As the title suggests, this is a comment raised to a post, one of the things that bloggers get to do, if comment streams get long, and there seems to be some need of additional detail that deserves to be placed — at least I think so — so that everyone can get to read it. The following is a comment, slightly amended, in response to this by Egbert (comment #30 under the post “Religious extremism and moderation: Are there really any sophisticated believers?”) Here is that comment:
“New Atheism not a force for good? You don’t have to believe everything they say, but how could it be a bad thing that unbelievers are banding together to assert their rights.”
Remember, I was part of this ‘movement’ before I started to get censored and banned for warning others about group thought and growing [dogmatism], and for standing up for things like free speech and secularism. I realized something very odd was going on long before elevatorgate and the atheism plus nonsense, but because the ‘movement’ is organized in a top-down fashion, by academics, bloggers, political activists, no one is actually interested in what some anonymous person says. Most atheists are not positively motivated for the good, but are bitter, angry, resentful (and now hateful) and jump on anyone with a different opinion, using insults and bullying tactics (see this thread for example) which is unacceptable to me.
The idea that atheists are by default, rational, moral, politically wise and knowledgeable is a fiction. What does history say about atheists who organize mass movements? See the French revolution or state communism for your answers.
No one was interested in the moral and philosophical foundations of this ‘movement’ it just began straight after 9/11 based on prejudice and war against the religious.
I want to say straight away that this is not a response only to this comment. Nor do I wish, by pasting it here, to suggest that Egbert, whose comment this is, deserves the contumely that has been heaped upon him. I do think we need to take people at their word. But this comment does raise questions about the uses of scepticism — which were raised more explicitly earlier in the comments — that, it seems to me, need to be raised, and that is why I thought it useful bring my comment right up front where we can discuss the issues involved.
I find the uses of scepticism exhibited in this comment stream to be a bit strange. Scepticism by all means, but not by all means scepticism. In science it is inference to the best explanation that largely determines what is thought to be true. But of course, as Hume pointed out, induction is always more or less insecure due to the open texture (the contingency) of reality, which includes our minds, and the differential responses that any group of individuals is likely to make to a phenomenon. So the best we can do in this context if we are to order our thoughts around the likelihood of something’s being true is to follow the line of inference to the best explanation. Accepting a one-off outré explanation for something, that does not take the complexity of the issues into consideration, is scarcely the way that these things are settled. For example, suggesting that you have a good reason for believing that steel doesn’t melt at the temperatures at which jet fuel burns is to take only one factor into consideration, when considering the collapse of the twin towers. Was it the melting of metal structures that was responsible for the destruction of the twin towers? I don’t know, and I bet the guy who wrote the analysis doesn’t know either.
What we did see was too large airliners full of people being flown into the structures. I was sitting watching it on television when the second airliner hit, and it was like a blow to the stomach. And then some minutes later I watched spell-bound and horrified as the buildings collapsed.Without further information to go on, the best explanation is the obvious one. The shock of the airliners flying into the building, plus the fire caused by full fuel tanks, is the most likely explanation for the buildings collapsing. Saying that it couldn’t be the airliners flying into the building that caused the collapse is ignoring the most salient information that we have. Supposing that it must have been thermite or thermate means that we need to know how enough thermate was placed, and where it was placed, and when, without anyone noticing. This is a tall order. And supposing that it was a government plot of some kind is too ridiculous even to consider.
The same goes for global warming. Is it caused by human activity? “No!” say the deniers emphatically – where ‘deniers’ is not meant as an insult, but simply a description of what they are doing, namely, denying the received explanation. Why? Because Antarctic sea ice is increasing while the arctic is melting? But <i>that,/i> would suggest that it <i>is</i> anthropogenic, since the heaviest use of fossil fuels and industry is in the northern hemisphere. And, in any event, there are explanations for increasing Antarctic sea ice cover (see here). (And note, I am not linking this because I know it to be true. I am linking it because it is so easy to ignore information in a very complex situation, if one has already chosen a conclusion.) Perhaps this cartoon will explain:
Nor do local anomalies count. The only way to resolve these issues is by taking all the evidence into account at the same time, and infer from that to the best explanation. The likelihood that climate scientists — who have access to all the data — are getting it right is far higher than individuals working at cross purposes with them, most of them with limited expertise or access to data. Just as in the case of evolution. Creationists point out odd things, and think that isolated anomalies (if that is what they are) will carry the day, but they don’t bother with all the minutiae that go to make up the explanatory model as a whole.
My concern here is that a number of people seem not to understand what scepticism really is. Scepticism is not simply questioning everything. It is questioning things rationally, with due weight being given to the known evidence. One of the things that makes this difficult is the fact that the issues involved are so very complex that it is hard to have access to all the information that is necessary in order to provide a rational response to the questions we want to put to the evidence. This, of course, makes it easier to put something over on us, but in order for that to be true, we’d have to assume that all the experts who look at these things are in a conspiracy to dupe the rest of us, and this is simply unbelievable for the simple reason that there are so many of them, and they are so independent of each other. Cooking up a conspiracy in these situations would be next to impossible.
As for Egbert’s continual sniping at the ‘new atheism’ (which he is most welcome to do), and especially this –
Remember, I was part of this ‘movement’ before I started to get censored and banned for warning others about group thought and growing [dogmatism], and for standing up for things like free speech and secularism. I realized something very odd was going on long before elevatorgate and the atheism plus nonsense, but because the ‘movement’ is organized in a top-down fashion, by academics, bloggers, political activists, no one is actually interested in what some anonymous person says.
– let me add these few comments in reply. What this describes is not anything odd or nonsensical, but the free and open forum of the internet, where anyone may comment and soapbox who wants to. As we ought to know by now the internet is a place where people can comment anonymously (for the most part), if they wish, and so they do not need to take responsibility for their comments. The likelihood of this producing things that are pretty naff should go without saying, so trying to think of the new atheism as a coherent movement is fraught with difficulty. Even more than the religions, who keep telling us that there is no way of speaking about, say, Islam in general, since there are so many disagreements and divisions and diversity of thought amongst Muslims, the new atheism has no structure, no prescribed texts, no clear definition, or anything other than a number of disparate individuals who conceive of themselves as talking on roughly the same wavelength. And while I have noticed something of the nature of group thought amongst some people who call themselves new atheists, it scarcely amounts to a dogmatism. Nor, in many respects, can it be thought to be a top-down organisation, for there is none, really, unless I am simply so far out here in the Atlantic that the ties that bind don’t reach that far.
What we have, and should expect to have, is a fairly rough-hewn group of people who share some things in common, but differ on some points — maybe many. The greater number are not participants in a “movement,” except insofar as they attend conferences, or comment on a number of blogs, some well-known ones being the core of whatever “movement” there is. Many of the comments are simply throwaway expressions of temporary opinions or even more ephemeral responses. But if you look at those blogs, you will find a diversity of opinion which is fairly scattered, but situated roughly on a trajectory which runs from questioning believers to confirmed and outspoken atheists. In that number there are a number of people whose attitudes are (to my mind) quite frankly crude and misogynistic, but that is scarcely surprising. And it also runs to a number of people who find the new atheism a bit repetitious, and so they suggest, as I have done from time to time, trying to find substitutes for religious community, or the engagement of atheists in social justice issues, etc., and so recently we had the perfectly reasonable suggestion of something that was called Atheism +, which was a harmless, and perhaps even helpful suggestion as to where we go next, while maintaining our pressure on religious idiocy, which is spawned even more quickly and with greater proliferation than anything that atheists can even dream of.
So far as being interested or not in what some anonymous person says, I think it goes without saying that most people are, certainly if it seems reasonable and well thought through, but as in any group of people, those who are most creative and expressive will be likely to have the greater influence. One of my caveats about the new atheism is that it is largely driven by scientists, and this could be a turnoff for some people, since science today is so highly technical and specialised that it is difficult for a lay individual to make even intelligent noises about science. Nonetheless, it is important for science to find a place in the culture where, if it is not leading the discussion of socially important questions, it at least has a significant voice there, and that has not been the case for a long time. One of the things that I regret is that many of the scientists involved are not accustomed to thinking philosophically, and that has had a negative impact on what some of them say, on at least some occasions, quite pontifically, where a bit of sceptical reservation would be in order. That aside, I do not understand your criticism Egbert. Atheism + seemed to me a good suggestion, broadening the scope of interest of the freethought community in a humanist direction. Indeed, it seems to me that we could all do with an intro to secular humanism, and to its history, so that we know what we are talking about when we venture away from the narrower task of criticising religions and their misdoings.
And now I come to the last remark in Egbert’s comment:
The idea that atheists are by default, rational, moral, politically wise and knowledgeable is a fiction. What does history say about atheists who organize mass movements? See the French revolution or state communism for your answers.
Of course it is a fiction, for we are all human beings, and all given to the faults and foibles to which human flesh is heir to. But it scarcely does to point to the French Revolution or state communism as examples of atheism gone mad. Atheism was very rare during the Enlightenment, and the French Revolution was certainly not the outcome of unbelief. It was the justified outrage at the same kind of thing that is so quickly developing in the United States, and increasingly in the rest of the developed world: outrageous wealth, on the one hand, and the direst poverty on the other. Certainly, the philosophes had a hand in what took place. They made disaffection with the state of things an intellectual possibility, but they did not determine the course of the revolution, and to suggest that the revolution itself displayed atheism at its worst is scarcely borne out by the facts. It was a popular revolution, and a response to injustice, plain and simple. The ancien regime was not prepared to go silently, and the excesses of the revolution are inevitable in revolutions anywhere, as in communist revolution in Russia, where some people were little more than serfs still, and where atheism was practically unknown in society at large. One of the things that distinguished India’s independence from the independence of many other British colonies was the non-violence of Gandhi, who knew that violent revolutions call forth violent leaders and violent solutions. In this he was right, even though his religious primitivism retarded India’s development by decades, if not longer, and contributed not a little to the Muslim-Hindu divide which brought about Pakistan and the massacres of 1947 as partition was put into effect.
To put it plainly, we have no idea what unbelief is capable of, since all movements of non-belief so far known have been deeply influenced by religious belief, whose presuppositions and institutions are still deeply embedded in our culture, as Michel Onfray points out so clearly in his book Atheist Manifesto. We need to be reminded of this:
The Western body [he writes] (including that of atheists, Muslims, deists, and agnostics raised in the geographic and ideological Judeo-Christian zone) is Christian. Two thousand years of Christian discourse — anatomy, medicine, physiology, of course, but also philosophy, theology, and aesthetics — have fashioned the body we inhabit. And along with that discourse we have inherited Platonic-Christian models that mediate our perception of the body, the symbolic value of the body’s organs, and their hierarchically ordered functions. We accept the nobility of heart and mind, the triviality of viscera and sex (the neurosurgeon versus the proctologist). We accept the spiritualization and dematerialization of the soul, the interaction of sin-prone matter and of luminous mind, the ontological connotation of these two artificially opposed entities, the disturbing forces of a morally reprehensible libidinal humanity … [47]
Onfray speaks of the “ontological contamination” of the Judeo-Christian ordering of things, and how this subverts even attempts to free ourselves of it. As he says:
The absence of a cross in a the courtroom does not guarantee a judiciary that is independent with respect to the dominant religion. [49]
Even John Gray, who holds the new atheism in contempt, says that everything we touch is still deeply dependent on the religio-cultural matrix. He thinks that practically everything, including atheism, is religious. So to speak with great assurance of the failures of atheism to rise above the crimes of the religions is really premature. We don’t know, yet, and the world will not likely know, for a long time, if ever, what a world of disbelief would be like.
But at least we have an inkling of it, for, as Steven Pinker continues to point out, we are actually getting better, and more morally sensitive. This should be evident just by comparing what is considered normative punishment in a medieval society — as most Muslim majority societies still are — and what is considered cruel and unusual punishment in most of the West. The cutting off ears, the cutting out of tongues, drawing and quartering, putting heads on pikestaffs in public, hanging a suicide’s body at a crossroads, public torture and execution: all were fairly common in Europe until the Enlightenment. We find these things horrifying now, and so we should, but it was not religion that brought us to this point, as the use of torture by the Bush administration shows clearly. The most religious administration in living memory in the US reverted to the uses of torture almost at once and without apology. Nor is this all. The United States, the most religious of all developed countries, has more people in jail per capita than any other nation on the face of the earth. Surely this tells us something about religion that is not to religion’s advantage.
Eric, I don’t think as Egbert seems to suggest that New Atheism as a movement has it’s leaders. Well, there are a few outspoken atheists, but I don’t think they are leaders in any sense. Most of us, thanks to the internet have an opportunity to be heard even if the hearing group is a small world of bloggers but the message is out there and more people are freeing themselves from religion which was not possible a few decades ago. And whereas, many atheists, yours truly included, haven’f followed much what is going on at atheism +, they are attempting to address social issues but they are beginning with the disbelieving community where we except quite a bit of rationality and little or no misogyny.
When someone exposes them to the public, I think it follows they should expect some ridicule, some praises and to some extent insults and this doesn’t make atheism any bad. The only difference between atheist and others is lack of belief in gods and this is not insurance against the flaws we see in the larger society. There will be intelligent atheists just as there will be ignorant and rude atheists.
I agree with you, looking at Europe, especially those countries that are less religious, we can say confidently that atheism maybe just good for society. People will be treated more fairly and with some dignity more than we find in theocracies or deeply religious societies like in the US of A.
Egbert is just mistaken. There is no top-down organization of all of “new” atheism. There are some organizations, which have the usual organizational structures, but none of them organize or plan or boss or control all of “new” atheism. Nothing else even comes that close.
As for “no one is actually interested in what some anonymous person says” – that’s not so much mistaken as bullshit. (Because it’s self-serving, that’s why.) So no one is interested in what Author of Jesus and Mo says? Or what Non Stamp Collector says? Or what Sastra says? (Countless people have begged Sastra to set up her own blog.) Or mirax? Rieux? The philosophical primate?
Bollocks. The issue is quality, not anonymity.
I’m not sure exactly how I’m supposed to respond, other than Eric is doing nothing other than attacking the sceptics rather than their claims, misinterpreting them, then defining scepticism his own way. But at least he does it in an amiable and reasonable way, rather than via insults, bullying and hyperbole.
“That aside, I do not understand your criticism Egbert. Atheism + seemed to me a good suggestion, broadening the scope of interest of the freethought community in a humanist direction. Indeed, it seems to me that we could all do with an intro to secular humanism, and to its history, so that we know what we are talking about when we venture away from the narrower task of criticising religions and their misdoings.”
Well Eric, my paradigm is now different to yours, so it’s unsurprising that misunderstandings are piling up. If I write a criticism or comment about new atheism, then obviously you and others are going to take that personally, and I’m sorry for that. But I either shut up for good and stop criticizing, and try and find friends elsewhere, and leave you with an echo-chamber of agreement, or I persist mindlessly trying to help my former companions realize how wrong they are, and take all the mud pies thrown at me, which is too tiresome and soul destroying (if I had a soul).
Clearly, I have to at some point resign myself to that fact that you’re committed onto your path, and that where my path leads is only a full stop, and a series of question marks and horrors.
Egbert, I’m quite prepared to consider that I am wrong. However, while you say that you have tried to convince me that the new atheism is wrong, you have yet to say clearly why you think so. You really do need to do this clearly and unmistakably. It is hopeless to say that is what you are doing, if you do not do that, and I have yet to hear a clear statement from you regarding the question of theism-athesm or religion-secularity that makes your point of view clear. And if you think that climate change is a fraud, and that the twin towers were brought down by some kind of domestic conspiracy, then you have to show that this is, not just that this is your position, and pointing to a paper written by someone who may or may not know what he is talking about that mental doesn’t melt at a certain temperature therefore the buildings could not have been destroyed by flying aircraft into them does not fly at all, unless you explain clearly how you think it did happen. You can’t only say that mental doesn’t melt at certain temperatures, you must show how otherwise the buildings could have been destroyed. Just saying so doesn’t work. nor does just saying that I define scepticism to suit myself, You must show or try to show where I have gone wrong. That is the way rational conversations run.
““No!” say the deniers emphatically – where ‘deniers’ is not meant as an insult, but simply a description of what they are doing, namely, denying the received explanation.”
No, Eric, you don’t get away that easily. ‘Denier’ was originally applied to AGW sceptics as a deliberate slur in order to link them with Holocaust deniers. Those are the implications that it has, and by using it in this context you implicitly evoke and honour those implications. Would you refer to Jews as ‘Christ-killers’ and then explain that you didn’t mean it rudely, but after all, they REALLY DID kill Christ?
But anyway, what is the ‘received explanation’ of climate change? Hansen’s ‘received explanation’, whereby Chinese emission of aerosols has just happened, by sheer coincidence, to exactly balance the global warming that would otherwise have taken place? Phil Jones’s ‘received explanation’ that seventeen years of non-warming doesn’t count because it’s just a statistical anomaly? If you — personally — can explain plausibly to me why increasing CO2 should cause ‘global warming’, then I’ll accept that you have a ‘received explanation’. But I suspect that what you actually have is a ‘received faith’, which you accept without questioning because you think it sits well with your leftist predilections.
Seriously, Eric, you have already thought your way out of one guilt-driven apocalyptic faith; surely you can think your way out of this one too.
And by the way, the Green vote in the Australian Capital Territory elections dropped from 16% in 2008 to 11% yesterday. Time is not on your side.
PS: I don’t really want to join in the ‘let’s all pile on Egbert’ game — for the record I think he is completely wrong about everything, though I regard him as very brave to stand up here and say it. But if you understand why Egbert feels it necessary to blame the US for the 9/11 catastrophe, you will be in a better position to understand why so many people feel it necessary to blame the human race — particularly the affluent portion of it — for imaginary climate disasters to come.
Powerless people will always want scapegoats — and preferably scapegoats they can get at.
Egbert @ 3 – the first para of my comment just said you were mistaken. That’s not “insults, bullying and hyperbole.”
The second para said you were bullshitting, yes; bullshitting in the sense of exaggerating for effect. That’s mildly insulting, but you could just say why you weren’t bullshitting.
I also said bollocks; again, only mildly insulting. I implied that your comments were ignored because they’re not very good rather than because you’re anonymous. But then, your claim that your comments are ignored because anonymous is insulting to anyone who has ignored any of your comments, like me, for instance. I say we’re even.
You could perfectly well answer.
I’ll tell you why I lost all interest in your comments: it’s because you kept saying the same thing over and over, and it was always completely vague. “Atheists are becoming another group” – that’s about all there was to it. That’s not a good way to “help my former companions realize how wrong they are.” Frankly it just sounded like bee in the bonnet rather than a sober thoughtful criticism.
Eric, I said very clearly that the real evil is ‘political control’ many moons ago. I also said that the idea of progress was religiously motivated (a protestant belief) of which I suggested that you read John Gray’s Black Mass , to understand why (which you kindly did). We both agree on free-will, and human values, and the dangers of scientism and where it would lead (nihilism and fascism). I said that new atheism was based on a belief that religion is evil, but that this was a distortion of truth, as religion is both good and evil (or neither good and evil). I warned of the dangers of group thought years ago, and then along came elevatorgate and now the further splits between feminism and scepticism and how that involves atheism plus. You seem completely unaware that atheism plus was based on a radical and absurd non-liberal interpretation of feminism, which rejects new atheism and then seeks to control its politically naive members tightly in a ‘safe space’, widely criticised and rejected by those outside it.
And now, I’ve shown how new atheism was born from the paradigm shift of 9/11, which changed us all, and motivated Richard Dawkins and friends to turn atheism into political atheism. This movement was financed and organized from the top down, regardless of what Benson says, although it is a movement based on selling books, lecturing to the choir, with the same mainstream bourgeois attitude born from Protestant Enlightenment and the same Christian progressive values.
The real evil is political control, of which new atheism is yet another manifestation, and as John Gray says, “Modern politics is a chapter in the history of religion.”
Finally, can I just say that nothing good can come from resentment, fear, anger and hatred, which are all negative emotional states and attitudes, The tune I propose we sing is that of sympathy, love and compassion, is that not a better song? But how can that song be sung when caught up in materialism and not recognizing spirituality?
So, no, you’re not prepared, because to shift outside of new atheism is a difficult intellectual, emotional and spiritual journey far outside everyone’s comfort zone. A journey I have made, after a year and an emotional crisis, but now I am alone with no companions to sing with, except perhaps the likes of Gray, some left-wing french intellectuals, mystics, and others outside the box.
I doubt that Egbert and I would agree on political issues but I have to say that I share his disquiet over groups like Atheism +. I don’t disagree with the progressive attitude of Atheism +, I just feel that the group identity is at risk of becoming more important than the original concepts. I stopped reading PZ Myers some time ago (apart from the science based articles) because I felt that the blog was becoming an echo chamber of supporters, some of whom were as extreme as the people they decried.
Now there is certainly some benefit in forming interest groups to push for social change, but there is an apparently natural tendency for the emotionally invested to take over. I had hoped for better from people who were not wearing god tinted glasses.
And before anyone objects, it’s not a matter of tone. I feel uncomfortable because of the uncritical enthusiasm shown by many, even in a worthwhile cause. I’m sure that there are many thoughtful people in Atheism +, but the overall group identity (in my opinion) is very divisive and critical of people who are ‘not us’.
“PS: I don’t really want to join in the ‘let’s all pile on Egbert’ game — for the record I think he is completely wrong about everything, though I regard him as very brave to stand up here and say it.”
Brave or stupid? I don’t know, but thank you for not piling on me. I think you show some stones for daring to disagree, no one enjoys being personally attacked, bullied, ridiculed, etc.
“Most atheists are not positively motivated for the good, but are bitter, angry, resentful.” Egberts reasoning is like ‘If you all knew what I do know, then you would see it like I do.’ Perhaps. Your experience might allow for that statement. It is not my experience.
Still, one does not exclude another, it is possible to be angry that human rights like abortion and assisted dying are under severe pressure and innocent girls are shot at etc. etc., it is possible to be bitter that religion still has modern society in its claws, and yet strife to be a good person and oppose religious/social wrongs. If not in words or action than at least in daily behaviour. Whether it is under the flag of A+ or something different, should that matter? Resentful, now that is something incompatible, so I am curious as to why you think this is the case with most atheists.
“(…) and leave you with an echo-chamber of agreement, or I persist mindlessly trying to help my former companions realize how wrong they are(…)” To cite an important atheist long before the new atheist movement began (my grandmother): “Overdrijven is ook een vak.” In current English: Wow, speaking of hyperboles.
Try it with a mindful approach. Might yield better results.
Kind regards.
Egbert, here’s you:
I know you’ve said this, but saying it is not enough. Of course, there is political control. Things don’t run themselves, so we have to have some way, as I have tried to show, to specify what uses of coercion are justified and what uses are not. Merely speaking about political control is not enough. What do you mean when you speak of political control?
Secondly, I know you have said that Gray say that the idea of progress is religiously motivated, but is Gray right? And is he right when he says, as he does, that “Modern politics is a chapter in the history of religion”? I don’t think he is, and I don’t think he shows this. Indeed, Gray is so given to running a number of things together that it’s hard to sort out what he does and does not say. He is not well known for consistency. But, having said that, is it wrong to suggest, as Pinker does, that things seem to be getting better, rather than worse as Gray continues to say in a number of different keys? I don’t think he’s made his case. Though I do find some of the things that he says of interest, I do not think he has made his larger case. Indeed, by confusing religion with practically everything else — what is not religion in Gray’s world? — he tends to muddy the waters so badly that it is hard to know what he wants to say. What I think he is saying is that we are animals like other animals, and there is nothing, really, that we can do to improve things at all. Grayling says that Gray confuses meliorism (improvement by small increments) with perfectibilism. I think this is right.
So far as atheism being another form of political control — well, anything by that account is poltical control. What is not control, then? You end up by saying, in a fairly optimistic way,
Well, yes and no. While I don’t recommend fear, anger or hatred, as such, I don’t think we can rely only on sympathy, love and compassion. That would be to look at the world with rose tinted specs. There is, sadly, a lot of room for resentment and anger, for criticism and condemnation, but these should be used carefully, and, if possible, sparingingly. However, the reason that we need the negative emotions and the acts which follow from them are precisely the kinds of things that you seem yourself to oppose — namely, political control. Religion has a lot of it, and I think the world would be better — never perfect — if religions had much less clout in the world than they do. So I oppose that kind of political control. This website is devoted to opposing the kinds of political control over people that they have and that they seek. That is not going to change. But if you are opposed to political control, why do you not seek the same thing?
Egbert, I don’t know what you’ve been through, and what confluence of circumstances have brought you to this point in your life, but you must understand that we all have similar experiences, and these experiences may lead us, quite rightly, to different places than you have reached. Reason and common sense is the way we deal with our differences in this respect, but it scarcely does to make the kinds of claim that you do, as if, by having reached the point you have, you are beyond all the rest of us, so that you can, as it were, only speak, as you seem to do, from on high. This is not helpful. Your last paragraph suggests that no one but you can move outside the box, as if you are the only one out there. But you do not show this in what you write. Your comments on the twin towers and global warming doesn’t suggest this to me at all. Your uncritical acceptance of Gray likewise. If you are lonely with no companion with whom to sing, perhaps that is because no one can hear the music you think is out there. If you want people to follow where you have gone, you have at least to show that being there is a reasonable place to be. So far, I have taken note of your claims, but you have not convinced me that they are true.
I take Egbert’s criticism to mean that I am, and many other new atheists are, not skeptical enough. That may be true, but I take exception to his insinuation that he is rightfully the appropriate judge to take this measurement and presume himself capable and qualified to deem the whole movement of criticizing religious privilege wanting.
I’m not a fan of arrogant people unless they have good reasons for it.
I simply do not share Egbert’s lack of skepticism that he really doesn’t deserve criticism for many of his ill-supported vague implications, although I don’t think he will ever be honest enough to come right out and admit to this motivation for his self-justifications (that to my ear sounds too much like whinging). When directly challenged over some insinuation, Egbert seems only too willing to pretend it’s a plot by the gnus to unfairly to question his skepticism – superior as he assumes it to be to the majority of New Atheists in positions of comment moderation, apparently – rather than clarify and deal directly with the insinuated issue at hand. This is SOP for Egbert and I find it both arrogant and tedious.
As for corio37′s comment about deniers, the motivation for those who continue to do so over human caused climate change is the same kind of motivation relied upon by creationists to deny evolution: a fixed belief contrary to reality.
The motivation corio37 relies on is not to understand why anthropogenic global warming is driving radical (unprecedented) climate change; the motivation is to cherry pick bits of data that act only to give the appearance of respectability to continuing to deny the overwhelming evidence stacked against it. Sure, consider yourself equivalent to a holocaust denier if that helps you to appreciate just how wrong you are in your misplaced motivation, but don’t for a moment think the important word is the one you bring to the dance: holocaust; it’s denier because that’s what you have to do to maintain the false belief that the scientific consensus about human activity causing unprecedented climate change to happen is somehow debatable when it’s simply not! And the method to determine which of our opinions is better informed is best answered as if a neutral party were presented with all the evidence, which case would be the more compelling one? The answer to that is IPCC conclusion: that climate change caused by human activity is here, it’s real, and it’s a growing problem we need to address now. That conclusion was reached because that’s unequivocally where every line of climate study leads. That’s why every major scientific organization in the world supports it.
But by all means, corio37, get ready to step up for your Nobel prize identifying this strong and compelling contrary evidence you seem to possess yet clearly missed by tens of thousands of very earnest climate scientists.
Such arrogance is most unattractive in anyone claiming to be an honest skeptic.
Oy veh.
No you haven’t shown. You’ve said, which is not the same thing. You just saying isn’t showing anything, except that you fancy yourself a seer.
No the “movement” (which one?) was not financed and organized from the top down, because it’s not organized. Dawkins set up the RDF, of course, but that’s not a “movement”; it’s a website. I don’t consider atheism+ a movement, either; it’s an online forum.
It’s just nonsense to say there is A Movement and that it was organized by Dawkins and his friends. There are a lot of jostling organizations and groups, which overlap and sometimes co-operate and sometimes compete, and always argue and disagree on details and sometimes basics. I know this because I know a lot of the people involved. I know how chaotic and shifting it is.
You’ve got a grandiosity thing going here, which is kind of embarrassing to see. You think you know all the Inner Workings. That’s not skepticism, dude.
Tildeb, just what is this ‘overwhelming’ evidence which I am supposed to be denying? As far as I can see it consists of a) a primary claim about positive feedback linking increased carbon dioxide with an increase in temperature retention by greenhouse gases; b) a secondary claim that if a) is true this will produce a temperature increase on Earth which in some unspecified way will cause disasters and catastrophes; and c) a tertiary claim that if b) is true, these unspecified disasters can be mitigated or averted by the diversion of large sums of money to ‘green’ initiatives.
Well, let’s see what ‘evidence’ there is for these claims.
a) is a hypothesis based on a theoretical model and has NEVER, EVER, been demonstrated to occur empirically in a laboratory — or indeed, anywhere else.
b) is based on a series of computer models which have been spectacularly wrong, over and over again, and only maintain any resemblance to reality by constantly being tweaked after the event. Which models predicted no tropospheric heating, expanding Antarctic ice or a seventeen-year hiatus in ‘global warming’, for instance, BEFORE those events took place?
c) is based on an even more flimsy set of economic models which have been shown up as biased and unrealistic many times over.
‘Denying’ evidence as feeble as this may make me a ‘denier’ to you; but I prefer to think it makes me rational. And none of this has any bearing on the extreme rudeness of debaters who deliberately use offensive language in referring to their opponents.
The trouble with “atheism” is that it defines itself by what it is not. A replacement for religion must be defined by what is. What governs the world? What is our role in it? What is human nature? How should we behave and organize ourselves? Marx provided a coherent answer. Has anyone else? We atheists mostly believe in scientific facts, rational thought, that we are part of nature and the product of evolutionary forces. How can that give us meaning and commitment.
Perhaps the realization that we are athwart of nature, are fouling our own nest, are threatening the future of our own along with many other species, will provide an organizing theme to command devotion. If not, capitalism, nationalism, tribalism and corporatism will fill the gap.
Brilliant essay Eric.
Again, corio37, you don’t want to understand why AGW is driving rapid climate change or you would quickly find your feeble points to be thoroughly debunked already by honest climate scientists. You cleave to your denial and pretend it’s skepticism backed by such paltry points because this veneer is all that justifies your reality-denying belief. That’s the sum total of your argument and it is not skeptical if you assume – like any good creationist – that your a priori belief arbitrates the reality we share. It is your job – not mine – to find out why the scientific consensus is what it is – you know… the consensus backed by every major scientific organization in the world. And, like any committed creationist, the denier will continue to demand more and better information all the while refuting all good science used to explain why the points are correctly debunked because the denial is assumed to be true. The problem is that reality doesn’t back up your denial belief and – like any honest new atheist – I respect reality to arbitrate claims made about it… and not pay lip service to the kinds of of empty claims of skepticism deniers bring to the table based on no honest effort to understand this vital issue. Your skepticism in this case is not skepticism; it’s just a word you use as an excuse for your lack of intellectual integrity in order to maintain a belief contrary to reality. That’s why you are a denier.
So Corio, no link between carbon dioxide and temperature? – historical records strongly show there is. In the past it wasn’t humans, but now it is. Oh, the poor will suffer most if we don’t do something about climate change? – don’t pull out right-wing libertarian nonsense that environmental regulation helps the rich and hurts the poor – you sound like the the US Republican party. Ever heard of environmental racism – happens all of the time in the US.
Climate change deniers not only profess to know more about climate science than nearly all the world’s climate scientists, but more than nearly all scientists of any sort, physicists, chemists, astronomers, biologists and geologists. It’s nothing if not grandiose.
Whenever one claims to know more about a subject than the experts it’s reasonable to suppose that the Dunning-Kruger effect may be at work.
Progress is an aspect of life. It’s vividly manifested in the growth of a human from infant to adult, and it’s typical even of most adults, even into old age. My sight and hearing and endurance are not what they were, but I’m still able to learn new things. My French used to be negligible but now it’s merely pathetic.
Science unquestionably progresses. It’s the prototypical ratchet. Technology does too, but somewhat ambiguously. For most of my life I had no need of a cell phone, but now I’m at fault if I can’t be reached, and they’re getting bigger and fancier rather than smaller and cheaper. The replacement of trains and streetcars by planes and automobiles was at best a mixed blessing. Improvements in agriculture, health care and sanitation have led to overpopulation. Without the industrial revolution we wouldn’t have global warming.
There has been definite progress in morality in my lifetime. Racism and sexism are not only no longer enshrined in law but prohibited and discouraged and slowly vanishing from popular acceptance. Religion is an obstacle to the extent that it claims morality to itself and exempts it from the democratic marketplace of ideas and thus the very possibility of progress.
“No one was interested in the moral and philosophical foundations of this ‘movement’ it just began straight after 9/11 based on prejudice and war against the religious.”
These are your words, Egbert, as are your as yet unsubstianted words about the claims that global warming is taking place being fraudulent. As I pointed out, 9/11 was a catalyst – an important one – though not a cause. I have not read Sam Harris’s post 9/11 book, and am not generally a fan of his writing. But Dawkins’s and Dennett’s books, which are not, as you assert, based on mere ‘prejudice’ and ‘war against the religious’, would, I suspect, have come to be written, doubtless in rather different form, whether 9/11 had taken place or not. As I pointed out, both Dawkins and Dennett had been much exercised over many years by the power of religious fundamentalism particularly where matters of science, such as, obviously, the theory of evolution, were concerned, and rightly wanted to stand up against it. Or do you think they were wrong to do so?
I sort of drifted into atheism in my teens (hundreds of years ago), and do not regard myself as a ‘New Atheist’; I read – religiously, every morning – Eric’s, Ophelia Benson’s and Jerry Coyne’s blogs (or websites)not because I necessarily agree with them (I do not always, as you must have noticed), but because in the main they write well and intelligently about important matters and I respect them. I don’t know what this ‘anti-liberal feminismt’ that you allege informs Atheism + is: I haven’t noticed it, though I will confess that I am not very interested in posts of the ‘she or he said this nasty thing’ variety,
and not very interested, not being a ‘joining’ sort of person, in conferences about this and that. But despite the conferences, ‘elevorgate’ (the chief cause for surprise for me was the extraordinary reaction Rebecca Watson’s words aroused), talk about the ‘Four Horsemen’, the Dawkins website (which used at least to have a cliched photograph that I loathed of RD gazing heroically into the distance),I see no evidence of some of plot, or Leninist coup, instigated from the top by a certain group: rather, I see, as Ophelia Benson does, a disparate collection of people who share some important ideals but who also disagree strongly on some matters – as I do on occasion with them. You see, Egbert, you make these wild and vague allegations and then seem to half take them back (you admire Hitchens unequivocally, it seems,and you admire Dawkins in some ways), and then you talk about claims of climate-change being fraudulent and 9/11 being a put up job (by who?),but refuse to say when challenged why you believe these things or lay out any kind of case. It becomes very difficult for others to understand really where you stand or to take your allegations seriously. Sorry.
Tim Harris: “It becomes very difficult for others to understand really where you stand or to take your allegations seriously. Sorry.”
I don’t admire Hitchens unequivocally, but I tried to show people how important dissent was and thinking for yourself, rather than following popularity and authority. Without accepting dissent, people begin to agree with each other all day long, forming a tribe, and those with alternative views are considered ‘outside’ the tribe, and this is known as groupthink. Then those people agree all day long, becoming more and more deluded and living in a fantasy world. That’s how cults and religions form, it’s a natural process that happens in any group or organization that controls thought. Once people become tired and disillusioned they leave, or they start a new tribe. Then disagreement becomes tribes versus tribes.
Now Eric has been exceedingly generous by putting up with my dissent (and Corio’s), for months now. But that’s how a rational group of people are supposed to function by default. They are supposed to be open minded to new information, and relatively unemotional, but of course that hardly happens in reality. The power of social interaction and the desire for power overwhelms individuality.
And sometimes, a dissenter becomes a convenient clown, to laugh at. A scapegoat for the crowd to throw off their frustrations and their sadistic tendencies. Sometimes they make them eat hemlock or they crucify them.
I held my comments when this cam up in the last thread, because I felt like the topic shift was a bit of a hijack. This new post seems like fair game, even if I am less able to keep up with the conversations on weekends.
Jet fuel does in fact burn at temperatures too low to melt steel, but steel does not need to completely melt in order to be significantly weakened. In the end it was fire that brought down all three towers. They all shared a common design flaw in having elevator shafts near the main support beams. The grease and other flammable materials in the elevator shafts heated up the support beams enough to weaken them and cause the buildings to collapse in on themselves.
Scientific American made a good article on this.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fahrenheit-2777
There are also a great many videos on YouTube that address 9/11 and its conspiracies. I recommend a user called RKOwens4.
I was taken in for a time by 9/11 conspiracy theories, so I can sympathize. An honest investigation reveals that the most likely cause was indeed fundamentalists and not a massive US government covert operation. The “truthers” share an all too common pattern of desperately attempting to poke small holes in the “official story” and then trying to drive a conspiracy bus through them. I do think that the administration of the time used the attack to their advantage and started a war on false pretenses, clearly the US government is not beyond questioning, but the idea they masterminded the 9/11 attacks is just too fantastic to be reality given the amazing lack of evidence.
But, Egbert, what new information have you provided? And what exactly, are you dissenting from? As a matter of fact, I think that a great weakness of certain New Atheists is their political, historical and anthropological naivetie and ignorance (manifested, for me, in Jerry Coyne’s one-time belief that a secular state was necessarily anti-religious), their assumption that it is all a matter of just ‘being reasonable’ when they don’t see that their reasonableness is in large part a function of their culture and education, and assume, without realising it, that ‘being reasonable’ in their way is something that lies outside history and culture and is easily attainable by anyone when it really is not (see Pierre Bourdieu on this). Consequently, what sometimes comes across is a rather facile arrogance and a contempt towards those who have not been educated as they have, or even had the chance of such education (I crossed swords long ago with P.Z. Myers – whom I admire in many ways – for the contemptuous attitude he and many of his commenters adopted towards some Eastern European countrywoman who was thanking God for providing the opportunity to send her son to the States to have an operation that saved his life and that could not be had elsewhere); and I find really rather silly and childish, and certainly not funny at all, the recent sneering ‘tweet’ by Richard Dawkins to the effect that because a coffee-ring was found on a Koran somewhere all the shops in the Starbucks’ chain were having to be protected. Because of this naivetie and this confidence in their reasonableness, there is the attitude that a disinclination to embrace the truths that are obvious to them is due to a wilful blindness. This is an attitude that certainly does reproduce certain patterns of Western thought that were common in the imperialist age as to the incorrigibility of the ‘natives’ of various kinds, attitudes that led in many cases to genocide, whether of the benignly neglectful kind or of the obviously malign kind: the decimation of the San people in Africa, for example, or the extinction of the Tasmanian people… I remember Seamus Heaney remarking on some highly educated and highly ignorant English acquaintance (not me!) shaking his head at the time of the (fairly) recent troubles in Ulster and intoning, ‘These Irish…’ (Incidentally, in the book ‘Sex at Dawn’, which is well worth reading, there are some quite cogent criticisms, it seems to me, of Pinker’s optimism, of his misunderstanding of the nature of the primitive societies he adduces in support of his argument, and of his dependence on such as Napoleon Chagnon.). And, certainly where Islam is concerned, it is surely the case that the New Atheists need to be very careful that they do not play into the hands of the xenophobic right, who unfortunately do exist, and into the hands of those in the States who want to start a war with Iran. I have objected about what seems to me to be the refusal on the part of Eric and Jerry Coyne to give credit to those moderate Muslims who have taken a stand against extremists, and who, in my view, do not deserve to be dismissed as being of no account or as being in the end ‘enablers’ of the extremists (the last attitude seems to me to be very close in spirit to the attitude among certain socialists that anyone of bourgeois descent was necessarily a ‘class-enemy’ however much support she or he might have given to the socialist cause); they deserve to be praised and encouraged. And, yes, I do think that the New Atheists pay far too much attention to religion and assume it can be somehow separated from the rest of society, when the latter possibility has come about in the West as the result of a long and bloody historical process peculiar to the West. Now, those are my main criticisms of the New Atheists (another would be that few of them seem to have had the experience of living in a very different culture, but that is by the way). Now, what am I trying to say… I have lost the thread… well, I think what I’m trying to get at is that these criticisms are, I hope, fairly specific, and not vague gesturings, as, in all honesty, yours, Egbert, seemed to me to be. And – forgive me for saying this – but you really do not help your cause by presenting yourself as some Christ-like scapegoat when people disagree with you. Yes, some of the comments were unpleasant, but I have had to put up with such unpleasant comments, as when I crossed swords with PZ.
Tim Harris, I do agree with everything you wrote in your comment #25, and I also agree with your criticism of me, being somewhat flippant, vague and not helping my own cause.
corio37
Actually, there is way more than this going on. I haven’t ever been a climate change denier; but I have previously felt that the evidence for anthropogenic global warming was mostly statistical and therefore a good deal less reliable than the evidence for say, the fact that the earth revolves around the sun. It turns out that that is a very poor representation of the facts.
I found this out by listening to a series of lectures put out by “The Teaching Company” delivered by Richard Wolfson, a professor of Physics at Middlebury College. It turns out that (a) is nothing but a fact of physics and that a physicist would be as unlikely to deny this as to deny that the earth revolves around the sun. It is easy to observe this effect on the Earth and on Venus. If it weren’t for (a) the average temperature at the surface of the earth would be around 0 degrees Fahrenheit, which it is not. If it weren’t for (a) the average temperature at the surface of Venus would be 100 degrees Fahrenheit, but actually it’s around the boiling point of lead. Some things about Earth’s climate are a good deal harder to follow, but that part is basic modern physics that any ex-engineer who had to take physics in college back in the 80s can still follow pretty well.
I have nothing to say about any economic models — they do all seem inherently dubious. Physics is easier than people.
Apart from that,
smells a bit of persecution complex like the Christian majority in the US often shows, when they are once again stopped from dragging everyone else into their bubble.
Yes, you are not helping your own cause, whatever that might be. There’s no harm in being clear about what you think, but your vague allusions and self-pity do not draw others to it.
Egbert paints himself as Socrates or Jesus, or perhaps both at once.
Well, criticize “new” atheists as much as you like, but few of us do that.
(I totally agree about the cringe-making gazing-into-the-distance photo of Dawkins though. That comes way too close to painting self as Sock or Jeez. I also think naming the foundation after himself was a good deal too grandiose.)
Yeah, that photo was a bit funny. I remember laughing about it years ago when he came to lecture at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His lecture sold out (the tickets were free but all taken) and those of us who had been too busy to pick up tickets were able to console ourselves pretty easily by agreeing with each other that his self-portrayal was laughably vain even if his efforts were praiseworthy.
Since then, though, I’ve learned to feel more grateful for his tireless efforts while still deprecating the rather careless editing of “The God Delusion”. “The Magic of Reality” is actually a much more interesting book. And “The Selfish Gene” which I read in high school, had a tremendous influence on my thinking.
He’s my father’s age now, and I think he may be slipping a bit. The recent “elevator-gate” incident is probably evidence of this. Why should anybody so famous write such a carelessly written and ill-considered post on somebody else’s blog? I’m starting to worry that he’ll go the way poor Watson did, cultivating a reputation for saying outrageous things, and eventually being hoist by his own petard. What he needs is an actual friend to pull him out of the fray before he irretrievably tarnishes his own reputation.
corio37:
You say “which in some unspecified way will cause disasters and catastrophes;”
That’s bizarre. Many books and articles have specified in detail the expected results of global warming. Just 2 examples:
1 Hundreds of millions of people depend on glaciers to smooth out the river flow they need for agriculture. Almost all glaciers are receding. When the glaciers are gone, those people will suffer alternate flooding and drought. Their agriculture will collapse.
2 You may have noticed unusual drought conditions in the US this year – an expected consequence of global warming. As a result yields of many crops will be low. This will push up food prices worldwide. This is not theory, it is happening now.
Meanwhile the world’s population continues to grow. Unless we do something, widespread starvation is inevitable.
Tildeb, do YOU actually have empirical evidence that the alleged AGW feedback loop occurs in real life? Since this is, after all, the single hypothesis on which the whole AGW movement depends?
If not — well, you’re just relying on faith, aren’t you?
Corio37, yes, I have empirical evidence that is compelling. But, unlike you, I laid out years ago what evidence would be required for me to change my mind that AGW (for which the evidence is overwhelming) must be shown to drive climate change. I did this by establishing that the most convincing evidence to me would be if it could be clearly shown that the rate and frequency of changing weather patterns was accelerating when all other natural factors could be accounted for.
When this evidence was forthcoming (sorry to link to my own site but it already has an excellent video), I had the intellectual integrity to change my mind not because of reasons of faith (that you want tar all those who have compelling reasons to fully support the scientific consensus) but because I respect reality more than my own beliefs about it.
You see, Corio37, I have worked in climatology and am well aware of many of the criticisms (some legitimate, most illegitimate) against those scientists working diligently to find out what’s true and having the intestinal fortitude to take on the legions of wannabe critics who stand against accepting the reality we share (just look at what Mann has had to go through). But as long as you don’t want to understand why you are wrong, don’t pretend skepticism is your shield because it’s not; it is your embrace of ignorance in the service of your reality-denying belief.
corio37, it was you, not Tildeb, who introduced the idea of feedback. In fact adding CO2 (which is known to absorb infra-red wavelengths that the Earth’s surface emits) to the atmosphere is going to increase global temperatures even if there is no positive feedback. The AGW hypothesis does not require any feedback. The known feedbacks – such as, obviously, melting the Arctic ice makes that region absorb more sunlight – merely make matters worse.
Unfortunately the only way to verify that particular feedback “in real life” is to melt the Arctic ice. Which we are doing. But when the results are in there will be no way to un-melt it.
David Evans raises a key point here: we are running the global climate change experiment exactly once. We already have compelling evidence that we are rapidly changing our climate by human activity, but those who try to insist that their current skepticism about our (meaning human) role is justified – or that some measure of debate remains when none does – are causing the same effect as those who are paid well to stick their heads into their nether-regions and tell the rest of us it’s too dark to see anything clearly; they are helping to make the results of this experiment just that much worse, just that much more difficult to mitigate, just that much more costly to all of us.
When our grandchildren ask how this generation could be so arrogant and stupid and irresponsible to allow the problem to grow to such an extent in the name of exercising skepticism – when all the scientific evidence, and I mean all credible evidence, indicates substantial alteration to climate patterns caused in the main by greenhouse gas emissions – then I will refer them to the Corio37s and Egberts of the world who thought they had the right (and the egotistical luxury) to allow their denialist beliefs to take the place of readily accessible knowledge. You see, you don’t have to be someone who profits to be part of this global problem of unsustainable emissions; all you have to be is someone who aids and abets those who do. That is the role the denialist community makes to contribute ‘impetus to inaction’ to this increasingly catastrophic problem. They are used quite successfully as dupes and they need to be exposed and shamed for taking on this role in the name of skepticism rather than ignorance.
Really, this level of hysteria and abuse coming from the ‘reasonable’ non-sceptic side, is worrying, although I knew it was always there. You only have to disagree or other an alternative opinion to uncover it.
Umm, though we can’t run experiments on our own planet, we can observe what has happened to other planets, e.g., Venus. Another good point made by Dr. Richard Wolfson in his series of lucid and compelling lectures.
Egbert, when you have to face the horrific results of inaction up close and personal – fire, flood, drought, repeated extreme weather, famine – then perhaps you’ll begin to realize just how irresponsible you have been to think that what you are exercising is reasonable skepticism against taking responsible action (and, of course, labeling any criticism for lack of understanding as hysteria and abuse). It’s not reasonable. And this has been pointed out to you to no apparent effect other than asserting cause for your persecution complex.
So the question then becomes how can any of us know the difference between a reasonable and unreasonable skepticism? A good starting point is to figure out what evidence would be required for you to change your mind and then try to understand if that evidence is or could become available. When I read so many rich responses to you that offer so many to choose from, it is disappointing to find that almost all are insufficient in the quality you demand from others but are unwilling to apply to yourself.
There are apparently at least two very different understandings of Atheism+ around:
(1) Leftists are smearing their politics all over our nice atheism, where it doesn’t belong – just as you should not have to subscribe to a certain understanding of feminism to be considered an environmentalist, art lover or stamp collector. And they want to exclude and silence me personally because I don’t subscribe to it.
(2) Atheism+ is about making the atheist movement more diverse so that people who aren’t white male and straight don’t feel silenced and excluded, otherwise it will remain too small and insular. And well, for that we have to take a stand against those in the movement who do that silencing and excluding.
Now I am among those who do not consider Atheism+ necessary; it seems like a needlessly complicated way of indicating that you are in favour of minimally civilized behaviour. Because that is what (2) actually is: a no-brainer*. Any movement whose purpose is not to actively promote racism or suchlike should have that plus, and thus that plus should go without mention. And that should be that.
As for Eric defining scepticism in his own way, no, he isn’t. See, there is questioning received dogma and then following the evidence where it leads. That is called skepticism. There is questioning everything and just curling up and not knowing what to do. That is not called skepticism but solipsism or postmodernism. And then there is questioning everything, deciding that you can’t trust anybody else’s conclusions, and just picking the one you like best (e.g. “I don’t have any responsibility for global warming despite my wasteful lifestyle”). There is a name for that, but it is not skepticism either.
As for climate change, it has been known for decades that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, and we are putting a lot of CO2 into the air that hasn’t been there for a long time. Even if you don’t want to believe any of the models whatsoever, this is not rocket science. But what really gets me, not least because I am a scientist myself, is the view of the scientific community that must go with AGW
denial“skepticism”. To believe that it is all a hoax, you have to assume that the vast, overwhelming majority of relevant scientists are either much dumber and less informed than you are, or that they are part of a vile conspiracy**. Stupid or evil. So you either have to be arrogant to a truly stunning degree, or you have to be conspiracy nut. Pick your poison. If you consider that offensive there is no helping you; this would be like being offended because somebody remarked that your trousers are blue.*) The same goes for anti-harrassment policies. Those just should not be necessary among civilized people. What is next, a not punching people in the face policy? In both cases one should be able to throw the perp bodily out of the building and press charges against them without having to write this out in advance. But maybe that has something to do with the mentality in certain unnamed countries that also considers labels such as “CAUTION: after microwaving, container may be hot” to be indispensable.
**) It has been pointed out above that such a conspiracy would be absolutely impossible to pull off, but one could add that its motivation is also always a bit fuzzy. Is it about the awesome $50k grant money that an underpaid assistant professor gets to spend on equipment, and that they could not grab if one had not invented AGW? As compared to the complete absence of any financial motives on the opposing side financed by the multi trillion dollar oil industry, perhaps? Or is it merely the inability to admit error? Either way, nobody who know a real life scientific community from the inside can find these potential motivations remotely plausible.
‘Really, this level of hysteria and abuse coming from the ‘reasonable’ non-sceptic side, is worrying, although I knew it was always there. You only have to disagree or other (offer?) an alternative opinion to uncover it.’
Egbert, put a sock in it. You are being either very foolish or very dishonest, and I find it increasingly difficult to remain even moderately polite. It is you have made vague and ungrounded accusations about atheists, it is you who assert your superiority to others on the strength of experiences that you won’t specify but pretend that others have not had, it is you who have asserted that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the scientific community on insufficiently sceptical laymen, it is you who have asserted that there was a plot to bring down the twin towers and will not say in what that plot consisted, and it is you who persist in peddling that last claim while being obliviously insensitive to the fact that one of the commenters who responded to you lost family and friends in the disaster and saw the towers come down. And instead of responding to the issues raised by your interlocutors, you merely, and uncourageously, resort to self-pitying complaints such as the one I have quoted above. Come on: behave in an honourable way.
Alex SL, that is known as a false dichotomy fallacy. Personal attack against others is known as ad hominem fallacy. Come on people, let’s not keeping sinking so low as to be hysterical and irrational, get back to being reasonable and then we can have reasonable discussions.
As for skepticism, there are different kinds of skepticism. But it’s important to understand a difference between philosophical skepticism(s) and scientific scepticism. I suggest that what we do here is philosophical and not scientific, because we’re dealing with arguments and not verifiable evidence. Eric seems to be confusing critical thinking or logical positivism with scepticism, which does not describe reasonable doubt which ought to be part of any rational thinking.
The events of 9/11, which is a disgusting crime, and the hypothesis of catastrophic global warming are not verifiable events, and so can only be approached indirectly by science. We all form opinions either based on what we know, or what we’re told. I suggest that much of people’s opinions on the matter, whether they like it or not (including myself) are formed by what they’re told, not by what they know directly, and since there are good experts for either side of the argument, it is reasonable to be skeptical of both.
Now I used reasonable doubt over the event of 9/11 as yet another criticism of new atheism, which seems to me to be nothing other than an emotionally driven and futile force against religion, which is not only irrational but dangerous.
I admit to my own prejudice and hatred of religion, because of the great number of instances where great evil is apparently done by those who are religious. However, a great deal of evil is done by the non-religious too (see John Gray’s The Immortalization Commission ), and so now I realize that evil is not about religion, and the simple narrative of us vs. them, but it’s part of human nature. What I’m seeing amongst atheists who start organizing themselves politically is the very same force of hatred which causes evil in the first place. One example of this historically, is the Cult of Reason movement during the French revolution, where an assumption of rational politics is replaced with madness and evil. Please go and look it up, and then go and look up the horrors of state communism, if you still think you’re immune to evil and irrationality.
Again, this is as hysterical and irrational as telling you that your hairs are composed of keratin. So tell me, what is a reasonable view of the research community that would explain why it predominantly favours AGW if Corio37 can see how wrong it is, a view that neither includes them being too stupid to be researchers or evil?
At least with 9-11-trutherism I can dimly perceive a possible (evil, but superficially rational-sounding) motive behind the supposed conspiracy, even if the assumptions that this could be pulled off without 99% of the people who would have had to be involved either blubbing or revolting and that there was no considerably less convoluted and risky way to reach the supposed goals of the conspiracy are completely twee. But for virtually the whole climate science, oceanography and atmospheric chemistry communities to promote something that is supposedly so easily proven wrong… why would they do that? What model of human behaviour could be behind that idea, and how would one square it with the observable behaviour of scientists in real life?
I am no climate scientist myself, but I beg to differ about the indirectness of our observations about AGW. The facts are no more obscure than those about gravity, evolution or antibiotics: it is a simple matter of observation that (on average, as a trend over annual oscillations) flowering starts earlier, glaciers are retreating, arctic ice is disappearing, land and ocean temperatures are rising, the oceans are acidifying, the sea level is rising, extreme weather events are getting more frequent, and CO2 levels in the atmosphere are rising. If there is anything indirect about all this, it has to be on the level of “correlation does not mean causation” level, but that goes for everything we observe, as Hume already pointed out.
I did not realize until just now that Paul Kurtz recently died. Here is Joseph Hoffman’s thoughts on the man:
http://rjosephhoffmann.wordpress.com/2012/10/21/paul-kurtz-december-21-1925-october-20-2012/
I think, Egbert, you should just have the grace to shut up.
What do the insurance (in this case, the re-insurance) actuarial tables show us about data for human caused climate change?
In the same way today’s mining industry invests billions on geological models that some obstinate skeptics insist are not trustworthy enough (applying their breed of reasonable skepticism, that is to say), so too do today’s climate change deniers wish to insist that the insurance and re-insurance companies who also risk billions based on the scientific consensus for AGW driving rapid climate change are also not trustworthy <i.enough (exercising their breed of reasonable skepticism, that is to say).
One cannot help but wonder why these few but very vocal deniers do not see how their definition of what constitutes reasonable skepticism seems so at odds with those who are willing and able to put their billions of dollars where they think reasonable skepticism ends: where reality – and not the beliefs of those dedicated to their disconnected skepticism – arbitrates what is reasonable.