I begin simply by remarking on the death of Paul Kurtz, a stalwart, lifelong defender of reason and humanism. Perhaps I will get an opportunity to comment on this great humanist and his contribution to the cause of rational discourse at another time. R. Joseph Hoffmann has some thoughtful remarks here. While some of Kurtz’s last months were marked by contention with a new generation of atheists, it is unfortunate, I believe, that Hoffmann should have taken this occasion to raise his beefs (which also happen to have been Kurtz’s) with the new atheism. This was so small a part of Kurtz’s life and contribution, and can be partly explained by the unwillingness of an aging man to let go of a movement he did so much to influence, which was undergoing, as all things must, a process of growth and change, that it strikes me that it would have been better to have chosen another occasion to raise such issues, if raised they must be.
The last few days have been a real eye-opener for me. You may say that I have simply been naive, and that may be true, but I do expect a level of rationality in discussion that seems to me to have gone missing a number of times in the last couple of days while I have been rearranging and alphabetising my library — a task that I have been putting off and off for the last couple years, and finally, in search of a book which had already consumed a couple of hours, decided that I had to do now, instead of wasting more time on what was becoming ever more obviously a fruitless search. So I have just let the comments on my last post grow like Topsy — an expression, in case you wondered, straight out of Uncle Tom’s Cabin:
“Tell me where were you born, and who your father and mother were.”
“Never was born,” re-iterated the creature more emphatically. “Never had no father, nor mother nor nothin’”
“…Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy?” The child looked bewildered, but grinned as usual.
“Do you know who made you?”
“Nobody, as I knows on,” said the child, with a short laugh. The idea appeared to amuse her considerably; for her eyes twinkled, and she added, “I spect I grow’d. Don’t think nobody never made me.”
Well, things just grow’d, didn’t nobody monitor how. In this post I want to do a bit of monitoring and commenting, since, it seems to me, a number of things were said that need to be discussed. I also received a comment on an earlier post about sophisticated believers which I trashed — something I seldom do — the more to honour it by bringing it right up front where it can be discussed.
The trashed comment is from someone named Gord, from Vancouver or environs, and it goes like this:
There is a lot of silliness contained in your post. Of course there are sophisticated non-fundamentalist believers. 40 percent of acting scientists have an active faith in God. One third of American philosophers are theists. The Veritas Forums host many Christian intellectuals on campuses around the world–from across the disciplines. Notre Dame University has many world-class scholars who are people of faith. You have a clear bias that misses many facts. Try again. [corrected for spelling]
I don’t think Gord was reading particularly clearly, but he was obviously incensed that I should have questioned the sophistication of the “hosts of Christian intellectuals” and “world-class scholars who are people of faith.” But, you see, I never questioned the existence of these intellectuals or scholars. Indeed, I gave two examples in the post concerned, both of them English, I’m afraid, but none the worse for that. Both N.T. Wright, a bishop and a New Testament scholar who has written several books, and, most lately, a three-volume study of the resurrection of Jesus, and Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, can scarcely be called slouches when it comes to Christian scholarship.
My question, however, was not addressed to their existence as intellectuals or scholars, but to their sophistication. In one sense, of course, there is no question as to their sophistication, and insofar as this is true, Gord is right. They are subtle and refined, knowledgeable and highly respected. But my question obviously was not addressed to that. My question simply was whether, by finding workarounds for common beliefs, or by fudging the lines between sense and nonsense as Rowan Williams seemed to be doing, their sophistication amounted to a form of window-dressing. And just pointing to the existence of people like Wright or Williams scarcely answers the question that I was — or at least thought I was — addressing. Jerry Coyne uses the term Sophisticated Theology™ to refer to precisely the kind of thing that I was trying to illustrate by using Williams and Wright as examples. If there is substance behind the fancy facade of their “sophistication,” I am merely suggesting that it is hard to find. And it is, I am afraid, Gord, with the greatest respect, silly to suggest that this is a silly question to ask.
The next issue — and I take these up in no particular order — is Egbert’s suggestion that I define scepticism in my own way. Here is his accusation (from comment #3 in the last post):
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 I certainly wasn’t defining scepticism in my own way, and using that to misinterpret what sceptics claim. Indeed, the issue of the post was scepticism (just as this one is), and the widespread misunderstanding of what scepticism is, and how it should be expressed. I certainly was not deliberately defining scepticism in a way that was unfavourable to specific sceptical claims. I was asking a question about the uses of scepticism. For, after all, I consider myself a sceptic about many things, and the suggestion that I am over here and the sceptics in their turn are over there, and that I am a non-sceptic dumping on sceptics is completely orthogonal to what I believe I am doing.
As I understand it there are two fundamental kinds of scepticism. The first is philosophical scepticism, or what has been called Pyrrhonian scepticism, where it is doubted that it is possible to know anything at all. This form of radical scepticism is less common than it used to be before the revolution in science of the seventeenth century, when it became less and less possible to claim that we can know nothing at all. Even if, for any particular scientific discovery, we must say that it must be held in a qualified way, so that we cannot say that we know that it is true absolutely, we can say, with some assurance, that it provides a fair representation of the world given the present state of our knowledge about the world. But it could still be claimed, as the Pyrrhonian sceptic would want to do, that even that does not amount to knowledge, because it is a peculiarly perspectival view of reality, that is, that it is only what can be “known” by a cognitively limited being such as human beings are. What the world and the universe are like “in themselves” cannot be known by us, since we are inescapably bound to this limited perspective. We do not have, as Nagel pointed out in a book with the same title, a “view from nowhere.” This is not the kind of scepticism that I have in mind here, however important it is to philosophy to try to cut the nerve of this kind of universal doubt.
The second kind of scepticism is scepticism, or doubt about the truth of something, within the context of things already known; and its main purpose is to find reasons for belief, or, on the contrary, reasons to doubt. This kind of scepticism is local and occasional. It cannot be a general scepticism, because it is based upon already achieved knowledge, from which it gets its purchase for questioning and assessing other claims to know. This is what the author of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on scepticism calls ”ordinary incredulity.” In respect of this kind of scepticism the question is not whether knowledge as such is possible, but whether a particular knowledge claim is reasonably doubted. Let’s begin with evolution, because that is so widely doubted by Christians and Muslims, who, as a consequence, are fair game, certainly, for refutation, and even for a bit of ridicule, for they simply do not seem to understand, or to be willing to accept, the weight of the evidence ranged against them. What they do, sometimes, to make the point that I tried to make in that earlier post to which Gord took so much exception, with considerable sophistication, is to provide what I earlier called “workarounds,” plausible sounding arguments which call into question the evidence that they think is insufficient to show that life evolved — at a “macroscopic” level, they will instantly add, since they can scarcely deny that there are evolutionary changes in existing organisms, since this has been decisively demonstrated in experimental situations. But, they add, there is no basis for the claim that genuinely distinct species evolved from earlier species, or that human beings are related, by way of evolutionary ancestry, to any earlier forms of life, like the common ancestor of apes, say, and humans.
Now, those of you who are sceptical about claims about global warming, or about the claim that the reason the twin towers in New York were felled in 2001 was the result of crashing large jets into the buildings, must be prepared to show, in detail, in the first place, that there either is no global warming, or that the warming that there is is entirely explicable on grounds other than the emission of greenhouse gases by human activity. Conspiracy theorists of the twin towers disaster have to explain, if the most obvious proximate cause of the collapse of the buildings (namely, flying two large jet airplanes into the towers) was not sufficient to cause the collapse, what in fact did cause the buildings to collapse. Just as in the case of creationist sceptics about evolution, sceptics about global warming and the 9/11 collapse of the twin towers in New York must provide alternative explanations that can be shown to be true. It is well-known now that no creationist responses to evolution are plausible. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. It was overwhelming even in Darwin’s day, and he had much less information than we have now. He knew nothing about genetics, and he had no idea of the mechanism (DNA) — nor, of course, did Mendel – that explains inheritance. And yet the evidence that he presents in the Origin, if not conclusive at the time, changed the whole game plan for biology.
The same, as I say, goes for global warming and the collapse of the twin towers. Corio, for example, asks some very specific questions, and then suggests that, if I cannot answer those questions, that global warming scepticism wins by default. But I am not a climate scientist, just as I am not an evolutionary biologist. There is simply no option here but to take the consensus amongst climate scientists as a starting point, and it is for climate scientists to answer questions put to them by sceptics. Asking me, a mere layman when it comes to science, let alone climate science, how I explain this or that supposed fact, if climate science is right in its conclusions about global warming, is like asking me, if I claim on the basis of what I believe I know, that it is possible to operate on the eyes of humans to correct faults in vision, to show that my claim is true by operating on someone’s eye. And telling me that support for global warming is dropping in Australia is even worse. This is not a popularity contest. We are trying to speak about what is happening. My own observations over the last decade or so, as the fall remains warmer — we didn’t have a heavy frost here in Nova Scotia until mid-October, when it used to be mid-September — and the winters milder, suggests that large-scale change is afoot, but I really have to take my cue from the scientists whose responses to climate change denial has been consistently and robustly supportive of claims that industrialisation has not only accompanied climate change, but is a direct cause of climate change, and that the result could be disastrous. Ecosystem collapse could be sudden and catastrophic. It is hard to believe that general scepticism regarding these conclusions is reasonable, given that the consensus on climate change and its causes is so broad. Doubt of this sort has a context, and it is within that context that it must be answered. It is hopeless to create an entirely new picture of climate trends that denies the fact of global warming or its most salient causes, unless there is some completely new theory that can explain what climate scientists measure. “Getting skeptical about global warming skepticism” is a good place to start. I know of no other way of being reasonable in this situation than by taking seriously what climate science is telling us, just as I know no other way to be reasonable about the development of life than to take what evolutionary biologists believe to be true. General scepticism in this context seems to me to be not only dangerous but foolish, and electoral numbers mean nothing at all.
As to the twin towers, I cannot see that scepticism regarding the causes of the disaster is reasonable; nor do I think, as Egbert suggested, that there is nothing verifiable here. Watching two jetliners crash into the towers and then watching them collapse, and thinking that these events are causally linked is not simply a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc, unless there is some other plausible explanation for the collapse of the towers. In response to some reasonable comments on the criticism of global warming and the terrorist attack which is reasonably thought to be what caused of the twin towers disaster, Egbert said first:
Really, this level of hysteria and abuse coming from the ‘reasonable’ non-sceptic side, is worrying, although I knew it was always there.
and then, second, a bit later:
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.
I do not bring this up to pillory Egbert, but simply to point out that what led to the reference to hysteria and abuse was anything but hysteria and abuse. And claiming those who criticised “9/11 truthers” and climate change denialists as “the ‘reasonable’ non-sceptic side” is bizarre! Scepticism does not consist in doubting things, unless of course you want to take a Pyrrhonian sceptical position, which is harder to establish rationally than many people think (see here A.C.Grayling’s two books The Refutation of Scepticism and Scepticism and the Possibility of Knowledge). It consists in reasonably doubting things, and the arguments made by David Evans and Tildeb and others is that there was no reasonable argument in evidence for either “truther” claims or global warming denial. This is a terrifically important issue, and in so many internet discussions it seems to be overlooked. Just having a reason for believing or disbelieving something does not make it a good reason, and does not make disbelief rational. That is why religious believers field apologetic arguments in support of their beliefs, and also why the contention between believers and unbelievers runs so fast and furious at times, because a lot of emotional energy is tied up in our beliefs and our believing, especially when it goes against the grain of accepted beliefs. Of course, I could get my second wind at this point, and go on for another few thousand words, but perhaps this is as good a place to stop as any. But my point in this, as in my previous post, is to highlight a problem with internet discussions, and the difficulty of keeping these discussions on an even keel. Sceptics should endeavour to be reasonable above all, and should not be led into the morass of scepticism just for the sake of being transgressive. The aim should be to construct a reasonable model of the natural and social worlds, especially now that the religious world view is under so much stress and is in the process of collapsing. That, at any rate, is what I conceive myself to be at least attempting to contribute to, and I apologise if, to some of you, I seem in this post (to use that terrible expression) to be beating a dead horse.
Keep flogging the dead horse Eric. I guess the biggest problem for me is that opinions about important things tend to become polarised. Now it is quite possible that one position is merely wrong but, to take Global Warming as an example, sometimes a more nuanced view is appropriate.
In my opinion(!) Climate Change is as certain as we can be. It’s happened throughout the last 4.6 billion years and I see know mechanism to fix it at one state for the future. Is the trend warming? Yes, almost certainly. Is the warming trend influenced by human activities. Very probably. Do we know how bad it will get, and how soon? This is where scientific debate is very active, and ‘pronouncements’ from various bodies fudge the issues. Certainty is lacking. Finally, what can or should we do? I have no clear view of consensus here. The whole shooting match is data and argument which starts in ‘is’ (present) but is still struggling to find an appropriate ‘ought’ (future). And as with any ‘ought’ argument people can express opinions without risking contradiction by actual events – they haven’t happened yet. Denying global warming prevents a sensible plan of action, and overenthusiastic support also risks overwhelming a sensible plan of action with panic.
The 9/11 issue is slightly different in that all the events are in the past. While terrorists flying aeroplanes into skyscrapers staggers the imagination, a government arranging to fly aeroplanes into its own skyscrapers AND set huge thermite charges AND kill thousands of its own populace AND not have any of the details leak is, in my opinion, unsustainable. Look at the huge upset in the UK over the exposure of the fabricated evidence of WMD in Iraq; some things cannot remain secret.
“If there is substance behind the fancy facade of their ‘sophistication,’ I am merely suggesting that it is hard to find.”
Exactly.
DiscoveredJoys, that is largely my own reading on both counts. I remember reading Ehrlich’s (?) book The Population Bomb when it came out in the late 60s or early 70s, with its dire predictions, none of which came true in the way so alarmingly expressed, and I agree that we must not overplay the global warming issue. However, just as the population bomb thesis is starting to prove true, despite increased agricultural production, for it is quite clear that the limited resources of the earth simply cannot provide indefinitely for an increasingly large population, so, I suspect, the warnings about global warming will come true as well, and for many of the same reasons.
The problem is, in this case, that the destruction of environments that might result may be irreversible, and that could spell a serious catastrophe. Certainly, we do not want to spoil a plan of action by unreasonable hysterics, but, at the same time, the risks need to be squarely assessed and plainly put. A sensible plan of action seems very unlikely at the moment, unfortunately, because the economic problems associated with it are so huge, and may be unmanageable. This may mean that we are headed for a downward spiral of enivironmental failure and economic collapse. There is simply no reason why this could not happen, given the finiteness of the earth and its resources, though how serious and how imminent is apparently the issue that is in dispute, and, so far, there is no clear indication of where the science falls on this issue.
Denial that there is an issue, however, seems to me clearly unreasonable based on the best scientific opinion on the matter. It also tends to discredit scepticism, for the purpose or ordinary incredulity is to discover justifying reasons for our beliefs, if there are any, so that holding them is rationally warranted (or not, of course, as the case may be). Scepticism should never become an excuse merely for holding contrary opinionsm, which is why I find global warming denialism so hard to understand. I understand the religious reasons for denying that it is possible for humans to despoil the earth, though I think they are specious. I also understand why oil billionaires should try to downplay global warming. I can simply find no reason why unbelievers who do not stand to gain by the sale of fossil fuels should take a stand against the very broad scientific consensus on global warming, and it puzzles me in the same way that creationism does.
The more evidence you must discount, the bigger a conspiracy must become. The bigger a conspiracy, the less likely it is to be sustainable. It follows that any theory that requires a significantly massive and undetected conspiracy to remain valid ignores too much evidence and becomes correspondingly weak in its validity. With a big enough conspiracy just about anything can be ignored and anything can remain justified in spite of an infinite amount of evidence to the contrary. Such theories are functionally un-testable, and as such are not legitimate.
I do not understand much about climate science, so I must appeal to experts. When opponents of global warming tend to be funded exclusively by oil companies and supporters are accused of a massive global conspiracy funded very mysteriously, the reasonable place to put my trust becomes very clear. Global warming is as accepted among climate change scientists as evolution is accepted by biologists. That is surely not the final word, but I am out of my depth in disputing global warming given the expert consensus and must trust their conclusions.
I think your positions here are very well thought out, Eric. I agree with you completely.
The above is a comment by one of our resident climate change “skeptics.” This is so much like anti-evolution “skepticism” that it painful. The complexity of systems such as global climate is vastly larger than that of an ecosystem – even a small island system – but accurately predicting the future of even one population in a biological community is well nigh impossible. In the well-studied groundfinches of the Galápagos Archipelago, the change in beak size predicted by rainfall is a result, in part, of an unpredictable event – the invasion of a hard-fruited puncturevine from the eastern hemisphere tropics most likely on airplane tires. After its appearance, one would predict that when rainfall decreases beak size would increase. The later invasion of another even larger beaked groundfinch, however, reverses this trend. So in the end, we really can’t predict what will happen because we are studying a network with multiple links – some of which are just potentialities – when we construct the model. Does this mean that evolutionary theory is incorrect? No, because the populations still evolve – that much we can predict.
Has climate changed in the past, yes. Has climate change been due to activities of living organisms, yes. Can changes in climate cause major changes in ecosystems, yes. Can many species go extinct, yes. Can we easily predict what changes will occur, no.
“It is hard to believe that general scepticism regarding these conclusions is reasonable, given that the consensus on climate change and its causes is so broad.”
We really can’t compare skepticism about the science of climate change with skepticism regarding religious and moral questions — at least as of today. Climate change science is maybe 30 years old. Although there is a lot we don’t understand (no matter what some scientist like to claim) almost everyone agrees science has the tools to resolve this young argument. Both sides use and are confident in the same tools.
OTOH, we’ve been working on religious and moral questions for at least 3000 years. We don’t seem to be much closer today than 3000 years ago. We can’t even agree on what tools to use to resolve the issue. So we lack common ground. IOW, the dispute is much deeper. Unless science progresses enough to weigh in on the issue (which is a possibility) there doesn’t seem to be much hope for resolution.
“Now, those of you who are sceptical about claims about global warming, or about the claim that the reason the twin towers in New York were felled in 2001 was the result of crashing large jets into the buildings, must be prepared to show, in detail, in the first place, that there either is no global warming, or that the warming that there is is entirely explicable on grounds other than the emission of greenhouse gases by human activity.”
No that’s not how things work. Sceptics do not have the burden of proof. It’s rather like a court of law (and I recommend watching the movie ’12 Angry Men’) that the burden of proof is on the prosecution, or at least that is how things used to work in the ‘free world’ before 9/11. When I used to debate with Christians, I had to remind them over and over that the burden of proof was on the Christian and not the atheist.
It is perfectly okay to ask me for a reason for my scepticism, and we ought to remember that reason is not the same as evidence. My reason was the melting temperature of steel compared to the burning temperature of jet fuel, they don’t match up. I even gave a website where someone had carefully explained through reasoning, why they remain sceptical about the official account given by the state/media.
It doesn’t matter how many reasons I have to be sceptical, and there are many reasons, none of them add up to evidence or proof, because the simple truth is, none of us really know. We rely on much of what we’re told, and then come to our own conclusion. But if we’re not aware of all the evidence or all the knowledge, then we ought our certainty in the paradigm shift that 9/11 had on all of us.
And as DiscoveredJ remarks, we were sold a lie to go to war with Iraq, which had nothing to do with 9/11, but without an event such as 9/11 such wars would probably not have happened. The patriot act and subsequent loss of liberties and freedoms may also not have happened. New atheism, probably would not have happened.
So is it unreasonable of me to ask the question as I did in that first thread? “What if this was not the truth?” and “If in fact, the narrative we’re told about 9/11 was in fact a lie, wouldn’t that change everything?” No, it was not unreasonable.
Sorry, that should have been “But if we’re not aware of all the evidence or all the knowledge, then we ought to rethink our certainty in the paradigm shift that 9/11 had on all of us.”
It seems to me that this is too vague to be meaningful. If science can’t be relied upon to predict accurately, then of what use is it? You seem to be saying certain systems are too complex to make predictions. Yet we’re also told the system is simple enough to fully understand how it works and how it got to this point, and where it’s going. This is contradictory. It seems to me that AGW skeptics are mostly skeptical in the way you are skeptical here. “Studying a network with multiple links” is complicated. Easy answers should be questioned. Multiple links should be thoroughly investigated,
Egbert, you are quite wrong, you know. The burden of proof lies with the person who is making a claim that goes clean contrary either to established opinion, or to that opinion which is best supported by the evidence. The reason the Christian has the burden of proof in a scientific culture is that there are more reasons now to disbelieve than there are to believe. The reason the climate change denialist has the burden of proof is that the evidence is massively in the other way.
The same goes for the person who wants to deny that the jets flown into the twin towers caused their collapse. That person has the burden of proof, because, absent evidence for a giant conspiracy, there is so much more to prove. That’s the way burden of proof issues are settled. The same goes for assisted dying. Those who oppose it (almost always on religious grounds) must show just cause why those who are suffering intolerably may be forced to live even though their decision is to die, rather than to suffer intolerable ills. They have the burden of proof.
Burden of proof is not settled in the way that you suppose. Those who oppose the massive evidence of science on evolution have burden of proof to show why their view is a reasonable one. The emphasis is on the rational basis for belief, the justification for belief. Where the scientific consensus is X, the person who wishes to affirm ~X must bear the burden of proof. In the case of Christianity vs atheism, it may be thought that the burden of proof is equally shared, but this is, in general, not the case, for the naturalist position is more reasonable, since it affirms only what can be known with some assurance, than the religious position.
In the case of Iraq, the burden of proof rested with the American and British governments, and they did not satisfy the conditions. That is why so many NATO nations refused to participate. This, again, is how burden of proof is assigned. It always rests with the least compelling case, or the one with the most unknowns. Thus, your claim –
– in the absence of further compelling evidence is, in fact, unreasonable.
“The burden of proof lies with the person who is making a claim that goes clean contrary either to established opinion, or to that opinion which is best supported by the evidence.”
Now you’re just making stuff up.
donjindra, Go back and read the comment I highlighted – it specifically faults the models for not predicting every outcome accurately and for needing revision. This is normal science – especially for complicated systems – start with a simple model and change it to make it better fit the data by adding and subtracting variables as needed. It will take much work to hone models so they can predict how much temperature will rise and whether the changes will occur locally or globally. It will be a temperature range – not an exact value. And I am saying that yes complicated systems are very difficult to predict. One would be a fool to claim otherwise. This is what the “skeptic” trades on – and the point I was trying to make with evolution. If you are buying anti-AGW arguments, then you shouldn’t buy evolution arguments either. Even in a highly controlled laboratory setting we can’t predict what mutations or combinations of genes will occur and how those will influence relative fitness and change gene frequencies. We do know that if we change the internal or the external environment in predictable ways, then evolution will occur in predictable ways. So yes we should skeptical of the predictions in one way, but we should know that in the past when carbon dioxide levels have increased so have temperatures. Temperature changes have led to extinction of species and changes in species distributions. Those changes will have major impacts on agriculture and disease. If we can do things to slow temperature changes, then we will be better off; we are dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at very high rates – much faster than changes have occurred in the past.
No, Egbert, think about it: I’m not.
I should add, just so that you are clear, Egbert, that this is not a court of law, where you are innocent until proven guilty. You are trying to make an argument, and you must make it against other arguments, other evidence, of which you cannot be unaware. If you are unaware, you are simply not part of the same conversation.
Some of climate science is simple physics…it is climate change deniers who frame the conversation by puting all the emphasis on complicated models and statistics. See again that series of lectures “Earth’s Changing Climate” from “The Teaching Company”.
@Egbert
I suppose you had other posts you were paying attention to, but the melting point of steel is not a valid objection. I will repost the article.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fahrenheit-2777
Fire brought down all 3 towers. Positing a government conspiracy of controlled demolition because the method of collapse is unknown is an argument from ignorance. If you were only to reject the fire as the cause of the collapse, the burden of proof is not on you, but you would have to explain why you reject the evidence, including the video footage, that meets the burden of proof. If you want to go on to posit a government conspiracy, the burden of proof is most definitely upon you.
I never made an argument, I asked questions. Obviously Eric and some others here can’t distinguish the difference between appealing to authority or popularity and individual free thought and scepticism. I really don’t see the point in continuing with this.
In the spirit of charity I’m forced to believe that you are being deliberately perverse.
The alternative explanation would be that put forward by at least one other commenter on this blog, which is that you are just not that bright.
In either case I question your intellectual integrity.
In my opinion, Eric has gone above and beyond the call of duty in giving you a forum to air your silly views and you appear incapable of even explaining what those views are in any coherent manner let alone argue their merits.
Shame on you for being such a reprehensible troll and taking advantage of Eric’s good nature.
“Now, those of you who are sceptical about claims about global warming, or about the claim that the reason the twin towers in New York were felled in 2001 was the result of crashing large jets into the buildings, must be prepared to show, in detail, in the first place, that there either is no global warming, or that the warming that there is is entirely explicable on grounds other than the emission of greenhouse gases by human activity. ”
No, Eric — this is a misunderstanding of science. Science begins with a null hypothesis: that there is NO effect, NO correlation, NO interesting phenomenon, NO link. The job of the researcher then is to not only show that there is a link, but to show that their evidence for a link is sufficiently strong to dismiss the possibility of fraud, coincidence or error. AGW alarmists, in my view, have simply failed to falsify the null hypothesis, which in this case is that additional CO2 has NO impact on a hypothetical feedback loop involving ‘greenhouse gases’.
Just as with religion, it is the job of those people making a positive claim — ‘God exists’ — to come up with the evidence. Sceptics don’t have to do anything but point out where the alleged evidence is inadequate.
“Ecosystem collapse could be sudden and catastrophic. ”
And yet you advertised on your blog a conference entitled “THE WORLD IS PROBABLY NOT ENDING.” Well, is it or isn’t it? You really need to make up your mind on this.
Egbert, in all conscience, you have done more than just ask questions. You are right, you did not make an argument. That is why your “scepticism” is deeply questionable. You pretend to be a sceptic, simply because you “ask questions” or perhaps “reserve judgement.” However, you have claimed (i) that global warming is a fraud, and (ii), you have implied that the twin towers collapse was not due to a terrorist attack, but was, somehow unexplained, a conspiracy by the government of the United States. These are not just questions. They are much more. But even as questions you must, as a sceptic, justify their claim to be seriously entertained. You have not done so. So, either you are just being a troll, as has been suggested, just to get my motor going, or you are simply unaware of what you have been doing. I prefer to believe the latter, and have spent a considerable amount of time trying to get you to understand what being a sceptic involves, so far, without appreciable success. And, you are right, there is no point in continuing this, unless you are prepared to accept some of the burden of proof.
John K., when you say,
I hope you recognise that you are are really telling Egbert that he does have the burden of proof. For he must give reasons why he is rejecting the explanations that have so far been given. If he chooses to enter this conversation, the next step is his (that is, his burden of proof). Burden of proof is sometimes difficult to establish, that is true, but usually, if an explanation has been given, unless it is obviously irrelevant, the burden of proof lies on the person who wishes to contest that explanation. That is why the atheist has generally assumed the burden of proof in showing that the arguments for the existence of a god do not stand up, or that the supposed historicity of a religion’s claims to supernatural intervention have not been established. This is, presumably, why Jerry Coyne spends so much time countering the arguments of “sophisticated theologians.”
And just once more: calling AGW sceptics ‘deniers’ is deeply offensive. Why do you feel so reluctant to call your opponents by the name they prefer? Are you concerned that it would open up cracks in your own edifice of belief?
I hate to interrupt the discussion of global warming etc, but please see CFI Canada’s beautifully written email honouring the memory of Paul Kurtz: http://canadianatheist.com/2012/10/22/cfi-canada-mourns-the-death-of-humanism-giant-and-cfi-transnational-founder-paul-kurtz/
This is my last word and I will trouble you no more. I have posted for years on Eric’s blog, and have always been honest, or admitted errors when justified. These attacks on my integrity and honour are unacceptable, and I won’t put up with it any more. If after all this time you simply want to place me as a troll, rather than as a friend, then if that is easier than facing horrible truths or being a free thinker, then I think an injustice has been done here, and that saddens me deeply. I have done nothing but try and enlighten, provoke thought and discussion, and for that I’ve been attacked for daring to think differently. If this is what new atheism has become, then I am so happy to be rid of it.
It is a tricky game, burden of proof. The positive claim has the burden of proof. In the case of the towers the evidence of the fire more than meets that burden, so it falls to the detractor to discredit the evidence. I am reluctant to call the final obligation a burden of proof because I am wary of having to prove a negative. I need not provide an alternate hypothesis to reject a god claim, for example, a lack of evidence is sufficient. We can become stuck if a god can become an explanation that requires overturning, the theist need only back his god up beyond the observable.
In cases where there is no evidence, it should take no evidence to dismiss the claim. This only works if the burden is on the positive claim. In the end we agree, Egbert must show why the towers fell in an alternate way. Like many philosophical disputes, we come down to terminology. It is not because he has the burden of proof, but rather the burden of proof has been met handily by a theory he rejects. I cannot reasonably change my mind until I think the burden of proof has not been met by that theory, the evidence changes to no longer support the theory, or another theory fits the evidence in a better way (usually by encapsulating the old working theory and a greater amount of evidence). The fire remains the simplest and best explanation of what was observed, there is no good reason to reject it.
I was disappointed to hear him trot out the “just asking questions” gambit. There should be a law that predicts the use of this phrase by the conspiracy theorist. A more motorized set of moving goal posts is hard to find.
I think being a good skeptic is two fold. Claims that do not have sufficient evidence must be rejected, and claims that do have good evidence to support them must be accepted. As you rightly point out, rejecting evolution is not being a good skeptic, even if it is being skeptical by a strict sense of the word.
Regarding the effects of an increase in CO2 levels, crop plants like barley, cotton, rice, and soybean and trees like the Loblolly Pine and the Sweet Gum would see an increase in plant yield because of elevated CO2 levels. Additionally, the extra carbon stored in the stems and branches of the Loblolly, for instance, would allow it to persist for decades.
However, the problem is that elevated CO2 also causes extra carbon to appear in new roots, which only live for a short time–a couple of weeks to a year. Microbes decompose the dead roots and release CO2 back into the atmosphere, which only exacerbates the problem. Also, in plants like Cassava–a major food source in developing countries–elevated CO2 levels cause increased shoot growth and decreased root growth, which reduce yields greatly, usually, up to eighty percent.
Another problem is that elevated CO2 promotes the invasiveness of agricultural weeds like the Canadian Thistle, Cheatgrass, and the Juniper. Invasive plants reduce species diversity, modify the food chain, and increase fire potential.
In addition to elevated CO2, the O3 is expected to increase 1.2 times, which will increase plant susceptibility to pests like bacteria, fungi, and insects. For example, soybeans because of elevated CO2 and O3 would grow larger causing them to be ravaged by Japanese beetles.
Speaking generally about climate change, the large computer programs, to quote Muller, “are notorious for their hidden assumptions and adjustable parameters.” However, the only models capable of discovering the underlying mechanisms and statistical patterns that connect the data sets are the very models that are ‘notorious.’
Merely, pointing out that the large computer models are possibly flawed gets climate change skeptics no closer to proving that man-made climate change is not a reality. For me, an alternative explanation must be offered by skeptics and that explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does. I understand that conclusions cannot be drawn on the basis of correlation alone. A model is necessary to connect the data sets and it has, but even if the large computer models are flawed CO2 is more compatible than any alternative explanation, even if correlation does not imply causation.
Also, it should be mentioned that CO2 is not the sole contributor. (Although, it is the primary contributor.) For example, CFCs are at a much higher potential to enhance the greenhouse effect than CO2.
Regarding CFCs, the noncatalytic destruction of O3 in the upper atmosphere, is an ozone molecule collides with an oxygen atom to form two oxygen molecules in a single step. The reason that we have a protective ozone layer in the upper atmosphere is that the activation energy for this reaction is fairly high and the reaction, therefore, proceeds at a fairly slow rate; the ozone layer does not rapidly decompose into O2. However, the addition of Cl atoms–which come from the photodissociation of man-made chlorofluorocarbons–to the upper atmosphere makes available another pathway by which O3 can be destroyed. The activation energy, however, is much smaller and therefore the reaction occurs at a much faster rate. It is worth mentioning that Cl is not consumed–it is a catalyst. The catalyst speeds up a reaction.
Egbert,
I don’t agree with you, but I don’t think you are a troll. You–excluding Eric, of course–are pretty much this blog’s primary producer of fascinating discussion and for that I am grateful–despite our disagreements and Eric’s justified complaint above. I hope you continue to comment.
“The burden of proof lies with the person who is making a claim that goes clean contrary either to established opinion, or to that opinion which is best supported by the evidence.”
Now you’re just making stuff up.
Egbert, honestly! It is simply true that anyone who argues against established opinion or against clear evidence is obliged, whether by society or by science, to justify their position with evidence. How can you say, or suggest, that this is just some fantasy of Eric’s?
And no, I don’t think you are a troll, or dishonourable, though I do think that you are sometimes wrong-headed. And I think you ought to try to cheer up, and not start throwing out criticisms of “atheism” or whatever. Either we’re reasonable or we’re not. That is the first consideration.
As Eric has covered all the bases with regard to the reasonableness of belief and skepticism, I would just like to reiterate my point about what this denialism – especially evolution-related and AGW-related, but the same applies in a slightly different manner to 9/11 trutherism – implies about the underlying view of the relevant communities.
Corio, take a good hard look at what you are implying about the entire climate science, atmospheric research and oceanography communities. PhD students, postdocs, assistant, associate and full professors, group leaders in government funded research institutes, technicians, interns, you name it. What is your view of them: so much dumber and more clueless than you that they, who dedicate their life to this research, cannot see what is plainly visible to you, or evil and corrupt? And now, does that square with how scientists are actually like?
(And no, it is only a false dichotomy fallacy if there is a third option. Can anybody name it? If not, then the fallacy does not apply.)
Egbert, you write that you are “only asking questions”. Seriously, that is disingenuous. Just like a creationist is not only asking questions but trying to punch holes into the theory of evolution because they hope that the default option will be godmusthavedoneit, so the obvious alternative hypothesis, if a combination of shoddy building and terrorist attack did not collapse the buildings, would have to be a government conspiracy. (If there is anything else, please tell.) Now think carefully about how many people at how many levels would have to be involved to make that feasible, and what a terrible crime against their own compatriots that would be; what view must one have of these people to make that sound remotely plausible? Is this a realistic view of the character of hundreds of bureaucrats, soldiers, demolitions experts etc.?
There is a lot of group-thinking among scientists as well as a habit of continually analyzing and re-analyzing the data until it can be shown to fit the hypothesis. Almost anyone who is an expert in a field also does have an axe to grind or a living to make in that field. Ph.D. students tend to believe what their advisors would prefer them to believe, for obvious reasons. In any complex field, it’s nice to have authority so that you can dispense with the hard work of thinking.
The scientists do not typically dedicate their lives to their research — they typically dedicate their lives to themselves, just like other people.
I have a Ph.D. in a scientific field, so, to a certain extent, my remarks are based on actual observation and conversations with fellow scientists, some in other fields. I can’t claim to have done exhaustive research on all this.
mulkieran,
Oh, I am not saying that scientists are never irrational. Even in my own field I can easily list at least several areas of controversy where a minority that I would consider obviously wrong is resistant to being convinced of the obvious wrongness of their position. (Namely, colleagues convinced of the practicability of recognizing paraphyletic taxa despite being aware of the fact that evolutionary change is gradual, of the impossibility of long distance dispersal despite knowing of the existence of the native flora and fauna of Hawaii, of the naturalness of the current distribution of a certain tree genus despite pollen records showing how it was reduced, and charcoal increased, shortly after human arrival in the area…).
However, those are minority positions, as far as I can tell. Moreover, what you describe does not reasonably explain the long-term maintenance of the position that global warming is happening and caused by humans by 97% of the scientific community in the face of the great desirability of the opposite conclusion and a concerted counter-campaign financed by tremendously wealthy corporate interests. Even if both positions were equally well supported by the evidence (and they clearly aren’t), the possible confounding factors of wishful thinking and corruptibility have to be taken into account when evaluating the anti-AGW side of the manufactroversy.
I should add that if this was a good description of how science works…
Ph.D. students tend to believe what their advisors would prefer them to believe, for obvious reasons. In any complex field, it’s nice to have authority so that you can dispense with the hard work of thinking.
…then you would wonder why we ever moved beyond bodily humours, leeches and special creation.
“Corio, take a good hard look at what you are implying about the entire climate science, atmospheric research and oceanography communities. PhD students, postdocs, assistant, associate and full professors, group leaders in government funded research institutes, technicians, interns, you name it. What is your view of them: so much dumber and more clueless than you that they, who dedicate their life to this research, cannot see what is plainly visible to you, or evil and corrupt? And now, does that square with how scientists are actually like?”
Alex, take a good hard look at what you are implying about the 31,487 signatories to the Oregon Petition (http://www.petitionproject.org). PhD students, postdocs, assistant, associate and full professors, group leaders in government funded research institutes, technicians, interns, you name it. What is your view of them: so much dumber and more clueless than you that they, who disagree with your belief in AGW, cannot see what is plainly visible to you, or evil and corrupt? And now, how does that square with how scientists are actually like?
In the first place, I would expect a commenter on an atheist blog to know better than to try and use an ad populum argument (“Alex, take a good hard look at the billion or so Catholics on the planet…”). In the second place, I hold two science degrees and I have worked in science, so I know the ropes: most scientists will do or say what they believe is necessary to keep getting grants and publishing papers. If your chance of getting a grant to study wombats improves when you link wombat populations with climate change, then that’s what you’ll do. For every dedicated member of the AGW ‘Team’, there are several hundred scientists quietly collecting their grants, doing what they want to do, and adding the requisite boilerplate text acknowledging the awfulness of AGW to their papers in order to facilitate their getting published. With $80 billion in funds from the US government alone, do you think scientists don’t know how to game the system?
But if you’re concerned that I’m wrong, then you can easily put me right: just point to the paper or papers that provide empirical proof of the alleged positive feedback loop on which the whole of AGW theory depends.
Let me also point out that the ’97%’ figure is complete nonsense, and that anyone who is interested in making a serious contribution to the AGW debate should know that by now:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/
If denier is bad, then why isn’t alarmist. Here is one comment on Anthony Watts your hero-
“Willard Anthony Watts (Anthony Watts) is a blogger, weathercaster and non-scientist, paid AGW denier who runs the website wattsupwiththat.com. He does not have a university qualification and has no climate credentials other than being a radio weather announcer. His website is parodied and debunked at the website wottsupwiththat.com Watts is on the payroll of the Heartland Institute, which itself is funded by polluting industries.[1]“
Corio,
One will easily be able to point to a similar list of signatories rejecting the evidence for evolution. So what?
If two people agree, there is of course always the implication that either considers the other to be either a bit stupid, in the widest sense, or disingenuous. As for what my view of specifically these signatories is, see a previous comment I made above. I would actually argue for a mixture of stupid (again, in the very widest sense) and corrupt. There are two sides: one is representing a conclusion that is somewhere between uncomfortable and terrifying, the other one that is comforting. Even if the evidence for AGW were not overwhelming (see below), on what side would the well-known human propensity for one particular form of stupidity, wishful thinking, come into play?
Conversely, what would the psychological mechanism be for propagating a deeply discomfiting and bleak conclusion if you even had to go out of your way to manufacture evidence for it? Some AGW deniers ramble about masochism or the desire of liberals to control our lives or some New World Order conspiracy like that. I assume you are more sensible than that, so what would it be?
So I think many of the signatories are motivated primarily by wishful thinking; the realization that our present lifestyle is unsustainable and that we are all personally responsible for what may develop into a catastrophe is easily as psychologically challenging as, for example, the one that there is no afterlife.
On the other hand, there are of course also many people who are paid shills for the petrol industry. It boggles the mind how you can seriously imply that “getting a grant to study wombats” is the greater corrupting influence than the billions in the war chest of the oil companies combined with the benefits of convincing yourself that you can drive your car without feeling bad about it. It could be added that a biologist writing a grant proposal that deals with a completely unrelated issue (e.g. studying wombats) but attaches a fashionable term to it to increase the likelihood of getting funded, while silly, is not actually a climatologist faking evidence for AGW. That would be the real issue that you would have to demonstrate.
I know the ropes: most scientists will do or say what they believe is necessary to keep getting grants and publishing papers.
Maybe that is how your area of science works; it is certainly not how I and my colleagues work.
The millions of lay Catholics are not the issue; we are talking here about scientists studying the evidence, about the specialists who you and I and Eric as taxpayers have hired to tell us what is going on with the climate. Argumentum ad populum or from authority are only fallacies if the people in question are not actually the real authorities on the issue. I am sure in any other case you would see it the same way.
It has previously been pointed out to you that a positive feedback loop is entirely irrelevant for the case itself (although as methane is known to be a worse greenhouse gas than CO2, one cannot pretend that the thawing of the arctic is not a concern either). It is all quite simple: CO2 is a known greenhouse gas; we are transforming a lot of C into additional CO2; we observe increasing CO2 levels, rising temperatures, rising sea levels, earlier flowering, longer summers, ocean acidification and more extreme weather events. The first is a matter of a simple experiment, the remainder are indubitable, observed facts. Do you doubt any of this, or are you claiming that while this all is true it won’t be bad enough to warrant action if there is no feedback loop? If the latter, how long will you wait before you decide that now we have gone too far, we should not have burned that last shipment of carbon?
As for the 97% figure, I will admit that I don’t really remember at the moment where I got it from. It has admittedly always surprised me: among my colleagues, it would be much closer to 100%. That discussion was over a long time ago, and there are plenty of papers documenting the impact of warming climate onto plant phenology and areas of distribution. But maybe less relevant areas of science, those that do not study the atmosphere, the sea and the organisms directly impacted by the changes, have higher rates of deniers.
“disagree”, of course.
@corio : Yeah, what about the Oregon Project ;
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Petition#Criticism_of_the_Oregon_Petition
2. http://www.desmogblog.com/oregon-petition
It’s a big, lying pile of shite, used willingly by deniers to use assumed scientific acumen to bolster something that isn’t scientific, nor true. A smidgen of scientific understanding (or friggin’ basic understanding of statistics) is all it takes to understand the very harsh reality of what’s going on.
I can see further up the thread that people express that we can’t predict what’s going to happen in the future and so forth, but that’s mostly people being humble. The polar regions are melting, and that water is having an affect on coastlines everywhere. Maybe most people don’t care so much because they live on a big rock somewhere, but those who live near the sea or in it on low islands and inlets are already struggling, and that’s just what we’re dealing with now in the early days. More fun to come, more people to be dislocated, more coastal ecosystems to evolve and the possible evolutionary carnage that follows. Also, most people not worried about AWG are usually not farmers; it’s people who think that low supply of food is a problem that can be solved through economics.
That’s it. Back to bed with me.
Egbert, if ever you should still read this: are you familiar with the term JAQing off? Because that’s what you are doing. You may call it individual free thought and scepticism all you want, but you have nothing to show for your leading questions. If that is a hysterical accusation, than so be it. I hope that at some point you will realise that by holding on to your interpretation of the 9/11 events, you are not showing skepticism at all, but merely yet another sheep following a different herd of your own choosing.
It’s telling that corio37 follows a complaint about the illegitimacy of an argumentum ad populum with an appeal to the same fallacy, then pivots to the argumentum ad hominem that climate scientists tailor their findings to ensure their funding. This is not honest skepticism.
Mention of a list of fellow AGW “skeptics” reminds me of a bumper sticker seen after LBJ crushed Goldwater in the 1964 election: “26 million people can’t be wrong”, which could only be true if 43 million must be. Tea party types now say “Take our country back!” Clearly they think this land is their land but not my land.
Climate scientists are not alone in affirming global warming. Scientists of all kinds, whose funding has nothing to do with climate, uniformly agree, as does nearly everyone who understands the basic science underlying the phenomenon.
It’s well documented that many prominent “skeptics” are funded by coal and oil producers with billions of dollars at risk, so it’s obvious why they preemptively attack the alleged pecuniary motivations of researchers, correctly calculating that their audience is utterly ignorant of the reality of academic funding.
“The burden of proof lies with the person who is making a claim that goes clean contrary either to established opinion, or to that opinion which is best supported by the evidence. The reason the Christian has the burden of proof in a scientific culture is that there are more reasons now to disbelieve than there are to believe. The reason the climate change denialist has the burden of proof is that the evidence is massively in the other way. ”
That’s not the case. The burden of proof is always on the person WHO MAKES A CLAIM. So, if you want to claim that God doesn’t exist, you have the burden of proof. If you want to claim that God DOES exist, you have the burden of proof. If you want to claim that there is global warming, you have the burden of proof. If you want to claim that global warming isn’t happening, then you have the burden of proof.
Thus, the only true scepticism that doesn’t incur a burden of proof is indeed simply that sort of scepticism that points out flaws in the given proofs or alternate explanations that also fit the facts. And if scepticism is going to have any benefit whatsover or be of any actual use, it’s going to be precisely in those cases where you aren’t leaving room for scepticism: when the idea is contrary to established opinion or that which at least at the current time seems to be best supported by the evidence. The whole point of scepticism is to get people thinking about how the propositions they take for granted really shouldn’t be taken for granted. You’ve just cut that off by refusing to allow the sceptic to call them out for not being properly evidenced until they can prove that the proposition is false.
I meant, BTW, to comment on the “sophisticated theology” post, but didn’t get around to it, so I’ll make a small comment here. You keep talking about “workarounds” as if they are a bad thing, but we all do that all the time, even in science. It’s a major issue in philosophy of science about when a theory should be patched up and continue on or dumped in favour of a new one. So, it seems that your concern about the workarounds is simply a reflection of your personal opinion about how good they actually are, and not so much a general philosophical objection. As such, that would need to be hammered out with some good old-fashioned philosophical argument, as opposed to a blanket dismissal because it seems odd to you. The workarounds to patch up some of the scientific theories seem odd to those who hold other theories, too, but that doesn’t make them invalid or something to be derided.
Verbosestoic:
In general, of course, that is true. However, my point was local and confined to this comment stream. Establishing who has the burden of proof is much more complex than either you or I have suggested, and it depends a great deal on the dynamics of the moment. In this case, where the claim is being made that AGW is a fraud, to take but one example, the burden of proof is on the sceptic, not only because he makes the claim, but because the burden of proof has already been met by climate science. The same goes for evolution. Those who wish to deny this must show why their contrary belief is reasonable (they have the burden of proof), because they are opposing a massively well-established case.
That doesn’t mean that individual biologists will not try to meet the burden of proof, as for example Jerry Coyne, Richard Dawkins and other popularisers have done, but they need not. Their efforts are devoted to convincing people that it is foolish to deny the effects of natural selection. CSICOP accepts the challenge to show that some things like ghosts, poltergeists and other supposed phenomena do not exist, but the burden of proof, as such, really lies with those who, as you say, make the claim. But it is not the claim as such that lays the burden of proof on them. It is the fact that they are making claims to know something for which there has never been any convincing evidence. For example, if I claim that the supposed miracles at Lourdes were not miracles, the burden of proof does not lie with me, but with those who claim that they were. The reason is that this is an extraordinary claim. This is precisely why religion is so on the defensive, because, in relation to what is known to be the case, claims of supernatural beings and interventions in the natural course of things are, in fact, to make an extraordinary claims.
As for workarounds. Yes, indeed, in some instances workarounds are necessary and perfectly legitimate, but when you are involved in constantly patching the leaks, as religion has been over the last two or three hundred years (or slightly more), the workarounds begin to look a lot more like special pleading, and are simply ways of pushing of the inevitable day when you have to acknowledge that you have not been able to give meaning to your words, and to rescue your beliefs from the scrapheap. Even in science this is so, as Thomas Kuhn noticed. And when this happens there is a paradigm shift. However, in theology, paradigms don’t shift, or, if they do, they shift for a few. Read Hans Kung’s Christianity: Essence, History and Future, for example. One of the most notable things you will notice is that all the paradigms from all the paradigm shifts in the history of Christianity exist side-by-side in contemporary Christianity. That is a sign that Christian doctrine is entirely fabricated within language, and that there are no external controls that limit what can be considered objectively the case.
And now, to Egbert. I hope you do not think that I was either patronising or abusing you. I am trying as best I can to put the case for scepticism. Scepticism is a honourable philosophical tradition, but it does have some parameters, and one is that it cannot consist only in the asking of questions. If that is what it were, then scepticism would have got us nowhere, but, in fact, scepticism produced the modern world and all the wonderful discoveries that have been made — which, of course, is a mixed blessing, since we have not been able to control some of the effects of having this knowledge. In other words, scepticism is purposeful doubt, and simply asking questions — certainly an important, and sometimes a productive thing to do — see how many days of pleasant discussion we have had as a result! — is not really enough. The next step in scepticism is to show that our questions are in fact productive of knowledge and the correction of error.
Alex,
That was a comment about how science doesn’t work ;> When it works, it’s usually due to some amount of bucking these trends.
I would argue that these days Ph.D. students have a tremendous amount of technical training. They use that to do the jobs that their professors need them to do, and there is not so much time left over for disagreement and independent thinking.
In the past, they may not have had to spend the previous five years becoming competent in the technology of their discipline and may actually have had more time to think their own thoughts.
Eric,
Well, this argument is basically “But they HAVE met the burden of proof”. That’s hardly the same thing as saying that it doesn’t have it. And from this we can see that the sceptical counter claim would be that for various reasons the burden of proof has not been met, or that some claims go beyond the evidence that you have. And yes, THOSE claims would have to be supported, but it would not be the case that in order to claim that these supposedly settled claims should not really be considered so settled that you’d have to prove an alternative correct or better evidenced. All you’d have to do is demonstrate that there is another alternative that could explain the evidence as well, one that wasn’t considered.
This is a stance that annoys me to no end about much modern atheistic argument, and is non-sceptical to boot. You say that that is an extraordinary claim, and so it requires the stronger burden of proof. I counter with “Says you!”. Unless you can support your claim that that claim should be considered extraordinary — as opposed to, say, rare — and that it being extraordinary in that way means that it has more of a burden of proof even though you are indeed making a claim, I see no reason if I start from a neutral perspective to give default preference to EITHER claim. If you, then, say that it ISN’T a miracle then I expect you to prove it to me just as much as I expect the person saying that it IS a miracle to prove it to me before expecting me or any rational person to accept it. Otherwise, I will start from my own personal web of belief to determine what seems the most reasonable, given the evidence I have. Thus, as above, if you KNOW that you are correct then the burden shifts … but if you know that, then you have met the burden of proof that you willingly accepted and should be able to present that to me. Thus, in these cases it isn’t a matter of saying “They have the burden of proof, not me” but simply relating or pointing me to your evidence and arguments. Talking about who has the burden of proof simply confuses the issue and runs the risk of using the “established” beliefs as a bludgeon against any sort of skeptical challenge, even the sort of challenge that actually should cause those beliefs to be called into question.
Perhaps, but my reply would be that day is not yet this day. I have more of a tolerance for that in some cases because in philosophy that happens a lot as well. Thus, constant patch-ups might mean that you’re clinging to something that you should get rid of, or alternatively that this is a really hard question where none of the alternative answers really seem to get at all the issues around the question. Again, we’d need good, old-fashioned philosophical argument to settle it … just as is needed even in science when it hits these problems.
For the most part, that happens in philosophy as well; old theories rarely die as well, but that hardly means that it’s entirely fabricated within language. It might merely be the case that we simply aren’t at the point where we can verify it, for various reasons. But for me the big issue here is that science actually is more authoritative in this sense than either philosophy or religion is. Kuhn noted, I believe, that a big factor in the paradigm shifts is when the new up-and-coming scientists are only taught the new theory and so it is replaced that way. At least some old scientists still cling to it, however, but once it becomes part of the official curriculum of most schools it goes away. In philosophy, the curriculum usually still teaches the old theories because they are incredibly important to the formation of the views and the issues, and you are rarely taught that one of them is just plain right. In religion, if there is a change in doctrine and people don’t like it, then they splinter and form their own groups. If Catholicism updates its doctrine to a new paradigm and some don’t agree, those people can relatively easily simply stop being Catholics, but if physics moves to a new paradigm people don’t stop being physicists. So, in religion, those splinter groups still teach the old views, and so the old paradigms remain, while in science there is more comformity in the teaching and so if physics generally moves to a new paradigm eventually almost everyone moves to it, with only a few hold-outs (I was personally acquainted with a few academics who were still behaviourists, for example).
So, for these reasons, I don’t see the lack of shift in paradigms as being a problem for religion, and have never really seen what I’d consider a good argument for that (and have argued against them all at various times).
I think you overstate scepticism’s impact here, and in doing so unduly expand its scope. Scepticism made a great contribution to the modern world and modern science because it forced people to challenge beliefs they held as being obvious and demonstrate them, but there is nothing inherent in scepticism that means that you have to or are able to rebuild your beliefs based on evidence. How you go about settling the sceptical challenges is impacted by but not part of scepticism itself. Empiricism is not in and of itself sceptical, for example, but today it must work so that it can settle the sceptical questions that can be settled. So, as I said, scepticism is important, but in and of itself it doesn’t rise above simply challenging positions; there is no “positive scepticism” that proves claims, at least not in my opinion.
I don’t see much similarity between anti-evolutionists and AGW skeptics.
If evolutionists were to make predictions based on their theories, and those predictions failed, the theory would be called into question. That, also, is normal science. It seems to me that you’re trying to excuse the climate predictions — it’s just too complicated; stuff happens. That falls short of science. Plus, you seem to be conflating two different issues. One can agree that global warming has occurred. Only an idiot would deny the climate hasn’t warmed in 10,000 years. But the causes of that warming and the amount of that warming can still be controversial.
With evolution we can put life forms in a laboratory environment. We can contol variables. Though it’s not easy, we can experiment. With climate science we have only the one planet. We can’t put it in a lab. We can’t control variables. That makes it harder to confirm. And it’s a young science. So I think it’s reasonable to be skeptical of the many dire forcasts we hear — particularly when the track record is less than stellar.
I sorry, but I do see a similarity. Darwin never did an experiment to demonstrate evolution, yet many people accepted the evidence for evolution long before the first lab experiment was ever done. Given this and knowing what we know from historical records about the relationship between carbon dioxide and temperature, do you think burning 6+GT of carbon every year has no effect on climate? Do you need an experiment to verify it? What I am saying about evolution, which seems to be evading you, is that it is a probabilistic argument – we can say on average given a set of environment conditions how a population will change – but some may well do the opposite. This is exactly what you are saying about AGW – we only have one earth which is like having only one population in an evolution experiment – and I defy you are anyone else to predict what happen to that one population even under controlled conditions in the lab, let alone in the field.
Let me also say that those who are skeptical of AGW might want to be a tad bit more skeptical of where they obtain their information. If your source is funded by rightwing pro-freemarket think tanks or by extractive industries such as oil, coal or mining, then you may have cause to question their impartiality. Just sayin’.
Come on, Verbosestoic. Surely I’ve laid down enough of a trail of breadcrumbs? Burden of proof always rests with the person who is arguing from ignorance. If he turns around and tells you that you have the burden of proof, it is a simple rhetorical fallacy. So, in the case of both the AGW denier, and the creationist, of course the burden of proof has been met. The claim that climate science has the burden of proof is just a piece of rhetorical puffery, not a serious claim at all. What the denier must do is to show that climate science has it wrong — that the whole theory is wrong, not just niggling little bits and pieces which are claimed to undermine the whole. This is a tall order. Indeed, you must be a climate scientist to be able to do this, and the only people who can discuss this fully are also climate scientists. The same goes for physics or any other advanced science. That does not mean that there are no checks, for, even though scientists are like other men and women, as the sad case of Marc Hauser shows, science fraud will out, and the wrongdoer will suffer the consequences. Hauser’s life in science may very well be at an end.
As for workarounds, as I have called them — but they are really examples of sharp practice — it is simply not true that philosophy uses workarounds in the way that theology does. Theology must either resort to an earlier paradigm, or a bastardised form of it, as in protestant fundamentalism, or it must make adjustments so that it continues to make sense to the theologian or the believer to go on “believing,” (in some extended sense of that word) even though belief has actually been (very often) qualified out of existence. This kind of accommodationism is either inherently a rejection of belief, as in the case of theologians like Tillich or (in a different league) JAT Robinson of Honest to God fame, or it will appear to be such an accommodation, but with essential resort to unreconstructed belief at some point, as when Rowan Williams claims that he of course believes in the virgin birth, the resurrection of Jesus, etc. The lack of a shift in the paradigms is a problem for theology. Philosophy simply does not chop and change in this way, and even though some philosophical problems persist from ancient Greece until today, it would be incorrect to say that no progress has been made, or that the discussion is at the same stage. Modern discussions of realism, anti-realism, idealism, etc. are at a very different stage than they were in the days of Plato and Aristotle, even though Plato and Aristotle can still be seen as backgrounding contemporary discussions. This can, however, not be said, about theology, for theologians are do accept, sensu stricto, the deliverances of Augustine or Aquinas, just as they are, and for the very same reasons that they give, or they simply are committed to the belief structures established by the early councils. These are indispensible parts of orthodox belief, and unamendable except by a council, and even though theological discussion may wander far from the original form that theological discussions took, they inevitably circle back to the same canonised texts which prescribe the limits of that discussion. And these are fabricated within language. Read Tillich, for example, and find out everything is diaphonously linguistic. That’s why someone like Richard Holloway calls himself post-Christian, because he felt he could not, as a responsible human being, do this any longer. I am of the same opinion. That is why, despite what Tim Harris says about my and Jerry Coyne’s failure to stick up for moderate religionists, I think that accommodationists are enablers of the worst aspects of the belief systems they represent, for there is always that gravitational pull towards what is considered the original revelation, itself a revealing and a troubling word. The language will not let go, and somehow the originating language must be included in any subsequent expression of the beliefs enshrined within it. Incarnation, trinity and atonement are linguistic magnets which cannot be let go.
A quote from Larry Moran in connexion with an ill-written and sentimental book by Christ Stedman:
‘Like all my atheist friends, I have no problem working with theists of all stripes when it comes to making our society a better place—just as I have no problem working with conservatives, homeopaths, anti-abortionists, people who favor capital punishment, pro-gun lobbyists, and even misogynists and racists if the issue is important enough.’
My point wasn’t that ‘accommodationists’ are not the ‘enablers of the worst aspects of the belief systems they represent’ (I’m not really sure what you mean, Eric), but that as a matter of simple realism, not to mention human generosity, the efforts of those moderate religionists who do take a stand against their violent co-religionists should be recognised and encouraged, and not dismissed as being of no account.
And perhaps I should add that to refuse to do this on the grounds that all religious moderates are ‘enablers’ and therefore in the end no different from those who resort to violence and terrorism seems to me to entail a despairing view of things that is not unlike John Gray’s. It is also, as the quotation from Larry Moran suggests, unrealistic: we live with others and we do have to deal with them in various ways, and I think the writing off of whole swathes of humanity as incorrigible is wrong.
You seem to discount experimentation. That takes more faith than science, which is one reason I remain skeptical of AGW alarmists.
Tim, you said:
I think you misunderstand what I mean when I speak of the enabling function of religious moderates. Of course, no one should refuse to work with anyone who is trying to improve things, and making the world a better place in which to live. This does not, however, negate my point that religious moderates are enablers. I have just finished watching a number of video clips of Irshad Manji disputing with other Muslims, even in one case an ex-Muslim, and it seemed obvious to me, if not to Manji herself, that continuing to speak of the “Holy Qu’ran” was, in fact, to encourage precisely the kinds of Islam to which she is so opposed. She kept referring to verses in the Qu’ran as though the text itself should confound those who refuse to reform, but that’s not the way “holy texts” work. They work to ground any opinion whatever, no matter from what particular point of view they come. They ground Manji’s reformist zeal as well as the jihadi’s violence, and it is the failure to recognise this that makes religion a continuing problem. Someone has recently pointed out that the essential antisemitism of Christian sacred texts leads someone as gracious as Desmond Tutu to express antisemitic opinions, and why not? The texts he still holds to be sacred are antisemitic to the core, just as Muslim texts are. If we do not recognise this, there is no solution to the “communal violence” (as it is called in India). It will simply go on and on, because religions do not really change and become more moderate. What happens is that a few moderates will exist alongside a much larger — always much larger — group of literalist and unreformed believers. That’s why I speak of moderates as enablers, because they talk the same language, and they underwrite the excesses of the extremists, even when they do not recognise it. This does not mean that I do not side with the moderates, and welcome their moderation, but they should be aware that their moderation is simply one amongst many modulations of their faith tradition. It will never be the reigning one, as the demise of Christian liberalism should make clear.
I should add here that many people do not seem to be aware of the dynamics of faith communities, and how they continue to refresh themselves from the original springs of their faith, and how that means a recycling of extremist, more literalist views. I watched it happen in Anglicanism, and it is this experience — a very troubling one — that informs my jaded view of religious reform. Given half a chance Christianity would return to the excesses of the wars of religion, and the supposition that Christianity is some kind of force for good is, at base, an illusion, even though there are some moderates who are so.
Eric,
And how do you tell at the point the claim is being made — and, therefore, at the point that you’d be talking about who has the burden of proof — which person that is? I think you’re caught in thinking about specific cases — cases where it seems that for the most part the burden of proof has been met — and so that allows you to fire off that sort of rhetoric of “the person who is arguing from ignorance”, missing that in cases where the beliefs are not so well-established BY argument it is not so clear. This, it seems to me, is what encourages you to talk about how someone who is arguing against accepted wisdom has the burden of proof despite the fact that in any case where the burden of proof is being called into question saying “Everyone believes that” is in no way any kind of defense.
Now, this may not be important. It’s possible that the difference between our views is mostly semantic, where you believe that if a person/position has enough evidence to meet the burden of proof, then they no longer have it, while I believe that in the same situation they still do have the burden of proof but can meet it. That would be a semantic argument, and nothing really to talk about except in some specific cases. But this all started with my opposing the idea that the established idea is exempted from having a burden of proof, and that’s a far more important difference if you do indeed really think that.
That’s not how science works. If a scientific theory makes a prediction that turns out not to be the case, then that scientific theory is in danger of being falsified. So, to use an example from this thread, if climate change theory says that both the Arctic and Antarctic ice fields should be shrinking and it turns out that the Antarctic ice fields aren’t, then that’s a serious problem for climate change theory even if it seems trivial. You can work around it with “Well, since most of the greenhouse gases are produced in the Northern Hemisphere, then it would happen faster or more in the North, and based on other conditions it’s possible that it isn’t impacting the Antarctic enough to make them not grow”, but that’s a workaround and a required one because the theory is in trouble if it cannot explain it. Remember, the big experiment that caused the rejection of Newtonian physics in favour of Einsteinian was the perihelion of Mercury, which hardly seems like anything more than a niggling little bit and piece. But it was a prediction that Newtonian physics didn’t get right, and Einsteinian did.
So, no, you DON’T have to show that it is completely wrong, just that what it’s predicting isn’t matching what’s happening. That’s enough to place it in danger. Now, climate is complicated enough that workarounds seem completely reasonable to make, as it is far too easy to simply miss something … but, then, theology also has that sort of problem unless you’re a complete literalist.
I think here you confuse theology with religion, and the academic practice of theology with the more folk or embedded practice of it. As philosophy of religion continually demonstrates, you can examine works theologically and do theology without committing to any specific conception or any specific religion, and so there’s absolutely no chance that some sort of “council” will settle that. Yes, specific religions will rule on what theology is accepted or rejected for their specific religion, and a big part of that will be based on what basic beliefs they hold to. Absolutely. But at best you can differentiate between philosophy in general and theology in general by arguing that philosophy doesn’t have the organizational component of a religion, while theology does, and all of these are organizational considerations. Fine. But the academic practice of theology and especially the kind you’d find in academic institutions outside of theological colleges are not generally attached that tightly to those organizations, and are separated from them just as in general science and philosophy are. To put it better, to the extent that theology is done philosophically it has the same issues and the same benefits as philosophy does, and it can be done philosophically as philosophy of religion amply demonstrates. But, if it is done philosophically, it will not paradigm shift any more than philosophy does, and will progress in the same manner. So to return to something you said earlier:
But the point is that the basic, underlying problems have not be solved or settled, which is what happens in science when THEY claim they progress, and is what paradigm shifts aim at. Progress in philosophy is often measured by taking steps backwards, pointing out ideas that seemed to provide a leg up that don’t, and so wiping that “progress” from the map. Yes, things also get clarified, but I’d argue that, in general, theology done philosophically works the same way. Often, ideas get repeated and few ideas die, but the standard objections are generally known and new proposals almost always take a stab at solving the standard and well-known objections. So I don’t see the trouble you seem to see in theology, and your examples of a couple of theologians that I haven’t really paid attention to isn’t really sufficient, and from the more detailed examinations I’ve seen — mostly Jerry Coyne’s — I have yet to see one that doesn’t miss the point of what is being said so much that the counters against it aren’t really addressing it, or charges of “just making stuff up” that are following a similar procedure to what philosophers do all the time. Thus, I’m not impressed by the supposed examples of theology gone bad, as there will always be bad examples of everything (science, philosophy, theology, etc) and the general case has not been met.
donjindra, please go read some things about how science is done – it is not just experiments done in the lab. This is exactly the tactic creationists use – you may want to read about them too. We have repeated experiments done on the earth – natural experiments – when climate has changed in the past. The records are in rocks and ice cores. These are not as precise as controlled experiments, but they are experiments nonetheless. If you want to bury your head in the sand and ignore the evidence for AGW – go right ahead – it is your life and your childrens’ lives who will most likely suffer for your actions. Now of course, I and the climate scientists could be wrong because this will be a singular event. Much like knowing all kinds of demographic data on humans, we can’t know beforehand what exactly will happen to any particular zygote. One could have a high probability of living until 70+, but die in a childhood accident. There is a high probability that if we keep burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests that temperatures will continue to rise and climate will change dramatically, but that doesn’t mean it will absolutely happen; something currently unknown could alter the course.
verbosestoic, can you provide a good source for reading up on theological methodology? I understand that philosophers of science write books explaining how scientists study nature, but are there philosophers of theology that write books explaining how theologians study gods? That is what theologians are supposed to do, isn’t it? They are not philosophers of religion which seems to be something different altogether.
Michael, two books to suggest: Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology, and Gordon Kaufmann, An Essay in Theological Method. Neither, it seems to me, is satisfactory. If you want to read Longergan you really need to have read his book Insight as well. It’s a big commitment in time and effort, I think, for small return, but they are about theological method.
Verbosestoic. I’m not sure we differ all that much, and perhaps it is only sematic, though I think you are making too much of a song and dance of it. Whether or not burden of proof lies here or there, it is usually detectable when someone is using it as a rhetorical fallacy, but may still be a point in contention. Broadly speaking, burden of proof language is not technical, and cannot be demonstrated logically, except, perhaps, when someone makes a prediction of some sort. Then whether or not the prediction holds is something that the proposer must demonstrate to be true, by examining the follow on effects to which he is referring.
As for theology, I do not understand this:
That doesn’t really amount to doing theology, unless you want to call philosophy of religion theology. Even Christian philosophical theology must at some point address specific Christian claims such as incarnation, trinity, etc, and try to make sense of those in general or philosophical terms. But then it becomes, not philosophy of religion but Systematic Theology, which is a confessional undertaking.
As for global warming, I’m not quite sure I get your point when you say this:
And then suggesting that my suggestion about nothern hemisphere industrialisation might be relevant is really in some ways taking something that (at least so far as I know) has never been tested. My point is only that local anomalies, in such things as world climate studies, are probably not disconfirming events, just as the wet summer in Britain and the dry summer in the US midwest, are not. Even a growing sea icefield in Antarctica is not obviously something that disconfirms the theory. You’d have to ask a climate scientist, which is precisely my point.
Eric, thanks for the suggestions, although you don’t sound very enthusiastic about either.
Well, Eric, I am very glad that you do not mean that you do not side with the moderates, and that you welcome their moderation, but I do wish that these attitudes of yours were a bit more apparent at times (I fear this sounds sarcastic, but it’s not meant to be). I am well aware of the poisoned springs at the heart of many religions, at which believers refresh themselves, but if we are talking about enablers, then I feel that we should point fingers not just at religious moderates, some at least of whom have the courage to stand up against their violent co-religionists, but also at the Western governments who have supported the House of Saud and its theocracy for decades and consequently supported the export of fundamentalist ideas throughout the Islamic world, as well as those governments – mainly the American and Pakistani governments – who encouraged Islamic extremism in order to combat Soviet influence in Afghanistan, something that has proved, well, something of a double-edged sword (an expression, incidentally, that may derive from Arabic), to understate things – particularly in the case of Pakistan, a poverty-stricken country with a weak central government and a largely uneducated populace. Andrew Sullivan, incidentally, remarked some time ago on the extraordinary silence in the American media regarding the ongoing settlement of the West Bank by fundamentalist Israelis, and the dangerous (for all of us) stranglehold these fundamentalists have on Israeli politics. This, too, surely is enabling. I do think that at times your justified animus against religion blinds you to the broader picture, and in this at least I suppose I am in agreement with Egbert, who though he can be silly and provoking at times is, I strongly feel, a good person who will, I hope, rejoin these conversations.
Tim, my support for the moderates, is, as I have said, qualified. That does not mean that I am unwilling to work with them should the occasion arise, but they need to know that they are lending support, very often, to institutions which are working directly against the values they support. Think of the Church of England, most of whose active members support some form of assisted dying. By giving their support to the C of E they are actually supporting the medieval outlook on this and other issues represented by the Archbishop of Canterbury as well as a good majority of those who speak at the General Synod. Like a woman I know here, after a young man with Huntingdon’s had jumped in desperation from a bridge. She understood, she says, and agrees that people should have the right to make a choice and receive help to die when their circumstances have become intolerable, but she is an active member of the Roman Catholic Church, and when I pointed this out to her she merely nodded and said that she did not support all the stands taken by the leaders of her church. Yet when those leaders appear in public, she is secretly included in the number of those who support the church’s “pro-life” stand. This kind of moderate is a bit difficult to deal with it seems to me. And even Manji, when the Shari4Belgium group turned up and stormed her book launch, went to the trouble of saying that never, at any moment, did she feel that she was under threat, and yet threat is definitely what was being implied. Manji’s move immediately pulled to thorn from the offence, but also did not point out with sufficient care that this kind of threatened violence, and shouting of people into silence is unacceptable. So, yes, I do have deep reservations about religious moderates, because, since they are almost always in the minority they are, in essence, supporting radicalism and fundamentalism, even if the support is indirect.
I agree with you, I hope Egbert will return. I do find him trying at times, but he is clearly a person who feels deeply about things and tries to think they through. I have no animus towards him whatever, though we would, I think, continue to disagree, especially about John Gray, who, it seems to me, is deeply confused.
You may wonder what I have been doing. Well, I installed Windows 8 on a separate partition on this computer and am using it now. It actually spell checks as I go along, which it did not do in Windows 7. The interface is a bit of a trial, but it certainly has possibilities. We will see. At least I always have my Windows 7 partition to boot to if I am tried beyond patience over here.
Michael, I’m not particularly enamoured of either author, but for my money Kaufmann’s briefer essay is more manageable than Lonergan, whose work depends entirely on a fully developed philosophy which has not received widespread acceptance.
Eric, I will track down Kaufman’s book. You might find this exchange of letters between philosophers Georges Rey and Thomas Nagel in the NYRB over Nagel’s review of Plantinga interesting. I don’t really see how belief in god is on equal par with belief in an external world or a physical past.
Michael Fugate,
I’m not sure how far theological methodology has been developed, and even philosophy of religion is not one of my main areas. Eric’s book suggestions might be your best bet; for the most part, I develop my opinion of theology and theological method by looking at the theology that ends up being considered in philosophy of religion, and how it’s developed from there (Haught and Plantinga, for example).
It’s a philosophical thing. The “Science vs Science” paper on my site should be a decent summary of the issues, and it’s all scientific and atheistic (it’s between Bertrand Russell and John Dewey).
Eric,
This seems to be mostly where we disagree. I think that who HAS the burden of proof is technical and demonstrated logically, before anyone even considers how one MIGHT prove the statement. Otherwise, someone who makes an unprovable claim might be able to escape the burden of proof, which I find impossible.
It seems to me, though, that you might be talking more about a personal view while I’m talking about the impersonal. Meaning that you, to me, seem to be placing the debate in the context of someone asking you to either start believing something or change one of your existing beliefs. What you say seems right for that case. But I’m talking about it more in terms of a formal debate, and it doesn’t really work there.
Note that if you want to use the personal perspective, then you run into this issue: I, personally, am a theist. Atheists want me to change my beliefs. I, however, do not think I can prove that God exists, and so am not asking them to change their beliefs at all. I merely argue for reasons why I should or can maintain mine. Doesn’t that mean that in that case atheists have the burden of proof, and not me?
I consider theological arguments a subset of what philosophy of religion does. It also looks at religion as a whole, and religions that are not theistic (say, Buddism). For the most part, any theology that is done philosophically is also properly the subject matter of philosophy of religion. Simple faith-based arguments might not, but people like Haught and Plantinga do not make those.
Philosophically, examining Christian theology does require one to deal with their specific claims, obviously. But examining the Utilitarian ethical view requires one to deal with their specific claims and worldview as well. And just as one can examine and even defend Utilitarianism without actually being a Utilitarian — I do it all the time, despite rejecting it as a proper moral code — one can examine Christian theology without being committed to any of its actual beliefs. This, to me, is academic theology. The reason I think you move it to a “confessional undertaking” is because much of the most famous theology of this sort is done through people and institutions that DID hold those beliefs … but there’s no requirement for that and their academic/philosophical arguments cannot be ignored because they happen to actually believe what they’re saying (normally, it should be rather the inverse).
But that definitely runs the risk of an appeal to authority fallacy. Yes, it’s the case that without doing at least some of the research most people have to rely on the consensus, but when the consensus is challenged the climate scientists had better have a really good explanation and be able to provide some proof for their contention, or else good skeptics should wonder if they really have it or are just patching up their theories ad hoc to save their belief systems.
Kaufmann’s book was also about $80 – $90 on Amazon. For 120 pages, that’s a bit much [grin].
Verbosestoic. I don’t think there any formal ways of establishing burden of proof, though in general, I think, where someone wants to oppose expert consensus, the burden of proof lies with the dissident, not with the consensus, since, for all intents and purposes, they have met the burden of proof. And this is not the argumentum ad vericundiam either, because for that you need to appeal to someone who does not obviously have the relevant expertise, or to someone who, though an expert, is a dissident expert, one who himself bears the burden of proof. We may still differ about this, but I think you bear the burden of proof here. In general, burden of proof is an argument from ignorance, as it certainly is in the case of AGW deniers and the twin towers truthers. Appealing to the general consensus of climate scientists is not a fallacious argument to authority, though it is certainly an argument to authority.
I’m not at all sure that I see your point about philosophy of religion of systematic theology being a confessional undertaking. That is almost always the case at some point, since, after all, if you are arguing from a position of belief, you are bound, at some point, to introduce specifics into the flow of the argument. Plantinga is one of those whose whole epistemology is based on a version of protestant Christianity. I do not consider him a serious philosopher. Of course, there can be quite general arguments about the existence of a god, for instance, but when it comes to the supposed nature of this god, almost inevitably you end up talking theological specifics. There is no obvious reason why the creator of the universe, should one exist, ought to be thought of as kind or loving, for example. This must come from the particular theological stance of the person engaged in the discussion. Since you profess some form of stoicism, I assume you realize that the stoics did not believe in a god that created the world from a plan, or with a purpose. There was a conviction that this god was, in some sense, intelligent, but not that it was, in any sense, compassionate. Fate and the will of the god were pretty much the same, as I understand it — though it is many years since I read any of the Stoics. There was a rationally apprehensible order in the world, but it did not obviously include us as a favoured species.
Third, when you say that “I, personally, am a theist. Atheists want me to change my beliefs,” I wonder why you should get the idea that atheists want you to change your beliefs. Atheists may think your beliefs wrong, and believe that, if you changed your beliefs you would be most likely to be right, but I can’t think of anyone just wanting you to change your beliefs. How people live, and what they believe, so long as they do not harm others, is pretty much up to them.
Eric,
See, that’s where that whole semantic difference comes in. If you say that if the burden of proof has been met the other side has the burden of proof, then the only difference is that I say that they both have it but the one side has met it. Beyond that, the only clash would be over whether the burden of proof has actually been met by the expert consensus. The experts can all agree that something is the most likely case without actually having established that it is to meet the burden of proof, meaning justified to the state of knowing that it’s true.
Well, that’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it: under your view, how do you justify a claim that I have the burden of proof? If you use it to place the onus on your opponent to make arguments while exempting yourself from doing so, then you need to be able to do far more than simply say it. You have to be able to justify it objectively. Otherwise, it turns into rhetoric to cover up the flaws in your argument, or the fact that you lack justifications you should have.
On the specific point, if someone brings up objections to a theory and all you can do is assert that only climate scientists can settle those questions, the only way that isn’t an appeal to authority fallacy is if you don’t use that as an argument against the objections. One part of this fallacy is that you claim that because they are an authority they cannot be wrong, or should be just taken at their word. Again, scepticism itself denies that this is valid, and it isn’t valid. So you can off-load the debate to a higher authority than yourself, but you can’t use that to claim that the objection isn’t valid.
Basically, proper uses of the appeal to authority, it seems to me, are limited to “I am justified in accepting this because these experts who should know accept it, and remain justified until I receive sufficient evidence otherwise”.
On the theological point, if you are examining the concept of god of course you are going to, at some point, start talking about specific conceptions of that god, just as when you’re talking about ethics you’re going to talk about specific ethical systems. But it seems to me that your biggest complaint about theology is that it always turns into apologetics, into nothing more than trying to justify one conception at all costs. I argue that it can, but that this is common in philosophy and science as well, and that not all examinations of theology — even of specific gods — turns into this. Academic theology outside of specific institutions does this. You had people examining Plantinga, for example, who both agreed and disagreed with his Christian theological underpinnings, and I’m sure that people who agreed with his views criticized them and people who disagreed with his views defended them in case. THAT’S how academic philosophy and theology work, and it’s only because we are people that other concerns too often sneak in.
I think this is using a bit of nitpicking to dodge the point. The point was that atheists are trying to convince me that a belief I hold is false, just as AGW deniers and creationists do to you. I, on the other hand, am not trying to do that to atheists. Does that not mean that they have the burden of proof, and not me?