1. Comment #69973 by Cartomancer on September 13, 2007 at 12:34 pm

I seem to remember a certain professor Dawkins saying something very much like this in a recent book I read. Name escapes me...

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2. Comment #69980 by bamafreethinker on September 13, 2007 at 1:19 pm

A little piece on faith I wrote a time ago...

A Real Live Wire

Imagine that a child has made it to the age of five without ever having stuck his finger, or a butter knife, into an electrical outlet and felt the unmistakable sensation of 110 volts traveling through his body. Let's say that this hypothetical child's dad is building an addition to their house and there are exposed, live wires sticking out of a wall plug. Dad had to go away on an emergency business trip and there was just no way to avoid leaving this hazard behind. Of course the boy's mother is very worried that junior will be shocked or even electrocuted, so she sits him down and tries to warn him of the danger.

Mom knows what will happen from experience – now she wants to transfer that belief to her son. She explains that if he so much as touches the exposed wires or touches them with another object, he will get shocked. He will of course ask what it means to get shocked, and she will simply have to say that it hurts – because there is no way to convey what being shocked feels like if you have never experienced it. And although the chances of being killed are low; she may exaggerate the danger a bit to make her son take it as seriously as his immature mind will allow.

But the child thinks how odd this is. He has touched everything in his world up to now, and has never been "shocked". He can imagine how it would hurt if he scraped his legs on the sharp wires, but it has never hurt just to "touch" something like that before. His mother is asking him to accept a strange new belief on faith alone. But this concept just doesn't make any sense to junior. So the boy has two options: He can trust his mother and adopt her belief about what will happen - on faith; or he can walk over to the exposed wires and see what it feels like for himself. If mom has done an effective job of convincing the child, he will probably avoid the hazard. If she is less than persuasive, or if the child is overly-curious; she may still have to keep her eye on him at all times.

Faith allows us to take shortcuts to knowledge or a belief - by relying on the knowledge and experiences of the people in whom we place it. Getting shocked by electricity is only a concept to junior - until the moment he reaches out an inquisitive finger and gets a jolt – then it becomes first hand knowledge! We all know that lessons learned from experience are the best – but that is not always possible or even practical.

Faith: Belief - What's the Difference!

We often use "faith" and "belief" interchangeably, but I would like to point out that there is a significant difference between the two – at least as we will be using them here. Belief is the recognition of a truth. This "truth" may or may not actually be true – but belief means that we think it is. Faith is a substitution for study, learning, and experience. Faith is how we come to believe things that we have not yet had the chance to learn, or perhaps things that we simply are not able to know because of some limitation in our ability, our environment, or the time in which we live.

For example: I believe that Jimmy Carter was President of the United States because I lived during the time that it happened. I saw him on TV, in newspapers, and heard him on the radio. I also believe that George Washington was President, but I am totally lacking any personal experiences like those above. Therefore, my belief in George is based entirely on faith. What is my faith in? Ultimately, it's in the people who recorded and preserved the history of the United States – it's that simple!

So there are two paths that can lead us to a belief in something:

The path of personal experience and first-hand knowledge

The path of faith (Relying on the experience and knowledge of other people)

Which is easier?

Which is better?

Path number one is obviously the best way to learn things: but of course not feasible for everything. We can't all learn to be doctors, lawyers, mechanics, and so on; and we can't go back in time to prove something happened. Number one is not such a good way to learn that jumping off a high building will kill you either!

Ron Coleman

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3. Comment #69983 by LeeLeeOne on September 13, 2007 at 1:38 pm

Question, why does rely on anything that is considered "easier" or "better" when it comes to education.

I have been one who has purposefully "experienced the life of hard knocks" but just because I choose this particular learning curve, does it mean everyone should? or must?

Some people may learn with the "softer" approach, observe those before (without question as to circumstances) and take to heart - accept.

There is no ONE right way to learn.

Everyone learns at their own speed, their own pace, their own memory, their own resilience, their own environment, their own research.

I beg anyone to discontinue putting everyone "in the same basket."

Are we not all individuals? Pattern seeking aside, we still have our own brains; not brains with prerecorded intelligence or ideas embedded at birth.

The human mind is beautifully complex, why reduce it to a few "yes" or "no" opinions?

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4. Comment #69984 by robert s on September 13, 2007 at 1:42 pm

bama, you have stretched the definition of 'faith' so far that, by your own terms, you only have it on faith that Jimmy Carter was President of the US.

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5. Comment #69986 by bamafreethinker on September 13, 2007 at 2:01 pm

Robert, I meant to convey that I have a "belief" in both Carter and Washington having been president, but that one was based on personal experiences (backed up by modern historians) and the other was strictly based on faith in others – my belief is very strong however in old Georgie. I guess we could strip it down to my faith that the news media wasn't pulling my leg, but then we'd have a conspiracy theory on our hands : ) Of course I could have imagined that whole Jimmy Carter thing…

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6. Comment #69994 by robert s on September 13, 2007 at 2:33 pm

You were the one that picked 'faith', so let's stick with that. My point is that your definition seems to "belief based only on evidence that other people have been involved in". Therefore it does indeed strip down to your faith in the media. It's not obvious to me that this is tangibly different to faith in historians and archaeologists.

Both seem totally different to what religious people mean by 'faith'. A journalist and a historian can both give you reasons for why they believe what they do and even if you can't personally check it, you can get a second opinion - other specialists can look at the records (or whatever form the evidence takes).

And, crucially, you can match the strength of your belief to the strength of the evidence.

The supernatural claims of religions are simply entirely unevidenced. It seems to me that the term 'faith' (in its epistemological sense) should be reserved for belief in those kinds of things.

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7. Comment #69995 by Jiten on September 13, 2007 at 2:33 pm

Science is counter-intuitive and natural selection has not equipped us to do science.It has equipped us to deal with things that our ancestors successfully dealt with.People are naturally resistant to a scientific view of the world.And worse still is that many just don't care.

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8. Comment #69997 by Bremas on September 13, 2007 at 2:53 pm

Experienced this just a couple days ago with my family.
When something scientific counters the very basis for something learned as a child from a trusted source.... the first response is anger at the science, and dismissing it as a bad philosophy.

When someone figures out how to overcome this, let me know.

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9. Comment #70021 by Duff on September 13, 2007 at 5:15 pm

Jiten,

"Science is counterintuitive"!!!!? Science is a latin name for "knowledge". If Knowledge is counter-intuitive then I don't know what would be intuitive.
I suggest you re-invent yourself and come to a proper realization of just what it means to have a "real" sense of what constitutes science. Reality is what can be demonstrated. And if you "don't care" what is real and what is imaginable, may I suggest you get a grip on yourself and embrace science/knowledge..

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10. Comment #70028 by robert s on September 13, 2007 at 5:54 pm

Science is a latin name for "knowledge". If Knowledge is counter-intuitive then I don't know what would be intuitive.

Ah, good to see the believers aren't the only ones who like to play the old, 'you said X, but in a different context X means Y, and what you said isn't true of Y!' game.

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11. Comment #70030 by John Pseudonym on September 13, 2007 at 6:03 pm

"Science is counterintuitive"!!!!? Science is a latin name for "knowledge". If Knowledge is counter-intuitive then I don't know what would be intuitive. I suggest you re-invent yourself and come to a proper realization of just what it means to have a "real" sense of what constitutes science. Reality is what can be demonstrated. And if you "don't care" what is real and what is imaginable, may I suggest you get a grip on yourself and embrace science/knowledge.."

Uhh.. Duff, I think you misunderstood Jiten's post. Read it again.

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12. Comment #70038 by oxytocin on September 13, 2007 at 8:17 pm

Duff, you may want to read the article above. The whole point of it was that many of our discoveries are profoundly counter-intuitive. In fact, the more we learn about the world, the more we learn that we perceive a thin slice of an illusion. As Dawkins says, we live in "middle earth"; there is much to this universe happening around us that we cannot see. Many of our ideas about physical motion are wrong; most of us cannot comprehend quantum physics because it is so unrelated to the human condition and how we experience our world. Evolution does not make intuitive sense as we are creatures who exist in essentially the same form all our lives and will never experience an evolutionary shift; our self-concept is dominated by object permanence. The evidence for the validity of Jiten's statement is endless.

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13. Comment #70039 by Russell Blackford on September 13, 2007 at 8:26 pm

Science is counterintuitive. The world tends to appear one way - the so-called manifest image - to creatures of our size, capacities, habits, psychological dispositions, etc., that evolved on the savannahs of Africa. It appears another way when we start scrutinising it by the means that science employs (observation with instruments that greatly magnify our senses, careful use of experiments, mathematical models, and so on).

The scientific image of the world corrects the manifest image, but it is the latter that is intuitive. The longer the chains of reasoning that support aspects of the scientific image, the more difficult it will be to get people to abandon the manifest image where the two collide. Galileo didn't have too much difficulty convincing people of his (often counterintuitive) telescopic observations, but the chain of reasoning to establish that telescopes work was short. Likewise the chain of reasoning to show how certain observations were, for example, observations of moons circling Jupiter. Although we don't face heresy trials, as Galileo did, we are, in a sense, in a more difficult situation than he was.

The connections between scientific conclusions and the observations and experiments that support them are now far more difficult for non-scientists to understand and confirm for themselves.

Religions, alas, tend to build (in various ways) on the manifest image. Thus, the various religious images of the world are quite intuitive for most people. However, the image of the world in, say, the Abrahamic tradition, is in tension with science. After all, the scientific image is extremely difficult to reconcile with such ideas as libertarian free will, providence, explanation of phenomena in terms of agency and design, human exceptionalism within nature, the separability of ourselves (in some sense) from our bodies, the primacy of spirit over matter, and so on.

The problem we face is that a certain religious image of the world is highly intuitive to many people in Western societies - it has adapted over the centuries in conformity with the manifest image, and it has accommodated those parts of science that are supported by relatively short and obviously incontrovertible chains of reasoning. In the past three decades, or so, it has even made a comeback in many academic philosophy departments.

However, it is essentially false.

At the same time, the scientific image is essentially true, but it is not intuitive except to people who are trained to understand chains of scientific inferences and to see why the evidence supports findings that our brains tend to reject. That's what we're up against, folks. It's why people who are not deranged can so easily be deluded in the sense of having persistent wrong ideas about such things as the existence of a providential deity.

This is the sort of picture that seems to be emerging from the research of psychologists such as Paul Bloom. Just how we use it remains an open question, but it is valuable information to have. It gives some clue as to why religion is so persistent and what problems we face when we attempt to induce doubt in the minds of religious believers - or, at least, in the minds of true faith-heads dogmatists, who will argue from premises that many of us rationalist types find pre-scientific and bizarre.

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14. Comment #70055 by robotaholic on September 13, 2007 at 11:57 pm

I think Duff is right. I think science can be counterintuitive or it can be obvious. When RD explains it - it becomes obvious to me...He explains things so well...But some things like particle entanglement or the double slit experiment are counterintuitive.

Faith is belief in something without evidence. If possible, I try to avoid it. Who wouldn't prefer evidence?

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15. Comment #70080 by Haymoon on September 14, 2007 at 2:44 am

Excellent piece of writing by Russell Blackford on the difference between religious thinking and scientific thinking. Do you have a blog Russell ?

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16. Comment #70085 by hungarianelephant on September 14, 2007 at 3:10 am

Russell Blackford: At the same time, the scientific image is essentially true, but it is not intuitive except to people who are trained to understand chains of scientific inferences and to see why the evidence supports findings that our brains tend to reject. That's what we're up against, folks. It's why people who are not deranged can so easily be deluded in the sense of having persistent wrong ideas about such things as the existence of a providential deity.

Some insightful comments on the teaching of critical thinking courtesy of Dr Benway:
http://richarddawkins.net/article,1564,Feeding-the-fear-gene,Mark-Larson#65469
esp. the comments at the end on counterintuitive problems.

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17. Comment #70102 by Yorker on September 14, 2007 at 4:45 am

17. Comment #70089 by Prufrock

"Professor Dawkins has started by exposing some of the tricks of the psychic trade in a British television programme, but how many took on board the message in the enemies of reason?"

I wondered that myself; I would guess less than 10%. I was pleased though that my woo-wooish sister is becoming less woo-woo all the time. She liked Dawkins and the cumulative effect of his and other books I lent her plus my nagging, seems to be getting through. Very gratifying.

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18. Comment #70108 by Yorker on September 14, 2007 at 5:09 am

2. Comment #69980 by bamafreethinker

I soon as I read your post this popped into my head.

Curiousity overcomes the child, he goes over and grabs the live wire; nothing happens (the most likely scenario), so he goes to his mother and tells her what he did and the result.

What would the mother do? Knowing her husband wasn't an idiot, she would probably assume he'd isolated the circuit at the distribution board so she checks; but no, it's on, looks like he is an idiot! Assuming the child was fibbing, she admonishes him and reiterates her warning. What happens in the child's mind? Knowing that he did grab the wire with no ill effect, what would he think of his mother and would it have a lasting effect on him?

Perhaps the psychologists here can answer that.

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19. Comment #70111 by Russell Blackford on September 14, 2007 at 5:30 am

Haymoon, yes ...

http://metamagician3000.blogspot.com/

... though I seem to have written some of my most elaborate pieces on other people's sites/blogs just lately.

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20. Comment #70119 by Haymoon on September 14, 2007 at 6:15 am

My apologies to Russell Blackford. I have now informed myself better about you. If I was better read I would not have had to ask the question in my previous post. I apologise for my ignorance.

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21. Comment #70121 by leigh on September 14, 2007 at 6:49 am

Why was this in latest news? I could swear I read that paper months ago, linked from this site.

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22. Comment #70122 by oxytocin on September 14, 2007 at 7:02 am

Yorker and bamafreethinker,
This is a very interesting scenario.

First, bama, you've expressed an idea that Dawkins has posited as a potential evolutionary mechanism for religion. Because children would likely die quickly and spectacularly in the absence of respected parental authority, children may be hardwired for credulity. In fact, their brains are incomplete in their development, and, consequently, they think qualitatively different than adults. I think you have suggested something interesting when you call it "faith" in the parents. I would tend to call it "trust", but it is something I would need to think further on. I think adult relationships are based on trust as opposed to faith, but I suppose it depends on how the individual thinks about it; that is, whether or not they believe that their assumptions can be tested.

Yorker, I think your question is an interesting one, and one that has no firm answer. I would say that it depends on two important variables. 1-How old is the child? Children of different ages think and behave differently. 2-what is this child's learning history? Does this child trust his/her parents? We know that children, in efforts to develop autonomy, rebel against their parents and do things in order to test boundaries. These tendencies are strongest in the toddler and the young teenager; they are to be expected. If children did not assert their will, they would fail to develop autonomy and remain overly connected to their parents. Discovering that parents are wrong is an integral part of development.

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23. Comment #70124 by bamafreethinker on September 14, 2007 at 7:19 am

19. Comment #70108 by Yorker,

If there are three wires protruding, only one of them would be "hot" so perhaps he didn't touch the right one. For whatever reason, because junior now has a belief based on personal experience, it will be even harder for mom to convince him otherwise. He thinks that he now has sound knowledge based on evidence, but he does not yet know that his experiment is incomplete. Mom's only shot may be to try to explain that he must have touched the wrong wire (assuming she knows as much), but perhaps his confidence (in mom) is shaken to this point - at least as far as electricity is concerned (she's still useful for an occasional PB&J sandwich : ).

This is similar to the way my confidence in the bible faded each time it contradicted what I had previously believed. The bible was its own worst enemy when I started my journey out of Christianity (about six years ago). That is actually where my reasoning was going with the article. I realized that my faith was not directly in Jesus or God – it was in my parents, preachers, etc, who told me that the bible was true. But I reasoned that they were depending on their parents and preachers, who were… generation after generation! It really goes back, not only to the original authors of the bible, but to the hundreds of translators who were supposedly bringing us the most important information known to man! The sad thing is that these people had an agenda separate from just telling the facts.

When I was finally able to resist my fear of burning in hell enough to say to myself, "What IF the bible is man-made?", then I was able to see things in a whole new light and the floodgates were opened. Before, I was going at it backwards. I was assuming the bible was the word of God, so I had to twist my head around that unmovable fact. But when I was able to look at it as if, just maybe it was not... WOW! Someone can betray our trust once or twice and can eventually restore that trust by being right most of the time – the authors and translators of the bible blew over and over again!

I have nothing against faith. I don't have time/resources to dig up fossils to prove evolution with first-hand experience (or even study it enough to understand all aspects of it) nor do I have an interest in getting a medical degree so I don't have to have faith in my doctor. I'm just fine with trusting other people to do the dirty work for me (and I'll pay the doctor for his time and RD for his books).

I'm sure you will agree that religious faith is not even in the same category. It all comes down to the source of faith and how reliable it is. Science is backed up (hopefully without an agenda); religion is all agenda and no evidence.

Some scientists do have an agenda that may influence the way they interpret data and I give them much more skepticism than I would give a scientist who does not seem to have one. Scientists who believe in ID are a good example. They ignore mountains of evidence contrary to their pre-conceived world-view and admonish tiny anomalies that support them. And although I do think global warming is a real threat, I am pretty skeptical of some of the evidence because I feel that much of it is politically tainted. The people working with the Alex the parrot are good example too. I think they wanted him to reason and think so much that they sometimes let their emotions cloud and influence the way they interpreted what they were seeing - maybe not.

Sorry to carry on so long, but faith is one of my favorite subjects.

Bama

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24. Comment #70125 by Yorker on September 14, 2007 at 7:20 am

23. Comment #70122 by oxytocin

Well, I assumed a child able to understand cause and effect, perhaps 3 years old but you probably have a better handle on that. Since he explained his contrary findings to his mother, I suppose it would indicate his past experience had been positive i.e. his mother was to be trusted.

I agree with the rest of what you said and wondered if that single instance of his mother being wrong would cause the child to take more future risks or would he revert to trust again. I guess it might simply become a question of frequency.

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25. Comment #70128 by bamafreethinker on September 14, 2007 at 7:30 am

Oxytocin

I thought about the trust/faith question quite a bit and I think they can, for the discussion at hand anyway, be used almost interchangeably. We trust our parents to transfer good beliefs/knowledge to us. Our beliefs are based on our faith in our parents.

Faith is an ambiguous word isn't it? Almost as prone to semantics as the words god and religion!

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26. Comment #70129 by Yorker on September 14, 2007 at 7:30 am

24. Comment #70124 by bamafreethinker

No, I said he grabbed the hot wire because that was my point, his mother would most likely not know that a shock would only happen if he held the hot wire AND simultaneously grounded himself. Most floors are non-conductive and most kids footwear is likewise these days, holding the hot wire alone would be harmless.

His mother had unwittingly given him only a partial truth that did not hold in all circumstances. He therefore thought she was wrong but of course didn't know why himself and she thought she was right, a case of a little knowledge possibly leading to further danger.

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27. Comment #70135 by oxytocin on September 14, 2007 at 7:44 am

bamafreethinker,
All scientists have agendas. Some of us are better at hiding them than others! Also, some of us do research in areas in which we have no stake one way or the other, which is probably the best way to do it. In my doctoral training, I conducted research in several areas that I was interested in, but didn't have any assumptions beforehand. Consequently, I think I did my most objective work there. Although passions can drive scientists to do a lot of work, it might not be their BEST work since they may be motivated to confirm a theory or provide preliminary evidence in support of a hypothesis. The beauty of science, though, is that there are always other scientists [many times anonymously, in the case of the peer review process] waiting to assault your work with intellectual bazookas. This is what keeps us honest, and it is what differentiates science from other forms of discourse. Individual scientists cannot be and should not be ENTIRELY trusted in and of themselves. It is the body and process of science as a whole that has credibility. I think this is a fundamental point.

Again, I will assert that we might be best served if we refer to our respect of authorities as "trust", since we can examine the evidence for ourselves if we choose to. For example, if a physician prescribes you a med for epilepsy, and you're still flopping around on the floor on a daily basis, you may choose to dig into the data for yourself to see if you have other options. This is in stark contrast with faith in religion for which there is no evidence [except for magic books].

As for your comment on faith, yes, upon further reflection, I think you're right in the case of young children. If we assume that a child's unwavering belief in their parent's infallibility is a homologue to religious belief, then we are on firm ground. This all needs to be empirically supported, and I have no idea how to do that.

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28. Comment #70136 by Russell Blackford on September 14, 2007 at 7:44 am

(Haymoon, psssst: it would never occur to me that I am well enough known in any circles that you or anyone else should have heard of me outside of my comments here. I'm obscure in the scheme of things.

I'm just someone who has long been a fan of Richard Dawkins and who - for various reasons - is now sufficiently focused on the issues raised in TGD to take an interest in making comments on this site and in doing something for the cause of critiqueing religion's pretensions.)

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29. Comment #70146 by bamafreethinker on September 14, 2007 at 7:57 am

Yorker,

I would think that the child might compartmentalize things in such a case. "Mom is usually good at keeping me safe, she just doesn't know much about wires. I'll ask dad when he get's home."

I think we have to go on track records when it come to faith/trust and hopefully mom has a good one up to this point and some of the child's "testing" has proven that; such as checking to see if that iron was really hot or that vinegar really tasted bad.

Hence my rejection of the bible.

Or maybe she should just spank his little arse and send him to his room : )

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30. Comment #70147 by Yorker on September 14, 2007 at 7:59 am

Oxytocin

In recent years my diabetic condition has brought me into more contact with doctors than ever before. Initially, I thought it would be easy to find an atheistic doctor (my preference) but was somewhat surprised to discover that many are religious. I would've thought that seeing the realities of life and the finality of death on an almost daily basis, would cause many to doubt a god but clearly this is not so. What is your experience of such doctors and what is their mindset?

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31. Comment #70149 by Yorker on September 14, 2007 at 8:04 am

bamafreethinker

Tut, tut, they frown upon the spanking of little arses nowadays don't you know? At least, in a non-sexual way! :)

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32. Comment #70153 by BAEOZ on September 14, 2007 at 8:08 am

Russell. I've just commented on the blog of Irfan Yusef, who seems extremely reasonable to me. But then he contradicts his reasonable comments by pointing out that this or that Imam stopped him suicide bombing because that Imam convinced him that it was written in the Quran that it is wrong to kill yourself. He's proud of that. To me, it seems that if there was no book for muslims nor for christians, etc, there'd be no reason to kill yourself to curry favor....Yet he never got that.
How can we convince believers that their moderate stance is only one part of the continuum of lies that is the death stance? All supernatural is unatural (lie), we just need a way to point that out....

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33. Comment #70155 by oxytocin on September 14, 2007 at 8:10 am

Yorker, to be frank, my experience with physicians has been entirely devoid of religious content. That is, I have never heard a physician refer to any magic [beyond their own god-complex, that is]. I've heard some psychiatrists comment disparagingly about religion, but that's the extent of it. I would defer, however, to the data on the beliefs of physicians since my own perceptions of informally collected data will invariably be inaccurate.

However, I will say: 1-physicians are not trained as scientists, 2-I've read that they're leaving evolution out of medical school for fear of controversy, and 3-experiencing death often times increases one's belief in deities. I would refer you to Francis Collins and his account of how he became deluded.

BAEOZ, I think that this chap you've mentioned is relying on his moral feelings, and justifying them with the Quran.

bamafreethinker, contained within your facetious comment of slapping arses is a kernel of truth. Aggression can be used by an authority to re-assert their position of power, resetting the cognitive stance of the underling. Xians do this very well with shunning and fears of eternal punishments. Consequently, one's doubts may "vanish" when coming face-to-face with Satan's pitchfork.

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34. Comment #70156 by BAEOZ on September 14, 2007 at 8:13 am

Oxcytocin: I would refer you to your own sagacity. Are you and Russell Blackford actually Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris?

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35. Comment #70157 by bamafreethinker on September 14, 2007 at 8:13 am

oxytocin,

I agree that all scientists have an agenda, and without a doubt the best agenda is to find the truth/facts without preconceptions – but there again a hypothesis is a kind of preconception isn't it? The best scenario may be when you have two legitimate hypothesis and you get to let them compete without prejudice. I think that the double-blind test is one of science's greatest tools.

Religion thinks it already has the facts so why bother looking? That is one of the saddest things about religion!

Can't trust and faith be used interchangeably in religion a well? The trust is just shifted to religions leaders or magic texts? More semantics I guess - not really worth thinking about much more.

Great thought everyone! I've enjoyed them all.

Bama

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36. Comment #70159 by Yorker on September 14, 2007 at 8:17 am

Oxytocin said:

"I've read that they're leaving evolution out of medical school for fear of controversy..."

That's shocking! Isn't evolution the basis of biology? I'm a non-professional in that field but that's what the professionals tell me. I hope you're referring only to a part of the USA!

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37. Comment #70161 by BAEOZ on September 14, 2007 at 8:21 am

Yorker:

That's shocking! Isn't evolution the basis of biology?

As a programmer you'd understand the HAL (hardware abstraction layer). Engineers understand math but many will tell you it doesn't interfere with their belief (because the can ignore the science). Just as doctors understand the body, but they abstract that from the physics, chemistry and biology. It's not necessary to understand evolution (except on a micro level that comprehends resistant bacteria, they all accept resistant staflicocci) to get a degree and make your preacher happy.

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38. Comment #70163 by bamafreethinker on September 14, 2007 at 8:24 am

Living in the bible belt, it's hard to find ANYONE who's not a believer and I've not had much experience with doctors – thank god (Oops… I've only been out a few years : )

The doctors I've dealt with however, seemed to keep their religion totally out of their medical business – with the exception of a few wall-hangings – so it doesn't bother me much at all. As long as they know they're stuff…

RD is coming to my state (about an hour away) on Oct. 3 (my birthday), but the event is sold out : (

Bama

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39. Comment #70164 by Yorker on September 14, 2007 at 8:25 am

38. Comment #70161 by BAEOZ

Haha, good analogy. But sometimes I wonder if they do understand the body, sometimes I think they've lost the manual!

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40. Comment #70168 by oxytocin on September 14, 2007 at 8:30 am

Bama,
Ok, let's return to science 101. A hypothesis is a VITAL component of science. It says: based on the evidence we have so far, I think that under these conditions, x will be the case. That is called my "alternative hypotheis". The baseline assumption, however, is called the "null hypothesis" which states the reverse: NO! It is not the case. Inherent to the scientific method, then, is the philosophy of disconfirmation. This is essential. Rather than saying: I must prove x to be the case, the orientation is ultimately stated as: I must prove x wrong. This is a strength of science that assists in facilitating objectivity.

Yorker: Sadly, I must report that a psychiatrist buddy of mine confirmed that he did not learn a lick about evolution in med school. That, of course, says nothing about med school as a whole in Canada, but it was his experience nonetheless. And yes, as it has been said before, nothing in biology makes sense outside the context of evolution.

BAEOZ: I am a pimple of the ass of science.

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41. Comment #70171 by bamafreethinker on September 14, 2007 at 8:38 am

oxytocin,

I haven't thought much about the structure and terminology of scientific research since the ninth grade (about 25 years ago) so forgive me :).

I think we agree... we just don't realize it.

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42. Comment #70173 by oxytocin on September 14, 2007 at 8:44 am

Bama, I am sure you're right. No worries; I think all scientists should help to inform people about what science is really about.

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43. Comment #70175 by BAEOZ on September 14, 2007 at 8:47 am

Oxcytocin, I'm a pimple in the arse of a pimple in the arse. And not necessarily of science.

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44. Comment #70242 by kev_s on September 14, 2007 at 1:35 pm

On this subject, I recommend "The Unnatural Nature of Science" - "Why Science does not make (common) sense" by Lewis Wolpert (1992). It is a bit surprising this was not referenced by Bloom and Skolnick Weisberg because it deals directly with the problem. One small quote ...
"The central theme presented in this book is that many of the misunderstandings about the nature of science might be corrected once it is realised just how 'unnatural' science it."
I remember one of my first physics lessons. The teacher had asked us what would happen if we put a lump of lead into mercury. Would it float? The cube of lead was passed from hand to hand so we could feel how much it weighed (perhaps that is illegal these days?) and I said, "If that floats in there I'll eat my hat!"
This was a very strong lesson to me about the counter-intuitive nature of science. In my case the humiliation of being forced to try and eat my hat by my peers never made me forget it! We all laughed so much it was painful but I had to try a bite at least!
I think this shows that perhaps the secret is to teach in this way; directly confront the unnatural, non common-sense things and demonstrate through experiment how things really are. If we started each science lesson with something like, "Now you might think that xxx works like this, seems obvious doesn't it? Well today we're going to find out how it really works."
Maybe it wouldn't take too many of these lessons for the message to sink in and perhaps skeptiscm about 'common-sense' knowledge would emerge.
I am not a teacher so please forgive me if this is stating something that is already well understood.

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45. Comment #70245 by Raiv on September 14, 2007 at 2:01 pm

Baeoz: You beat me to it. I was wondering if others realized how closely doctors and engineers relate,.. what I mean is they are not scientists themselves, instead practical 'appliers' of science. It wouldn't surprise me one bit to find out that the percentage of believers/non-believers in both engineering and medicine are almost identical. Hmm,.. except that the doctors ARE exposed more to death and emotional situations,.. they may have more spiritual tendencies,..

Bama: I like your writing and viewpoints, but I have to disagree with your position regarding faith. Believing something your friend or parents tell you is not faith. It is based on reason. It is reasonable to believe something your friend/family tells you because you're weighing it against everything else they've ever told you and how all of that has checked out. I don't mean to make it sound like you're making it a point to sit and ponder your entire relationship every time someone says something to you. That trust or distrust (which has been based on reason) has been steadily built over the history of the relationship.

Sorry if my points aren't clear, if anyone understands what I'm getting at maybe they can explain it better than I can.

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46. Comment #70250 by sabre_truth on September 14, 2007 at 2:42 pm

Okay, so we have here a review of research into the understanding of resistance to science. I am in training as a scientist and educator. So, what I am really interested in is the development of strategies to combat this problem. Ideally, we should try to develop a wide array of strategies adapted to th huge variety of learning styles. I hope this research helps in that task, but it is just a beginning.

When I was a child I lived on a street with an almost imperceptible downgrade to the south. So when playing ball and the ball went out into the road, it would roll south. Because most the the maps that I saw were displayed with south as toward the bottom of the map, I hypothesized that things tended to go "down" and south was down, so things naturally would go south. So when I learned around the age of 5 or 6 that the Nile River flows northward, I was perplexed. Before long I noticed that there were other slopes where I played with downgrades to the north, so it was in fact the direction "away from the sky" that determined the motion of things. Then, I noticed how silly my original idea was because if south was really "down" in that sense, everything would slide off the face of the earth in that direction.
Combined with other observations, this led me in time to understand gravitation and the roundness of the planet.

I have to wonder whether part of the problem is a lack of experimental habits of mind. Too much is perhaps invested in the authoritative presentation of knowledge, and not enough in hands-on, observational and experimental education. It was only through the accumulation of observational experience that I was able to disprove my incorrect (if childishly cute) theory. After living long enough with the accumulation of these kinds of experiences, I eventually understood the scientific method in a mature way as the testing of explanatory models against the accumulation of data.

I would like to know what it was apart from possibly some natural aptitude for empirical thinking which led me to pick up on science from an early age, whereas many people, even among my contemporaries in college, still have trouble grasping so much apart from trusting the authority of scientists, if even that. What was it about the education I received from my elders both in my family and in the schools which nurtured scientific reasoning? In the simplest terms, it had to be the encouragement to question and to always remain curious for new evidence, and perhaps most importantly, to pay attention to what was actually going on in the world around me. How can I make use of these lessons drawn from my own experience and from psychological research to be a more effective teacher?

There is always some degree of reliance upon authority in evaluating claims. What I have confirmed empirically for myself in a laboratory is very much limited by my own access and the extent of my own education. I am not an expert in virtually any field -- I barely even have any expertise in my own field of optical physics. I have no rigorous understanding of evolutionary biology or climate science, yet I accept evolution by natural selection and anthropogenic global warming. All I have to go on in each case is the lucidity of exposition of the evidence and how it fits the model done by talented educator-experts. I rely upon their scientific integrity and the consistency between multiple sources to be able to trust that they are being thorough and honest. In the media, I often see this "good faith" being undermined by sensationalism such as health scare reports that go back and forth and by outright fictions such as the existence of a significant body of methodologically sound climate research which contradicts the consensus. Here, in addition to the skeptical attitude which looks for soundness of methodology and consistency between sources, it is necessary to be media savvy. Unfortunately, because of the ineptitude in much of the mass media's reporting of science, it is science itself which is called into question in many people's minds, rather than journalistic practices.

So, in conclusion, while we don't have to make every member of the population into a professional scientist, we need to instill critical reasoning skills in relationship to not only science itself, but to our media information resources as well. Living in a wiki-world wrapped in the winds of the blogosphere, where a strong gust of rumor can easily run us aground on shoals of falsehood, it is more important than ever that we equip all members of society with the compass of reason and the astrolabe of evidence.

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47. Comment #70293 by oxytocin on September 14, 2007 at 6:46 pm

Raiv:
On the matter of faith and relationships, I would agree with you that we call upon our histories with people in our midst. The interesting thing about this, though, is that it is a non-conscious process...we don't sit there recollecting all of our transactions with people in our social circle, but we react with a feeling or intuition as to whether we should trust someone. This is one of the shortcuts of human cognition; these feelings can be experimentally induced as well, as can feelings of intimacy [behaviorally and chemically]. People will not consciously know where their feelings came from.

sabre_truth:
I think we're all in the same boat with regard to our individual niches of expertise. This becomes increasingly problematic the more advanced we become as a species; our knowledge grows and our ability to take it in remains constant, and we become specialists within specialties. I think this is why it is so vital that we learn about the scientific method, fortify the structural integrity of science, and learn about critical thinking from an early age. If we do this, we might have some chance at evaluating evidence presented in branches of science with which we have only passing familiarity. If we cannot fully know as much as we would like, at least we should have the intellectual tools in our possession to do so if we choose.

What worries me is that the perception of our knowledge [growing ever larger] may become so overwhelming to society that I wonder if people, en masse, might not just flee back to the safe confines of religion as a means of simple "knowing". Although it may not mean knowing anything substantive, it is an illusion that I think humans gravitate towards all too readily.

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48. Comment #70297 by Raiv on September 14, 2007 at 7:04 pm

Oxytocin said: The interesting thing about this, though, is that it is a non-conscious process...we don't sit there recollecting all of our transactions with people in our social circle, but we react with a feeling or intuition as to whether we should trust someone. This is one of the shortcuts of human cognition;


EXACTLY. You found the words better than I could. Thanks.

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49. Comment #70309 by sabre_truth on September 14, 2007 at 9:13 pm

Interesting that the discussion came around to the word "faith". In the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, there is a four-level definition of faith, graded hierarchically, and I think it is instructive for the purposes of our present discussion. No need to associate it with any of the metaphysical claims of those particular traditions.

The first level of faith is wish-thinking: wanting something to be so based on a desire for a better state of existence. This is the primary motivational factor in most religious thinking: faith is imposed out of a desire for salvation, or simply for an easier explanation of a complex reality.

The second level of faith is authoritative confidence: one trusts what comes from a certain source because what they have said has been shown true in previous circumstances. This is the sense in which I think bama is using the word, and it is probably indispensable to every person to varying degrees depending upon their relationship to the object of knowledge at a given time. I myself could be said to have this kind of faith with relation to the fields of science in which I am not expert.

The third level of faith is devotion or dedication: one endeavors to achieve a specific end through will, based on a value-based commitment to that purpose, and trusts that through appropriate exertion such an end will be attained. This is relevant to a mature relationship to one's spouse, for example (even though the goal is not necessarily in the future, but may be just the maintenance of the fruitfulness of the marriage). It also applies to a life's work, to pursuing a particular discipline or project even through the difficult and disillusioning points. It applies personally in my dedication to my particular scientific field, as well as to the broader project of deepening the public understanding of science in general.

The fourth level of faith is conviction through direct realization: this is the certitude (attitude approaching certainty, though it may not be fully "certain" epistemically) garnered by seeing something consistently proven true in one's experience. This is what occurs in the mind when one has completed a particularly rigorous course of applied study and attained the desired results. It applies to the scientific endeavor as the confirmation of theory through repeated experimental and/or observational test. It is only this kind of "faith" which can, in my view, be properly called knowledge.

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50. Comment #70365 by Raiv on September 15, 2007 at 5:13 am

Very interesting Sabre. Based on those levels it seems to me that we're discussing whether the first and second levels can be rolled into the same, broader category of 'faith'. I argue they cannot, for fear of the faithful claiming that since the second level of faith is healthy, the first level of faith is as well. Since we don't have those shades of 'faith' in the west, it's better to use different words to show the line of delineation, ie. trust, reason, faith, etc. 'Faith' only applying to the first level of faith you described in use by the Buddhists.

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