I thought I should tighten up one of the arguments put in my previous post with an actual example based on one given by Plantinga.

Let's examine the behaviour of running away from tigers. Here is what Plantinga says:
Perhaps Paul very much likes the idea of being eaten, but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief... Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it... Clearly there are any number of belief-cum-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behaviour. [Plantinga, Alvin Warrant and Proper Function, (New York: Oxford University Press), 1993]

These beliefs about tigers work when there is a possibility of running away from one. But suppose Paul is stuck in a cave with a tiger. Which belief will make him more likely to survive - (1) I like being eaten, but I want something better than this specimen, (2) I want to pet the tiger but the best way is run away or (3) tigers are dangerous?

Neither (1) or (2) work, because being stuck in a confined space with the tiger, Paul may well decide to compromise and go with the being eaten, or petting this specimen. Unless of course, yet more beliefs are added: (1a) I don't like being eaten by tigers in caves, or (2a) Tigers in caves don't react well to being petted.

So, the problem for adaptive false beliefs is that they aren't versatile. Indeed, Plantinga's arguments based on probability can be used against him: What are the chances of an new adaptive false belief spontaneously appearing just in time to deal with a new circumstance not deal with by the rather specialised original false beliefs?

There is so much less work for the brain to do, and so much more likelihood of survival if Paul has the true belief (3) tigers are dangerous. And that is why true beliefs are generally (though not always) more adaptive than false beliefs.

So next time someone mentions Plantinga's argument, I suggest the response "but what about tigers in caves?"

There is renewed interest in the arguments of the philosopher Alvin Plantinga against naturalism. 

I have covered this subject before, but I think there is more to say.

Put very simply, Plantinga's argument is that what matters for beliefs is that they are adaptive, not true.  The chance of hitting a true belief when you can imagine very many adaptive false ones is quite small.  Therefore we should not trust our beliefs about the world if we believe that our brains have evolved by evolution.

I think this is quite easy to rebut.  PZ Myers has a go, but I don't think he quite manages it, but his article is worth a read. 

I believe that evolution does have a tendency to produce brains that contain generally true beliefs, because having many true beliefs is more adaptive that having mostly false beliefs.

Why is this?  For several reasons.  Firstly, true beliefs can work together in a way that arbitrary false beliefs can't.  The belief that you should run away from lions because they are dangerous can combine with the belief that you should run away from tigers for the same reason to combine to form a generalisation that can be re-used, so suggest caution when meeting new large animals.  Secondly, having true beliefs is more parsimonious because many false, arbitrary but adaptive beliefs would be required for each generalisable true belief.

The brain would have to be very large indeed to make room for all the arbitrary - and so disconnected - beliefs about the world that are both false and adaptive.

Another problem with Plantinga's position is how we gain beliefs.  Beliefs like those about lions have been tested by personal, or other experience.    We don't just have our heads magically filled with arbitrary beliefs - we get taught them, or we come up with them after discussion.   We have developed collaborative strategies to explore the word in ways that our individual brains can't, such as science.

So, Plantinga does not recognise that truth is adaptive, and neglects the way that we obtain beliefs.

I recently came across a very neat description of why gravity slows time. So, I am going to try something: a simple explanation of why time slows both as a result of movement and acceleration with no diagrams and no equations that should be understandable by anyone.

Imagine you have two mirrors, which are parallel. You shine a light at one of the mirrors so it hits it at 90 degrees, and you are fast enough to get out of the way. The light will bounce back and forth between the mirrors. You can use the bounces as a clock, as nothing can go faster than light. Someone runs past you. They don't see the light bouncing vertically up and down between the mirrors. They see the mirrors moving past them, and the light too. They will see the light move in a zig-zag path. They will see the light having to move further than you do. But light can't speed up for them, so, they will see the light take longer between bounces. They will see your clock running slower.

That's Special Relativity - the effect of relative velocity.

Then, the person running past you speeds up. Remember that they saw the light move in a zig-zag because they were moving? Well, if they move faster they will see the zig-zag change to a steeper angle. And in the process of moving faster they will see that change as the path of light being curved (as light leaves one mirror, it will be at a certain angle, but as the runner moves faster, that angle will change).

Because the path of the light between mirrors is no longer a simple zig-zag, but curved, that path will be longer. So, there will be an additional time between ticks of your clock for someone who is accelerating. Acceleration slows time in addition to velocity. Einstein realised that acceleration and experiencing the force of gravity was the same thing. So if you feel gravity, you will experience a slowing of time as compared to those who don't. Also, you will see light move in curves.

That's General Relativity - the effect of gravity and acceleration

Do we detect a slowing of time and light curving as a result of gravity? We certainly do. The atomic clocks that are put into GPS satellites have to be set to run slow when built on the surface of the Earth, because when they are in orbit they will be in a lesser gravitational field, and so will speed up.

Many years ago the biologist and science writer Stephen Gould proposed that science and religion could be compatible providing they keep to their own domains, or 'magisteria' as Gould called them. This seems a very reasonable and tolerant approach. I am going to argue that this is far from the case.

So what was Gould's suggestion? What are these “magisteria”?

I will be quoting from Gould's 1997 article “Nonoverlapping Magisteria”:http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_noma.html

One of the main concerns of that article was the protection of science from the influence of religion, but early on in the article Gould starts making some claims that sound initially innocuous:

The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise—science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives. The attainment of wisdom in a full life requires extensive attention to both domains—for a great book tells us that the truth can make us free and that we will live in optimal harmony with our fellows when we learn to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.

“Religion supports the search for proper ethical values and spiritual meaning.” This sounds uncontroversial, although the term “spiritual” has supernaturalist baggage.

Gould later covers the same ground again:

The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for starters, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty). To cite the arch cliches, we get the age of rocks, and religion retains the rock of ages; we study how the heavens go, and they determine how to go to heaven.

Religion determines how to go to heaven. At a stretch, that could be considered metaphorical, or at least tolerant of other beliefs.

Gould goes further:

Religion is too important to too many people for any dismissal or denigration of the comfort still sought by many folks from theology. I may, for example, privately suspect that papal insistence on divine infusion of the soul represents a sop to our fears, a device for maintaining a belief in human superiority within an evolutionary world offering no privileged position to any creature. But I also know that souls represent a subject outside the magisterium of science. My world cannot prove or disprove such a notion, and the concept of souls cannot threaten or impact my domain. Moreover, while I cannot personally accept the Catholic view of souls, I surely honor the metaphorical value of such a concept both for grounding moral discussion and for expressing what we most value about human potentiality: our decency, care, and all the ethical and intellectual struggles that the evolution of consciousness imposed upon us.

Here Gould gets into murky waters. Souls may be outside the magisterium of science, but that concept certainly does threaten science. Ask someone who works in embryonic stem cell research. And, how can the concept of the soul have value in grounding discussions of morals and human potentiality? How can a discussion be grounded by a concept that has no rational basis? Even more bizarre is that the value of the concept of the soul is being proposed by a writer who believes that the concept is false.

Gould does not limit the number of magisteria to two – science and religion – but in agreeing that religion has some kind of value or authority in the area of morality and meaning he is effectively excluding other approaches to these matters based on rationalism.

I believe that support for the value of religious ideas in the manner of Gould has implications that have not, to my knowledge, been discussed. If it is agreed that religious ideas have real value in the discussion of morality, in the consideration of human potential, in the attainment of wisdom, then it is not reasonable to exclude religious ideas from politics. NOMA is not a gentle and reasonable protection of science and religion from each others' influence, because of its active support for the value of religion NOMA is a real political problem, and counter to secularism.

Why do so many people think that marriage needs protecting?

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What would you do if a friend or colleague told you that they had abused children, and had not been found out? Would you insist that they turned themselves in to the police, or would you call the police yourself? That may be a hard decision. But would you tell them that it was nothing really? Would you even say that you forgave them? How about if you told them that God forgave them, and you believed that, and you would not tell anyone? At what point here have we passed beyond what is reasonable? Surely, surely, most people with any sense of morality and justice would start to have a problem at the third or fourth question? But in the Catholic church, many priests had little or no problem with any of these. The confessional is a sacrament. It is part of the relationship between a man and his God. It is sacred, and beyond man's laws. And that is where this goes very badly wrong, especially when the child abuser is a priest.

A priest can act as mediator between a sinner and God. As I understand the nature of confession, a priest can absolve himself of his own sins. Catholicism is not just privileged because it is a religion, the dogma of Catholicism is explicit that human failings can be forgiven by God via representatives of the church. Religious forgiveness and absolution have priority over secular justice.

That is bad. It encourages those who have committed terrible crimes to seek to pacify their consciences in the confessional.

And now things get far, far worse. Naïve moderate priests and bishops accept that there is honest repentance for sins. But the poor sinner needs to be given another chance. Shift them quietly to another parish. What if they sin again?

Let's go back to the questions I asked at the start of this post. Let's add another couple:

“What if God forgave them, but they still continued? Where could we send such sinners so that they would abuse people who were insignificant?”

I find it hard to write those questions. But unfortunately, they describe reality. In Australia, child-abusing priests were sent into areas with aborigines, as who cared what happened to their children?

I have tried to keep emotion out of this post.  The way that the child abuse has been covered up and the abusers protected is sickening, but the discovery that groups in the Catholic church considered aborigine children as worthless fodder for inconvenient paedophile priests has left me very deeply upset and shaken, and very angry.

I am a secularist. I believe personal religious belief should be allowed, protected. But something has to be done to curb the wickedness of institutions like the Catholic church.  What they do and have done is beyond secular tolerance.  It is beyond any standards of human decency.

A fuller explanation of why I have a problem with the idea of subjective experience.

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The Simon Singh case is interesting.  Lots of people have written about it, and what needs to happen.  I'd like to discuss something that I have not yet seen mentioned: the changing meaning of words.

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Stanley Fish has posted in response to the feedback to his recent post in support of Terry Eagleton.

I'll pick some selected statements to give a flavour of his response:

Sounds good, sounds simple. Just free the mind of pre-packaged beliefs and take a good look at things. But is it that easy? Is observation a matter simply of opening up your baby blues and taking note of the evidence that presents itself? Does evidence come labeled as such – “I am evidence for thesis X but not Y”?

Evidence, understood as something that can be pointed to, is never an independent feature of the world. Rather, evidence comes into view (or doesn’t) in the light of assumptions – there are authors or there aren’t — that produce the field of inquiry in the context of which (and only in the context of which) something can appear as evidence.

And while there surely are facts, there are no facts (at least not ones we as human beings have access to) that simply declare themselves to the chainless minds Hitchens promises us if we will only cast aside the blinders of religion.

Pking gets it right. “To torpedo faith is to destroy the roots of . . . any system of knowledge . . . I challenge anyone to construct an argument proving reason’s legitimacy without presupposing it . . . Faith is the base, completely unavoidable. Get used to it. It’s the human condition.” (All of us, not just believers, see through a glass darkly.) Religious thought may be vulnerable on any number of fronts, but it is not vulnerable to the criticism that in contrast to scientific or empirical thought, it rests on mere faith.

the religious life is depicted as one of aspiration within the conviction of frailty. The heart of that life, as Eagleton reminds us, is not a set of propositions about the world (although there is some of that), but an orientation toward perfection by a being that is radically imperfect.

So to sum up, the epistemological critique of religion — it is an inferior way of knowing — is the flip side of a naïve and untenable positivism. And the critique of religion’s content — it’s cotton-candy fluff — is the product of incredible ignorance.

I don't believe this is a biased sampling: the original article is here for anyone to check:

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/god-talk-part-2/

So what is Fish actually saying? I believe it is quite simple: All ways of trying to obtain knowledge about reality are based on methods that can't be substantiated, and so religion is not an inferior way of trying to understand the world we live in, in comparison with science.

This sounds reasonable, even benign, but it is far from that.

Fish sets up a deeply mistaken view of science and how it operates. Its foundations don't require faith of any kind. It does not require assumptions of naturalism, for example. It starts from the idea that an individual's experiences and understanding of those experiences is unreliable. From that follows the ideas of collaboration and empirical testing. Science does not assume naturalism. Naturalism (that there are reproducible tests of a physical world) is a reasonable, tentative, conclusion because science works.  It is ridiculous to criticise the scientific approach on the basis that facts can be interpreted different ways, when that kind of scepticism is part of science.

Without science and the associated methods of reasoning in abstract realms (mathematics, logic, philosophy), there is intellectual anarchy, with no way to assess the attributes of different intellectual positions – they are simply declared “true” by fiat.

Anarchy would not be so bad, but it is never left like that. A key phrase in Fish's post is:

the religious life is depicted as one of aspiration within the conviction of frailty. The heart of that life, as Eagleton reminds us, is not a set of propositions about the world (although there is some of that), but an orientation toward perfection by a being that is radically imperfect.

An intellectually anarchic world with individuals publicly stating what they believe is an orientation towards perfection is a very good summary of the dangers of religion. Within Fish's intellectual framework, there is no way to assess the truth of these suggested orientations. All religious positions are equivalent, no matter how extreme. Indeed, any statements about reality have to be free of judgement of worth, including political views.

Fish's position does not just mischaracterise the nature of science, its fundamentalist relativism gives no protection against religious (or indeed political) tyranny.

Which highlights another reason for reason. Science and reason are a defence against tyranny. Legal and political processes which use evidence and reasoned argument help protect the individual, no matter if they are a believer or not.

This is why the Post Modernist arguments of Fish, Eagleton and others have to be countered. Because they are profoundly unfair. They privilege groups over the individual; they weaken democracy.

I used to think that what we experience was beyond what could ever be explained by any kind of physical processes.  I mean, how could some electric charges and re-arrangements of molecules in nerve cells mean that I see red to look like *that*?  This problem has been in my mind most of my life, since I was a child.  There had to be something more than the known physical world.  There had to be some extra ingredient.  I never assumed that this was supernatural, just some extra layer over the world that we can investigate and experiment on.  The properties of reality that I *experience* (which I later found in out in my early teens to be called *qualia*) aren't even the kinds of things that could be tested in a laboratory.

This had been on my mind, sometimes a source of major concern, on and off for decades, until I read a book (The Conscious Mind) by one of the strongest supporters of dualism - the philosoper David Chalmers.

In that book, he proposes a hypothetical being - a 'zombie' - which does not experience the internal mental world that we do, but when asked questions about its mental state, gives the same answers that we normal people do.

It took some time before the impact of that proposal hit me.  Then, suddenly, I had a realisation.  If you can't tell by talking to a zombie whether or not it experiences qualia, then what are qualia?  Zombies function perfectly normally in society.  They express emotion, and they have normal reactions to art, to politics, to other people. 

And then it hit me, like a sledgehammer:  I am a zombie!  I say the same things to people as if I did not experience qualia, so what are qualia?  They can't be anything at all.  They have no influence on physical reality, and so can't influence what we say, and what we think.

And so, thanks to one of the greatest supporters of dualism, I abandonded it.

I am Steve, the zombie.

Michael Jackson is touring.

Why?

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Why there is little foundation for the principles of Naturalism and Supernaturalism.

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http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/05/elephants_wings.php

No, sorry.  This doesn't work.

As Dawkins has written, before Darwin, theism and creationism were not unreasonable.

Creationism was not based on sitting under a tree and making stuff up.  It was based on the evidence.  After Darwin, the evidence was shown to point to another conclusion.  That is the failing of Eagleton and others.

I have long been a fan of Alison Bechdel.  Her comic strip "Dykes to Watch Out For" has been, for decades, more than just following the lives of some supposedly stereotypical lesbians.  It was about how society dealt with difference, both in terms of sexuality and politics.  In the last year or so, Bechdel has turned her attention to her own life and family.  She has produced a graphic novel of her life: "Fun Home".  It is simply a Masterpiece.   Read it.

I have seen them at last. I thought they were just a myth, but no. Fundamentalist Atheists do exist! They insist on the truth of ancient texts. They declare that anyone who does not follow doctrine is not a true believer. They pick out those whose faith is inadequate, for public humiliation. They spend much of their time researching the history of doctrine, so as to make authoratitive statements. There is just one minor detail worth pointing out. Atheist fundamentalists are fundamentalists about religion. If you are a part-time church attending Anglican, or a Muslim who does not worry about the eating of pork, you face the wrath of the fundamentalist atheist. You are a heretic! How dare you call yourself a believer? You aren't part of the true faith! You betray the words in your holy books. The atheist fundamentalist is not a democrat. He or she cares not for the views of thousands, or millions, or hundreds of millions. How dare they all reject the clear words and teachings of their religion - can't they see how their lives are joke, a pretence, as a result? Religious fundamentalists and atheists who are fundamentalists about religion are interesting characters. They form an unintentional alliance. Both stir up mainstream believers to question their beliefs and pressure them to decide whether they are true believer or apostate. Me, I am a very moderate atheist. I really am.

Being a short piece which contains musings on recent criticisms of the views of Dr Dawkins by Mr Eagleton.

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NOMA seems to be no more.  The idea that religion and science are compatible ways to look at reality because they don't deal with the same areas of understanding has been under probably fatal attack recently from the Jerry Coyne amongst others.  There has been much discussion about the details of this, so my contribution will be brief.

Why was NOMA encouraged by some?  Because there is in some people a religious fear of science.  Science is materialist, and damages the foundations of religion.  Without religion, we are left in a moral vacuum. 

So what is to be done?  I think there is a reasonable answer.  That is to highlight the existence of prominent scientists who are religious, such as the Christian Kenneth Miller and a Muslim, the late Abdus Salam.

This may seem misleading, as there is little doubt that a scientific education is corrosive to religious belief.  For some, but not for all.  But, this is not something that need be emphasised, as the purpose of highlighting the existence of religious scientists is not to show some biased statistics about belief and science, but to destroy a stereotype - that of the amoral atheist scientist.  Achieving that goal may well overcome the resistance of many religious to their own education in science and that of their children.

NOMA should go, and in its place there should be something far more subtle, and yet much more honest: pointing out that religious faith and science are psychologically compatible.  One can be both religious and a world-class scientist.