJoe,
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss meditation as a way to happiness. Have you watched this video? http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html
The experience described here is a stroke, but my understanding is that meditation is a mental discipline that enables people to have this experience without having a stroke.
Clearly this has *nothing* to do with spiritual components of reality or with quantum mechanics. But when he talks about the subjective experience of meditation and not-being, Harris might be objectively reporting a real human experience.
wales,
“I suspect you would find any excuse to justify why you should not read something that runs counter to your beliefs. ”
No, I just refuse to take nonsense seriously.
As I said, there are not enough hours in a day.
BillyJoe on drugs and repentance:
“Most who indulge in drugs are honest enough to admit that it was just a big mistake.”
Citations, please?
Billy Joe, you really ought to read your authors more thoroughly.
Here’s Sam Harris on drug use: “Well both through meditation and through my first experiences with psychedelics, probably at age 19. The very first experience was with MDMA, which is Ecstasy, which is now this very popular club drug, but when I took it back in… ’86 I think it was, it hadn’t been discovered by the culture in that way, and it was, there were certain people using it in research, and… It was just an incredibly simple experience in the context in which I took it. It was just feeling so much neuroses drop away in a way that you never thought was possible. It was just a sense of being much more nakedly aware of your experience than you have ever been. And many of the things that you’ve always been trying to get rid of without knowing you want to get rid of them, like anxiety and fear and judgment and apprehension about the future, all of that was just dropped away. And it was, it suggested that there really was a path, whatever it is, whether it’s pharmacological or attentional or through happenstance or whether you just have to have good genes, whatever it is, there’s a difference between how I was tending to feel and how it was possible to feel.” Science Studio Interview
Harris also did a stint as a bodyguard for the Dalai Lama.
Here’s Harris on meditation: “One problem with atheism as a category of thought, is that it seems more or less synonymous with not being interested in what someone like the Buddha or Jesus may have actually experienced. In fact, many atheists reject such experiences out of hand, as either impossible, or if possible, not worth wanting. Another common mistake is to imagine that such experiences are necessarily equivalent to states of mind with which many of us are already familiar—the feeling of scientific awe, or ordinary states of aesthetic appreciation, artistic inspiration, etc. As someone who has made his own modest efforts in this area, let me assure you, that when a person goes into solitude and trains himself in meditation for 15 or 18 hours a day, for months or years at a time, in silence, doing nothing else—not talking, not reading, not writing—just making a sustained moment to moment effort to merely observe the contents of consciousness and to not get lost in thought, he experiences things that most scientists and artists are not likely to have experienced, unless they have made precisely the same efforts at introspection. And these experiences have a lot to say about the plasticity of the human mind and about the possibilities of human happiness.”
From a talk he gave to the Atheist Alliance, 2007
If Sam Harris can count these experiences as empirical research, why can’t John Horgan?
BJ said, in interpreting Harris’ comments: “Okay, “extraordinary experiences of happiness” is perhaps a little over the top. I would call it simply an extraordinary insight.”
How can you call it anything, when you were not the one who experienced it? Sounds to me like Harris had some trippy, euphoric experiences with drugs, (subsequently dropping out of college to travel to Tibet & Nepal studying meditation) and then spent many years trying to replicate that drug-induced blissful state via meditation.
Harris picks and chooses what he likes (meditation) from religion (buddhism) and then labels it “rational mysticism” as if he has discovered something new. He also believes that reincarnation is possible. This begs the question: reincarnation of what? A soul? Apparently Harris has finished his PhD in neuroscience, so he’s an “expert” now.
Alison – awhile back I heard an interview with a neuro-scientist who had a stroke who decribed the feeling of being at one with the universe that the stroke brought about. She said this is because her stroke was on the left (I think) side. If the stroke is on the other side, patients often suffer anxiety or anger, etc. Just thought this was an interesting tid-bit that your post reminded me of. Here’s the link to the interview, if you’re interested.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91861432
“Most who indulge in drugs are honest enough to admit that it was just a big mistake.”
Do they admit this in the job interview or when they are running for president?
On Ecstasy – “It was just an incredibly simple experience in the context in which I took it. It was just feeling so much neuroses drop away”
That reminds me of a friend who lived in Texas where ecstasy became popularize. He told me about a kid he knew that was paralyzed due to Ecstasy use. Not a drug to screw around with.
Acute paralysis following recreational MDMA (Ecstasy) use.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16749557
I know you were not advocating for drug use, Wales. But who knows, it’s possible more than five people are reading this thread, so I wanted to add the precautionary note.
Good point Michele. No I wasn’t advocating drug use, BJ brought it up in the context of John Horgan. I would say meditation is much safer.
Alison & micheleinmichigan
I was talking about the group of people wales referenced who go through a period of drug experimentation and get over it. A minority seem to try to salvage something by proclaiming some great insight they derived from the experience. Most admit it was just a big mistake.
But that’s my impression only.
wales,
It seems to me that in your last post on Harris you seem to be agreeing with me that Harris has some wacky ideas. If not, I can’t see the purpose of those quotes that seem to confirm that exact view.
As for “extradordinary insight”, I said that’s what I would call it. It was an “extraordinary insight” for me when I realised the truth about the self as illusion.
Billy Joe, I didn’t reference a group of people who experiment with drugs. When I mentioned some journalists’ propensity to engage in risky or covert behavior to research their stories I wasn’t referring solely to drug experimentation.
Regarding your last remark, I can appreciate that we all have different ways of expressing our experiences.