Religulous

A new movie from Liongate Entertainment called Religulous, starring Bill Maher and directed by Larry Charles (Borat, Curb Your Enthusiasm), is coming October 3rd, 2008:

The documentary RELIGULOUS follows political humorist and author Bill Maher (“Real Time With Bill Maher,” “Politically Incorrect”) as he travels around the globe interviewing people about God and religion. Known for his astute analytical skills, irreverent wit and commitment to never pulling a punch, Maher brings his characteristic honesty to an unusual spiritual journey. Directed by Larry Charles (BORAT: CULTURAL LEARNINGS OF AMERICA FOR MAKE BENEFIT GLORIOUS NATION OF KAZAKHSTAN, “Curb Your Enthusiasm”), RELIGULOUS will mark Charles’ first feature project since the critically acclaimed, wildly successful BORAT. Jonah Smith and Palmer West of Thousand Words (A SCANNER DARKLY, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM) and Bill Maher are producing.

View the trailer here.

A Little End of the Week Fun

These videos are awesome:

What's even more hilarious are all the comments that don't understand it's satire.

Intellectual Laziness: The Appeal of Over-Skepticism

I had a strange conversation recently. I got into an argument of sorts with an acquaintance that I see rarely on my daily commute. Initially, we were discussing the differences between HMO and PPO health care plans, but then that shifted to other topics: first, the balance between work incentives and promised benefits and then to the solvency of Social Security and Medicare.

Where the conversation grew worse was when this person made a claim that undocumented workers, or "illegal aliens" as he called them, were putting a strain on the system by receiving benefits. I quickly called bullshit and cited a collection of studies compiled by The Urban Institute that debunks many immigration myths; one being the myth that undocumented workers come to the United States to receive welfare benefits. But we didn't even get to debate this topic at all, because this person had already categorically denied that any truth can come from any individual or group.

A true nihilist (only in the sense that he rejects the idea of an objective truth), he went on to argue that I cannot know that what I am reading from organizations like The Urban Institute is truth. I pointed out that, using his logic, that I should not believe a word he says. He agreed with me. At least he was consistent.

His main arguments against my own were that his personally biased, anecdotally collected, and geographically limited observations that led him to broad generalizations about the world are enough to call into question the scientifically verifiable methodology, transparent and accessible data, and repeatable observations of organizations that make claims counter to his own ideas about the world.

I attempted to explain the idea of criteria analysis; the idea that since some sources are better than other sources, people should critically analyze each source based upon criteria laid out in Enlightenment philosophy. For example, a source that provides the raw data that its analysis is based upon would be a better source than one that does not. A source that provides a transparent and accessible methodology is also superior to a source that does not. These factors allow any disinterested individual to repeat the analysis, examine the data, and criticize the methodology. After much conversation back and forth, the end result is a much more robust analysis of the available data -- one that we can be reasonably assured to be truth because many disinterested parties have had the opportunity to criticize and alter the original analysis. This process is the basis of much of academia and is an example of how the scientific method of inquiry is put to practical use.

He unequivocally denied that this is possible, and again he used his own anecdotal evidence from past experiences about how data can be compromised in the lab, outside of the peering eyes of the public. He may very well be right that such things have occurred, and I do not doubt that such things still occur. But over time, these errors can be found out when the data is transparent and accessible. Academia is very transparent and accessible, and academics who conduct analysis that are not transparent and accessible are generally criticized and not taken as seriously as those who are. Organizations that use the same processes of academia can be held accountable, and that is the key to discovering truth.

Getting back to the point of argument that sparked this, I believe that I can be reasonably assured that the analysis from The Urban Institute is accurate because of the use of such open processes. Furthermore, to my knowledge no other academic has provided a damning criticism based on empirical evidence of the debunked immigration myths. I have not seen any scientifically vetted sources make claims to the contrary. Therefore, I have every reason to believe that what I have read is much closer to the truth than the anecdotal evidence of my debate partner.

Although I tried, there was simply no way for me to convey these ideas to him. He appealed to the value of skepticism. While I agree that skepticism has great value in a functioning democracy, his skepticism seemed unwarranted by the available evidence. Skepticism is healthy when it is used to show flaws or holes in existing analysis and data by using new, empirically derived evidence; however, this was not the kind of skepticism that he employed. His was based upon loosely connected anecdotal evidence, false analogies, and logical fallacies that led him to broad generalizations. That kind of skepticism would fall into the realm of conspiracy. The only conclusion that I could come to, as I said then, is that he appears to have rejected objective reality.

Why does this bother me? I have to wonder how many other people out there think the same way. In an email list that I sometimes participate in, I've run into this kind of intellectual laziness before. It seems that many people have given up on the idea of an objective reality. Many of these people subscribe to a conservative political ideology -- I wonder what kind of reaction I would get if I described how their points of view are very post-modern. On second thought, I'd probably be told that's bullshit without a second thought from them.

How can we reach people who think this way? How can there be a debate on things like public policy when the opposing point of view has already rejected the most robust method of intellectual inquiry ever thought by humans?

A History Lesson in Media and Democracy

Required reading for today -- an Al Gore speech from October of 2005. Here's a sample:

It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.

The German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as "the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like gobbledygook, but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant. And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance.

For further reading, look up Neil Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business.

This gets me thinking... will vlogging destroy blogging as television has destroyed print, or will blogging bring a return to the Rule of Reason?

Fuck American Anti-Intellectualism

Today, Eugene Robinson, or "Mean Eugene" as a good friend of mine is fond of calling him, has a column in The Washington Post advocating "an egghead for the oval office." The topic is built upon Al Gore's recent book, The Assault on Reason. I couldn't be more pleased that someone in the mainstream media is giving intellectualism its due credit!

Some highlights:

When I look at what the next president will have to deal with, I don't see much that can be solved with just a winning smile, a firm handshake and a ton of resolve. I see conundrums, dilemmas, quandaries, impasses, gnarly thickets of fateful possibility with no obvious way out.

[...]

I want a president who reads newspapers, who reads books other than those that confirm his worldview...

[...]

I want a president -- and it's amazing that I even have to put this on my wish list -- smart enough to know that Darwin was right.

Actually, I want a president smart enough to know a good deal about science.

[...]

I want the next president to be intellectually curious -- and also intellectually honest. I want him or her to understand the details, not just the big picture.

[...]

I don't want the candidates to pretend to be average people, because why would we choose an ordinary person for such an extraordinary job? I want to see what they've got -- how much they know, how readily they absorb new information, how effectively they analyze problems and evaluate solutions. If the next president is almost always the smartest person in the room, I won't mind a bit. After all, we're not in high school anymore.

Hopefully, more people will voice this concern. I, too, am sick of the rampant anti-intellectualism in this country. Why wouldn't we want the smartest and most capable person in America leading the country?

Science Is Not Religion

PZ Myers rules:

There is a fundamental contradiction [between science and religion]. Faith says that the way to get answers is by revelation, accepting authority, and dogma. Science says that the way to get answers is by examining the evidence critically, testing hypotheses with experiment in the natural world, and by constantly reevaluating and revising our ideas to make them more accurate. It isn't just that the two arrive at different, conflicting answers—for instance, that the earth is 6000 years old vs. 4.5 billion years old—but that their methods conflict. Scientists will not accept a random idea because someone contemplated and decided a deep "Truth" appealed to him: a kernel of observation and evidence is required.

It is disingenuous for Brownback to claim that science and religion do not contradict each other, given that religion contradicts itself. Which "same god" created the material order? Allah, Jehovah, Vishnu, Thunderbird, Jesus, Ymir? Which sect's interpretation will we accept: Catholic, Protestant, Sunni, Shi'a, Scientologist, Mormon? There are even two accounts of the creation in the book of Genesis that differ from each other greatly—which one is the "spiritual truth"? Most importantly, how will you objectively evaluate these explanations? [emphasis in original]

I couldn't have put it better myself. Myers rips apart an editorial by Senator Sam Brownback, printed in The New York Times. Read the whole thing.

And this hits on something that really bothers me -- when people call science a "religion." Science and religion couldn't be more opposed to one another even if they got up and clashed swords. Science is the antidote to religious inanity.

Philosophy of Epistemology

I've been wanting to get this post up for quite awhile now, but time hasn't permitted me to do so. Last week, I had a very interesting discussion with a good friend of mine on the train. The original topic concerned a statement made by Richard Dawkins, who famously equated the teaching of religion to children with abuse.

Dawkin's approach emphasized that religion's use of fear causes great mental abuse to children, but I took a different approach during this discussion with a friend. My argument for agreeing with Dawkins was as follows:

1. Deception is defined as misleading others to believe something to be true. As wikipedia states:

Deception is the manipulation of perception to alter thoughts and feelings through lies and cleverness. Deception involves concepts like propaganda, distraction and concealment. Fiction, while sometimes manipulative, is not a deception unless it is portrayed as the whole truth.

2. The question is, then, is deceiving children considered to be abuse? I would answer that it is. Under any definition of abuse, to be deceptive is to be emotionally and/or mentally abusive. Abuse is defined as using someone wrongly to one's own advantage. It can easily be argued that religion uses people to its own advantage through coercion. The Inquisition is a prime example.

3. Religion makes many claims about the universe, and also puts forth that these claims are truths. In other words, religion has made claims for which it also says are true.

4. In all the thousands of years that religion has been around, never once has religion provided any verifiable, empirical evidence to support these claims that it posits are true. Religions claim there is a god (or gods), yet they have never proven this claim. Under any logical framework, it is the responsibility for the one making the claim to provide the evidence to prove that the claim is true; it is not the responsibility of the person not making the claim to prove that the negative of that claim is true.

5. Since religion has not provided the necessary evidence to support its claims, yet religion still preaches these claims as truths, religion is being deceptive.

6. If religions are being deceptive, and if the teaching of deception amount to abuse, then the teaching of religion is abuse.

My friend raised some questions regarding epistemology -- namely that one cannot actually obtain an objective truth; therefore, one cannot be held accountable for claims that are believed to be true but not proven to be true. Because no one can analyze evidence through another's perception, we cannot know for certain that both are viewing the evidence in the same way; however, I would argue that with multiple, independent perceivers, we can verify that a piece of evidence is viewed virtually the same, and therefore, we can state that we are so reasonably close to the truth that we can call the evidence a truth. With each added independent perceiver, the chance of error decreases.

This is the basis of the scientific method -- which posits that we can only accept evidence for claims that are observable, repeatable, and verifiable. Science has a long track record of making claims, providing evidence to prove those claims, and altering those claims when new evidence arises that disproves the old evidence; we can say that science has a method to provide truths to a reasonable degree. Science also uses a transparent methodology, so that anyone with enough interest can repeat the experiments and observations used to prove claims. Religion has no such method in place, and is therefore unfit to make claims of truth.

Since religion has no such method to provide verifiable claims, since religion's claims in the past have been proven wrong again and again, and since religion continues to make claims that it states are true (but that religion cannot know for certain within a reasonable degree that those claims are true) then religion is being deceptive.

I only make the claim that religion cannot know that its claims are true because religion does not have a method with a proven track record for obtaining truths. To continue to make such claims is the very definition of being deceptive. I don't have to claim that religion's claims are false, because it is not my responsibility to prove the negative of their claims.

My friend would argue that I cannot prove that such deception is intentional, and therefore, I cannot call it abuse. Whether or not religion is intentionally deceptive is besides the point -- religion is still being deceptive, and religion still teaches that deception to children. Even if religion believes that such claims are true, then are then being self-deceptive and self-abusive. Religion, because it teaches claims that it cannot know to be true but still teaches those claims as truths, is both deceptive and abusive.

Harris/Sullivan Follow-up

I've been rather busy lately, so I'm late to post this. In case you haven't noticed, Harris has responded to Sullivan's last email. I think Harris gets to the heart of the matter with this paragraph:

You want to have things both ways: your faith is reasonable but not in the least bound by reason; it is a matter of utter certainty, yet leavened by humility and doubt; you are still searching for the truth, but your belief in God is immune to any conceivable challenge from the world of evidence. I trust you will ascribe these antinomies to the paradox of faith; but, to my eye, they remain mere contradictions, dressed up in velvet.

It is this kind of cognitive dissonance that worries me most regarding religious progressives. Partitioning their brains in order to preform such mental gymnastics must have some kind of negative cognitive effect in the long run. Why don't they just take the next logical step in their reasoning?

Sullivan Evades Challenges Posed By Harris

Yesterday, I blogged about an email exchange between authors Sam Harris and Andrew Sullivan titled, “Is Religion ‘Built Upon Lies’?” In my post, I quoted Harris’s more recent email, which laid out the most pressing questions unanswered by Sullivan that came out of the dialogue. Today, Sullivan writes back. Harris had previously asked Sullivan to consider the plausibility of these competing doctrines:

(1) There is no God.

(2) There is a God, but all of our religions have distorted Her reality. Jesus was just an ordinary prophet who happened to become the center of a myth-making cult. God loves everyone and has never been concerned about what a person believes. After death, all people, Christians and non-Christians, simply merge with the Deity in a loving embrace.

(3) Christianity is the one true religion, and Catholics have the truest version of it.

Instead of answering Harris honestly, Sullivan writes in his own answers, ultimately choosing these two:

(5) There is a God, but all of our religions have distorted Her reality. Jesus was a man more suffused with divinity than any other human being who has ever lived. God loves everyone and has never been concerned about what a person believes, except that a person know God and accept God's love freely and expresses that love toward everyone he or she encounters. Jesus uniquely showed us how to accept God's love and how to be worthy of it. After death, all people, Christians and non-Christians, simply merge with the Deity in a loving embrace. But Jesus was the proof that such love exists, and that it is divine and eternal, and that it cares for us.

(6) None of us knows anything about these things.

The only things different about Sullivan’s (5) from Harris’s (2) is that Sullivan has inserted “god’s love” into the doctrine, as well as assert the “divinity” of Jesus. Sullivan has evaded Harris’s original inquiry -- asking Sullivan which doctrine is the most plausible. Considering that all Sullivan has done is added to Harris’s (2) with more assertions that Sullivan accepts purely on faith, it is logical to assume that Sullivan finds Harris’s (2) more plausible than the other choices posed by Harris. My question is this: what explanation does Sullivan have to assume that his more complicated and fantastic (5) is more plausible than Harris’s simpler (2)?

And let’s address “the wisdom” of Sullivan’s (6), as he put it. Sorry, but I’m not convinced of the wisdom of holding two unequal ideas at a level playing field. On the one hand you have faith, which asserts that there is a god of some form or another, and which provides zero empirical evidence to back up its claim. On the other hand you have reason, which asserts that because there is a lack of evidence in faith’s claim, there is no reason to assume that a god could exist at all. Atheists don’t claim to not believe in god's existence, atheists claim to be convinced god doesn’t exist. There is a fundamental difference -- the burden of proof is on the theists to prove that their god exists. Atheists are convinced of god’s nonexistence for the same reasons that most people are convinced of the tooth fairy’s nonexistence.

Sullivan goes on to clarify why he speaks of “god’s love”:

For me, the radical truth of my faith is therefore not that God exists, but that God is love (a far, far less likely proposition).

Ok… so Harris asks Sullivan to answer with which doctrine he thinks is the most plausible, and Sullivan answers with one he made up himself, and one that he himself has stated is “a far, far less likely proposition”? I guess I’m having a hard time following the logic here because there is none. Sullivan continues:

But I believe it to be true - not as a fable or as a comfort or as a culture. As truth.

[…]

…Jesus lived[] a life full of love and friendship and self-giving, even to the point of non-violent submission to violence, as proof of God's love. I do not need the proof of miracles to believe this.

Sullivan has just stated that he believes god is love because he believes it to be true. So far, he hasn’t given any reason to hold onto faith here -- in fact, Sullivan even says that miracles are unnecessary for him to continue to believe this! So what, then, is Sullivan’s standard of proof? It seems as though anything could convince him. So what does Sullivan have to say about miracles, anyway?

The universe itself is a miracle to me. If there are aspects of it that science has not yet grasped but that believers have somehow glimpsed, then I am content to allow for the possibility of miracles. But I have not witnessed any but the normal ones: the miracle of the blossoms out of my widow at this time of year or the miracle that someone else actually loves me unconditionally, or the miracle of a newborn child. This is miracle enough for me.

Under this definition, almost anything would be a miracle to Sullivan -- even things that can be explained by modern science, like “the miracle of the blossoms out of my widow at this time of year”! To understand just how meaningless Sullivan’s definition of miracle is, consider the definition in the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

1 : an extraordinary event manifesting divine intervention in human affairs
2 : an extremely outstanding or unusual event, thing, or accomplishment

Sullivan also uses his completely meaningless definition to describe the universe itself as “a miracle.” Does this mean that Sullivan implicitly thinks the universe is meaningless? Probably not, but I couldn’t help but point out that Sullivan has applied a meaningless definition to describe something which he thinks holds meaning.

All that and I haven’t even gotten to the specific issues that Harris outlined for Sullivan to ponder! Sullivan does get to those, but doesn’t answer them all. Gee, I wonder why?

Sullivan completely evaded Harris’s pointed critique of his distinction between fundamentalism and moderation. Sullivan never once addressed his distinction between fundamentalism and moderation in terms of truth or falsity, as Harris had challenged him to do so. Sullivan answers the challenge by saying he’s already answered it -- once again confirming my suspicion that Sullivan doesn’t want to consider some questions because of where they might lead him.

Sullivan then addresses Harris’s challenge on the inadequacies of the Bible by stating that he doesn’t “believe in its inerrancy or its literal truth” but does “believe in the deepest truths of the Gospels, and the truth of the life and death of the man they describe.” This begs the question, what reason does Sullivan have to believe in only certain parts of the Bible? Considering that Sullivan is Catholic and that the pope has stated that the Bible is inerrant, how has Sullivan reasoned his intermediate position?

Another challenged posed by Harris is completely ignored, and this time it’s not even mentioned in Sullivan’s text. On the question of Sullivan’s claim that god is “definitionally” the creator of the universe, Sullivan says nothing. Sullivan must know the fault of his claim -- he's assuming god’s existence to claim god’s existence -- hence why he did not address the challenge. The question I have for Sullivan is this: for what reason do you have to believe that god is the creator of the universe by definition?

On Harris’s destruction of Sullivan’s argument that the success of the Christian religion is proof of its truth, Sullivan had this to say:

I agree that such success doesn't actually prove anything about a faith. But it is a sign that a truth has endured the test of time…

Sullivan just snuck one in there -- he agrees that his argument is bogus, and then without skipping a beat makes the same exact argument. How is Christianity’s success “a sign that a truth has endured the test of time” if the cultural success of Christianity doesn’t prove anything? Hasn’t Sullivan already conceded that cultural success doesn’t prove truth? Sullivan has just shown that he is assuming the “truth” of Christianity and that he is not open to the questioning of that “truth.”

The end of Sullivan’s email suggests that this exchange is coming to a close -- oh how I hope that that isn’t so! I really would like to see a point-by-point rebuttal from Harris. Sullivan’s email is just begging for it.

Sam Harris Dismantles Faith... Again

I read this email exchange between authors Sam Harris (The End of Faith, Letter to a Christian Nation) and Andrew Sullivan (The Conservative Soul) on science and faith. I have to say, I came away from the discussion feeling that Harris had effectively diffuses all of Sullivan's main points, as well as mount a serious case against faith itself. Sullivan doesn't put up much of an intellectual fight, and is evasive of the challenges posed by Harris for the most part. I'll quote at length the final issues that came out of the discussion that Harris sums up in his latest email:

Moderation v. fundamentalism: There appears to be no principled separation between religious moderation and religious fundamentalism other than a facility for (and an inclination to) doubt. But how much doubt is too much? Why not doubt the whole shebang, as I do? The pope seems to believe many things which you doubt. Do you have reason to believe that the pope is mistaken about the true doctrine of Christianity, or do you just not like the social consequences of some of his beliefs? Can you justify the intermediate position you've taken with respect to Catholicism in terms of truth and falsity (rather than consolation and its lack)? And if you disagree that the truth of an idea can be neatly separated from its consolations, what does the phrase "wishful thinking" mean to you?

The inadequacies of the Bible: What is the intellectual justification for considering the Bible to be the inspired word of God, given how much bad stuff (like slavery) is in there, and how much good stuff (like all of science) isn't? Do you really think that no mere mortals could have written Mark, Matthew, John and Luke? Not even the combined talent of a first-century Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy? It seems to me that this textual claim really lies at the core of the matter: either the Bible is a book like any other great work of literature, or it's a magic book. Once one accepts it to be a magic book, I agree that a wide range of religious implications follow; but if one doesn't accept this claim, it seems to me that the basis for being a Christian (as a opposed to anything else) evaporates. Would it really surprise you if God told you that the Bible was a product of fallible, human minds? And if this wouldn't truly astound you (in the way that finding out that George Washington never existed presumably would), how can you claim to be so certain of the doctrine of Christianity?

Ontological fancy footwork: All that business about God being "definitionally" the creator of the universe, outside of space and time, etc. just doesn't wash. The "marzipan at the center of the sun" is definitionally at the center of the sun. Does this mean there is marzipan at the center of the sun?

The contingency of your own faith: As you said, if you'd been raised a Buddhist, you'd probably be a Buddhist. And yet, you also believe that Christianity is really true. This seems to entail that, by sheer accident of birth, you were raised and culturally conditioned to believe the one true faith. Do you really believe this? Doesn't it seem more likely that you just happen to subscribe to the religion into which you were born (as most people do) because of social pressure, emotional consolation, attachment to tradition, etc.?

The troublesome example of other religions: Don't you think Mormons and Muslims have similar stories to tell about feeling consoled in the presence of death, hearing voices, etc.? Can't both Mormons and Muslims use the same argument you have used about the cultural success of their faiths to vindicate their own truth claims? How is it that you reject their claims, and how is it that in rejecting them you don't find your own religious beliefs coming under pressure?

The argument from cultural success: Apart from the fact that the argument from cultural success would vindicate any religion that has millions of subscribers, it's also just plain false. The success of Christianity (or any faith) is not an argument for its truth. While dialogue and consensus (and, therefore, cultural success) play a role in our knowledge gathering, we don't do epistemology by plebiscite. The majority of people really can be wrong-as are the majority of American Christians about the age of the universe and about the evolution of life on this planet.

Ancient miracles are less compelling than modern miracles (and modern miracles don't compel you): Christianity is predicated on the reliability of the gospel account of the miracles of Jesus. And yet, there are modern books cataloguing the miracles of Hindu adepts, written by educated Westerners. Why not grant these testimonials even more credence than the gospel? I would bet that you are not even inclined to read this literature, much less organize your life around it. Then why not view the gospel with the same skepticism?

I feel that Sullivan has avoided addressing these specific issues with specific answers because, being an intelligent person, he knows the logical binds that await him if he tries to weasel out a defense of faith. I'm eagerly awaiting for this exchange to continue...