UK Book Review: Scientific Dogma of the New Atheists

[Synnical]

I know an oxymoron when I smell it, er, read it.

Still displeased with that "New Atheists" tag.

http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/46044,opinion,big-gook-atheist-scientists-have-taken-over-the-pulpit

Atheist scientists have taken over the pulpit

This is one of those books whose subtitle gives it away entirely. Robert Park is a physicist and sceptic, who believes in an age of science - so naturally Superstition: Belief in an Age of Science (Princeton University Press, £14.95) is one long howl of complaint that he actually lives in an age of unscience. This makes his book much more illuminating than it might have been; much more illuminating, in fact, than he intended it to be.

It is hardly news to the intelligent reader that homeopathy is nonsense, creationism is a lie, intercessory prayer has no measurable effect, Uri Geller is a fraud and so on. What's easy to overlook is the existence of another sect of determined believers, whose creed is the last sentence of Park's book: "Science is the only way of knowing - everything else is just superstition."

So much for philosophy, history, literature, art, and common sense.

Park is not original here. In fact the value of his book consists in his unoriginality and his willingness to say straight out the kinds of thing which lurk unsaid within more self-conscious writers like Richard Dawkins. The more that the New Atheism emerges as a social movement in the USA, the more it acquires the habits of mind that make monotheistic religion obnoxious.

. . .

Because Park refuses to distinguish between reasonable religious belief and chaotic superstition - neither of them a science, after all - he is unable to consider the evidence dispassionately and retreats into scientific dogma. This is what he would call progress.

-Cindy in Fort Lauderdale

[laconicsax]

1. What a fucking idiot!

I'm torn whether to point out the obvious fallacies or just leave it alone...ok, I want to argue.

"Science is the only way of knowing - everything else is just superstition."

So much for philosophy, history, literature, art, and common sense.

Philosophy is not a way of knowing.
History is not a way of knowing, but a record of contemporary knowledge.
Art is a means of creative expression, not a way of knowing.
Common sense is that the sun goes around the earth and a pound of rocks falls faster than a pound of feathers.

"Humans are free to decide what kind of world we want to live in, and science has given us the tools to set about the business of building that world," Park continues. That humans might disagree about the kind of world they want to live in; and that science might supply no means of resolving these disagreements, is a fact unworthy of his consideration.

I guess the writer (Brown) has a point--science can't settle disputes over whether to paint the house blue or green, so we might as well declare it useless.

Because Park refuses to distinguish between reasonable religious belief and chaotic superstition...

Reasonable religious beliefs:
When Jesus died, graves in Jerusalem opened and their occupants got up and hung out with the locals.
A 500 year-old man built an enormous boat, filled it with 2-7 of every animal on earth, and used it to wait out a global flood.
Chaotic superstition:
The moon can make you crazy.
It's bad luck to walk under a ladder.

I see a big difference here. While all four statements are false, only the 'chaotic superstitions' are directly testable and demonstratively false. That must be what distinguishes 'reasonable religious belief' and 'chaotic superstition.'

Reasonable religious belief is any belief that, while false, cannot be directly proven to be false.
Chaotic superstition is any belief that can be proven false.

I wonder though if Brown classifies beliefs of non-mainstream religions as chaotic superstition. It doesn't really matter, since they're all superstition, but it may be necessary to move "the underworld is guarded by a three-headed dog" to the chaotic superstition pile. This does pose a problem however since the following would be classified as chaotic superstition:
-A man built an enormous boat, filled it with people and animals, and used it to wait out a global flood.

:shrug:

[enlightenment]

2. Don't disagree with most of your assessment, but I will

argue this: "History is not a way of knowing, but a record of contemporary knowledge."

History is not just a record of contemporary knowledge. It is, in each new incarnation, a culmination of opinion about human events and decisions.

To say that history is simply a record of contemporary knowledge - an accounting of everything we KNOW about a past historical event - ignores the very real part that human subjectivity and error play in the process (it also reduces historians to scribes, which would probably piss off a goodly number of them!)

If all historians did was collect, collate, and record everything we currently know about a past event, we wouldn't have much 'history' - but we do. Reams of paper, literally thousands of books, dozens of periodicals devoted to publishing essays and articles. Why? Because historians are humans and they develop opinions about what the 'evidence' of a past event proves. Like scientists, they look at the evidence and develop hypotheses to explain it (or develop a hypothesis and seek the evidence to prove it - hmm).

Now, you can argue that because they seek evidence to explain their position that they are no different than scientists, but it's a lot harder to prove the past than to prove a formula . . . history straddles a fine line between what can be known and what cannot be known, because the proof is sometimes very tenuous - or just not there. Sometimes I think of it like that bit in Jurassic Park, where they complete the dinosaur DNA using frog DNA . . . they can't fill in the gaps because they don't have the dinosaur bits, so they use something else that looks sort of similar and fits well enough that it works.

So really, despite the pique I feel at having to agree with the reviewer, history is 'a way of knowing'. If you read three books about a particular historical event, you will probably discover the same set of 'facts' being used to 'prove' three different hypotheses. You can choose the one you like best - the one that makes the most sense or appeals to you the most. Most people do; look at how many people on DU wax poetic over Howard Zinn . . .

In the end, though, despite good argument each monograph will stand as a particular way of knowing about that event UNLESS it is so badly researched or so polemic that it is rejected by the academic community or (if REALLY bad) by the reading public. I'm not saying that all takes on history are equal and deserve equal time; just that there is rarely (if ever) only ONE take, and there are very, very, very few that could be said to be THE definitive take on a topic.

rant off . . . I wander away to complain about some other minor, piddling point . . .
;)

*disclosure: I 'do' history for a living . . .*

[laconicsax]

3. I agree, it was a poor choice of words on my part.

[skepticscott]

4. I love this piece of crap he throws out

It is hardly news to the intelligent reader that homeopathy is nonsense, creationism is a lie, intercessory prayer has no measurable effect, Uri Geller is a fraud and so on.

Uh, dude...homeopathy is huge business, almost half the country believes in creationism, including a lot of our elected officials, tens of millions of people continue to use intercessory prayer every day as if they think it works fine, and most people nowadays still think Uri Geller bends spoons and starts watches. And these are not all people with IQs of 80.

And I agree about the "New Atheists" label...just more BS to make the commentator seem relevant. Atheism is just as it has always been, a lack of belief in gods. This reviewer, among many others, is unable to distinguish between atheism, anti-theism and old-fashioned critical thinking. The only difference is that atheists have been getting a much higher profile and have been taken much more seriously in the mainstream media during the last 10 years than they had been for a thousand years before that. Atheists and anti-theists aren't shy about expounding their worldview any more, and that scares a lot of people.

[laconicsax]

5. It helps to put it into context.

His entire slipshod argument makes sense if you give him the following mindset:

I'm Christian and I don't believe any of the stupid bullshit that these so-called 'New Atheists' are always railing against, and since I'm the center of the universe/most Christians are like me, their arguments do not apply.

It's the same as asking a progressive religious adherent that if morals come from their god/the Bible, then why don't they think it's moral to stone someone to death for insulting their parents. The response is typically, "well of course no one believes that anymore," which really says, "my morals come from somewhere else, but I'm unable/unwilling to admit that to myself."

[skepticscott]

6. It's also interesting to ask someone

who claims that a firm moral grounding can only come from the Bible whether they think slavery is immoral and if so, how they came to that conclusion. Because they certainly didn't get it from the Bible, which implicitly sanctions it and nowhere condemns it at all.

[laconicsax]

7. It's more depressing than interesting.

I argued with another DUer somewhere else about the Biblical sanction of slavery. They insisted that anyone who says that the Bible sanctions slavery is wrong--that the passages detailing how slaves should be kept don't endorse slavery, and since we know that slavery is wrong, the Bible must agree with us.

They also linked to a site that they had copied and pasted from. That site also had something about Obama being a secret Muslim or something like that. Read it for yourself: http://www.godwords.org/posts.php?id=31 If you want to see the thread, PM me and I'll give you the link.

That's the thing--rather than admit that their arguments are flawed and wrong, they re-interpret the Bible to suit their means.

[skepticscott]

8. It's true that the Bible

never explicitly sanctions slavery in the way it sanctions killing children who curse their parents, but it mentions it frequently and never condemns it in even the mildest terms. Even Jesus himself never said a word about slavery being wrong even when the topic came up, though he wasn't a bit shy about condemning many other things. When you're supposed to be a great moral teacher, but you're keeping silent when one of the greatest moral evils in human history is going on all around you, that's no different than sanctioning it.

It's actually a very interesting comment on Jesus (to the extent that he existed and is accurately depicted in the Bible) being nothing more than a man of his time. In the Roman world, essentially everyone (even slaves) accepted slavery as part of the natural order of things. Abolitionists and abolitionist movements were unheard of.

[laconicsax]

9. Leviticus 25:44-46 explicitly sanctions slavery.

(44)Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids.

(45)Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession.

(46)And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever: but over your brethren the children of Israel, ye shall not rule one over another with rigour.

If you have heathen (non-Israelite) neighbors, you should take them as your slaves. If a non-Israelite person comes to town, take them and their family as slaves too. Their families will belong to your family forever...just don't take other Israelites as slaves.

If that doesn't explicitly sanction slavery, I don't know what does. The funny thing is that the site I linked to claims that this passage describes an agreement whereby people voluntarily sold themselves into slavery. It also insists that the slavery involved was more of the 'king-feudal serf' variety, where the slaves weren't essentially held in forced labor camps, but just the legal property of the master.

Only on an apologist site do you see people try to argue that buying and selling people as property isn't *exactly* slavery.

[skepticscott]

10. Didn't know that one...thanks

Not as up on my Leviticus as I should be. But it doesn't surprise me...slavery was just the way it was. Of course nobody wanted to be the one who was a slave, but everyone accepted it as the way of things. Some days you were the windshield and some days you were the bug.

[awoke_in_2003]

11. I have to disagree

with the homeopathy thing. In some cases it can be useful. For instance, my wife has RA. Even prescription she has gotten for it makes her sick. Decided to try poison ivy extract and the pain greatly subsided with no side effects. Does it work in every case for every one, no. But she was at the end of her rope, and we found a solution.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

12. Are there real molecules from the "poison ivy extract" in what your wife had?

Or was it diluted to the point that the probability of existence of a single molecule from the original substance is insignificant?

[awoke_in_2003]

13. No, it is real extract...

comes in a container for popping it under the tongue without touching skin. It reacts differently to saliva than it does skin (don't ask me how I know :) )

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

14. Then it's not homeopathy, it's real plant extract and therefore has a chance of being effective.

Homeopathy = diluting substances until they're no longer present but woo-woo-y pretending they left some kind of supernatural trace.

[awoke_in_2003]

17. Oh, thanks...

I had the definition a bit messed up, it would appear.

[laconicsax]

20. It isn't a supernatural trace, it's an imaginary trace.

Big difference.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

21. Po-tay-to, po-tah-to. -nt

[laconicsax]

23. It's a significant difference.

Supernatural claims cannot be tested. While they tend to be unsupported by available data, they can't be proven false.

Homeopathy is wholly based on a natural process where water retains a physical 'memory' of whatever substance used to be in it. This process, being fiction, can be proven false, leading to the conclusion that homeopathy is false.

Now, if homeopaths said instead that homeopathy is based on supernatural processes, then it could never be proven false. I'd see a po-tay-to/po-tah-to difference as the difference between claiming that God sent a violent storm and claiming that Poseidon did it.

[dmallind]

16. In somewhat tepid defense of the reviewer

Isn't the pound symbol a sign that they live in the UK, where most people, Xian or otherwise, really don't believe in creationism et al?

I also suspect the last sentence is missing that "context" which believers rely on so much to explain why Jesus, for example, didn't REALLY mean they should sell all their goods to feed the poor. I doubt too many peole think icience is teh only way we can know ANYTHING (excpet in a very broad context such as using neurology and psychology to determine why we feel pleasure at the sight of puppies but not baby rats). Having never even heard of the book I suspect what it really says, and concludes in laudable pithiness, is that science is the only way we can know anything concrete about the origins of life, the objective nature of the universe, and so on. I don;t think he's likely to be claiming science is the only way to explain why Mozart sounds better than Marilyn Manson.

[skepticscott]

22. It's true that

in the UK and most of the rest of Europe, creationism is pretty much a joke, as it should be, but Park is American, and what he says applies much more validly over here. And I probably wouldn't have put the last sentence quite the same as Park, but to claim that philosophy or literature are ways of "knowing" in anything but a personal sense is just lunacy. Philosophy has produced absolutely no universal understanding of anything.

[John Gauger]

15. "Reasonable religious belief"

There is no such thing. But I wonder what the author define as "reasonable?" My guess would be the religious beliefs commonly held by WASPs.

[laconicsax]

18. I think it goes like this:

Reasonable religious belief:

God told Noah, age 500 or so, that humanity was wicked and a flood was coming to destroy them. God then instructed Noah to build an enormous ark and fill it with 2-7 (depending on the chapter) of every animal. Noah built the ark by himself over a period of 100 years and used it to wait out a global flood that lasted for 40 days. When it was over, he sent out some birds to see if it was safe to come out.

Chaotic superstition:

Ea told Utnapishtim that the gods had decided to send a flood to destroy humanity. Utnapishtim, along with his family and the rest of his town, built an enormous boat, filled it with animals and used it to wait out a global flood that lasted 7 days. When it was over, he sent out some birds to see if it was safe to come out.

See--they're completely different!

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

19. Religious belief of lower-than-average toxicity? -nt

[immoderate]

24. Bob Park has a weekly newsletter called "What's New"

It's quite good. I get it in my email every Friday.

You can sign up here: https://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=bobparks-whatsnew&A=1

His web site is: http://www.bobpark.org where I copied his bio:

Robert L. (Bob) Park is professor of physics and former chair of the Department of Physics at the University of Maryland. For twenty years, research into the properties of crystal surfaces occupied most of his waking hours, but in 1983 he was recruited by astrophysicist Willie Fowler (who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics later that year) to open a Washington Office of the American Physical Society. Bob initiated a weekly report of happenings in Washington that were important to science, and with the development of the internet, the weekly report evolved into the news/editorial column What's New. For the next twenty years he divided his time between the University and the Washington Office. In 2003 he returned to the University full time. With the support of the Department of Physics of the University of Maryland, he continues to write the occasionally controversial What's New, which has developed a following that extends beyond physics.

Dr. Park has also written two books based on his Washington experience:

Voodoo Science: The Road from foolishness to Fraud (Oxford, 2000)

Superstition: Belief in the Age of Science (Princeton, 2008).

--IMM

[and-justice-for-all]

25. Atheism has been around for as long as there has been 'religion'..

Atheism is not 'new' and neither is the the theory of Evolution..

[laconicsax]

26. Technically, it's been around for much, much longer.

Someone had to invent gods to worship at some point. Before that point, everyone would deny the existence of gods.

[and-justice-for-all]

27. What about celestrial worship?

[laconicsax]

28. What about it?

It took someone deciding that there were spirits/gods in the first place. No one is born believing these things.