One tactic of persuasion often put forth in favor of the supernatural is a (deeply sincere) report of someone's own past experiences; appropriately, this category of evidence is called anecdotal. A confession of an occurrence--an anecdote--may seem quite convincing to the witness. After all, it's not a tangle of philosophical premises or an admonition to "just trust", but an observation of reality. "Seeing is believing."
However, scientific studies of complicated phenomena that are tied to human experience, such as medicine, use different standards. First, if at all possible, the observer or subject shouldn't be notified that he or she is expected to report a positive result. That is, the observers should be placed without their knowledge in one of two groups. One group is the "experimental" group, which is expected to give a real report. The second group is the "control" group, which is not really undergoing the same test but is nevertheless under that impression (in some cases with a placebo). This way, the effect of observer bias is "controlled for": the observations of everyone in the control group are only based on bias. Their incorrect assumption is that they are giving a real report. The observers or subjects don't have awareness of what they are "expected" to say, so they're "blind". This method is "single-blind".
Yet bias could still be creeping into the study. What if the conductors/interviewers of the study, due to their own awareness of which group each observer is in, influence what the observers say, no matter how subtly? The conductors of the study have their own stake or bias, after all. They want a cleanly definitive set of observations that match the reality of what is under study. Those in the control group should report negative results and those in the experimental group should report positive results. A better way is to also "blind" the conductors of the study such that nobody involved knows who is in which group until the analysis afterward. During the study, that information is stored separately. Since both sides aren't aware of whether a particular observation really supports what is under study, the method is "double-blind".
Data that supports the existence of the supernatural is either measurable or not. If the data isn't measurable, then it must consist of human observations. But if the data is human observations, then the data collection should be double-blind in order to eliminate bias as much as possible. If the data collection can't be double-blind, then it should be single-blind. If the data collection can't be single-blind, then its level of relative credibility is indeed low. The inherent inability to systematically eliminate bias from observations of the supernatural is partly why some people are skeptical.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Friday, March 7, 2008
secular values
For most people, and through much of history, their values (i.e., the qualities they value) have been intertwined with their religion. This isn't surprising because values and religion are parts of a culture, which is a connected whole. Values, especially the relative priority of each, form the starting point for the free moral decisions made by each individual. Values are therefore vital to a society.
If someone works to reduce the influence of religion on a culture, or eliminate religion altogether (based on the quaint notion that godlessness produces utopia), then he or she must also ensure that the resulting culture will have the values people need to make good decisions. With religion no longer playing a role, secular values are the only option. "Secular" in this context doesn't mean anti-religious, just non-religious. What are secular values, and what is the basis and/or the justification of those values? The issue must be addressed convincingly by people who wish to sweep religion out of culture. A culture must contain livable and functional values to be viable.
If someone works to reduce the influence of religion on a culture, or eliminate religion altogether (based on the quaint notion that godlessness produces utopia), then he or she must also ensure that the resulting culture will have the values people need to make good decisions. With religion no longer playing a role, secular values are the only option. "Secular" in this context doesn't mean anti-religious, just non-religious. What are secular values, and what is the basis and/or the justification of those values? The issue must be addressed convincingly by people who wish to sweep religion out of culture. A culture must contain livable and functional values to be viable.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
case of the nonexistent brain
No, the title doesn't refer to a particularly vicious insult. It refers to a misleading story I've received numerous times via email. To summarize, a teacher/professor tells a student that since God can't be directly observed God must not exist. Then the student retorts that since the teacher/professor's brain can't be directly observed his/her brain must not exist, either. Not nearly as poetic as comparing God to the wind, but much more incisive. (It also superficially resembles another gambit: if all human thoughts originate from lumps of matter called "brains", then how can someone trust any of his or her own conclusions?)
The story's moral is certainly valid: not everything that exists can be directly sensed. However, any readers of the story (and there are many) should not be misled into applying this childish moral to the actual philosophical clash between belief systems that include the supernatural and belief systems that deny it. The problem isn't that the moral is inapplicable to the clash; the problem is that the moral offers no "ammunition" for either side, because everybody believes it. To represent the opposing point of view as being so crippled is dishonest.
In fact, very few human endeavors of significance can happen without assuming the truth of this moral. When someone shakes a closed, opaque container or weighs it to determine how much is inside the container, the inability to directly sense the contents doesn't result in someone assuming the contents don't exist. When a hurtling object is momentarily blocked from view by a tree or pole, the inability to directly sense the object for an instant doesn't result in someone assuming the object blinked out of existence. The inability to see germs or atoms with the unaided eye doesn't result in someone assuming such things don't exist. The inability to directly sense thermodynamic energy (we only see evidence of energy when it's transferred by doing something) doesn't result in someone assuming it spontaneously appears and vanishes.
Unlike the teacher caricature in the story, people who say there's no proof for the supernatural can then say they have brains without contradicting themselves. They would do this by patiently enumerating the "brain evidence": over time many observations have consistently shown that humans have brains, and over time many other observations have consistently shown that the body under consideration, exhibit "Me", is indeed a human just like the rest. Therefore, it's reasonable to conclude that exhibit "Me" has a brain. They would then go on to state that a similar chain of evidence doesn't hold for evaluating statements about the supernatural.
One last important point is that the moral doesn't act as a persuasive point for the existence of any given supernatural entity. In short, the truth that some things that exist are nonphysical does not mean that anything that is nonphysical exists. Don't accidentally place God in the same category as leprechauns and fairies.
The story's moral is certainly valid: not everything that exists can be directly sensed. However, any readers of the story (and there are many) should not be misled into applying this childish moral to the actual philosophical clash between belief systems that include the supernatural and belief systems that deny it. The problem isn't that the moral is inapplicable to the clash; the problem is that the moral offers no "ammunition" for either side, because everybody believes it. To represent the opposing point of view as being so crippled is dishonest.
In fact, very few human endeavors of significance can happen without assuming the truth of this moral. When someone shakes a closed, opaque container or weighs it to determine how much is inside the container, the inability to directly sense the contents doesn't result in someone assuming the contents don't exist. When a hurtling object is momentarily blocked from view by a tree or pole, the inability to directly sense the object for an instant doesn't result in someone assuming the object blinked out of existence. The inability to see germs or atoms with the unaided eye doesn't result in someone assuming such things don't exist. The inability to directly sense thermodynamic energy (we only see evidence of energy when it's transferred by doing something) doesn't result in someone assuming it spontaneously appears and vanishes.
Unlike the teacher caricature in the story, people who say there's no proof for the supernatural can then say they have brains without contradicting themselves. They would do this by patiently enumerating the "brain evidence": over time many observations have consistently shown that humans have brains, and over time many other observations have consistently shown that the body under consideration, exhibit "Me", is indeed a human just like the rest. Therefore, it's reasonable to conclude that exhibit "Me" has a brain. They would then go on to state that a similar chain of evidence doesn't hold for evaluating statements about the supernatural.
One last important point is that the moral doesn't act as a persuasive point for the existence of any given supernatural entity. In short, the truth that some things that exist are nonphysical does not mean that anything that is nonphysical exists. Don't accidentally place God in the same category as leprechauns and fairies.
Friday, February 29, 2008
please stop using the word "covenant"
Please. I understand that as a Christian you feel obligated to start calling a promise or pledge a "covenant", much the same way you call any gathering of Christians "fellowship", particularly when they're eating. But unless you're sacrificing an animal or two, choose another word than "covenant". Remember, speaking in King James English doesn't earn you additional divine consideration. Not only because it would be incredibly unfair to anyone whose first language isn't any form of English, but also because it's not even close to the language actually spoken by the Lord anyway...
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Worldview Fragment: faith as its own justification
Worldview fragment: one or more related ideas/viewpoints that can (and often do) serve as a component or flavor in a complete worldview held by some specific individual. The "fragment" term is not intended to be a subtle insult, but to accurately reflect the reality that the fragment is 1) not necessarily an actual, comprehensive worldview, and 2) could likely coexist with a variety of other fragments within some individual's worldview. A puzzle piece isn't worthless because it's a puzzle piece.
Before proceeding, the definition of "faith" in this worldview fragment must be clarified, because "faith" has many rich meanings, some of which have occupied Christian thinkers for years. In this fragment, however, the meaning of "faith" is uncomplicated. A quote from Miracle on 34th Street, a movie which is teeming over with this worldview fragment, expresses it well:
In short, faith is the broad category of thought that disregards the accepted standards of evidential truth, epitomized by scientific methods and procedures. An editorial like "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" advances its suppositions about Santa Claus, fairies, the unknown, the unseen, the sublime, and a raft of Platonic Ideals explicitly NOT on the basis of actual verification but on the observation that the effect of those beliefs is good--in fact, the effect of life being worthwhile! A top theme of Miracle on 34th Street is the same mismatch or dichotomy, personified by the conflicts between Fred Gailey and Doris Walker, and it comes to a similar conclusion:
Obviously, the problem here is not the mere defense of the existence of and need for love, joy, hope, compassion, imagination, etc. Christianity asserts and defends the same! The problem lies in acknowledging the existence of the dilemma and therefore mounting a defense at all. For Christians (and others), "leap of 'faith' " is not an apt description of the way they think. God exists and is good. Humanity has value not because we say it does nor because we have highly-advanced herd-animal empathy for one another's genes, but because God created humanity to exhibit a divine spiritual spark. Faith no longer has to be its own justification, as a wish-fulfillment escape hatch from soul-crushing reality. Rather, faith is a Christian virtue, the strength-giving virtue of confidently trusting God in all of life's details.
Some would have us think that, in a universe whose mysteries are not mysterious and whose purpose is nonexistent, the only path to meaning is elaborate fantasies that must be taken on "faith". (Creatively clever writers have noticed that even stories containing blatantly unrealistic, perhaps nonsensical, elements can avoid the obvious question "Doesn't this mean that the story presumes the existence of the supernatural, and therefore a supernatural Source, God?" simply by explicitly or implicitly framing those elements in the "have faith, not questions or truth" mode of illusionists.) That faith is not Christianity. It's not why Christ died. The intangibles are actually tangibles. Good is backed by Someone, while Evil is rebellion against Him.
Before proceeding, the definition of "faith" in this worldview fragment must be clarified, because "faith" has many rich meanings, some of which have occupied Christian thinkers for years. In this fragment, however, the meaning of "faith" is uncomplicated. A quote from Miracle on 34th Street, a movie which is teeming over with this worldview fragment, expresses it well:
Faith is believing when common sense tells you not to. Don't you see? It's not just Kris that's on trial, it's everything he stands for. It's kindness and joy and love and all the other intangibles.Then faith, according to this fragment, is the opposite of reason. It's the opposite of sensory experience. It's the opposite of systematic inquiry. It's belief grounded in nothing. It's commitment to a disembodied idea. It's a mental leap into a void. It's warping something tangible to better fit something intangible.
In short, faith is the broad category of thought that disregards the accepted standards of evidential truth, epitomized by scientific methods and procedures. An editorial like "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" advances its suppositions about Santa Claus, fairies, the unknown, the unseen, the sublime, and a raft of Platonic Ideals explicitly NOT on the basis of actual verification but on the observation that the effect of those beliefs is good--in fact, the effect of life being worthwhile! A top theme of Miracle on 34th Street is the same mismatch or dichotomy, personified by the conflicts between Fred Gailey and Doris Walker, and it comes to a similar conclusion:
Look Doris, someday you're going to find that your way of facing this realistic world just doesn't work. And when you do, don't overlook those lovely intangibles. You'll discover those are the only things that are worthwhile.In other words, everything real (i.e., tangible) is determined by observation and experimentation, but everything that matters most is believable solely by furiously shutting one's eyes against the exact same standards and pretending. Faith is pretending pretty things, not seeing. Is it any wonder that "people of faith" (a fascinating label in itself) don't feel flattered when "people of science" (another fascinating label) interview them, debate them, or portray them like this? Some people will say they "wish they could believe like you do". If anyone wants a prime example of damning with faint praise, that would be it. "I wish I held to your beliefs just as I wish I held to other fictional beliefs, like Santa Claus and fairies and objective, transcendent morality."
Obviously, the problem here is not the mere defense of the existence of and need for love, joy, hope, compassion, imagination, etc. Christianity asserts and defends the same! The problem lies in acknowledging the existence of the dilemma and therefore mounting a defense at all. For Christians (and others), "leap of 'faith' " is not an apt description of the way they think. God exists and is good. Humanity has value not because we say it does nor because we have highly-advanced herd-animal empathy for one another's genes, but because God created humanity to exhibit a divine spiritual spark. Faith no longer has to be its own justification, as a wish-fulfillment escape hatch from soul-crushing reality. Rather, faith is a Christian virtue, the strength-giving virtue of confidently trusting God in all of life's details.
Some would have us think that, in a universe whose mysteries are not mysterious and whose purpose is nonexistent, the only path to meaning is elaborate fantasies that must be taken on "faith". (Creatively clever writers have noticed that even stories containing blatantly unrealistic, perhaps nonsensical, elements can avoid the obvious question "Doesn't this mean that the story presumes the existence of the supernatural, and therefore a supernatural Source, God?" simply by explicitly or implicitly framing those elements in the "have faith, not questions or truth" mode of illusionists.) That faith is not Christianity. It's not why Christ died. The intangibles are actually tangibles. Good is backed by Someone, while Evil is rebellion against Him.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Worldview Fragment: cultural accommodation through appeasement
Worldview fragment: one or more related ideas/viewpoints that can (and often do) serve as a component or flavor in a complete worldview held by some specific individual. The "fragment" term is not intended to be a subtle insult, but to accurately reflect the reality that the fragment is 1) not necessarily an actual, comprehensive worldview, and 2) could likely coexist with a variety of other fragments within some individual's worldview. A puzzle piece isn't worthless because it's a puzzle piece.
The basic, introductory outline of Christianity is simple, and people often express it as a handful of steps or tenets. It's also highly adaptable. One of the factors of its longevity and ubiquity is the effective repackaging people have done to extend the Gospel to those who deeply need it yet don't or can't comprehend their own need because the unpackaged form of it seems irrelevant. The adjective "Christianized" arose for good reason. A top theme of Acts is the spreading of Christianity, which was founded by God in the guise of a Jew, from one people group to other, drastically-different people groups. This long and distinguished tradition could be referred to as cultural accommodation because it consists of taking the whole Gospel and integrating or transplanting it into a previously foreign culture.
Any honest Christian will tell you that this integration is never perfect nor easy. However, for Christians the essential mismatch between Christianity and culture does have a straightforward explanation: culture comes from people, while Christianity comes from God. The sinful components of a culture don't and shouldn't mix well with the holiness components of Christianity. Plainly, just as some parts of the presentation of Christianity are subject to cultural accommodation, some parts of the accommodated culture are subject to rejection by Christianity. To use the Bible's metaphors, the salt must keep being salty to be useful; Christianity must have an observable, statistical effect on Christians (regardless of culture) to be Christianity.
In contrast, some well-meaning people who have a commendable level of enthusiasm for the Lost fall into the error of "solving" the real conflict of ideas between Christianity and culture by taking cultural accommodation to such an extreme that Christianity ceases to be Christianity in any meaningful and/or significant sense. When a participant in a conflict concedes too much for the sake of peace, this is appeasement. Christian appeasers could operate in a variety of different ways; boiled down to the most fundamental form these are recanting or abandoning, if not in so many words, the Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed, or the reliability of the Bible.
Of course, the appeasement can be so subtle that it escapes notice. Christian appeasers sound a lot like other Christians. They may also agree on many points. A Christian appeaser might not have started out that way, and might yet stop jettisoning the central concepts of Christianity in response to culture. (He or she could have drifted into becoming an appeaser simply out of unreflective exposure to culture.) Here and now, some of the Christian concepts commonly sacrificed on an individual or group basis to appease culture are:
The basic, introductory outline of Christianity is simple, and people often express it as a handful of steps or tenets. It's also highly adaptable. One of the factors of its longevity and ubiquity is the effective repackaging people have done to extend the Gospel to those who deeply need it yet don't or can't comprehend their own need because the unpackaged form of it seems irrelevant. The adjective "Christianized" arose for good reason. A top theme of Acts is the spreading of Christianity, which was founded by God in the guise of a Jew, from one people group to other, drastically-different people groups. This long and distinguished tradition could be referred to as cultural accommodation because it consists of taking the whole Gospel and integrating or transplanting it into a previously foreign culture.
Any honest Christian will tell you that this integration is never perfect nor easy. However, for Christians the essential mismatch between Christianity and culture does have a straightforward explanation: culture comes from people, while Christianity comes from God. The sinful components of a culture don't and shouldn't mix well with the holiness components of Christianity. Plainly, just as some parts of the presentation of Christianity are subject to cultural accommodation, some parts of the accommodated culture are subject to rejection by Christianity. To use the Bible's metaphors, the salt must keep being salty to be useful; Christianity must have an observable, statistical effect on Christians (regardless of culture) to be Christianity.
In contrast, some well-meaning people who have a commendable level of enthusiasm for the Lost fall into the error of "solving" the real conflict of ideas between Christianity and culture by taking cultural accommodation to such an extreme that Christianity ceases to be Christianity in any meaningful and/or significant sense. When a participant in a conflict concedes too much for the sake of peace, this is appeasement. Christian appeasers could operate in a variety of different ways; boiled down to the most fundamental form these are recanting or abandoning, if not in so many words, the Apostles' Creed, Nicene Creed, or the reliability of the Bible.
Of course, the appeasement can be so subtle that it escapes notice. Christian appeasers sound a lot like other Christians. They may also agree on many points. A Christian appeaser might not have started out that way, and might yet stop jettisoning the central concepts of Christianity in response to culture. (He or she could have drifted into becoming an appeaser simply out of unreflective exposure to culture.) Here and now, some of the Christian concepts commonly sacrificed on an individual or group basis to appease culture are:
- Truth. As courage is a basic ingredient of other virtues, the claim to truth is a basic ingredient of authentic Christian beliefs. To put it bluntly (in a definition philosophers will mock you for), truth is "all statements which correspond to reality". True Christianity is more than a "metanarrative", a "religion", a "belief system", or a "doctrine". It is. God isn't an analogy, a label for some inborn archetype, or a manifestation of the Divine Oneness of Being. God is. If a culture or someone inhabiting that culture doesn't believe in this kind of truth, particularly applied to the supernatural realm, then Christianity is so much nonsense and wasted energy--although it would still be excellent inspirational fiction.
- Sin/guilt. Morality confronts each individual with two facts: 1) some actions should be done while some actions should not be done, 2) on a more or less daily basis he or she doesn't do what he or she should and/or he or she does what he or she shouldn't. Christianity comprehensively addresses those two facts, and in fact is centered on them: the causes, the effects, the temporary cure, the ultimate cure, etc. Thus, each Christian believer must start out by recognizing that he or she is a sinner--an EVIL person. Isn't this an awful marketing challenge? Appeasers relinquish sin and divine judgment in favor of a self-improvement program whose net result is blessings for now and forever. When Christians (verbally) "convert" with the understanding that sin is just "the reallllly bad stuff I do occasionally", not "the despicable condition of my soul, fully deserving eternal punishment apart from mercy", why should onlookers be surprised that this appeasing version of Christianity leads to ineffective and hypocritical "Christians"?
- Hell. Christian appeasement to culture is almost as old as Christianity. And Hell is likely among both the oldest and most consistent victims of appeasement. "I can't believe in a good God who could send people to Hell." Hell's overwhelming unattractiveness makes that statement overwhelmingly attractive. Yet it also happens to be an oddly childish statement refuted by elementary points. 1) How could Good be Good and tolerate Evil indefinitely? 2) How could Heaven be Heaven if Evil is there? 3) If God's forgiveness really is that cheap, why did Jesus come and die? 4) Do the damned want to be with God (obeying, worshiping) anyway? 5) Most obviously, God HAS provided a freely-offered and fully-functioning escape from Hell--how is He therefore contradicting His "goodness credentials"?
- Blood. The Bible has plenty of sex and violence, which is a point people relish using against Christians when they actively campaign to restrict the distribution of prurient and/or violent media. (What really makes specific media unacceptable is the glorification and incitement of sex and violence--by portraying the desirable aspects while not portraying the real-world devastating consequences.) Christians can take some solace in rationalizing that much of it, and certainly the more disagreeable portions like slaughters and affairs, is pre-Christ. However, the topic of blood cannot be similarly avoided (if you don't like the word "blood", don't read Hebrews!). Throughout the Bible, blood is the atonement for sin. Hence the Christian songs which rhapsodize about Christ's blood, for it's how sinners can be reunited to God. And the ritual of Holy Communion, which seems to have cannibalistic overtones to people who don't grasp the concept and symbolism. Blood is still another concept which underscores the seriousness of Christianity (but that seriousness is coupled to the joy and hope of forgiveness, new life of repentance, and the Spirit). To appease a culture by denying blood's importance in Christianity is to sever ties to one of the long-standing pillars of historical understanding.
Thursday, January 3, 2008
agnostics don't celebrate agnosticmas
If someone uses the term "agnosticmas", then that person isn't an agnostic. Agnostics believe the "God question" is forever unanswerable. Therefore, the term "Christmas" (in the religious sense, celebration of the nativity) is neither true nor false. This means the term is also neither worthy of saying nor distorting into a shrill one-word commentary like "agnosticmas".
Agnostics don't celebrate Christmas, but by definition they also don't conclusively believe that Christmas is incorrect. An agnostic who twists a term to make a point is taking a definite stand...for atheism. There's no such thing as agnosticmas.
Agnostics don't celebrate Christmas, but by definition they also don't conclusively believe that Christmas is incorrect. An agnostic who twists a term to make a point is taking a definite stand...for atheism. There's no such thing as agnosticmas.
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