End of Faith in What ?

Several different threads here. All mentioned before – reading Sam Harris “End of Faith” itself, a discussion thread on MoQ.Discuss with End of Faith title and several spin-off threads, and a discussion thread on Chairman Parker’s Blog.

My position can be summarised quite easily.

Tolerance of (misplaced) religious faith is as dangerous as extremes of faith themselves; Harris is right in his warnings, and his analyses are much more sophisticated than the deliberately attention-grabbing headlines. We need to remember that this argument is about faith – bases of belief – rather than God per se. Nothing wrong with Dawkins / Dennett et al position in explaining religions in the scientific terms of evolutionary psychology / memetics either.

The problem that remains is that in this debate the scientists (Dawkins archetypically) are blind to the fact that much of science really is a (not-quite religious) belief system too – the bases of science are not as objective and value-free as science’s model of itself – a scientific “article of faith” almost. The “scientific neurosis” in Nick Maxwell’s terms. In Dennett’s terms the intellectual honesty is simply about exposing both religious and scientific faith to the same scrutiny and questions of evidence, not limited by either protagonists choice of weapons in that argument.

The reason this is such a big subject – a global issue, rather than just a problem for science itself – is not just that science-based technology is exponentially behind so much global activity, but that scientific thinking is a dominant meme in western (and western infected eastern) global economic culture, in all manner of debate, analysis and decision-making. Dominant, in direct competition with a god-based religious faith meme that is. In the Dave Gurteen reference in the previous post, I mentioned the “pedestal” idea. Whoever is perceived as “winning” is a natural target from those who are competing. This dichotomous winning / losing mentality is part of the Newtonian objective / logical-positive / cause & effect world model that says conflict is built-in to the dominant process – if you want an argument, or a war if you prefer, you can always have one. Test and critical analysis are fundamental to the methods of proof of knowledge, but they are not the sum total of wisdom in applying and using knowledge to make progress, solve problems or exploit opportunities.

Despite the hype, what the internet revolution (exponential evolution really) is exposing is how much progress can be made through transparent collaboration, and visibly interconnected communication.

That much seems clear, but we need values and wisdom to recognise progress, so there are important aspects of the issues still open to debate. One is the basis of values (ethics) – which for me are also part of the evolutionary psychology story, rather than any tablets of stone.

Another is teleology – purpose – if the direction (axis) of progress, betterness, can be agreed, there are still questions about what is driving it – is there some direction (agent action) towards this ultimate purpose. Natural explanations of this are the principle reason I take an interest in the Anthropic debates.

Related, but quite distinct is first-cause. Causation and the psychological impressions of both time and purpose, are one set of things, but any metaphysical explanation of the whole cosmos runs into a first-cause question – the something rather than nothing question.

Here the God answer runs into the “but where did God come from ?” question. In fact any positied first cause theory – even a scientific one – runs into this, and most importantly however much it is debate, my contention is that any hypothesis here must by definition be untestable in any direct empricical way. The right kind of answer here is a convenient, pragmatic one. The answer you choose doesn’t pre-empt any possible answers to questions in the experienced real-world domain, so no-one need be offended by anyone else’s answer here. God, it, the cosmos, the stack of turtles, always existed is as good as any answer. Mu too, makes the additional point that it is not a question even worth asking, let alone debating an answer, other than to discover that it is indeed that kind of question. The problem arises when some believe their answer here is somehow a fundamental answer to all other difficult questions of cosmic mysteries, particularly the aparently purposeful teleology. Err no; the first cause question is a special class, and not a short-cut to all other answers.

I’m an atheist – though in Harris terms, the distinction between atheist and agnostic is immaterial to a real atheist, and only really matters to a theist looking for an argument. I qualified my opening statement about religious faith with the caveat “misplaced” because, even though the first-cause “God” is a convenient fiction like any other first-cause – the question is the fiction, not the answer you choose – there are babies in the bathwater of theistic faith that need to be preserved. Not least that the religious traditions have indeed preserved (in those tablets of stone) many traditional (ie long-lived but evolving) values and ethics – which have no more fundamental basis – and a much more fundamental concept of collaboration – eudaimonia – love if you like, as an antidote to competitive conflict.

It’s the end of faith, in either god or science, being the tool of choice in making human progress. When all you have is a hammer, all screws look like nails. The power-boater may think he is driving his point home, whereas the sail-boater knows he is steering a course through life’s choppy waters. When all you have is a choice between objects, all decisions look like matters of faith or science. When you have a more fluid-dynamic inclusional view of the world as our oyster, that oyster can work those grits of difference into pearls of wisdom.

[Acknowledgements to Sam Norton, Alan Rayner, Ted Lumley, Nick Maxwell, Robert Pirsig, as well as those explicitly mentioned. – I’ll grow this into a properly referenced paper.]

Shift Happens

Thanks to David Gurteen for bringing this to my attention. The punchline is a bit lame, or perhaps understated, but if 20% of these stats turn out to be 80% true, then the situation is mind-boggling – scary and/or inspiring at the same time.

Interesting comment thread(s) on YouTube – there are several different versions ShiftHappens, ShiftHappens2.0, ShiftHappensUK, ShiftHappensNarrated, etc – apart from the naive nationalistic (ostrich-head-in-sand) reactions, all the threads run very quickly in three directions.

(1) Where are values and wisdom in all of this – can there be anyone who sets priorities for what (shit) happens ?

(2) The processing power, inter-connectivity and bandwidth equals AI vs Ai is just fiction debate ? But there are so many options and opportunities of course before we get to that one – worth keeping an eye on the ball(s).

(3) The faith debate, which could be the “ostrich” debate depending on your perspective. Shit happens then you die, but it’s OK, God’s in charge. The first cause / teleology debate gets everywhere – see (1).

Though provoking at the very least.

 [Post Note : David’s newsletter makes a reference to Thoreau’s “Walden”.]

[Post Note : Also a predictable US vs India / China debate in the threads. I call this the “pedestal” debate – whichever nation is currently on the pedestal should expect to be the target for being knocked-off by those in pole position – expect that is, where a view on life is a competitive either/or rather than collaborative outlook.]

[Post Note : Also David has a summary of the KM worlds of work …. several interesting points – context preserved through first person stories, thinking out loud and transparent workings, and the world recognized as complex with many overlapping approaches and mechanisms, rather than simple netwonian cause / effect model.]

Some Time Management Paradoxes

A whole collection here from Dave Pollard. Particularly like the first two.

Generalists / consultants shouldn’t worry (feel guilty / stressed) about not getting things done, it’s not the point of their work – the point is to figure out and pass that information along to someone who can do something with it. In fact delivering less is better. Doing is about learning, not about delivering.

Stress wastes / causes a lack of time, not the other way around. Time pressure is not a cause of stress, but the result.

Too easy “excuses” ? Well yes if your aim is excuses, but worth thinking about anyway.

Mindwalk

Conversation between a Physicist, a Politician and a Poet. Mindwalk with screenplay co-authored by Fritjof Capra, based on his “Turning Point”, subsequent to his “Tao of Physics”.

First I need to say, that I have previously seen Capra taking the parallel’s between Mysticisms of ancient cultures and New Physics into interconnected harmonies a step too far, but it raises many of the same issues as Michael Talbot’s “Mysticism and The New Physics” and he too seemed to take the metaphors too far with his later “Holographic Universe”. Intriguing and interesting stuff that you have to be very careful if and how to bring into real-life considerations.

That said, this film is played pretty gently, and despite the probable conflation of too many connected issues – too much of “the great convergence” into systems theory – it covers many interesting points at a pragmatic level – the politician asking “but how would that get me elected”.

Wisdom as the addition of values to science. The individual responsibilities of scientists (very reminiscent of Durrenmatt’s “Die Physiker”). Life as self-organization. Evolution as co-creativity. Adding Blake to Descartes and Newton. Very Gaia. Very little new, but intelligent and thought provoking presentation.

Thanks to Marsha and Krimel over at MoQ-Discuss for bringing it to my attention.

Musical Interlude

Saw Tommy Womack again on Saturday, this time as a double act with Alabamian Will Kimbrough, who I’d not seen before. Saw them at a Nashville venue I’d not visited before either, Norm’s River Road House.

Great little basement venue, in the middle of nowhere, and I discovered I wasn’t the only first-time punter who almost turned-back thinking “I must have taken a wrong turning”. Small packed entry-fee-paying crowd hosted by owner, cum barman, cum MC, cum mixing engineer Norm, someone who clearly likes his Americana.


(This painting from 2011 – courtesy Jim Osborne on Facebook.)

Tommy and Will alternated their original numbers dueting and harmonizing on guitar and vocal on each others numbers. Some great poetry from Will as well as the legendary guitar playing that preceded him, and Tommy’s venomous wit and manic rhythms. They made a great double-act, with a clear fondness for each other and each other’s material. Will’s “Hill Country Girl” lodged in my mind – must acquire the CD EP. Have to emphasise in these parts how unusual it is to hear and pay to hear artists play entirely original material. So much covers for the tourists.

Bought a copy of Tommy’s “Cheese Chronicles” biography of his brush with stardom in Government Cheese. Great read so far, helped by a common history of music through and beyond the punk period, and Tommy’s aforementioed wit with words.

Successful Mass Collaboration

Very interesting “Thinking Allowed” today with Charles Leadbeater discussing his “We-Think” (subtitle – Mass innovation not mass production).

Very brief part of the programme – but I was taken by the comment that all (that is all) successful bottom-up / de-centralised / self-organising collaborations like Wikipedia, Linux etc, not only seem to have some freedom-limiting rules, but also have some “aristocracy” to apply some form of governance. Collaborations that deliberately preserve or encourage 100% anarchy – total freedom and nothing else – do not evolve progressively. Governance is essential and an essential aspect of that governance is an “elite” with additional rights and responsibilities beyond those of general community members.

A thesis I’ve expressed many times, in a number of discussion forums that end up going nowhere fast, despite the progressive intent of their memberships.

Black Humour

Hope this guy turns out to be innocent … but an interesting real example of black (non-PC) humour at work. In service industries looking after the welfare of individuals (eg education, training, health-care, and to a lesser extent, food, drink & leisure retail service) Sylvia and I have often joked about the black humour amongst professionals (where Sylvia has worked). If “outsiders” (or god forbid, the “clients”) could hear the routine banter between such staff, referring to their charges in the course of a normal day’s work, they might well be shocked.

Was this case just black humour, or did the knowing banter turn to innappropriate action – murder is still illegal in West Yorkshire, right ?

[Post Note : Guilty of Murder]

Lakoff by Winer

Dave Winer interviews George Lakoff.
Thanks to Matt at WordPress.

It’s a worthwhile listen. Informal and rambling, but some good stuff about the (deliberate) psychology of associating ideas with words when describing candidate and party positions in the current US Presidential campaigning. (Framing and Parent / Child & Strict-father / Nurturing theories.)

Intelligent Design / Creationism Propaganda

“Expelled” is a movie in the pipeline (due for release in April at the last count) that purports not so much to “debunk” evolution (or Darwinism as they refer to it, like any good Victorian might) in favour of ID / Creationism, but to claim a mass institutional conspiracy preventing debate on alternatives, not just to evolution, but to fundamentals of science generally. It’ll be lizards in the board-rooms next.

Thanks to P Z Myers at Pharyngula for the link to Roger Moore’s piece, on previewing the film, under conditions where the makers intended it to be seen only by supporters. (The review piece includes a YouTube link to the film’s trailer.)

[Post Note – I notice these guys are paying serious attention to publicity – they get top billing in the sponsored Google side-bar, when any evolution / origins keywords are on the page.]

The film is such an obvious piece of conspiracy theory propaganda, that it is very easy for the reviewer (and the commenters) to rubbish it, on so many levels beyond the content itself. It is a good review, and as an atheist I side with the scientific view, but as you know my agenda is to temper the “hyper-rationalism” of science as a “culture” to knee-jerk its response in dogmatic certainty in the name of science.

Intellectual honesty demands that science recognise the limits to what can be known scientifically, at its own boundaries and it’s own foundations in epistemology and the philosophy of science, however much it screams the empirical evidence mantra, back at faith-based believers. I made my comment on the original post.

You probably know my view on conspiracy theories generally – most are in the minds of the beholder – but you could be forgiven for seeing the scientific response as just the kind of conspiracy that Expelled claims to be exposing.

Reminds me of so many threads on Ben Goldacre’s “Bad Science” Blog, where the assembled masses end up baying for blood like any neurotic lynch mob. Again,  a good blog exposing good valid stories, but if science doesn’t wake up it will find it has shot itself in the foot whilst it nodded off.

It’s also exactly the kind of thing that happened within “Friends of Wisdom” – a forum of those in science and education looking to promote the philosophy of science ideas of Nick Maxwell – when any member openly suggested doubts or value-based philosophical extensions to the basic empiricism of science, the poor dears were run out of town (despite the fact those ideas are explicit in Nick’s work.)

Methinks science doth protest too much. Something I said about Dawkins, long before the recent upturn in science vs god debates.

[Post Note – I see in the very brief “Expelled” ads being broadcast on Fox TV (~12th April ?) – the language is “evolution” rather than the pretense at the “Darwinism” target, and apart from a worried looking shot of Dawkins, the memorable line, in response to a crusty, dusty old “evolution” lecturer the question asked is “Yes, but how did life originate.” – as if somehow that was some killer question. Doh ! The disgusting rhetoric continues. This one may run and run.]