where i fall off this edge:
well-regarded people feel that the "spirit of the Lord" speaks to them",
ok, i think, but then what is speaking to the true believers getting bombed in their homes in Syria;
and if the voice dictated that DJT was going to be president but then he didn't get elected, would that memory stay or would it have faded?
26
Well, everyone wants to defend their own nuttiness (me included). Usually, that entails denegrating other approaches. Hopefully, we are all trying to live our lives at a deeper level through whatever means we can find.
26
So,after leaving your charismatic church where your pastor tells you that the schizophrenia your son struggles with is the work of the devil...you call your wife on your satellite-based cellphone;get into your electric car;head for the nearest pharmacy to get a vaccination for pneumonia;head home to watch a football game taking place on the other side of the country;make popcorn in you're microwave;worry about the fact that you've had no rain for almost a year which you believe is the work of your own personal god,turn on your climate control system and on and on.These factors were all the result of the science made possible by our "smug,secular certainties" and they were all opposed by religious thinkers at one time or another. Embracing failed ideologies prominent in our past is not curiosity ,as you define it ,at all.If you want to ride a horse to Boston in order to have a Cotton Mather- type pastor cure your prostate cancer,be my guest.But don't push this nonsense on me or my family.Don't advocate that this type of thing be taught in my schools unless it's in history class.Pinker overdoes it with statistics but he is right in proposing that rational,scientific thought has a better chance of saving our world than prayer and health food.
143
Thanks, Ross, for dealing that firm blow to another promoter of "smug secular certainties." The FDA's smug secular certainty is certainly an important public health threat these days. The Trump administration’s genuine "inquiring scientific spirit," exemplified by such truth-telling iconoclast as Scott Pruitt over at EPA, will probably set them right. And thank god for the evangelistic truth-tellers, and their unwillingness to settle for secular dogma, who've debunked that smug theory of so-called "climate change." Then there’s vaccinations. Think of all the suffering we’ve avoided by frustrating such efforts by secular “nanny-state” tyrants to limit our freedom and control our lives!
You really know how to pick your targets, Ross. So glad you’ve got your spot on the NY Times Op-Ed page to speak truth to power.
You really know how to pick your targets, Ross. Thanks for putting your spot on the NYTimes Op-Ed page to such a good public use.
66
Ah the fallback position of the believer in unprovable fairy tales: anyone who points out the illogic and unlikelihood of their beliefs is “smug” and “arrogant”. The reality is that these believers are unable to support their claims and get increasingly frustrated when these claims are not given respect. I like Douthat’s columns but I wish he would just accept that his beliefs are not provable and all the introspection in the world will not cause them to be anything but obscurantism.
60
One can hypothesize things that are not yet in science’s ken - alternative strategies for illnesses which scientific medicine has yet to be ableto treat successfully, life-style changes which lack consensus, even spiritual practices that may well benefit well-being and social cohesion, but there needs to be an overall rationality about it.
I simply cannot subscribe to any rigid adherence to the tenets of organized religion — any religion — as other than general guidelines. Mythology is not the rationalbasis for any hypothesis. It is tribal and unthinking.
33
I find it interesting that yet again, Mr. Douthat somehow skipped the well-armored Catholicism he espouses.
I'll grant that at its worst, the contenporary Church is far less nutty than, say, Ken Ham or Kevin Swanson.
However, the teaching is faith, and logics aimed at reinforcing faith. That is a lot of things, but it surely isn't a scientific skepticism aimed at material reality.
16
If I was given a free copy of the book, I would read "Enlightenment Now!" After finishing, I could reevaluate Douthat's critique. I don't have a free copy of the book though so I'll have improvise.
For all the philosophical and historical veneer, Douthat's criticism basically boils down to the same tired elitist argument against liberal secularism permanently emanating for the right these days. Throw in a dash of whimsical evangelical authentication for the sake of audience and tie the entire idea to leftist-hippies to preempt accusations of bias and present a false sense of balance. Bravo. Slow clap.
Douthat applies a broader significance to the rationality of irrational individuals than is truly warranted. He's guilty of the same selective interpretation for which he criticizes Pinker.
Here's a news flash: I wasn't buying organic vegan pad thai from my local food co-op because of some unprofessional existential experiment with my body. There was no spiritual realization emanating from a volunteer run grocery store selling recycled toilet paper. The paper, not the product. Quite simply, the place was cheap, good, and convenient. As an added bonus, I had occasional friends who worked there.
Furthermore, I happened to eat at Moosewood once not because I have a particular affinity for vegan cuisine and local produce. I was trying to date a girl and the woman's mother once owned the cookbook. That's not spiritual experience. That's successful branding.
Come off it Ross.
30
Hilarious to read Mr. Doubt-That critique ANY piece of literature or science. I imagine he was pretty pleased with this offering, and himself.
19
Another piece by a smug social scientist, exposing that he has no idea how science really works.
Science is in constant ferment. Only new ideas are valued. It is, unlike fields with which he is familiar, self-correcting.
Fatuously, he seems to be claiming that the mumbo-jumbo of his youth was valid because...well, because people wanted to believe.
That this can come from the pen of an educated American crystallizes the origin of the moral panic seizing the US.
34
Mr Douthat, you’re conveniently concealing the dimension of humanism that is integral to Prof. Pinker’s discourse. Expanding the horizon of understanding—which is your main point—is integral to humanistic enlightenment. Pinker is not making “enemies” of anyone. To selectively read conceals the appropriative interest of humanism.
In fact, you’re exemplifying the result of open-minded inquiry: It enlarges the horizon, as you reaffirm your fidelity to reasoning independently. Humanism enlarges; it doesn’t marginalize the other, as you mistakenly read Pinker to be doing.
You see the value of avoiding scientism, but you read Pinker as scientistic. You evidently don’t appreciate the difference between evidence-based thinking and the empirical aspect of that which is specifically scientific. Evidentiary inquiry belongs to humanism, as much as to empirical inquiry.
16
I have a hard time accepting Douthat's premise that as a child, he understood the concept of science and secular liberal consensus. This entire column is really a stretch, it's ivory tower luxury to contemplate "unreasoning obscurantism" and its connection to macrobiotic diets.
The whole column begs for mockery: "Pinker defends a selectively edited Enlightenment that conforms neatly to his style of liberal politics and absolves his idealized version of the modern project of all imperial and eugenic and centralizing cruelties, and all the genocides and persecutions justified in Reason’s name." Call me jaded, because I'm sure I'm not supposed to laugh, but I did.
19
Fascinating how people have general notions of how science (e.g. gravitation) and pseudoscience (e.g. astrology) differ - but very specific notions of where one ends and the other begins
Here's perhaps the rub
Anything and everything can be taught through narrative
Even if gravity is experienced in every step we take, and for every second of our lives that things do or don't fall down - good narrative speeds the learning process dramatically
Yet - people didn't need to be Newtons or Einsteins to learn how to predictably use gravity, for profit and for advantage
On the other hand, in the seeming random pattern of the stars, equally accessible to everyone every night - putting aside light and atmospheric pollution - hundreds of explanations arose, each more "settled and scientific" than the other
The Darwinian process by which the best astrology evolved was in two steps...
1. Astrologers would convince royalty or other influential people that things could be predicted by the stars
2. The more glib among astrologers - after some prediction had gone awry - would conjure up yet more astrology, to explain the anomaly...The others would be beheaded
Endgame, of course - glib narrative becomes a life-skill unto itself
But - people can only stand being lied to, to a point
Which is why people now tend to trust Sheldon Cooper more than Barack Obama
Sheldon can't stand to tell a lie
Barack, on the other hand, won a 2nd - and a 1st - term through the most glib of narrative
4
Very nicely done.
(Despite the unfortunate repetition of "First was the world...", which we will chalk up to incomplete editing.)
3
Mr. Douthat provides evidence of how far Americans have fallen from first understanding, and secondly, accepting the inherent value of, the scientific principles of the Enlightenment. One cannot be “personally empirical;” scientific reason requires evidence beyond one’s personal experience to validate a truth. Scientific reasoning is all about skepticism and proof and not at all about “meekly submit[ing] to authority.” How could he become so confused? BTW, obediently following your doctors orders may not be scientifically validated, for example in a world where you get 60 OxyContin tablets for an outpatient surgical procedure.
21
Douthat remains true to form in extolling the virtues of prayer once again. For good measure he even throws in a shout-out to astrology. He would do well to present the best argument that prayer has any effectiveness, for anything, ever. Does prayer "work" better if one faces Mecca, or Rome? Kneeling or prostrate?
The reply may be that prayer makes some of us "feel better". Drinking my coffee while reading the Sunday NYT with my cat on my lap makes me feel better. Prayer seems simply a waste of time.
® amen
32
My Zen teacher, Steve Hagen, describes himself as a radical empiricist. He was trained as a science researcher, but through the practice of meditation he has discovered that reason has its limits when trying to discover the truth about life.
For example, science assumes that there is an objectively real world that exists "out there" separate from the subject. This is a false assumption that has been shattered by experiments with the quantum world––like the double slit experiment in which we find that consciousness is intertwined with matter. Yet science continues to operate on this false assumption. It assumes that the "things out there" are actually real. And then it reasons on the basis of that false assumption.
Ironically (for most people anyway) he argues in his book Why the World Doesn't Seem to Make Sense, that science can only ever be about belief, and it can never get us to Absolute Truth. And he further argues that religion goes astray when it relies on faith or belief––it should be about getting at Absolute Truth.
And the best way to get at Absolute Truth is simply to drop all thought and pay close attention to immediate perception, aka Zen meditation, aka radical empiricism.
8
Reminded me of this,
from Thomas Paine,
Common Sense:
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong
gives it a superficial appearance of being right”
22
Douthat"s criticism Of Pinkar is a little one sided. Just because we don't know why it works, doesn't mean it doesn't work. I think this was addressed very well in Robert M. Saplonsy's Behave. Known unknowns.
3
Douthat appears to be placing a value upon magical thinking, at least when it suits his ideological views. Like many on the right wing, he relies upon this kind of escapism to cope with the realities that he chooses not acknowledge.
20
Not having read Pinker's latest book. Be careful of an uncritical acceptance of Enlightenment. The Age of Reason in many instances justified racism, sexism, and class exploitation. Science justified racism and white supremacy. So, tread carefully.
7
Arose this morning with a strong desire to research human evolution on line instead the morning ritual of retrieving the Wash Post at the front door. Probably enhanced by the new book recently purchased by Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus. Online stumbled across a scientific treaty on what would or could have caused the evolution of the human brain other then the evolutionary development of human physiology. If understanding the scientific rational correctly, it appears that scientists traced austral ozone holes in the southern hemisphere allowing more electromagnetic radiation that could have made changes in the DNA in brain functioning of humanoid's. This could have given rise to a slightly more cognitive awareness of their natural surroundings. Within a few hundred thousands years of this event, appearance of primitive stone tools and after that simple communication developed with cave paintings.
Just think Ross, if the science behind this ozone occurrence is correct, you and I would still be trudging along dragging our knuckles on the ground.
2
Maybe I didn't get it but are you trying to say that because Tofu makes you feel better it is equivalent to empiric evidence? or that liberals use empirical evidence to shame those who believe in cleansing cures? Or are you merely saying that it is PC to believe in science?
8
For Aaron: How do you know it was the Holy Spirit and not a mixture of hormones and neurotransmitters?
3
Douthat isn't necessarily wrong about what he says about Pinker, but he isn't necessarily right, either. Pinker is a con-man who wants in on Jordan Peterson money: telling rich, educated libertarian dudes that every thought they've ever had is blessedly correct.
Why, oh why are we having important philosophical conversations in the ghastly, TED-infected, incurious, pop-psych-driven parody that faintly passes for public intellectual thought in this country? We end up with "The Enlightenment was good, because of reason!" "I agree, except kind of I don't!"
We can have intelligent conversation, or we can have 'public intellectuals,' but we can't have both at the same time. Pinker's book, ostensibly about the enlightenment, mentions Voltaire six times, Diderot twice, Locke twice. It is not a serious book. Oh, but look: it drives conservative New York Times columnists batty, because it implies religion isn't important. I know a couple of libertarian dudes who will be delighted.
7
What Ross calls the edges of reason are really the depths of unreason. Science is the expression of human curiosity about our world. It is not a belief system; its theories are the result of hypotheses about how things work that have stood the test of repeated experiments designed to disprove them. It is not perfect because it is a human enterprise. Sometimes hypotheses/theories survive longer than they should. Ultimately, however, these mistakes are corrected by empirical observation and experimentation.
The world of unreason that Ross appears to be advocating has a long record of promoting ignorance, slavery, tyranny, death and human suffering. The vast majority of imperial cruelties, genocides and persecution have been justified by a belief in a god and/or a god-like leader. The Nazis believed all kinds of supernatural mumbo-jumbo; Buddhists are killing Muslims in Myanmar; Catholics and Protestants have been at war with each other in Ireland for centuries; radical Islamists are killing innocent people in the name of Allah.
If it were not for science, reason and empiricism we would still be relying on shamans and witch doctors and millions of people would be dying of infectious diseases every year because we would not have developed vaccines. And yet, the anti-vaxers would take us back to a world where these diseases could make a comeback.
So, continue to advocate for supernatural solutions to real-world problems and watch the world descend into new Dark Ages.
22
Ross. If it weren't for Pinker himself, Socrates from New Jersey. AMF, Prefessor Sharma and others I would choked on my oatmeal. I'm waiting for Christine McM and Gemli. If it weren't for Pinker and other public intellectuals that educate us eager to learn lay people, we would be left with nothing but stories, always unsubstantiated, about virgin births, shrubbery that spontaneously combusts, and that a carpenter formed the universe. How did this get us cures for disease, the mac on which I write or the ability to hear the "burp" from the leftover background radiation at the beginning of the universe? Why didn't Jesus tell us about all of that? The true majesty of the natural world? Perhaps he thought the earth was flat.
6
I suppose when you get sick you should pray and ignore the advances of medical intervention.
The truth is you should do both.
Science is not without criticism nor is religion. But science does not mind this and moreover welcomes this.
9
This article is a new low.
"It was the charismatic-religious and “health food” regions where people were the most personally empirical, least inclined to meekly submit to authority, and most determined to reason independently and keep trying things until they worked."
Sp the real dogmatists are the people who subscribe to empirical science, and the real dogmatists are the so-called empiricists.
Come on, Ross, come on. This is not helping.
8
What is this nonsense? So we are to return to the age of Medieval, abject superstition? Science is respected because it has worked.
10
Was there a historical time period I missed and that can't be found in any history book? The one involving "genocides and persecutions justified in Reason's name." You'd think a Catholic would know something about European history, which at its core involved the Catholic and Protestant churches involved in "genocides and persecutions justified" by Christ. Knowing that, our Founders created a secular state which, to date, has yet to engage in the religious genocides that are a necessary by-product of faith. Douthat attacks the superior mode of living and thinking because he's entrenched in an inferior, 2,000-year-old religion (a 1,700-year-old religion truth be known), which is responsible for more deaths than could ever be known: a Holocaust per century for more than 1,000 years. Pinker provides a solution that Douthat and David Brooks, who had a similar article, missed: Humanism, acting ethically without the religious baggage that always and inevitably requires subjugation, coercion, and mass killing. If you want to see what Christianity can do, look to the middle east now. Islam is just a few hundred years behind. Same history, same track record.
17
"... the bright line that Pinker draws between the empirical spirit of science and the unreasoning obscurantism ..."
Pinker never uses the phrases "empirical spirit of science" or "unreasoning obscurantism". Douthat should quote Pinker before attacking him.
4
It would be so encouraging if this article reported reality. Instead all we see, apart from the few hippie types tinkering with their new age alternatives as they frolic around their burning man, are the slavish followers of the Kardashians and their ilk, the Goop peddlars and bling-laden rappers with their comic book handles. Lemmings all without any capacity for critical thinking or reflection; for whom ignorance is a valid point of view because some celebrity told them so - ripe pickings for exploiting by the Russians.
Pinker’s science is complicit in this dumbing down of the masses. Think back to its trumpeting of doom caused by a millenium bug which never eventuated; its tacit feeding of disaster epics like Independence Day, Terminator, Aliens etc etc & the Stars Wars series - let’s make a franchise out of it and rake in the millions. Anything that goes bang - and destroys - the bigger the conflagration the better. Mustn’t forget the Hunger Games trilogy - sporting the latest deadly technology (scientifically accurate of course) for the heroes to override. Where is the Enlightenment in all that? Where is there any sense of finer feeling, compassion, kindness, encouragement to flourish and nurture? Where would one smell the flowers in a Terminator movie? Where are the trees in Star Wars - nothing to see here but Jabba the Hutt in the fabled Cantina with all its gorgeous (ugh) patrons. Pollyanna Pinker has a ring to it - but is that all there is?
4
So as an antidote to reason Douhat seems to be offering personal anecdote and Gnosticism. Great. That should work out well. Have we actually learned nothing?
9
It is not enough to think you have discovered a truth. The scientific method requires that your test your discovery (that is to say, your hypothesis). If it is experimentally verified, you have discovered something new. Until then, your belief is meaningless. No matter how good it makes you feel to believe it.
7
"As the radius of our understanding grows, so does the circumference of our ignorance" (A. Einstein). Being scientific means always questioning your conclusions. There are very few certitudes, these is only a self correcting process. If your data fits your model and correspond to an objective reality, let's see if I can shoot holes in this beautiful edifice with all my ugly facts. Otherwise, you're just another guy with an opinion. Sorry, you won't learn that in Sunday school. Now, you believe anything you want and I will respect your belief, stated as a belief. But in return, I sure expect YOU to respect my right to believe in nothing at all but the unlimited potential of the human mind. I expect this kind of talk to be censored as it has been before. Or maybe, for once, a fellow scientist AND believer will reciprocate and respect MY belief in nothing?
10
You know, Brooks/Douthat regularly take the "science is everything" card when it suits there purposes. Yet I have never seen either man examine, let alone question, the validity of their descent into empiricism and method.
An excellent example is their commentaries on the economy which, because it makes them feel good, they are forever representing as somehow rational and meaningful.
Take the stock market, please. A steaming mess of paranoia, exuberance, "animal spirits", manipulation, self interest, greed, and outright thievery, all the long columns of teensy print, all the authoritative study and commentary on past performance and future projections is, in the end, just nonsense.
The market soars and dives to near oblivion based on hunches, hopes, lies and schemes. Yet these champions of the human spirit persist in acting as if they somehow know something about it and will brook no argument.
All that's missing is snakes and abandoned crutches on the floor of the exchange.
The Market is a serious abuse of data, much like the pretend science of creationism. Baby minds dressing like grownups to win the argument they started.
Of course, the greater danger lies with those, like the Evangelical Catholic Douthat and Evangelicals generally, who have discovered that the purpose of their lives is to force others into compliance or shame them into oblivion. I assume they have supporting evidence.
10
Ross, my childhood experiences happened a bit before yours, in the '50's,
before the Warren Court ruled against school prayer.
On Mondays in my elementary classroom a Catholic priest would replace the teacher at 2 pm to give religious instructions. 24 of us would stay; Allan, the Jewish kid, got to go home one hour early to watch baseball on T.V.
When the priest told us of "the chosen people," I knew he was referring to Allan.
11
You lost me on this one Ross - which is not the first time to be sure. Rather then sight Pinker why didn't you just write that you don't believe much in science, research, and what mankind has done to make his brief time on earth better. Religion will always play a (feel good) part in the life of billions of people, just not sure of it's roll in advancing the human species.
5
This liberal’s smug certainties:
There is no big guy in the sky watching out for me
The scientific method is a more likely path to discerning objective reality than watching Fox and Friends
Having a temperament that’s willing to challenge received wisdom is of no benefit if it doesn’t extend to being open to questioning the hare-brained hypotheses being offered up in its stead.
7
The more I read Ross Douthat the more I come to realize he has completely lost any connection to respect for reasonable.
.... "against its enemies — be they the populist right, the identity-politics left, or a larger crew of historical villains, from Rousseau to Nietzsche,"
in one bit of clever word word he dismisses everyone who does not see the world through his (in my opinion) religiously tainted eyes, from way far to the right.
Ross, this is just a suggestion, man to man. Stop letting the Catholic Church do your thinking for you. I share a deep faith with you, but the men who administer that brand of faith are just that, MEN, not GOD. I still need to engage my brain in critical thinking to figure out what God wants of me and where he or she is trying to lead me, lest I find myself doing things and thinking things that if I were more careful I would obviously figure out are wrong. Nazis were guilty of blind adherence and look where it took them.
5
I've never read Pinker and I would bet that roughly ninety percent of these commenters attempting to take a cudgel to his work have only had a secondary exposure to it or the most superficial glance at something of his. These posts just reek of that. Apparently they find some threat to cherished beliefs in some poorly understood fragment of his work. As does Ross.
4
When discrimination rears its ugly head and is winked at by none other than the president of the country, referring to "identity politics of the left" strikes me as being devoid of Reason. No need to read further.
7
Complete rubbish. Douthat confuses science with popular nostrums, and fails to note that most common discourse, most of the information we use to make the little decisions that occupy the greater part of our waking lives, often involving choices in a confusing marketplace, is either quasi familial or drummed into us by the din of advertising and commercialism. People of good sense know how little they know. Ask yourself how does my cellphone work and then marvel at how much other people know and can do. Follow their lead. Go to school and take a chemistry course.
6
Right about the time I read, "We have no answers for you yet", I flashed on the Republican offices in Congress this last fall that were crammed with people in wheelchairs begging the Republicans to not end their health care.
They were muckled onto by persons who had no respect for anatomy. Some were lugged in their wheelchair, others were dragged from their wheelchair, carried down the hall and dumped without even the means to stand up and demand their dignity.
And, what was the "reason" for this Third Reich behavior?
It was so the 1% could have more money, it was a "tax cut" that actually RAISED the rate for the bottom-most poorest by 20%, while slashing it for the rich.
Warren Buffet was quoted yesterday in this very same paper as pointing out that he had made about 25 BILLION DOLLARS on that little piece of legislation. Warren has been pointing out for years that he is taxed less than his secretary.
That is the simple truth, the "reason" that the desperately infirm were packing those offices of the Republicans. They understand that in every generic Reich that there are "those" who will be disposed of, their assets turned back to the generic state to further the 1% Golds.
Like all Republicans, Ross, you left those people out.
So, please, explain where they fit in in your world of macrobiotics and curiosity, which "world" do they exist in for you?
The "reason" I ask is because you NEVER seem to bring them up.
Aren't they part of "everything"?
12
The column reminded me of a funny cartoon I once saw in a magazine in which a man is in mid air with his legs folded in a yoga full lotus position but obviously having jumped off the top of a very high building and he's careening downward. And as he whizzes past yet another windowed floor, he's saying to himself inside the cartoon's thought bubble: "So far, so good."
7
Religion and God can and cannot be proved- They are acts of faith.
Science based on faith is worse than useless
Nothing can be proved 100%, but science gets pretty close and is always trying to improve.
Republicans may be against elite universities, but that is where they and their children want to go.
Ignorance is not bliss even if Trump encourages it.
Stupidity loses in the end.
11
Most of what Ross says here was better said a century ago in the golden bough. I suggest he and Brett read it, to up their alleged cultural chops.
2
As Mr. Douthat is surely aware, mainstream Christianity has lost many members to anti-science denominations, a process that tracks pretty closely to the mainstream’s embrace of the major insights of physicists and biologists. As evangelical churches swell in numbers (and purge the odd dissident voice that questions Hell and the Young Earth), the cosmopolitan part of the faith community that embraces scientific knowledge and diverse creeds dwindles every year. I’m afraid that the club Mr. Douthat wants to promote, where Christians can believe in science AND the Sermon on the Mount is going to be about as popular as National Review is nowadays at CPAC. But there’s hope for him, when he concedes that religion and science are “non-overlapping Magisteria” which may cross-fertilize in terms of insights — I may or may not get an idea in yoga class that cracks the problem of anti-gravity — but which are best kept largely separate in a diverse world.
7
Who cares? Conservatives actively subvert fairness for the whims of their masters.
I got 60 bucks a week more thanks to Trump's tax cut. "Americans are optimistic with Trump's economy". Which Americans are these? The real stupid or the 'billionaire' liars? Indenture me more to your slaveries, capitalism. I have not given enough.
8
The is only one world.
In that world, there is gravity, science and truth. There are those that would like to change those laws for their own personal or political gain, but it is not possible.
You can decry fake this or fake that, but those laws are unbreakable.
8
Our ability to perceive the world is limited by our senses and our ability to understand it limited by our intellect. The weirdness of quantum mechanics hints at the nature of the universe in the manner of a grain of sand hinting at a mountain range. We truly know very little.
Here's one thing I've observed: belief systems rooted in contradictory notions of reality can lead to equally successful lives.
A friend of mine is an evangelical who believes the Bible is literally true and prays for my soul because he genuinely thinks I am going to Hell. His beliefs make no sense to me and run counter to everything I've experienced and learned. He has a successful career doing web development, a great marriage and fantastic kids. If someone is in crisis seeking concrete answers on how to live a meaningful and happy life, he has specific faith-based answers. A lost soul would get comfort from me but my belief in infinity and unlimited possibilities would offer no direction. In the reality I've observed, a desperate person does better turning to religion than to an absence of it - nonetheless I'm rooted to my view of incomprehensible unlitmited reality.
I know with every fiber of my being that even though I don't really know what reality is, it does not correspond with what's written in the Torah or the New Testament. My friend knows just as surely the opposite. Like Schrodinger's cat we live together in a quantum space where opposing notions are true. That's just fine.
92
So much of absolute,accepted hard science isn't really empirical in nature. Newtonian physics, both descriptive and molecular biology, geology, to name jsut a few prominent ones. Of course once you enter the kingdom of man as a social animal there is no empirical science; jist cargo cult stuff.
1
Pinker has exaggerated the the role of reason in
human life. People are not simply governed by the
the frontal lobe( reasoning, problem solving) but also
are emotional expressed in love, kindness,
altruism, anger, hate. Religion encourages
positive emotions--compassion, charity, forgiveness
and discourages hate, anger. Science has no role
in shaping the emotions. Without emotions
there will be no poetry, literature, art. Imagine
science describes heart as a pump controlling
the blood flow in the body, its structure
in valves, arteries,etc. There is so much fine
poetry related to heart pouring out the romance,
love, feelings. Science has contributed to the
material progress and made life comfortable
for a large number of people as well as created
the weapons of mass destruction, imperial conquests
and destruction of civilization of the conquered.
Humans need both science and religion or moral
philosophy for a comfortable and peaceful life.
4
USA as a country is under serious threat due to growing influence of religion in every field- more so in education (both school and higher education) and research. Quality of American education and research has deteriorated drastically and it affect out ability to generate wealth and also public policies. Religion is also affecting almost every contentious issues like gun violence and immigration. Many Churches routinely organize gun fairs and also distribute gun for religious conversions.
Many orthodox catholic churches actively promote illegal immigration from Latina American countries. They also give shelter and arrange for jobs for such illegal immigrants in USA. Other 'minority' religions (e.g Islam, Jews, Hindu, Sikh etc) are also doing the same. The easiest American visa would be religious preachers and it's greatly misused.
It also became one of the core reasons for polarization of American politics. Democrats made it their moral obligation to defend whenever they hear the term 'minority' (racial and religious)- irrespective of laws and benefit of the country. Dems promote this mentality of playing victim card by minorities.
And that also make the Republicans hardening thier policies to promote protestant (mainly Evangelical) fundamentalism and anti-minority rhetoric. They exploit white supremacy, Christian/evangelical fundamentalism and so-called (jingoistic) 'patriotism'.
We need to make our education and policies secular - as it's supposed to be.
7
And so we have the sublime defense of anti-intellectualism. Smooth words, false analogies, Tenuous associations...and always the attack on liberals.
Translation: if it worked for me, it works. If it didn't work for me, or I heard it did something bad for someone, it's evil (See: anti-vaxxers). If I tried it, I am as good as a scientist. If the truth is uncertain or unpleasant and the doctor or scientist admits it, it's "fake news" or "quackery". If someone has no evidence but states it will work with confidence, it's good (See: snake-oil and modern equivalents). If if doesn't provide a quick-fix or give partial benefit, it is bad. If it works "like a miracle", it's good. Political extension: If it takes us all working together over time on a complex plan, it's bad. If "I alone can fix it...on Day 1" it's good.
Above all, if a fact is promoted by a Liberal it is wrong, evil and needs to be replaced by an "alternative fact" that leaves no uncertainty.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan said "Everyone is entitled to their opinion, not his own facts." It is not smug to insist on truth, facts and to be able to admit that life is hard, uncertain, scary and that we don't know it all. That seems to have become a major dividing characteristic between liberal and modern conservative thinking. There is no defense of anti-intellectualism, which is the first step towards authoritarianism (See: history of Man), and the silver-tongued defender is the advanced guard and needs to be defeated.
16
My Father was "Born again" when he was in his late thirties. All my adult life I emember how confident he was that he was promised Heaven at his death. When the Russians went to orbit above the earth he scoffed when they said they could not find God there. When Kennedy stated firmly that we would go to the moon, he said it was the same hubris as those who built the Tower of Babel to reach Heaven. I challenged him on that one. Actually, he did accept our quest as just scientific and liked "....One small step for mankind".
On his deathbed in my presence he had complete confidence he was still going to Heaven. Wether true or not it was not a bad way to go.
4
The problem with both the alternative medicine guru-followers & the 'charismatic' religious guru-followers was & remains their indoctrinated certitude in their belief-systems.
True curiosity is not a locked-down total conviction in a certitude or belief.
Ideas that sound scientific, that claim certitude in a fabricated belief system are similarly cultish concepts requiring suspension of true curiosity in favor of blind belief.
It's reasonable to follow that likely unrefined foods unsprayed by known synthetic neurotoxic pesticides would be a better bet than succumbing to an irrational cult of industrial capitalism long evidenced to be poisoning us & the fragile ecosystem for profit.
It's reasonable to listen to scientists who point to evidence that this unprecedented burning of 300 million years of fossil energy all in a single generation is changing climate.
It's unreasonable to say that 'only god' could cause such change, or that a 2000 year-old religious text of unknown source claiming that god gave us 'dominion' over all earth & we therefore should use it all up with abandon.
Reason makes sense, blind belief-systems don't.
Reason is far harder & more rigorous than belief, & requires relinquishing a comfortable certitude.
But all that tells us is that 'belief' is a crutch, an addictive drug for those unable to cope with the unknown or unknowable, a superficial comfort for the lazy-minded and uncurious who are unable to do the hard work of science.
7
Ross may think he is capable of understanding scientific inquiry, but his statements show a real lack of insight into the human mind and brain. He shows he is unqualified to discuss or critique someone Pinker’s status, who turns to statistical evidence.
First of all, reason and empirical evidence are what brought us to advance and benefit our universe today, not things like prayer (which science has already explored and found lacking of value), which Ross suggests as worth evaluating.
Ross’s approach is similar to that of the Creationist trying to claim their thinking as equal status of worth, to Theory of Evolution? It shows weak powers of reasoning and logic, promoting such comparison, it is a NON-STARTER.
Many critics of Pinker, seem to claim he uses statistics selectively, to promote his own brand of humanism, HOWEVER, he still bases his claims on hard found statistical evidence. Just like in any debate, it is up to those who disagree with his statistical conclusions, to present their own equally legitimate statistical evolidence and proofs. Ross has failed to do anything of the sort, more he has proved his incompetence to do so.
David Brooks also criticized Pinker for his humanist agenda, Brooks also pushing similar thinking to Ross, but both their positions are NON-STARTERS to that of Pinker, who stands head and shoulders over both, as to true science and inquiry.
They might do better to challenge each statistical claim of Pinker, point by point, scientifically.
4
I haven’t read Pinker’s book yet but I know his previous work and I have some criticism of it (dismissing Nietzsche would definitely be on top of my complaints). But Mr. Douthat’s pitiful defense of pseudo-science only shows the paucity of modern anti-Enlightenment thinking. People who “try out” speaking in tongues or some cooky diet are not being scientific or empiricist. They are being silly. Science is not poking around randomly, trying to see what sticks. Science is an organized body of knowledge based on some axioms, chief among them is the exclusion of the supernatural. The universe is material and ruled by a set of laws which are indifferent to our wishes, inclinations or even existence. You may disagree with this picture of the world, considering it bleak or unfriendly, but it is what it is. Embrace religion if you want a universe more amenable to your desires but know that your belief or lack of thereof changes nothing in the material world. I once talked to a new atheist who grew up in a charismatic household. She said she still occasionally speaks in tongues because it is fun. But it proves the objective existence of God as much as fantasy novels prove the objective existence of dragons.
8
Douthat here takes the "Teach the controversy" line so beloved of creationists. As Paul Krugman has often satirized it, this is the approach that reports that there are still people who believe that the Earth is flat by saying "Shape of the planet: Both sides have a point".
Using the logic of creationists you'd basically have to report that "there are differing views on whether aliens are beaming signals into our brains" because a small, fringe sampling of the population goes around wearing aluminum foil on their heads.
This is not frivolous stuff, it's deadly serious. Douthat's suggested thinking here is exactly what has led us to deny that the planet is heating up in a jagged but ever upward line for decades now. Charlatans point to an upward tick in the 1990s and a downward tick a few years ago to claim "See? Temperatures are barely rising!" but it's shamelessly dishonest smoke and mirrors and nothing else (see a chart at the NASA link below). The media's gullibility to such deception led for far too long to the "Both sides must have a point" approach that Douthat is suggesting, and this approach bears no small responsibility for having let the problem go on for so long without serious action to deal with it.
"Health food" and "charismatic Christianity" are not the same thing, despite Douthat's claims. The latter is a dangerous and destructive force in the world.
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
8
Decades ago the NIH fuded randomized trials comparing alternative medicine against placebos. The study design conceded that people believed that these therapies had merit. The goal was to seek empiric evidence to support their belief. Mostly, alternative therapies failed this “scientific test”. The conclusion was clear. Bielif in treatment X did not make it effective. The testimony of respected authority dogmatically claiming effectiveness was not acceptable evidence.
The “scientific method” is designed to substitute empiric evidence of “”probable” effectiveness for the less reliable power of “magical thinking”. So long as alternative therapies do no harm and supplement but do not substitute for treatments “scientifically proven” to be effective then their is no problem. Only when science is held to be a conspiracy against believers—the vaccination contraversy for example—do these beliefs become harmful.
3
Douthat's is a strange thought these days, but that strangeness is the point. Mental worlds change just as material ones do. For someone like me who's writing on the history of religion, Douthat is right. The Enlightenment, capital-E, has become dogma in my lifetime, and religion pejorative. The word "enlightenment" changed its meaning in the 18th century from something like inner light to outer, from personal to universal, and some things were lost. The subsequent Romantic period of Western intellectual history did not entirely restore them, though it did make "artificial" pejorative and "enthusiastic" complimentary. Open-ended curiosity, Dewey's "critical thinking" in the face of uncertainty, should trump capital-e "Enlightenment" (as it does for too few nowadays), rather than the other way around. By now we should know that the Enlightenment was wrong about any values being "intrinsic" (Adam Smith could have corrected that). Wrong, too, about the possibility of deriving universal moral principles from universalist reason and logic; and wrong about the universality of human experience. (David Hume could have corrected that, but only a few philosophers at the time understood him).
3
Science is so obviously corrupted by money, power and influence and the spiritual world seems based on obvious untruths, often led by ridiculous charlatans. The trick is to be your own person, as Mr. Douthat suggests, and find out what works for you. I would suggest that both worlds, the scientific and the spiritual have equal validity, for we are both physical and spirit beings. To subscribe wholly to one or the other is a sure way to be misled.
6
No one will argue with the thesis that curiosity is a natural and positive human virtue. But curiosity by itself does not necessarily lead to understanding. Drawing an equivalence between the often irrational constructs of charismatic religion and pseudo-science to the empirical scientific method is utter nonsense. Furthermore, to tag the scientific method with some kind of secular inflexibility is simply a case of sectarian projection. Empirical science is always open minded, always skeptical, and ever adaptable to new information and approaches. One tests, rewrites, and tests again since a hypothesis is supported and never proved. Every postulate, hypothesis and conclusion is always open to questions, reasoned inquiry, passionate debate and rationale revision. The beauty of being on the edge of knowledge is that often little is certain. But science helps us shine a light into that darkness. Discovery is joyous, beautiful and humbling. There is nothing smug or necessarily certain about it. I would argue that science is the perfect outlet for our curiosity. However, as a society, we must make a conscious choice to value and invest in science from our K-12 schools to our top university, government and private labs pursuing it. To take a different path is to wander back into the darkness.
13
What I thought Douthat wanted to say was that nice people can believe strange things, in Trump for example, or in evangelical certainties, like the notion, heard from a pulpit that "Catholics do not Care For the Things of God" (arguably some do, some don't) or the priestly prohibition, which no longer exists, that my wife would be in dreadful moral danger if she visited her uncle's house because he and his wife were on their second marriages.
But no, he describes people who have been taught to believe the earth is 8000 years old as budding scientists. In the main, the reason why the Evangelical persuasion has grown so fast in Latin America has nothing to do with thought experiments. Much of the Catholic Church forgot what Pope Francis seeks to restore, avocation for the poor.
As in the U.S., evangelical churches take care of their pastors, often handsomely, in the spirit of a dubious proposition, doing well by doing good, but they also help the poor, the unhealthy and the forgotten, who comprise the majority of their flocks. That's altogether admirable but not the homophobic stance of the evangelical party which came out slightly ahead in the first round of Costa Rica's presidential election.
3
It is interesting to me that many of the comments appear to be knee-jerk defenses of "science" and the "scientific method" as if they alone can chart the teleological path for humankind. This is not to say science and the scientific method aren't useful and necessary, of course they are. But they certainly aren't sufficient for achieving a better world. For Pinker and many commenters, it's as their ultimate belief and faith in science as good and righteous, as opposed to a means to technology and tools, feel threatened and therefore must be boosted.
The cultural, environmental and political crises evidenced in the acceleration of inequality, the existing and looming challenges of climate change, continued instability in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, South America and the former Soviet Republics, the rise of right-wing nationalism (Brexit, Trump), nuclear proliferation, etc. certainly makes for an uncertain world. Funny that the ascendancy of science and reason (for Pinker, empirical positivism) has led us to this point, but thank goodness, at least according to Pinker, it will "save us."
See: https://www.globalresearch.ca/reality-denial-apologetics-for-western-imp... and http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/pinker.pdf for reasoned critiques of Pinker's ideologically limited view of history and statistical analysis.
Pretending that religion or alternative medicine are expressions of curiosity is nonsense. In many cases believers persist not while science can’t yet prove that they are right, but despite rock solid evidence that they are wrong. Homeopathy? Antivaxxing, anyone? Rather than reason believers are driven by wishful thinking and Intellectual laziness. I’ll take science any day.
9
It seems the key fallacy here is the assumption that all things have an answer, and therefore if science can't find the answer, then we have to resort to pseudo-science.
Although perhaps in the end, everything could be answered (if we knew enough), we have to recognize that there are limits to our knowledge, and therefore there are some things that can't be answered, at least with what we know today:
- what causes autism?
- how did life begin?
- why would anyone vote for a Russian agent to be president?
I realize it is a difficult line to draw: individual curiosity is a thing to be encouraged. Individual answers arrived without adequate scientific study are dangerous.
4
Words to ponder. Human curiosity is of the essence, as it drives our mind to imagine, then create, resources that include science and technology. Insofar as wanting to believe in the extra-ordinary when seeing the ordinary, that is perfectly fine, it keeps us in awe of nature, the only world we are able to know. Otherwise, raising a theistic religion so to believe in the 'eternal' and even our redemption and 'salvation' from death, by believing dogmatically (not subject to discussion) in it's truth, we are in a swampy terrain to escape rerality. In brief, believing is not knowing. Not that we know much, compared to what is out there, awaiting to be discovered. What happens is that we humans just aren't smart enough to be able to disentangle things, whether there is a God or not; it there was one, we surely molded him/her/it to our specifications, a rather arrogant view in my humble opinion. Insofar Pinker is concerned, he seems a nice guy with sensible ideas about reason and having improved our lot on Earth. But we may forget that, most of our time, we function based on emotions, on feelings; and use reason only to justify what we did (or didn't). You mentioned Newton, a great scientist for sure; and yet, so humanly credulous, in alchemy. As we keep indoctrinating our children, is there any wonder it sticks? One more thing: to believe in a personal God, and for Catholics (as I grew up with), in the transubstantiation and resuscitation, Reason must be suspended.
3
Douthat combines two very-different sorts of empiricism from his childhood. The personal efforts by a person who is ill to find something that works with their body is totally sensible, and would receive higher marks from science today then back when he was young. We now know that many drugs work or don't for individuals, based upon their genetic makeup. Many drugs rejected as not providing a statistically-significant improvement in testing against placebos, would certainly be found to be significantly effective for subsets of our genetically-diverse population. We also know that a lot of published scientific results, especially on the proper diet, were not statistically valid. We understand that allergies and autoimmune responses are very personal, making a personal hunt for which foods agree with oneself perfectly reasonable.
The other, the charismatic religious experience, is also better understood and used by cults. Whether on acid, marijuana, prolonged wakefulness, self-starvation, dancing to exhaustion, the twilight state between wakefulness and sleep, deep rem sleep dreams, schizophrenia, epileptic seizures, and other trance states, the not fully functional/off-peak brain registers everything from sensing a 'presence', perceiving super wisdom, to full-blown hallucination. Religions and cults around the world have used these techniques for thousands of years to induce religious experiences and reveal the truth. No indication that it actually is the truth.
2
Perhaps charismatic religion and pseudo-science involve an openness and curiosity. The problem is that their conclusions about the world are very often not true. The second problem is that religion and pseudo-science rarely acknowledge their error- they simply move the goalposts and continue to argue with the same lack of logic and good sense that created their false beliefs in the first place. I simply don't buy Douthat's attempt to create some equality between faith-based "thinking" and a sensible evidence-based epistemology- that's called a false equivalence.
3
As one who was trained as a scientist, I would like to point out a critical flaw in Douthat's arguments. He indicates that the scientific view is that something which cannot be proved to be true must be false. Wrong. The scientific view is that something which cannot be proven to be true is neither true nor false, but simply an unproven hypothesis. Most religious beliefs fall into the category of unproven hypotheses. That scientific method does not validate Douthat's belief system seems to bother him greatly.
5
We are living in a time when epistemology is on life support and yet we can validate what we consider knowledge and integrate it into civilization. There is objective truth and facts are the result of observation, experience and reality. Mysticism is fun to dabble in but we should not conflate the rise of the slow food movement with a spiritual profundity. Monsanto did more to create the need for health food stores than the Buddha.
There is a place for religion, meditation, yoga and all forms of self-improvement, but not in the creation of public policy. The EPA, FDA and the other agencies we rely on should be administered by reason-based leaders, not zealots and demagogues intent on replacing reason and science with their ignorant infantile clinging to extremist political philosophies. Just the facts, Mr. Douthat.
87
If one explores the range of human responses to the challenges of survival, well being, and longevity, it brings out the limits of human understanding along with a genius for finding solutions that seem to work a lot better than anyone can reasonably explain. The rational approach to determining what can be trusted and what just is not reliable is the best means that we have found to separate the fantastic from the trustworthy.
Acupuncture does work to a degree that exceeds the placebo effect but not to the extent claimed by practitioners. In addition, the empirical evidence of efficacy cannot be confirmed by the explanation of how it works. The system as taught by practitioners is mostly imaginary. So it goes for most of the alternative systems for achieving better health, they seem to work but neither cause and effect nor sound statistical studies can provide assurance that they work as advocates assert.
Science is our best method of determining the reliability of our beliefs. Without it following our beliefs amounts to gambles without knowing the real risks.
7
I worked in biology, and most people I knew were scientists. Now, I know mostly people on various spiritual paths--Buddhism, Native American traditions, Christianity, and the others that used to be called New Age. In my former life, I encountered the “smug secular certainties” that Mr. Douthat describes, so I began investigating some of these other paths. I have tried to remain open, to learn from the alternative ways of seeing the world. Still, I have encountered the same smugness among some of my friends, who have accused me of being “just a scientist,” and thus spiritually impoverished by definition. Whatever the walk of life, there seems to be no shortage of people who think they know the truth and want to convince you of it. I have met people who believe all kinds of things—alien spaceships in the mountains behind the house, spirits that intervene in human affairs, etc. The takes on reality run the gamut, from the reasonable to the ridiculous. So what can I do? I start somewhere, I make some choices. In effect, I winnow the various assertions about what is true and make provisional decisions about those that are most likely. If one path dead-ends, I take another, all the while trying to remain open to information and experiences that suggest something different. This process is called Occam’s razor and is the organizing principle of science and the law. I have also found it useful in this other realm of life. It seems the only way; any other feels arbitrary.
10
Sorry, but this is ridiculous.
Curiosity, searching for answers, experimenting, are all apparently inherent human traits -- in our societies and in our genomes. These were celebrated by The Enlightenment, and rightly so.
Science can be seen as "how do you know that?" It was also championed by The Enlightenment, notably by David Hume. What it does is to distinguish between curiosity and hypotheses, which are essential, and faith (belief without supporting data) which may be comforting but is a dead end in any search for how things (rocks, trees, people) work. To say that Newton loved alchemy (well-documented, I believe) is not in any way to confuse alchemy with, e.g. gravity. SEARCHING for how to transform lead into gold is one thing; BELIEVING that somebody walked on water 2,000 years ago is another.
20
Douthat is quite right here. There would have been no Enlightenment without the Protestant Reformation that preceded it. Christian dissenters introduced the idea that one should not meekly accept what established authority defined as truth. Instead, the individual must take steps to seek truth for oneself, and have an independent confirmation of it.
Reason and faith are far more dialectically linked than people like Pinker acknowledge.
4
Platonism, which will ultimately be overthrown by the Scientific Revolution was necessary to break the stranglehold of Aristotlanism.
Ross, I'm closer to you on the overarching theme of experience and meaning beyond (just) science and reason--and I say that from the perspective of a career scientist (Physicist, mathematician, and engineer).
Ken Wilber has a good introduction (and fast read) in _The Integral Vision_, pub. 2007. The conundrum you describe of losing some deeper meaning by rigid adherence to Pinker's reason and scientific method is really quite simple: It's a result of what Wilber calls the "pre-trans fallacy," which is the all-too-common human trait of conflating brief but very real and meaningful spiritual experiences ("trans-rational") with "pre-rational" experiences divorced from reason. A classic example of the latter is summed up as, "I believe *because* it is absurd!" Sound like anyone you know?
Wilber says, "Spirit is indeed nonrational, but it is trans, not pre. It transcends but includes reason; it does not regress and exclude it." If it sounds to you or other Pinker devotees like so much hogwash, consider that most of the world's greatest physicists embraced mysticism in one fashion or another. Proof: Another Ken Wilber book, _Quantum Questions, Mystical Writings of the World's Greatest Physicists_, pub. 2001. I highly recommend it.
Sadly--as Wilber readily admits--there's far more people stuck in the pre/trans fallacy than those who've made the leap to true spirituality (and integrating it into their lives). But why else are we here than to work on it?
5
Wow, not seeing many commenters who agree with you Mr. Douthat, but yes! Pinker and you are on to something! Over and over again I see people saying in all their rational ways "religion is bad and science is good." There are so many reasonable and historical arguments against living a life of faith that people who have never experienced it find it easy to dismiss and ridicule. They never ask friends and acquaintances "what has your religious practice meant to you as you have lived your life?" The numinous is an essential component of human life and human society. Automatic dismissal of faith and religion is an unfortunate (and boringly conformist) aspect our culture.
As for science, I have lived long enough to see many scientific "truths" superseded. (Nevertheless, I tend to favor scientific etiologies and prescription drugs over traditional and natural medicine.)"Scientifically" based superstitions and fads have been amusing to watch over the years: they are easy to spot by what's on the shelves in the natural foods section (coconut water, anyone?) At the same time I'm wondering if it's the turmeric capsules that are giving me some extra energy ...
All of the complex aspects of human culture and personality have their positive and negative features: where we run into problems is rejecting one on the basis of the other. We are addicted to "Yes, but" and (apparently) terrified of "hmm ... that sounds interesting, tell me more!"
6
It is one thing to live a life of faith. It is another to believe that through that life you know the Truth and further that you must impose that Truth on all others.
3
There is a general tendency to do what we do in politics--cherry-pick our preferred narrative--when analyzing "big history." That is what Pinker did, and it is nothing new. Pinker does have a large and devoted following (read David Brooks' take on Pinker's recent work: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/opinion/steven-pinker-radical-honesty... ). He is also guilty of intellectual over-reach.
Here is another stinging criticism of Pinker's Enlightenment views: https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2018/02/unenlightened-thinkin... .
These bright lines between faith and reason, between religion and science, are not be as bright as some insist. One could construct a lengthy bibliography on the subject, with revered figures on all sides.
Science has never been that pure, that free of political forces and factionalism. I do favor the notion that the best of science understands the importance of ignorance, of failure, of not relying on fixed dogma. Is there a reason to choose sides, to insist strict obedience to one view or another? Maybe not. [Note: I am not theologically observant.]
I do not often agree with Mr. Douthat, but here he has a point: "...should consider the possibility that some of their own smug secular certainties might be part of the problem — that they might, indeed, be stifling the more comprehensive kind of curiosity upon which the scientific enterprise ultimately depends."
4
Rejecting irrational belief in theism is not a smug secular certainty.
A theistic belief is not a comprehensive kind of curiosity. It is the lack of curiosity.
4
What a week. David Brooks explains that we cannot have common sense gun regulations because liberals criticize gun owners too much. Now Ross Douthat explains that we cannot have science because scientists criticize astrology and divine healing.
We have gotten to the point where almost every Republican position now is selected on the basis of "what makes liberals mad," regardless of evidence, merit, or frankly sanity.
29
The true enemy of reason is actually the sense of certainty. The essence of science is to question everything, make hypotheses, and test them backwards and forwards. Over time, we can be reasonably certain about some things, but being willing to doubt what you believe is the only defensible attitude given that we are fallible beings.
Most of the evil in this world comes from people who are absolutely certain that they are right and any other way of thinking is wrong. Unfortunately fanatically-held religious beliefs are the culmination of this kind of certainty. It never occurs to a religious fanatic that knowing exactly what God wants is the height of hubris, as it assumes God-like perfection of understanding.
As Ashleigh Brilliant once said, "don't believe everything you think."
18
Good science is anything but "smug certainty". The worlds of thought Douthat defends for himself and others as a corrective on the basis of the value of curiosity neglects the fact that it closes off curiosity when it arrives at its personal goal and urges others to accept it for themselves, abandoning curiosity for fervent belief.
6
Douthat it claiming that religion provides things that reason cannot, but the edge of reason is defined not by rank superstition but by art. The arts allow us to see the dark side of the moon—those experiences, feelings, and intuitions that we have difficulty perceiving and articulating in the crystal clarity of science. Douthat’s opposition between science and religion strikes me as extraordinarily outdated; no one seriously thinks it can contend any longer as a source of reliable information about the universe. Perhaps he is afraid that once he recognizes its inability to compete with such a successful method of discovering truth, religion will lapse back into its proper place, as a form of poetry.
7
I'm not sure what Pinker said in his book, but many wise comments here on this article are excellent.
Einstein said this:
“One thing I have learned in a long life: that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike----and yet it is the most precious thing we have.”
Douthat implies we should ask "what happens if you pray." Science knows the answer to that; absolutely nothing happens if you pray. That's a fact and should never be a hope, because it most often gives us disappointment and simple planning and listening to science can often result in our not having to pray.
No one in their right "mind" thinks science has anything to do with absolute truth. Of course there are physical laws which operate in the universe and understanding them gives us some clues as to how it works and are extremely valuable is medicine, engineering, etc.
But Newton looked at alchemy because many of the laws were unknown in his time; he did not go to it for spiritual renewal. He went to it out of pure curiosity. His famous equation for gravity was brilliant and of course is still used today as are his laws of motion.
But later in his life he pointed out that although he had given us a formula to calculate the gravitational force between two bodies in the universe, he stated he did not have the slightest clue as to what gravity was and how it "worked." It was unintelligible and remains that way today. Einstein only made it more unintelligible. No absolute truth there.
11
Republicans are welcome to be as fact-free as they want, but not in the public sphere where it damages millions of people. In the policy world, we need evidence-based decision-making, which historically resulted in better economic results under Democrats, from jobs to GDP growth to the stock market. You can't just transfer a religious/cult mentality to the public sphere.
For example, it isn't OK for Republicans and Trump to sabotage the ACA, adding an estimated 13 million people to the ranks of the uninsured over a decade. That's about 16,000 avoidable deaths per year, an entirely unforced error.
It isn't OK for Republicans and Trump to add $1.5 trillion to the debt over a decade when the economy is booming and we should be paying down debt. Never mind the the inequality aspects by which the bottom 80% get 35% of the benefit (for awhile), the top 1% about 20% or more of the benefit.
It isn't OK for Republicans and Trump to ignore the scientific consensus on climate change, deregulate for the joy of it (we tried that with banking), leave assault rifles in the hands of civilians while preventing research on gun violence, and force their morality (or lack of it) on the rest of us.
And it certainly isn't OK for Trump's approval rating among Republicans to be close to 90%, no matter how often he admires Putin, lies, attacks immigrants that contribute to our economy, pays off his mistresses, or otherwise embarrasses the country. What's wrong with these people?
11
Our common life depends on the experience of generations. There are things that cannot be learned in one lifetime. This is true of Science, which is also a tradition. If not, then why do I seem to see so much dogmatism in these posts? Claims to exclusive truth?
Rocco Errico, a Christian, was sitting next to an astronomer on a plane. The astronomer let him know he didn't believe in "God." Derrick asked him how he FELT when looking through a telescope. But the astronomer kept on sharing THOUGHTS. Finally, Errico insisted on how he FELT. The astronomer said, "It just totally blows my mind!" Errico: "Now you're talking about God!" Sounds very much like a traditional Buddhist story. Not all scientist operate in the TRADITION of LITERALISM.
3
If people are pursuing non-traditional treatments because they've been told traditional treatments cannot help them, they are indeed exhibiting rational behavior and applying reason to the problems they face. No?
4
But what if they pursue non-traditional treatments when they have been told that traditional treatments will help them? Or as a lady the other day said, we don't get the influenza vaccine; we believe God will take care of us.
3
I thought, "good article," until I read the last paragraph where Douthat just had to use the word "smug" to judge the secular "certainties" of Pinker and others. Douthat brings up charismatic Christianity in Africa and Latin America. I was raised Catholic and attended parochial schools. Still, I felt alienated. In the 1970's, I joined a charismatic Christian congregation where every service started with fast paced joyous music, moved to the sermon and the passing of the collection plate and then proceeded to the speaking of tongues and then slower paced music which trailed off as congregants swayed slowly until they stopped swaying. This concluded the service. This music fueled theatrical arc likely controlled congregants' dopamine which fueled enthusiasm for pastoral exhortations, much like a political rally. At this same time, I was also studying Mythology in college and I quickly saw how all "creation" stories emerged separately in separate geographically defined locations. I left the charismatic congregation after six weeks. From my secular perspective, I see the election of a South American Catholic Pope as an attempt to keep South American Catholics from abandoning Catholic weekly re-enactments of Christ's crucifixion for the pleasantly self-reinforcing individual emotionalism of prosperity gospel, charismatic Christianity. Money is involved. As Pinker teaches, we are neurologically controlled beings in a multi-stimulus universe. "Enlightenment Now!" indeed.
7
I must correct one thing I said. Mass is more a re-enactment of The Last Supper. As I was writing, I became fixated on memories of the crucifix. Mea Culpa.
2
"And therein lies the oddity: If you actually experienced these worlds, and contrasted them with the normal world of high-minded liberal secularism, it was the charismatic-religious and “health food” regions where people were the most personally empirical, least inclined to meekly submit to authority, and most determined to reason independently and keep trying things until they worked."
In Douthat's version, "to reason independently" means only to adhere to a different set of "facts". The magic of charismatic religion and special foods that "worked" only attests to the power of the mind's placebo effect.
3
How far from our primitive selves have we really come when the "hurly burly" of modern life with its ever-increasing information overload throws us into a search for suprarational explanations of existence? The Enlightenment, as a movement, sought to overcome superstition and provide explanation for the phenomenons of the physical world and our role in it through a rational process known as the "scientific method". It's fine to be "curious about everything" but in the real world we had better rely on reason and rationality over superstition.
1
This analysis ignores the greatest force at work in fighting reason—-$. Money has found a comfortable ally in marketing that doesn’t ask questions about truth, but strives only to convince.
At a board meeting addressing a problem a person rises to suggest a course of action designed to solve the problem. Another stands to express how to make it seem that there is no problem or that it appears to be solved. The second person is revered and the first “resigns.”
Those that are speaking are not choose Inn their words based on the message, but are only interested in what is heard.
In the crazy-good movie NEBRASKA, when the son is questioned by a woman why his elderly father believed he actually won the publishers clearinghouse sweepsteaks, he replies, “he just believes what he is told.” The woman responds, “that’s too bad.”
2
I don't begrudge "unreason" it's place. I just don't want it to get in the way of reason and if we have to choose at some point between the two I'll take the latter.
And unreason clearly is getting in the way of progress these days, on many important issues
2
"...their own smug secular certainties..". Actually, the scientists I have known have been the least smug people I have ever met. The religious, and in my particular case, Catholic clergy persons (nuns, priests and brothers), have been the most unbearably smug, individually and collectively, creatures I have ever known. Thus, almost fifty years ago, I escaped catholic schools for a BA and PhD in experimental psychology (at secular universities in Manhattan - the most secular place I could find) and never looked back. This is my 'individual experiment'. I felt "...not just alive, but well..." to escape from professional christians and their "experience" to find professional 'scientism" and it's empirical curiosity.
3
I disagree with your statement that the Space Age is connected with the rise of health food stores. The Space Age began with the launch of Sputnik in 1957; health food stores didn't appear until about a decade later. Indeed, the late 60s were a time when Americans were questioning if money spent on sending astronauts to the moon was money well spent. If anything, health food stores were a reaction by the counter culture against the technology mindset of the late 60s.
4
Near universal scientific consensus is still not certainty, but it is often the best we have. What I can't understand is those who then pick & choose which scientific consensus to accept. For example many who believe global warming has been proved to be caused by man refuse to accept the safety and need for GMO plants. Scientific consensus agrees with both.
9
There were plenty of skeptics who questioned the scientific consensus that cigarette smoking causes cancer. There are plenty of skeptics who question the scientific consensus that humans are causing the current rise in global warming. I'm more interested in the underlying promotors of skepticism and their reasons for promoting their particular skeptical outlook. For many skeptics who challenge scientific consensus it seems to me that there is financial gain in their position. It sells books. It sells product. It sells cigarettes. It sells oil, coal, and gas. It may even sell a false sense of security.
Scientific consensus isn't the same as scientific certainty. Any system of knowledge that veers into the realm of certainty becomes more like religious orthodoxy. Any scientific consensus that's worthwhile leaves room for healthy skepticism. Skepticism that masks a hidden agenda isn't healthy.
15
Dan...the number of skeptics doubting the undeniable link between cigarette smoking and cancer and denying fossil-fuel-based global warming are a tiny percentage of scientists and they generally fall into the categories of cranks, quacks, charlatans and well-compensated merchants/spokespeople of death.
15
Scientific consensus is not certainty and dissent from scientific consensus is a good thing. But in the end, the dissenter's vehicle must be science. Dissent can and often does start out as a hunch. If it remains a hunch or merely turns into an ideological or religious doctrine that is not subject to scientific proof, the dissent is useless and counterproductive. If the dissenters or at least some of them subject the proposition they champion to scientific empirical testing then it becomes worthwhile. The dissent's theory will either be confirmed, modified or dis-proven. But until the theory is tested, it is mere dissent.
1
First off, the guys who "doubted," the links between cigarette smoking and cancer weren't "skeptics," any more than today's warming deniers are.
They're paid shills, and people with clear political axes to grind. They don't actually doubt, and they don't encourage doubt.
Whether for pay or for politics, they encourage stupidity.
3
“After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
74
That Nietzsche quote sounds rational compared to the rest of the passage. Here are some other cherry-picked quotes:
* "I am not a man, I am dynamite."
* "I refuse to be a saint; I would rather be a clown. Maybe I am a clown."
* "My genius resides in my nostrils."
Quotes are from "Ecce Homo" by Nietzsche (trans. Ludovici). Full text at gutenberg.org.
2
Ross Douthat's take on Steven Pinker's "Enlightenment Now" seems deeply and dangerously off the mark in trying to line up "individual experimentation" and the idea that "every human life is .. a science experiment" with humanity progress and the empiricist project. The idea seems to be that Pinker's "scientism" has completely missed the individual experimenter's role in the project. Douthat even trots out Newton's interest in alchemy in support of the point.
But that's a mistake. The normative idea on offer is that the individual w/in the larger society has a responsibility to conduct factual experimentation and associated discourse within the confines of best science (where that exists). So, for example, given the overwhelming evidence of the Standard Model in physics, it is *not* normatively acceptable to attribute anything empirical to astrology beyond the psychology phenomenon of magical thinking. If Newton's interest in alchemy seems eccentric nowadays, it's nevertheless completely within the norm. What wouldn't be acceptable is pursuit of Newtonian alchemy in the face of our knowledge of the quantum basis of the periodic table, electron energy levels, and valence. Douthat's individualistic empiricism would provide normative justification for an individual taking the position "I have a right to my opinion about the scientific basis for the effectiveness of astrology". Pinker's view of evolving Enlightenment norms would reject that norm. Rightly so, in my view.
18
To confuse and equate the objective empirical inquiry with personalised experimentation based on simply faith and following is simply a clever attempt to make reason subservient to the blind faith and thereby superimpose the authority of dogma over the rational belief.
28
Thanks for this concise criticism of Ross's column.
“The real question of life after death isn't whether or not it exists, but even if it does what problem this really solves.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein
2
“There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
38
"...they should consider the possibility that some of their own smug secular certainties might be part of the problem ..."
Who isn't 'smug,' Ross? Evangelical Christians? Orthodox Jews? Conservative Hindus?
You? You aren't "smug" in your tone of this column?
I've sat inside the 5,000 year old site at Newgrange, Ireland, climbed Mayan pyramids. I've stood in Greek and Roman temples. I've kneeled in Catholic cathedrals and Protestant edifices and attended services in Fundamentalist Christian churches.
I studied science, devoured theology, read all the Pre-Socratics, wandered Hindu shrines.
Everybody is smug Ross.
We're an animal that dies. None of us can see into the impenetrable darkness. Our great anxiety drives us to Inquisitions and to electing the Trumps of this word. We write oh, so meaningful tomes announcing to others the truths we've accumulated like clothes in the closet.
My mother had answers when I was a child. I vested in them. But when she died, 92 years in her journey I guarantee you that the smugness of her beliefs as a young, fiercely Irish Roman Catholic had dissolved.
We all make it up, Ross, and we all get smug about what we derive.
Mostly what your column is, is an defensive expression out of anxiety of your own position at this moment; it's valid, but amounts to Newgrange and will be as much a curiosity soon enough as the scientific search for the 10th planet Vulcan is now that Einstein showed that the previous math was wrong.
So it goes.
87
The is a difference between experimentation and doing (scientific) experiments and studies. One is controlled and only investigates disprovable hypothesis amenable to scientific study. The other does not. It may be that they share the some common yearning for knowledge. But the hardest but in some ways the most liberating thing about science is to genuinely say "I do not know". All these other forms of "knowing" have in common the the inability to accept "not knowing". We are not gods, or super humans. We do not have any direct privileged mystical connection with the Universe. We just are. A part of it. Incomplete. Fallible. Prone to error. But human.
17
"His book is at once a salutary reminder of the material progress modern science and commerce have delivered " I won't speak for commerce but science has delivered material progress but it pales in contrast to the intellectual progress it has delivered. No longer do we accept statement from authorities as fact, no longer do we accept it when we are told not to question a statement and no longer are we limited in our thinking to the blinders of ancient doctrines.
As a example Abraham Lincoln were born on the same say. Both rescued humanity from bondage, one physically ad intellectually and the other intellectually only. Thank Reason for the Enlightenment.
1
The question is how such reason saddled us with the shabby likes of Donald Trump, Scientology, and Wakefield.
Just another attempt at false equivalency, to give equal weight to what we would like to be true vs what can be proven through rigorous scientific method . In other words Creationism can be just as valid as Evolutionary theory and should be taught side by side, never mind that classroom time is finite and time wasted on a subject that someone would like to be true is learning time gone forever.
Skepticism is a central part of the scientific method but using skepticism to undermine valid scientific results for political reasons only leads us backward.
36
A text on basic science from say 1900 will immediately appear outdated to a lot of people, religious texts from a few centuries ago probably won't. Science doesn't always get it right, the body of knowledge changes over time, but that is still the way to bet. Also science will often end up making generalizations on populations in what is interpreted for the general public, and individuals need to sometimes assess in how it may be of significance for them.
Science often begins with a literature search, although on occasion sometimes just careful notes, observation or luck may uncover something new. Experimentation without reason and the knowledge of the scientific process isn't really science, instead one is typically just using a random process in an attempt to discover something. An example of a steep learning experience would be looking for good tasting mushrooms with prior knowledge.
Science certainly have an answer for everything, but for me it is the only way that I can make sense of the physical world around me, and some sense of the people in it.
11
John, the point that I would make is that even you accept the premise that there are forces larger than ourselves in the universe who have attempted to exercise the role of a shepherd over a flock of sheep, the reality is that the religious texts of antiquity are also surely outdated. Likewise, the modes of behavior that a loving parent or custodian would urge on a toddler or small child are surely not those that they would recommended for a young adult first attempting to make his way in the larger world (being as upfront about my opinion of the likely current state of development of human beings as I can be).
1
As a practitioner of the scientific method all my life, I find myself agreeing with Mr. Douthat. Truly transformative discoveries and ideas don't come from logic and reason. Instead they come from somewhere deeper and mysterious. What you do then is build a logical, mathematical framework around your hunch -- that is where the reason comes in, i.e., after the fact.
10
No, what happens is that you become very familiar with something - all the pieces and parts. Your subconscious mind turns it over and over, and sometimes there is a connection where you put the pieces together in the right order, and suddenly everything starts to make sense
12
You are not agreeing with Mr Douthat. He is not talking about where hypotheses come from. He believes that non-scientific empiricism can validate woo woo.
So you are saying that science suffers when it suppresses non-scientific inquiry.
Not really. science is defined in this context by the use of scientific method which tests (proves) the standing of a theory. If a theory survives a test specifically designed to disprove it, then it remains a good theory; if it fails, then it is proven to be wrong; if it is untested, it is a mere theory. The curiosity of which speak is encouraged and absorbed by science in this method for the generation of theories - which are then tested (proven).
For the charismatic-religious, there are different approaches to "test" and proof; faith is distinct from scientific method. Enjoy it but do not complain that it is related to, or comparable with, science.
When the engines on my jet fail at 20,000 ft, I will pray; until then I will rely on science to get me off the ground: God gave us our minds and the free-will to use them independently, it would be ungrateful not to.
16
A sound argument--until you conclude with a statement about "free-will" as something that "God gave us." Alas, that sentence features an unproveable AND a disproven concept.
I wanted to show Christians that Science was compatible with their faith, hoping for a willingness to embrace both.
You assert that something is both unprovable and disproven, which is not quite rational.
When you say "theory", the correct term is "hypothesis".
1
Though I consider myself a denizen of the secular, rationalist world, my humanism compels me to respect individual choices that stem from a different search (and probably make a few of them myself). But I draw the line when alternative belief systems have effects far beyond the practitioner, as when hostility to science leads to climate-change denial, vaccination paranoia, or demands that schools teach "creation science." The column fails because it misses this distinction.
69
Gownie,
I wonder if a less absolutist approach might be more productive, especially considering the angry polarization that has overtaken our culture and politics. You might be conflating "received wisdom" with "science". As I understand it science is about questions, not certainties.
"God" is just a gimmick to make things non-negotiable in the US. Those who claim to speak for it claim to be it.
1
I have only read The Blank Slate, but in that book Pinker is careless with the facts. It is clear that underpinning The Blank Slate is biological evolution. The last section is titled “The Voice of the Species,” and the book ends:
It is a scene that has the voice of the species in it: that infuriating, endearing, mysterious, predictable, and eternally fascinating thing we call human nature. Pinker, Steven. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (p. 434). Penguin Group. Kindle Edition.
Compare this with the major conclusion of Darwin’s The Origin of the Species:
Hereafter we shall be compelled to acknowledge that the only distinction between species and well-marked varieties is, that the latter are known, or believed, to be connected at the present day by intermediate gradations, whereas species were formerly thus connected. . . . In short, we shall have to treat species in the same manner as those naturalists treat genera, who admit that genera are merely artificial combinations made for convenience. This may not be a cheering prospect; but we shall at least be free from the vain search for the undiscovered and undiscoverable essence of the term species. Darwin, The Origin of the Species, Penguin Books, p. 456.
Pinker wants to show there is a human nature or essence. But to do this he relies on evolution which claims there is no eternal essence to species. Essences can’t evolve. Pinker transforms species from a scientific to a religious rconcept.
6
Human nature derives from the set of emotions that we all share. They evolved because they are adaptive and create a common understanding for social organization.
Another straw man attack against secularism and liberalism. This time confusing scientific authority with government authotity. These are not the same thing, just look at what the current White House makes of their prescriptions of how we should live. The fact that religious and whole foods cultures go against government prescriptions doesn't mean anything in relation to science and reason.
12
Steven Pinker realizes, as Ross Douthat does not, that it is only through science and technology that knowledge of the world grows. Science and religion are incompatible: One is rational and the other is not. Science and technology have led to our modern world, but what has religion done for us? Can Mr. Douthat name one important modern advance in knowledge or human wellbeing that religion has brought us?
17
Are you defending that “miracle” cures and “spiritual healing” should be put on the same footing as treatments derived from years of systematic experimentation by dedicated and bright scientific researchers? Well, let’s see. While I recognize that even science allows for the placebo effect, where a strong belief that the “cure” will work seems to make difference in some cases and I admit that science-based treatments are almost never 100% guaranteed, to claim that they are equivalent is IMO absurd. Science delves into and discovers how things actually work and come up with solutions (e.g. vaccines) instead of just a scattergun approach hoping that I will stumble onto something that will help. Sure scientific research takes longer and often isn’t ready just “yet” but it clearly shouldn’t be disparaged as just another option. Two additional thoughts:
Should people be allowed to experiment when they are desperate? I suppose they should have that right as long as no general harm is done.
However, it seems to me that fraud and people being duped and taken advantage of are more prevalent in one of the two spheres; guess which one?
Finally this belief-based, I-want-it-to-be-so thinking isn’t limited to personal issues. It bleeds over into more universal problems: glaciers are melting, temps are rising? A hoax. An avalanche of guns will make us safe? Of course. Don't bother looking at other countries, wre just different.
16
I suppose the irrational but highly prevalent belief in angels and ghosts is harmless, however the inability to distinguish this belief system from the consistent, well founded evidence for global warming, and its cause by human activity, is potentially catastrophic.
I'm afraid that there may be much bigger thinker out there writing about the contested history of Reason, Enlightenment and Science than Mr. Pinker. Mr Pinker's work has the quality of a good, spirited Ted Talk aimed right at that cosmopolitan global target market who like to be reassured by people like Mr. Pinker that the "other guys" just don't get it. In fact, the banality of brands like Mr Pinker's has sent me back to the classic writings of the Frankfurt School. Right or wrong, overblown, hyperbolic --- those thinkers going over much the same terrain as covered in Mr. Pinker's pamphlet were dazzling. Mr. Pinker's work is not.
4
All I know is if I were a young scientist, I'd get the heck out of this country. If we don't change the direction of this country's progress - which is backwards right now - then there really is no hope for the best and the brightest. Go to Germany. Or France. Or Wherever. Because it will be vastly apparent that your brilliance and wanting to serve the greater good will go to waste. Find a place that will support you in your important endeavors and allow you to use all the words you know to be true on official websites.
27
Americans under-appreciate how the rest of the world looks down on a country that has rejected adoption of what has become the global standard measuring system since the French Revolution. When Reagan killed Carter's Metric conversion commitment, many international cosmopolitans gave up on the US. Look to that for why so many factories vacated the US when markets went global.
1
My problem with Pinker is his research leads him to believe the world has become a safer place; he clearly hasn't factored our President into his calculations.
8
Trump is an extreme reaction to the superior force of reason over faith.
Well, Ross displays a serious dismay over the scientific enterprise and its smug participants that fail to appreciate the role of curiosity. Possibly too confined by the strictures laid down by Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein?
Unfortunately his misgivings apply far more easily, and with uncountably more examples of hubris and stiff-necked behavior, to his religious leanings. So far, at least, it is a rarity for scientists to burn their colleagues at the stake over disagreements about their scientific work. That despite some very heated arguments.
12
Mr. Douthat never did and doesn't like Mr. Pinker, nor his scientism and scienticisms and writes a column per book - looking for a twitter fight? Maybe with the next one. Nevertheless, I hope he still won't have succeeded to move the fight from the "abortion vs pro-choice" line to the "my experience is as important as your science". It's mechanisms and statistics, Mr. Douthat, it's not all in our head.
3
We get it Ross. The secular, empirical, and science based world is bad. Religion and the mystical and magical thinking world is good. You can serve it up with a large plate of word salad, but that's it.
Someday you may realize the world of science is not your enemy. We have all reaped the benefits from those persons who failed to follow religious dogmas and pushed the limits of our collective knowledge to new heights.
I have hope you will realize someday that people who do not share your religious and political values are not evil; but I have little faith it will ever occur.
19
I find that watching the anti-empirical evidence crowd twisting themselves into pretzels in order to come up with concepts like “intelligent design” to replace the “secular and (egads!) scientific” concept of evolution, or hiring NRA lobbyists to put pressure on legislators to forbid any evidence- based study of the correlation between gun violence and the availability of guns or anything else that might overturn their “evangelical applecart” extremely enlightening. And by the way, it does not make me feel “smug” it makes me appalled.
16
If Ross Douthat wants to discuss the limits of pure reason with reference to the writings of classical philosophers , which I am sure he can do it very eloquently, I will be more than happy to read and be enlightened. But it seems he wants to glorify backwoods mumbo-jumbo of charismatic Christianity. I don't care whether it is popular in Africa or Latin America or in the boondocks of USA. Coming from India, I can provide him with a whole list of non- scientific and non-rational beliefs practiced there too.
13
I think of Pinker as the Apostle of white people. The white man's burden. Etc. Couldn't have imagined Douthat would be thinking so much the way I do. But I think he's wrong about the origins of alternative culture. It IS really a necessary reaction. By people like me. Because we're here. We've always been here.
You say the inhabitants of the old worlds have "...been told by the official consensus, “We have no answers for you yet.” And so they looked and searched into answers on their own including looking into religion. Well, we STILL, don't have answers for too many things: dark energy, dark matter make over 95% of our universe. What IS gravity that helps oceans not emptying into space? And you could go on and on in nearly every domain that we know of.
So it's this sense of ignorance and really FEAR of not knowing some most pressing questions about who we are and what we are to do that religion comes to help us to give some relief -- mostly by promisig what we might get AFTER death.
But even if we do not have access to such comforting beliefs, Nietzsche has attempted to show some light -- by embracing what makes us human as we know it. And here we can submit to awe and wonder, to pure play which every child knows but too often the adult forgets, and the human connection that can mitigate but never relive the existential loneliness we all feel in our loneliest hours. Religions that help us by inviting us with rules that attend to our deepest yearnings are the ones that perpetuate and live on.
So it's not the embrace of unreason, but incorporating in our lives rules where reason can't enter.where
1
So, you're saying schools should teach both alchemy & chemistry because:
A) no less a figure than Isaac Newton dabbled in the former B) Not being exposed to alchemy takes some of the joy out of our lives.
No doubt you'd urge the teaching of both creationism and evolution.
I think what you're really saying is that 'man cannot live by bread alone.' Such a view should not however give license to return our legal system to witch-burning, or our medical system to blood-letting. Perhaps, just take an art appreciation class .. or go to a concert instead. And if you want to go to church|synagogue|mosque ... feel free to do so.
6
The only sense I can make of this is that he likes magic more than science.
13
While there are flaws in your arguments, Mr. Douthat, that could be picked apart---and, I see from a few of the comments, already are looking a bit banged up, still I say, as an old, curious but skeptical, visitor to those "other, stranger worlds," Amen to you for knocking the stuffing out of Mr. Pinker's rather stuffy and lofty position. I'm afraid if I have a bias, it is against just his brand of pronouncement from the towers of Enlightenment. I have spent over thirty years in the classroom teaching Shakespeare and Faulkner and have not chosen to live in those stranger worlds. But there is life there, and passion, and I have spent enough time there to be welcome and comfortable. It has broadened and enriched my life. I would suggest that Steven Pinker take some field trips.
7
As someone with some scientific training, but not specifically in medicine, when I have an issue, I will try to form a hypothesis as to what caused it, and search for correlations that appear consistent. If a reproducible cause can be determined, at least the diagnosis is reasonable. In that sense, I can agree that many people are using some of the same wherewithal characteristic of experimentation. The main thing is that it is often jumping from fad to fad and hearing the promises of some snake oil salesman. Perhaps the salesman really believes caramel colored water with some odds and ends they sell. but there, they are mostly selling wishful thinking.
The role of religion and faith is a more complex issue. Having a better attitude can help some people rise out of a bad mental state. Knowing Jesus loves you may really be exactly what the mind needs to get out of a bad feedback loop in some cases. Sometimes, prayer does help. Maybe the potential of disaster means you meditate and find the least bad option. Of course, bad experiences with religion may make things worse, so it still comes down to the kind of friends you have. It is possible to measure the effects of faith, and my understanding is that it does help. At any rate, I do think that whereas prayer is a good thing to do, the person should see a doctor too.
6
"if Pinker and others are genuinely worried about a waning appreciation of the inquiring scientific spirit, they should consider the possibility that some of their own smug secular certainties might be part of the problem."
Good. The boons of science are manifold and unquestionable. The idea that science is the only way to know is debilitating --a dead end.
5
Science progresses by experimentation, gathering evidence and using the information to arrive at verifiable conclusions which are further refined as new data emerges. Religious beliefs appear sui genesis, are evidence averse and eschew rationality outside of their hermetically sealed systems of belief. They are fungible irrationalities. The former is the path to enlightenment, the latter is that which nature abhors: a vacuum
3
The meaning of Steven Pinker?
Pinker represents the left wing trend to probably the major challenge of our time: How to make a better humanity in the face of decline of religion, religious reformation of man, collapse of belief that morality emanates from God and that salvation lies in God and life after death.
The left wing answer is massive nurture over nature projects, egalitarianism, something of making the New Soviet Man. In short, for all decline of communism the left wing cannot help but go ahead and try to make a new human because this problem existed prior to religion, during religion, and exists now in all greater force in face of overpopulation, war, WMD.
The conventional right wing answer to Steven Pinker is of course the usual religious answer, all attempts to control people by stuffing them back into tradition, religion, nationalism, etc.--a slowing down of history, the incremental approach to man. But as can be seen, the both face the problem of what to do about man.
And both traditional right and left wings, for all their attempts to control the argument, all their censorship, all their attempts to prevent any other view, are falling before a new scientific libertarianism, attempts to create a new humanity, a superhumanity by advanced scientific and behavioral technique, a project not to have lockstep right or left wing humans, but highly developed individuals, maximum and brilliant individuality, all connected together brilliantly in high technology.
"strident" - nice one Ross. Coupled with the silly claim that genocides and persecutions are a result of being secular and you have a hat trick. No problem with simply ignoring the Crusades or Pogroms for example at all.
The core of the problem is that religion starts with the conclusion and then cherry picks observations to find "support". Real science starts from the opposite end. You have observations and formulate a hypothesis. The hypothesis is then tested against other observations and experiments where possible. This is why religion says God created the heavens, full stop. Astronomy has gone through dozens of hypotheses on the origin of the moon. Nothing magical is allowed and if the hypothesis doesn't handle other observations it is modified or dumped.
Answers in Genesis claims that if there is a conflict with science and the Bible, it's the science that's wrong. That seems sorta strident but certainly is o.k. and certainly not smugly secular. It seems to fit with a more comprehensive curiosity. One where you get to make up the answers.
3
Issac Newton, arguably the greatest scientist who ever lived, believed in alchemy. He did so because the modern theories of elements and atoms did not exist yet. Newton’s weird beliefs were the the result of incomplete knowledge and not because of some irrational devotion to poppycock theories. You cannot cite him as an example in defense of your proposition, Ross.
It is true that a magical world is much more interesting to many people. And there is probably no harm in dabbling in it, whether spiritual experiences, astrology or the health food fads of your childhood. But the problem comes when people who believe in a magical world take over our government and make policies that affect all of us.
Our experiences with “self” might give us a better personal toehold in this chaotic universe but will not add anything to our knowledge about how the universe works. There are enough things in the real universe to cause endless wonder. The universe is 13.8 billion years old. We are made of primordial hydrogen atoms created in the Bing Bang and other elements cooked inside stars. Our lives are way too short, and ultimately tragic. But even in this blink of an eye that we exist for, we manage to fathom some secrets of the universe. Science has given us all these amazing things to wonder at. There is no need to hanker after more speculative realms.
4
"Rather, it’s that when people and societies are genuinely curious they are very reasonably curious about everything, including things happening in their bodies and their consciousness and more speculative realms.
Which is why if Pinker and others are genuinely worried about a waning appreciation of the inquiring scientific spirit, they should consider the possibility that some of their own smug secular certainties might be part of the problem — that they might, indeed, be stifling the more comprehensive kind of curiosity upon which the scientific enterprise ultimately depends."
It is not that science wants to stifle curiosity when the secular world doesn't have ready answers. It's that science teaches us to practice "slow thinking" as Daniel Kahneman would define it. To hold out for a true or at least useful answer rather than pursuing paths that are short on evidence of efficacy. It is emotionally satisfying to be doing something (rather than nothing) but there is more to be gained by patience and methodology to achieve something more certain and universal.
I once had a friend who went through what could only be described as a religious experience. He followed Douthat's advice of "individual experimentation". Eventually he came to believe he was getting messages from aliens/angels, that he was mentioned in the book of Revelations specifically, and that he had some grand part to play in mankind's future. We'd argue for hours. He would in fact make many of the same arguments that Douthat is making here. But my friend wasn't talking to angels. He had serious mental health issues compounded by years of drug abuse. Eventually it killed him.
There almost certainly are limits to what the scientific method will reveal to us. Some things will be beyond the reach of our experiments. I'm doubtful we even have brains capable of representing all of the answers we seek. For even such a simple question as "Why should anything exist rather than nothing?", I honestly can not even imagine what form an answer could possibly take.
But to fill the gaps with the kind of garbage that Douthat is celebrating won't turn out any better for us that it did my friend. For a time, it can make life seem more meaningful, even magical. But ultimately it leaves us in a worse state when the house of cards we've built for ourselves collapses.
We have this world and the people we share it with for as long as we can keep it. And that's going to have to be enough.
1
"Which is why in many instances the interests that Pinker dismisses as irrational hugger-mugger, everything from astrology to spiritualism, have tended to strengthen during periods of real scientific ferment."
Most people don't even pay attention science, so that's an invalid argument. Douthat should read the extensive examples in Carl Sagan's "The demon-haunted world : science as a candle in the dark".
Next, Douthat commits the fallacy of equivocation by redefining science so that "every human life" is "a science experiment" and then referring to "real scientific ferment" which is not even clearly defined.
Douthat follows that with a category error by joining "Newton", who was an individual, and "the Victorians", who were a large group of people.
1
What is the genesis of 'reason' did it emanate like some dazzling insight out of the Enlightenment? I mean, is it reasonable to ask what and where reason originated from. We are post Enlightenment and reason, as some argue is a tenet of the Enlightenment. These day some would argue that reason or common sense are power tools. By way of example when people say 'you are not being reasonable' or 'for goodness sake use your common sense', many now argue that such encouragements are velvet glove power tools.
So how did reason originate, surely to come into existence it had to define itself against another reason, whose truth and identity was also assigned by reason, thus giving reason the false appearance of originating from itself. Follow this line of thinking are we are sleep walking into infinite regress till we arrive at the causa sui argument (Reason? it originated from itself) which can't be the case. So 'reason' is not some stand alone thinking tool, it must have emanated from self interested parties and we are ether dupes or savants to employ it, depending on what voices of reason listen to.
Dyed in the wool liberal here. I agree with Douthat and appreciate his willingness to take a few punches over this.
We are all unique and sometimes science and rationality can't help us through our problems, either because there's no solution tested yet, or a population-based test suggests a solution that doesn't work in one's unique case. Self-science is a noble endeavor as long as self improvement is the motivation.
The extant conservative trope embodies the opposite approach. Instead of considering, listening, adjusting, you must put your head down, scream about evil liberals, and attempt to destroy government. Then you can call yourself part of the screed. There is zero ability to look at one's situation and behavior, on a social or individual level, and adapt it based on your observations. Conservatism is not curious. It is tribal and reflexive and, in its current form, highly destructive.
It's a constant and monotonous refrain from the Right that liberalism stifles individuality and innovation; all the while the Republican regime is systematically dismantling the social structures that enable self expression and exploration.
7
Science and reason have brought us prosperity. But prosperity is not what we live for.
Our heroes, whose stories brighten up our meager lives, aren't usually scientists. They are people who were selfless or brave or who created beauty. They make our lives meaningful.
We need science to put food on the table. We need
2
"Science and reason have brought us prosperity. But prosperity is not what we live for.".....Neither is the absence of prosperity.
1
It doesn't seem to me that a person who rigorously tests every concept and condition agains a 'crazy' set of values and personal beliefs is a scientist. If you are a fan of astrology, or a fundamentalist religious fanatic, it still isn't 'science' or 'empiricism' if you test and compare every outside event to your closely held irrational values. Real curiosity, real science, starts with an -open- mind, not one already filled up with nonsense. The testing of reality isn't to see if a new concept can displace a feverently held idiocy, but to find what the repeatable, independently verifiable, and logically consistent events, causes and effects, are through observation, test, and analysis.
Don't have much time to comment because I'm off to a meditation group. However I have to say thar this article and the one by David Brooks about coming together to discuss our political differences gives me hope. I never agree with you and Mr. Brooks and am often moved to disagree in the comment section, but Gee! can a new day be dawning?
4
It is comforting (cold comfort in the age of Trump?) that perceptive people commenting here have noted how Douthat continues his attempt to hold on to the "conservative" regressive thinking, couched in sophistry. The idea in the current article is to question science with only a slight nod to its achievements. (Curiosity and a fascination with the mysterious are the essence of scientific thinking, with doubt as its impetus, not quasi-religious magical thinking that actually demands certainty.) His ideas are pathetic but consistent with the prevailing form of conservatism (i.e., radical extremism of the Right-wing). He maintains it while trying to edge away from a personal history of enabling its transformation into its current monstrous form. Douthat, in other opinion posts-- Oops, sorry about the Trump thing.
1
This column would seem to indicate that we are being empiricists when, in search for a cure for disease, we try eating crayons, and when that doesn't work, we try spray painting our dog, and when that doesn't work, we try standing on our heads on Tuesdays between 11:00 and 11:06. Each time, we try something at the edge of reason, and if it doesn't work, we keep looking. Science!
Sorry, that's not how it works. You can't run experiments in nonsense and call it science.
Ross, it is apparent that you have little understanding of science. Science does not value dogmatic assertions as religions do. The highest rung on the ladder of scientific knowledge contains theories, which are the best current explanations of knowledge of physics. But every theory, and I mean every, is subject to change based on new information or better formulations. Newton’s Laws of motion and gravity are very accurate for most purposes, but are less accurate than Einstein’s Theories of Special and General Relativity. Newton’s Laws of motion break down when speeds of objects approach the speed of light. Even our voyages to the moon didn’t go nearly that fast.
There is nothing in science like the Southern Baptist Convention’s assertion that the Bible is the perfect inerrant word of God. And we can all thank God that science is not bound by such rules. Scientific theories are not hunches, but are derived from hypotheses that are subjected to very strict tests. Scientific knowledge is not based on faith, aka wishful thinking.
3
Almost daily, I sit on a lovely oaken pew, salvaged from a nameless church, in the large front window of a coffee shop directly across from "St. Antny's" (Maritime pronunciation) Catholic church. As I savour an unspeakably delicious pain de raisin, heavy with yellowy butter, and a chocolate milk-infused Americano, I gaze through a huge picture window upon funeral attendees getting into long black cars, the carrying of caskets and flowers, brides in white taffeta, or elderly Portuguese-Canadians rushing in the rain to communion. I'm deeply gratified by the fact that as the churches continue to empty out, the furniture continues to be re-purposed in wonderfully useful ways.
3
Steven Pinker and the scientific, left wing political grappling with the human, and the march of progress toward the better angels of human nature?
Pinker seems to me the exponent of the natural evolution of human society away from religion and toward science yet still faced with having to make something acceptable of the human--particularly men--in a world without God. Religion of course constantly tried to make humans "better", would constantly declare morality emanates from God and if people would only just obey they would receive salvation.
With birth of science and now established as left wing political orthodoxy, morality emanating from God and possibility of salvation collapses entirely and we are left with simply human attempts to reform the human. And this of course means massive and ever growing "nurture over nature" projects, constant attempts to meddle with the human, and because the project is so desperately needed, like it was in the days of religion, there is massive irresponsibility, unwillingness to see the price paid, just as the religious would not see price paid in absurdities such as positing supernatural salvation not to mention all the attempts to crush the human into the Procrustes bed of a "better human nature".
Essentially in a world without religion, and for all decline of extreme left wing projects (communism), we are still faced with something of making the "New Soviet Man", the "fixed" animal by science in a better, harmonized world.
I am almost 80 years old and I have spent nearly 75 of those years in music. But somewhere along the way I acquired a passionate interest in physics. (My childhood heroes were Beethoven and Einstein --- I was a weird kid.) I am still learning new (to me) music and ever marvel at the mystery of its power which I understand even less as I get better at producing it. (When Casals was asked why he was practicing in his 90s he said "i am making progress".) And I am also trying to learning the intricacies of the General Theory of Relativity and even grappling with the utter strangeness of Quantum Mechanics. What I find similar in both music and physics the way in which the most piercing insights are achieved through the constraint of form and inner logic. What I find amazing is that a certain succession of tones or a line of mathematical symbols can seem a ray of light into the mystery of our being in a way that words, unless wielded by a great poet, cannot.
If one has done the labor of understanding (however imperfectly) the languages of tones or mathematics, "alternative" realities are unnecessary --- our own reality (as understood by physics) is stranger than any New-Age fantasy. Those who have never made the effort to understand science have no standing to criticize it.
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Looking at the dark side of reason while showing only the bright side of spiritualism is certainly comforting, especially for conservatives who would rather not consider too closely the dependence of the rise of Trump on a rejection of science in favor of humbug and religious hypocrisy.
But when we get down to specifics, it might be a good idea to look honestly at the consequences of our president's nostalgia for the days of big coal and his ongoing arguments against global warming. Science may be imperfect and reason fallible, but both are preferable to superstition and the kind of speculation that sees a "natural" link between charismatic Christianity and economic development in Africa and Latin America. And if we're looking at really robust economic development, we should be looking at China, and wondering whether the Chinese example owes more to science and reason than to spiritualism. Then we might be wise to consider also the next quarter century and our own economic standing should we continue to pursue the past instead of a future based not on "smug scientific certainties" but on solid evidence that alchemy and seances wither and die with other passing fads while science and reason continue to reward those who pursue them with due diligence and respect.
2
You make a good point Ross. Huston Smith referred to it as "Scientism", which involves the assumption that something that can't be empirically proven is false. There are lots of true things that can't be proven.
However, we humans do seem to have a tendency to lock into belief systems and ignore rational evidence to the contrary. Anytime I hear someone say, for example, that only those believing in a certain religion are saved, I have to ignore them. My God, if he or she is out there, is much bigger than that. Pinker is correct that the skepticism that comes with Reason is what helps us move forward.
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Confused, you really are confused. Nothing can be be empirically "proved". Every experiment that satisfies the theory only gives correlation, not proof. Newtonian mechanics is a good example. For centuries scientists and engineers did zillions of experiment that gave the results that appeared to conform to that theory. But much later, we (thanks to Einstein) discovered that it always gave the wrong answer even if only by a tiny bit.
That is what science does. It does not prove; it only disproves.
1
Poppycock. Pinker is inveighing against anti-reason, willful ignorance - the insistence on believing something despite clear evidence to the contrary. I doubt seriously he'd have anything disparaging to say about approaching epistemological voids with an open mind and a searching spirit, regardless of how "unsanctioned" the path might be. That is not what we're suffering from today - we're suffering from pigheaded, willful ignorance and anti-intellectualism in service of tribalism. By mis-characterizing his argument you give cover to those who want to write him off as just another elitist. He may not himself be enamored of the more magical pathways toward enlightenment, but what he's after is a failure to think critically and a refusal to internalize knowledge that conflicts with preconceived notions, however they might have been obtained.
3
Human beings have always been empirical in some sense, going back hundreds of thousands of years. People can't help but react to their own experiences. If you put your hand in a fire and get burned, you are going to remember that next time you are near a fire.
Dogs are empirical too. That is how they can be trained. They observe that certain behavior is rewarded (with food, say) and repeat the behavior so as to repeat the reward.
The essential contribution of science, which Ross Douthat doesn't seem to properly understand, is to show that this sort of casual empiricism commonly leads to wrong conclusions due to a variety of biases and logical errors, and to develop techniques for overcoming this. The double blind trial is a classic case of this. Scientists discovered that if doctors knew which patients were receiving which treatment, then that biased their examination of their health. Thus they instituted a testing regime whereby the doctors examining the patients did not know what treatment (if any) the patients were receiving.
Douthat's "empiricists" are just people who are drawing conclusions without the protections that science provides against error. For both dogs and humans, this is unavoidable some of the time. However, clinging to beliefs that science has shown are extremely unlikely to be true is not unavoidable; it is arrogant and foolish.
Curiosity is in short supply these days as far as the Leadership of this country is concerned. But skepticism and cynicism abounds. As does greed . As far as religion goes, it is the very thing right now that has ripped at our Democracy.
Most of our leaders have turned into ideologous or demagogues. And most of this is due to the Evangelical movement. There is no more separation of Church and State. Until this happens, we are doomed in our progress. And that is because those who are secular do not want Religions shoved down their throat in the form of new laws to regulate how we choose to live or die.
My experience with various religious beliefs is that they all claim to be the one true Religion. If you have questions about the theology, you are shut up or ridiculed. Religion does not teach you to think for yourself. It indoctrinates you.
At least science has the benefit of stirring up curiosity.
Spirituality is entirely different than Religion. You can be spiritual, but not believe in any particular religion. You can live by the Golden Rule or the Ten Commandments without being religious.
It appears to me that it is the Seven Deadly Sins that are being followed, not the Golden Rule or the Ten Commandments. And it is those Sins that are defeating curiosity.
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Forget the book. My dad used to say, "You don't know what you don't know!"
People are often guilty of the "Is-Ought, fallacy of logic". Perhaps, wishful thinking plays an important role in or lives. It gives us hope, which sparks our psychological energy. We continue to drive to the end. Is there a link between our drive and our continuing push for scientific investigation?
He might want to sell his book to Kim Jong Un!
1
To deny the "edges of reason," would be to deny our own humanity.
On the one hand, science cannot enlighten the unknowns that will persist until the end of times, as far as what we know today: Is there a god, a soul? In this context, the critiques of the book as described, seem entirely adequate.
On the other hand, Mr. Douthat, a reasonable republican, seem to go to the opposite end of empiricism. To deny the services of the FDA to humanity, for example, is in fact to be blind by our politics. In this specific case, the FDA reassures the safety of medicines allowed for consumption in humans.
The modern GOP has embraced cheap propaganda and an aversion to facts that argues for the call of some empiricism. Facts as decision-tools are squashed away for 'gut' feelings that are making us dumber. The conservative philosophy deserve respect, but the modern GOP appears not to represent conservatives anymore.
The Democratic Party, for all its faults and contrary to the GOP, seems to embrace facts and science as a way of human development. In this sense, according to the GOP climate change is a hoax, a Florida teen is a crisis actor, and the FDA is worthless, everything contrary to the belief system is a conspiracy. In the GOP, facts gets blinded by politics and everyone is a target.
Sorry, but Republican politicians and most people depending on this republican-party-complex seem to be intentionally blinded to facts, including some reasonable republicans, such as Mr. Douthat.
1
"...everything from astrology to spiritualism, have tended to strengthen during periods of real scientific ferment. It’s why Isaac Newton loved alchemy... "
You have misinterpreted here the phenomenon of Isaac Newton's interest in alchemy to support some validity of alchemy and other falsities. I am sure that Newton, if exposed to scientific debunking of this persistent myth, would have abandoned it as quickly as he would any disproven theory of the calculus. His lacking the tools or informed colleagues to carry that out does not speak to value in alchemy or other superstitions or quackeries, but merely to the paucity of proven scientific resources at that time in history.
The affectionate recollections of faith healing, homeopathy, and other worthless fads and "cures" cannot be called out and debunked quickly enough. They drive the cruellest aspect of quackery, which is false hope. Anyone --- from Steve Jobs to those who relied on the vicious myth of laetrile to cure their cancer --- who was suckered by fake science (from which somebody profited, of course), would be first to support Dr. Pinker.
I wouldn't call the certitude of those who oppose Pinker's version of the Enlightenment an expression of "Curiosity." That wouldn't be descriptive of the authoritarian right or the Evangelical movement. Is Trump and his cohort "curious" in any sense of the word?
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"both of the stranger worlds of my childhood, the prayer services and macrobiotic diet camps" - I also grew up intimately familiar with both of these strange worlds, and your recognition of their overlap is spot on. Romanticizing these worlds, however, is unhelpful. These are sad worlds, populated by desperate people being taken advantage of by the unscrupulous, by charlatans, by cheats and phonies. Unless you had tremendously different experiences than I did, but I doubt it. Charismatic religion and alternative medicine are sleazy.
2
Most people are intensely incurious, which is why as soon as they pop out of the womb, there is someone waving a book that they claim has all the answers, a claim a helpless child is in no position to dispute. It doesn't take too long for the gray-matter to harden into an impenetrable carapace. In early societies this served us well, because wrapped up in all the mumbo-jumbo, to be regarded as a colorful mnemonic, were valuable survival skills that helped confront a relatively static universe. Now, the world changes so quickly that to follow all its developments and still retain a comforting sense of self, is almost impossible for all but a few. Someone being swept away in a flood will grasp at anything and hold on for dear life, even after the danger has waned. If irrational beliefs served you once, they might just serve you again. No point taking chances.
When our pockets are threatened, we tend to turn religious, and I don't know about all this Christianity-babble which is enough to turn one into an affable Pagan.
It has been a lifetime since the word 'Pharisee' came to mind earlier. There is something warped in these discussions.
What I like about this introduction to 'Pinker' is that he appears to have grown into his name; it helps understand why acquaintances long forgotten, forward my way a sign that they are feeling despondent. Celtic Sorrow; and changing it to Merry does not work.
If Mr. Douthat is a 'Christian', he has a smug way of showing this to some of the readers. Should Africa, a devout Muslim, be able to visit again, she is going to get The 21st Century Hug from this American. We are not going to be wasting time going on about charismatic Christianity. We will have an animated discussion about family and friends and a weather exchange about What Happened to this Country We Love.
I'm an agnostic. Being certain there is no higher power seems as illogical as being certain there is.
1
Mark me as reasonably incurious about the suggestions
that the Earth could only be 6000 years old,
or that we have 300 millions guns because we are overwhelmed by curiosity,
or that arming teachers ought to be an experiment worth trying,
or that opioids is the way to go when nobody has any answers for a debilitative economy,
or that vaccines are problematic,
because something tells me that, by following these intensely experimental crackpot ideas, I will end up 180 degrees from where I need to be.
Not a trenchant critique, but a good one, nevertheless. Like the old critique of empiricism, the trouble with empiricism (and it’s positivist variant) is that it’s not empirical enough. The same critique can be levied against scientism and scientific rationalism. Trouble is, they ain’t sufficiently scientific.
Gates and a whole host of “blurbers” may love and feel a need for Pinker’s clarity, but anyone aware of the complexity of the world and of the human consciousness necessary to even begin to apprehend that complexity will know that such clarity is misplaced. Scientism is as much an ideology as its less pleasant relatives. It just ain’t scientific enough.
Thank you, Mr. Douthat, for a thoughtful column. If you read the top comments, you’ll notice that your, mostly, detractors, didn’t understand your main point — that a little self-reflection on the part of secularists and people who beliefs science will eventually explain all, would not go amiss. The best example that comes to mind is the work of William James, arguably the father of American psychology and certainly a practitioner of scientific thought, who took “religious experience” as as valid as any knowledge with which science provides us. Mostly importantly, he respected the world in which people reported these experiences to him. To read the comments of contributors like “gemli,” who routinely disparages all things religious (thereby discounting as nonsense the lived lives of billions of other humans — where on earth does gemli get off?), how restricted the secular mind can be and how — my guess — lacking in imagination. God knows how you’d ever reach them, Mr. Douthat, to the extent that they would give you an inch. I hope God forgives my pun. I’m not personally a religious person, but I have a feeling He would.
1
You gotta admit, Pinker has chutzpah! Being optimistic about continuing enlightenment progress, one year after Donald Trump was elected, that's the new definition in the Wiktionary.
A more sober outlook is that human civilization is heading for a big fall and Trump's election is a strong indication of trouble ahead. Think about it - almost forty percent of Americans don't care that they elected a corrupt incompetent to be in charge of the most powerful nation in human history. What could possibly go wrong?
When the printing press was reinvented in the West, it led to the mass dissemination of Martin Luther's critiques of the Catholic Church, then to the translation and mass publication of the New Testament. Then fifty years later the savage thirty years war between the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Europe. The rise of ISIS and the new Fascism are directly connected with the internet and social media.
Religion will always be with us, but Western Science - probably not. Science these days is a big-budget operation. Bit by bit it could die as governments cut off funding. Now philosophy, that's another thing. All you need is paper and pen. As long as people continue to read and write, philosophy will be there. Old Faithfuls like Plato and Aristotle, Spinoza and Hobbes...
2
Our modern civilization is based on science and enlightenment ideas. Based on the Oxford Dictionaries Online, the scientific method is "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses.” Alchemy, astrology, religion and all ideas based on unreason are not based on scientific method, and are gradually being pushed aside by history. The most benevolent kind of secularism and humanism is based on naturalism, group survival concepts and empathy—most likely rooted in evolution.
Mr, Douthat seems to be arguing that we should give more weight to the leap of faith required by religion than to the proven certainties of rigorously established fact. He ignores, however, the likelihood that more people have been killed throughout history in the name of religion than for any other reason.
C..P. Snow debated long ago in his essay, “The Two Cultures,” the dichotomy between science and the humanities, but Douthat appears to be taking that to a higher level, essentially dismissing less religious non-believers because they are empiricists who favor fact-based certainty over the unprovable.
2
Again Ross has identified truth that there is no difference between the "Fishtowner" seeking seeking solace from God at his local church and the "Belmonter" seeking enlightenment with the local psychiatrist. Both are manifesting a desire for improvement and both are expressing faith in a methodology, It is not so much the methodology that matters but sufficient faith to persevere.
3
All human experience and experimentation are subject to bias. This makes religion, alternative medicine, and scientific experimentation all vulnerable to error or falsehood. Of the three, though, only science is based on a system to limit or attempt to correct that bias. It is the only system that promises to abandon old ideas when faced with new objective facts.
Briefer version of this same article: "Reason did not provide us the answers we sought so we made things up, banged rocks together, and came up with our own rules for social conduct that we call Commandments. So there."
Please, let's end this bogus meme of "identity politics," as if the left invented it.
Conservatives live and breathe identity politics; they just do such a good job of blaming the left for calling and countering them on it, that they get away with it.
What is this column, if not a neat bit of identity politics - bashing "high-minded liberal secularists" (high-minded in the sarcastic sense) in favor of the "charismatic religious" and health food enthusiasts?
It would seem that Mr. Pinker's book lays itself open to ctiticism as much for what it does not take into account as for what it does; but this column hardly refutes his thesis. It is just one more opportunity for one more conservative to bash liberals and promote the religious over the non-religious.
Identity politics indeed.
1
I think that scientists and alchemists exist in tension. To the degree that someone believes they can turn dross to gold is an inspiration for Rumplestilskin not science.
If Trump does anyone a favor it is only to remind us how far wrong we can still go and to urge us to pick up the liberal mantle with fervor.
Believe in alchemy or astrology or speaking in tongues if you like these things. It is your right in a secular and rational society which the rest of us have created.
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Ross Douthat should seriously consider the possibility that some of his own smug dogmas of religion might be part of the problem -- that they might, indeed, be stifling the more comprehensive kind of curiosity upon which knowledge, progress, and wisdom ultimately depend for our survival.
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This article is a classic example of how the religious have lost the ability to think: they follow the dogma dictated to them by their church, and twist any evidence to the contrary as support for their beliefs. Of course, Douthat has no evidence whatsoever to support his claim that belief in mysticism has increased during periods of "real scientific" advances. I particularly love his claim that health food stores flourish because of a rise in scientific achievements. What !? I think I get it: everything supports the dogma; just that some of us are too blind to see it.
1
If you’re looking for a sound, even definitive, treatment of personal quests, personal truths, and personal spiritualism, dust off William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience and see what a pragmatist and radical empiricist has to say. James explores everything Douthat posits as healthy explorations of alternative answers.
He never chortles at these not always well educated searchers and often marvels at the ways they make sense of their world and live securely within it.
You see, James felt that all of us proceed in this manner. Douthat, Pinker, and I believe what we believe and try what we try because it works for us or might work for us.
None of this makes smart ideas dumb or stupid ideas smart.
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Yes, I thought of John Dewey too. The Pragmatists seemed to be a lot more tolerant of personal experience than today's Rationalists, up to a point. But religion ceases to be all about personal experience when looked at in its fullness, with its doctrines and ancient traditions.
I had the same thought about William James, whose open-mindedness and respect for experience inexplicable by Western science was impressive, and very rare today. Matthieu Ricard makes the point that 30 years of contemplative practice is as much a science (of the mind) as any other endeavor we pursue. I may occupy a different realm, but one that doesn’t refute anything science offers, merely completes it. I think Mr. Douthat’s column indicates James’s approach to life would fit in well with his own.
1
Many thanks for this reference to pragmatism. Douthat's essay runs off the rails in the first paragraph where he conflates science, certainty, and truth.
As James's pragmatic colleague Charles Peirce pointed out just after the Civil War, science is driven by doubt, not certainty or truth. In Peirce's analysis, science represents the practices a community adopts to carry out the inquiry required to resolve doubts into beliefs. In the pragmatist's view, beliefs are not certain or true, they are fallible ideas that represent the best thing going at the time.
Perhaps Douthat's first mistake was to turn to Pinker's latest, already embraced by David Brooks a couple of days ago. Perhaps Douthat should have just been, shall we say, more curious.
In his closing paragraph he writes that PInker and others should consider the possibility that some of their own smug secular certainties might be part of the problem - they might be stifling more comprehensive curiosity.
The problem with that paragraph is we have no idea who is included in "other" and "they". Maybe medical researchers?
I am lucky enough to have constant contact with an array of medical researchers in Sweden, all of whom want to understand processes that diminish human quality of life and may end in misery and death. I translate manuscripts they have chosen to write in Swedish, and I review manuscripts written in English, fixing the English but more important for most, helping them to express their thoughts more clearly.
I can guarantee that all for whom I work have burning curiosity as a central element in their makeup, in common with me also a scientist by profession. We all wish that more ordinary human beings whose paths we cross would be more curious. But please, Ross Douthat, try to learn more about the difference between curiosity leading to personalized n = 1 experimentation and scientific study.
Become enlightened.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
Dual citizen US SE
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"... the difference between curiosity leading to personalized n = 1 experimentation and scientific study."
Even a person stranded on a desert island can conduct scientific studies.
Indeed, Robinson Crusoe refers to "nature", "experiments", and "laws" in several passages.
When I first started reading RD I found it easy to react and pick him apart. His professed conservative Christianity feels reactionary to me personally and is not where my own Christian heart resides. But In learning more about Ross I realized one of his consistent points is pushing back against smugness held by self appointed superiors. Then, because I read him on my e-reader, I saw the comment section was very reactive to Ross, very lively, and usually full of put downs.
I personally have roots in 2 worlds: in both a Christian family and a heartland childhood, then decades in a world-class city that only seems secular because it holds many religions. I have evolved to sympathize with Ross’ untiring stand against smugness even as I know I disagree on his conservative points.
5
It’s a good thing pot is legal in many states, because Douthat seems to be advocating the experimentation of the ‘60’s.
As to trying non-FDA approved drugs for chronic illness, why not, as long as the reason the FDA didn’t approve the drug was because it was poisonous and as long as it isn’t a substitute for approved drugs with substantial probability of success.
Openness to different paths is a good thing. But don’t throw caution and the cumulated understanding of the world to the wind. Build on it. After all, Newton May have believed in Alchemy but he still respected the laws of gravity enough to know what would happen if he walked off a cliff.
2
The missing link - the scientific method starts with a theory. The theory itself doesn't have to be arrived at by using the scientific. It could be a hunch based on observation. So, Mr. Douthat, there is really no bright line. The issue is where the Stop sign is located. Science moves beyond the hunch and tests it over and over. The science on the mind-body connection started with some kooky looking activities. The medicine of nutrition today goes back to some notions about health that folks had because of how they felt when they stopped eating junk. Let's no enshrine the hunches and notions. Let's fund. and reward pushing forward through reliable, repeated testing cause and result in the name of science.
6
Belief versus the measurable. Belief versus facts. I prefer the measurable and facts.
23
I prefer the hopeful vision of Pierre Teillhard de Chardin who proposed that science and religion both pointed the way toward the same evolutionary reality, an "omega point" in which secular reason and divine reality coalesce. I prefer the hopeful vision of David Bohm's implicate order which proposed that the whole of creation is a living, interactive participant in the unfolding of future reality. I prefer the hopeful vision of Ken Wilber' spiral dynamics which proposed that Enlightenment reason was a necessary step on the evolution of human consciousness toward union with self, other, creation and the divine. Pinker is just purveying another tribal religion that is no more right and no less wrong than Evangelical Christianity or Roman Catholicism.
12
I find much to appreciate in this column, and I'd encourage you, Mr. Douthat, to do more of this. We humans have been around these parts for a blink of nature's eye, and it's a fair guess that we've figured out only a small fraction of what there is to figure out. I don't regard the column as a defense of conservative evangelical politics or of the idiosyncratic treatment of the Bible that is said to underlie that politics. And your observation about Newton is both spot on and instructive. What you don't address, here at least, is whether convictions one acquires through spiritual experimentation rather than rational analysis ought to be regarded as sufficient justification for bringing the State's monopoly of coercion to bear on actions inconsistent with those commitments.
15
The root of all physical reality is energy stored as waves in a superfluid energy storage field pervading space. Even the concept of subatomic "particles" is quaint and inadequately descriptive.
The "God" of people's imagination would find itself in the same existential state as ourselves, awakening to what is eternal, in a natural process of evolution.
3
It's all Ivolution (the evolution of self-consciousness). Ivolution Theory will be as impossible for young souls to swallow as evolution theory is now. But ultimately, it is a truth that will shed more light on the questions: Who are we? Where do we come from? and Where are we going?
No wise person would suggest that truth begins with science. Science provides us with a great method - but does not concern itself with deep existential questions - that is the work of sages - experienced old souls.
1
The scientific method is not a religion, whose tenets enjoy immunity to challenge by skeptics. Rather, it is the most useful approach ever devised for discovering truths about our world which can be grasped by reason and the five senses.
Like any other intellectual tool, however, its impact depends on the flawed human beings who employ it. The scientific method has empowered mankind to develop technologies which have curbed disease and reduced poverty to an extent that our ancestors would have considered impossible. It has also enabled us to reach for the stars and to convert the universe from a realm of mystery into one that yields its secrets to our empirical inquiries.
That same method, however, has facilitated the development of weapons which have killed millions. Empiricism has also made it possible for us to discover and exploit sources of energy which may soon make this planet uninhabitable.
The popular image of the mad scientist captures the anxiety people feel over the contradictory impacts of this method. But the real fault lies in cultural values which encourage us to define progress in terms of new technologies, without pausing to measure the effects of these breakthroughs.
The emphasis on spiritual values reflects an effort to harness science to a concern for the welfare of humanity. With these restraints, we might balance our desire for more material goods with an understanding that we do not live by bread alone.
14
When you want to avoid the small, messy details of life and Trump, write about Big Ideas. Carefully edit out of the conversation the deaths of children, the racist attack on Michael Steele, the fact that healthcare for millions paid for permanent tax cuts for the wealthy, the separation of families, the absurd image of a military parade to appease a fantasy of power.
Deliberately ignore #metoo and the heads of white men exploding who are now making death threats by email and social media on children--children!--who survived a horrific shooting when a deputy cowed (but teachers driven by love will pack up the slack)/children are receiving death threats from adults so warped in their alt-imaginations that see our youth as crisis actors and think the blood spilled is a stage prop--their denial as extreme as their beliefs.
Ignore bullets that leave exit wounds the size of an orange, that shatter organs like a sledge hammer; ignore Flint where the water is still poison. Ignore the pay-for-silence checks written after sex by Trump's proxies and enablers. Ignore the infatuation with power to reward friends and peers, gleaned from his Russian dance involving shell companies and hidden payoffs (see the Atlantic article). Ignore the flights of anger that strike at anyone at any moment for absurd reasons, the overreaction to every slight.
Lastly, be blind to real ideas of depth and change, China's trillion dollar One Belt, One Road infrastructure project. Fight over trade. Sad. Sad.
78
He actually agrees with your sentiment.
Mr. Douthat, you cherry pick curiosity as a defining trait. If we look at other traits, your argument does not fare as well. Let's look at skepticism.
Science requires skepticism as well as curiosity. Skepticism plays a greater role in the scientific method than curiosity. An hypothesis, the starting point for an experiment, is the product of curiosity. An experiment, used to prove the hypothesis is the product of skepticism. Then other scientists skeptically review the hypothesis, the experiment and the conclusion. Then they repeat the experiment to test the conclusion. In the world of science, curiosity is the spark that ignites the fire of skepticism.
In the world of charismatic, evangelical and fundamentalist religion, there is some room for curiosity but no room for skepticism or even the appearance of skepticism. Science has not declared war on religion. But charismatic, evangelical and fundamentalist religion have declared war on all science that contradicts, or even appears to contradict, their doctrine.
That is why your argument fails.
110
The worlds seeking miracle cures for chronic disease are patently relying on magical thinking. Douthat does not even seem to recognize what he describes.
38
Mark: It could be called "hope". Let's add unrealistic hope at that.
And that is why we have trump. Unrealistic hope and day dreaming.
Those voters:
I hope trump will return industrial jobs.
I hope trump will return coal jobs.
I hope trump will give me a good tax break.
I hope trump will solve all the problems of the world.
I hope trump will grow into the presidency and be less narcissistic.
I hope trump will not sucker punch me.
Need I go on.
2
In 2006 my sister, a Christian and I, an Atheist, both developed cancer; Breast Cancer for her and Large B Cell Lymphoma for me. I went immediately to my Primary Care Physician and from there to the care of an Oncologist and Chemo. While I developed some Peripheral Neuropathy from the Chemo, I am alive 12 years later.
My sister, a firm believer in Jesus and the Bible delayed going to a doctor. She tried to cure her cancer by diet and "Healing Codes". She based her decision on firm fundamental Biblical grounds. In Matthew 7:7 it says, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you". She's dead because she believed the theistic nonsense that invisible beings run the universe and as a professed, faith-based believer she could rely on an individual relationship with them to do what the Bible promised.
Real world actions are based on Natural Laws, not spirits and mythology, and they have real world consequences.
4
If Pinker draws a "bright line ... between the empirical spirit of science and the unreasoning obscurantism he suggests otherwise prevails", he is speaking for himself, and not for all non-theists. Even the most committed empiricists (including me) know that what we do not know is much greater than what we do. Some of us have started to appreciate the role of spiritual experiences in determining the quality of life. However, Douthat's error is thinking that the only valid spirituality is patriachal and authoritarian deism. There are many forms of spirituality that are completely compatible with science. The reason that that is true is that science is not a belief system. It is a method for sharing and using information based on observation of the material world.
For a few moments, I wondered if Douthat would have had a better appreciation of Pinker if he did more than browse this book. But then I remembered that Douthat is always looking for straw men to knock down in support of his authoritarian religion, and reading the whole book might have interfered with that.
53
in other words, a belief system that believes that the material world exists and can be understood.
Douthat has written in a number of columns that the only valid spirituality is not merely "patriarchal and authoritarian", it's egotistical. Consider his columns that suggest the Pope is Heretical, from a perspective that neither Augustine nor Aquinas would have agreed with.
3
Timothy Leary and Aldous Huxley had the more comprehensive kind of curiosity, and it would have been very enlightening to see what the scientific enterprise could make of them. But instead legal mind-altering substances were limited to those that would cure specific problems by making people more normal and that could be sold at great profit to many people.
The acceptable and dominant alternative to the scientific method's quest for understanding is the businessman's quest for making money and for a framework of ideas that will justify that moneymaking. This businessman's quest can be found in charismatic religions and alternative medicines; the framework of ideas of both of them lends itself to manipulation for profit. This businessman's quest got us our current opioid problem, and the quest of purveyors of nicotine and alcohol to protect their businesses is a major factor in the demonization of pot.
20
Deluding people to sell something is no vice to many businesspeople.
Maybe the interest in, for example, alternative medicine or religious experimentation, started with searching for answers. Too often though the searcher is looking for the "truth" or certainty. In those macrobiotic diets and new age religions or even the old ones, this searcher finds certainty and true belief and when these true beliefs of the people around her who have led her to these belief systems are threatened by the further questioning of science, the questions stop and defending and defense begins. The great breakthrough in thought which led to science and its realms of knowledge was the admission of thinkers and searchers that "we do not know" and these few people (at the beginning) began to apply experiments to find answers and even to further question the answers thought to be answered by the prior experiments, that is the scientific method. What I have just written is much better explained in the philosopher Yuval Noah Harari's book called Sapiens, A Brief History of Mankind. In his book he states that the scientific revolution was not a revolution of knowledge but a "revolution of ignorance", that we do not know and that the systems such as the religious systems which purported to know (for example the beginning of the world as explained by religions) really did not know, that all was not known. So, it is wonderful that people search as long as they do not settle on "truth and belief in certainty" and keep an open mind and question their certainties.
16
It's interesting that Douthat, undoubtedly a capable and noteworthy thinker, seems to largely miss Pinker's point actually and misunderstand that he is not (I don't believe) suggesting that other ways of knowing through human experience are invalid or unimportant. Instead, he is suggesting that we not abandon or diminish an approach that has contributed an awful lot to improving human welfare. Reason and science-based approaches can't solve or even address every concern certainly. However, when we're less afflicted by disease, hunger, and other challenges, we're also in a much better position to attend to those needs and dreams that science will never be able to address.
62
"it was the charismatic-religious and “health food” regions where people were the most personally empirical, least inclined to meekly submit to authority, and most determined to reason independently and keep trying things until they worked":......That is absolutely nutty. Most determined to reason independently? Surely you can't be serious. Have you ever met a real scientist. Apparently not. Either that or you find anything related to science too hard to think about so you simply defer to some charismatic magic as a substitute. Might I suggest you take the afternoon off and have a conversation with a real scientist - you think they meekly submit to authority? Oh boy, is your education lacking.
242
Spitzer, you saw "charismatic" and suddenly turned your brain off. Douthat is making a valid point that charismatic believers and whole food advocates are venturing out into "fringe" areas that science has either overlooked, examined and discarded, or never had an inkling about. I personally don't think they all (or always) find the answers they are seeking. Neither does science. But hey, we live on a continent that was discovered because a man assumed he could get to India from Europe by sailing west. And a man once found a nickle when he was digging for earthworms.
1
We are always, I hope, going to ask questions that science cannot answer. Questions about values & experience & beauty & meaning & freedom. And I hope we will always want things that markets cannot peddle; things like community & love & introspection. Science pursues predictability & description, not meaning; just as markets create self-serving "choices" or "options," instead of freedom. But, sadly, these distinctions are being forgotten . . .
14
Agreed, but I would add that even if/when science isn't necessarily pursuing "meaning" it's discoveries can and do often inspire it.
11
I agree. Science & technology are very much "double-edged swords," & I suppose I was responding to what I see as the tendency of people (esp. Times commenters!) to ignore that.
We are all equipped with the more or less the same set of emotions that tell us how well we are coping, or not. "Meaning" derives from the effects of knowledge and/or beliefs on emotions.
Donald Trump and the GOP are the antithesis to any sort of logic and reason. When Obama won in 2008 the GOP exercised their collective "reason" to try to make him a one term president. When that failed in 2012 they decided to keep on working against him thus wasting 8 years of everyone's life. Whatever Obama wanted to try it was no good. If Obama wanted to spend money he was exploding the deficit. If Obama wanted to set up a national monument it was executive overreach. If Obama was negotiating with a country about nuclear arms the GOP had to interfere in order to undermine him.
Now that Trump is in the White House nursery if there's a deficit it's fine. If Trump wants to destroy America it's fine. If Trump or the GOP want to arm teachers there are no dangers involved. Any crackpot idea that the GOP or Trump has is fine. Wherever the GOP stands is the edge of reason because whatever they support is the opposite of common sense. The only things that interest the GOP are what their rich owners are concerned about. If the Waltons were worried about religion the GOP would pass a law on a state religion complete with penalties and loopholes. Since the NRA donates millions to some GOP members these same members wouldn't flinch if one of their friends or relatives was mowed down because, at the edges of reason is the NRA position that everyone ought to own a gun and that gun safety isn't compatible with the Second Amendment.
The GOP lives on the edge of reason.
125
Or maybe beyond . . . the edge of reason.
2
For spiritual enlightenment, I recommend to you Pope Francis, not the ideologues who are more catholic than the pope, nor the Ayn Randian Congresspersons who are more Christian than the Jesus of the Gospels.
Pope Francis and Jesus and other heroes that bring us together and teach us to do our best for each other are worth heeding.
Anyone who uses religion to fight knowledge and separate us should be shunned.
Open, not close. Share, not loot. Embrace knowledge, not ignorance.
We're capable of great things when we don't look for people to blame and things to exclude.
129
I find the whole notion of there being any kind of exogenous creator-intelligence intervening in human affairs utterly silly, and all activities directed at influencing such imaginary entities utterly futile. People who claim to know what God thinks simply pretend to be their own imaginary "God" themselves, typically to back up some non-negotiable demand.
4
I agree with the broad strokes of Mr. Pinker's argument here. One only has to take a dip into Paul Feyerabend's wonderful "Against Method" or simply talk to a few really top drawer working scientists today who utterly embrace the fact that we mostly live in mystery in order to watch Pinker's "bright line" waver and fade away.
But in the context of our time...these particular times in which climate deniers are having a full-on death romp at the expense of the planet, or in which it is simply not possible in the USA to have an evidence based discussion about gun control as a public health measure...it's difficult to read Mr. Douthat's words here as anything other than an apologist's attempt to make the world safe for ongoing pillage powered by crazy.
We need some sort of shared baseline understanding that science isn't just another opinion to be waved away by presidents and oil company executives
or gun manufacturers who are inconvenienced by the data that scientists produce. In these times, we don't have that.
Instead, we have a sizable portion of the population whose curiosity only extends as far as a narrow reading of the Bible or to the second half of the Second Amendment or to an app on their phone which helps them find the cheapest gas in town.
There are some certainties we all need to agree upon if we are to survive.
149
Another recommended reading coming to mind along these lines: Carl Sagan's "Cosmos. The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark". If just for its sympathetic, lucid non-judgemental description and diagnosis of the scientifically untrained yet passionately curious, and hence tragically gullible mind, in its opening chapter. Or for its genuine description of the as humbling as inspiring experience of a scientifically trained view of the world, which Pinker is able to convey these days just as lucidly and sympathetically. This achievement is the hard-earned fruit of his broad scientific training in the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences. It is language and thought where much of our genuinely human experience comes into being. And it was a deeper understanding of this "stuff of thought" that sent Pinker onto a journey into a new phase of the enlightenment movement. Something to simply be grateful for.
4
Thank you. You said this much more eloquently that I did.
1
Why does the NYT encourage bigoted comments when they are directed at Christians?
Only when a Christian writes a column does it allow hateful comments focuses exclusively on Christians and their religion.
7
Why do Christians believe that they are entitled to be coddled simply because they believe in something for which there is no evidence?
5
Christianity gets the most attention because it is the religion that is most familiar to the majority of Americans. But since you ask, most religions are silly. I am no theologian but religions that are simply guidelines for good behavior but are not fixated on a supernatural leader make the most sense to me. All of my children went through stages iof disobedience while growing up, as I did when their age, but I never had the slightest inkling of putting them to death as the Bible commands.
1
Ok, I get it, Ross. Science is not filled with certainty. Just this week, two medical authorities dealing with the same general subject came to opposite conclusions. Science is the best fit theory given known facts. Individuals must ultimately make choices under conditions of uncertainty. In the example I offer, I chose to follow the recommendations of the physician whose inferences are drawn from his own carefully controlled experiments, and not the one chosing the work of others to craft a directive. But that is not the end of it; Ross gets it right here: we are individually still faced with the necessity of both chosing and observing how our choices fit our own personal health. Pinker points in a good direction, but it isn't the whole picture. Science changes with new insights; much remains unknown, unstudied, yet here we are and with a finite life must chose how to live in as a real experiment, real time, one time around.
15
Or - who knows? - maybe many times around...
What does this even mean, Mr. Douthat?
"Which is why if Pinker and others are genuinely worried about a waning appreciation of the inquiring scientific spirit, they should consider the possibility that some of their own smug secular certainties might be part of the problem — that they might, indeed, be stifling the more comprehensive kind of curiosity upon which the scientific enterprise ultimately depends."
I guess in the age of Trump and the Republican's full-blown attack on science and reason we liberals need to reconsider our certainties?
When my parents did their first residencies in hospitals in New England in the early 60s, there were patients in iron lungs because they had polio and couldn't breathe on their own.
When I was a child in the late 60s, we sent men to the moon and brought them back.
When I was growing up in the 70s, the Cuyahoga River “oozed rather than flowed" and finally caught fire. It became the symbol of out-of-control pollution that lead to the Clean Water Act.
Now we have a Republican Congress and President who refuse to acknowledge climate change, even though the Pentagon says its a major threat to our country:
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2017/09/12/pentagon-is-...
But Trump and the Republicans peddle the lie of clean coal and are dismantling the EPA.
How about addressing smug religious certainties and lack of curiosity that poses a threat to all of us?
519
These folks believe that God wished the whole universe into existence, so it should be no big deal for them to wish such further alterations of physics as they may pray for.
1
Socrates appeared to believe (in Plato's mind at least) that while we ought to respect individuals and their right to hold a belief, there no moral or logical reason to respect the beliefs themselves, particularly if they run counter to logic, science and common sense. For some reason, this is hard for many to grasp. Douthat might be surprised to learn that reason has no edges.
138
When I read:
"Which is why if Pinker and others are genuinely worried about a waning appreciation of the inquiring scientific spirit, they should consider the possibility that some of their own smug secular certainties might be part of the problem — that they might, indeed, be stifling the more comprehensive kind of curiosity upon which the scientific enterprise ultimately depends."
What came to mind was what Richard Swanson wrote cogently and precisely.
There are references to being a patient and choosing wisely since there's one life to live - just like we have merely one planet on which to thrive. It's fine to be curious and entertain flights of fancy. But some courses of action are logically beneficial, even if they aren't necessarily the solution. Don't fritter away your time with the magical thinking. Newton loved alchemy, but knew what worked, and knew the difference. Victorians loved seances, but knew the inhuman reality of the industrial age. It isn't smug secular certainties that's the problem, it's the denial of what is plainly in view, and focusing on magical thinking.
Sometimes you need to depart from the text, but you ultimately can't lose focus on the goal.
22
Brilliant observations! Well and concisely put, thank you.
3
Uh, Wittgenstein much? Not to mention the magisterial Eastwood, who reminds us that a man's gotta know his limitations.
In the interest of fair and balanced smug certainties, here are a few words from our religious sponsors:
"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."
-Jerry Falwell
"The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example."
-Richard Furman, Baptist Leader and Slavery Champion from South Carolina
"The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith."
-Catholic Church's decision against Galileo
"God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith, that he [Hitler] was sent to us by God to save Germany."
-Hermann Goering
"Evolution is a bankrupt speculative philosophy, not a scientific fact. Only a spiritually bankrupt society could ever believe it. ... Only atheists could accept this Satanic theory."
-Jimmy Swaggart
"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."
- Pat Robertson
"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin."
-Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615, during the trial of Galileo
551
Thank you.
44
Your choice of these examples of some supposed religious consciousness do not diminish the great imaginative creations humankind has brought into existence over the centuries called religions. They do of course reveal that you know very little about religion or the history of religions. Admittedly, religious consciousness has been and is abused—that’s all your examples reveal.
In fact, your earlier dismissal of religion in the name of science is nothing short of an abuse of science, somehow assuming that its terms of understanding are sufficient and final. Scientific understanding is never sufficient and final. In short, your defense of science, better termed scientism, is a diminishment of science.
So yours is clear thinking, huh? Pinker seems to think reality is clear and his understanding of it is without illusion, as does your other hero, Sagan. Funny, scientific method and understanding reveal no such thing. The mystery is palpable.
3
"Admittedly, religious consciousness has been and is abused—"....And very often by its greatest advocates. Which is the point that you missed.
5
Steven Pinker does not understand Nietzsche nor does he understand
Paul. Ehrlichs ‘Population resources and the environment “. I believe I remember the tittle correctly. Pinker is out of his deapth. What is he after all
A psychologist?
I don’t think he understands the presure the ecosystem is under. Nor when he glibly says violance is getting less. We used to call such assertions :fallacies of the second kind.
19
The Catholic Church has fought a rearguard action against the enlightenment and all its developments since the days of J. J. Rousseau. The greatest development has been empirical science. Now Ross is launching another weak salvo against enlightenment values. No ideas are perfect or free of negative consequences but the enlightenment is one that has given much much more to mankind than it has cost him. Ross should stop fighting and join the future.
102
Steven Pinker?
He seems little more than a system produced intellectual, a perfect example of left wing orthodoxy, a very safe and palatable thinker. I wonder what Pinker the psychologist would think of the nightmare I just had (I took a nap), a nightmare so powerful, so clear, so disorienting, so painful, a nightmare in which I was given a supremely powerful hallucinogenic--which is to say I was already within a nightmare when I was slipped a drug which made it even more powerful--and which eventually turned into an observation made by me to a character within the nightmare to the effect that now I think I understand the eyes in all the old master's paintings, Renaissance, Baroque era, etc. All that suffering! All those individual and strange and painful experiences of life!
Pinker's worldview depends on massive censorship and control. You would think that after profound intellectual disturbances to society such as Socrates, Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, Marx, Freud, Nietzsche--make your own staggering roster!--humans would now have at least the education system made into something of an earthquake proof building designed to withstand even the most powerful jolts of truth, because these truths arrive, and they do arrive under the names of people such as aforementioned.
But alas no, the education system not to mention society is not nearly enlightened enough for that, no matter talk of critical thinking, etc. Rather we have rigidity/conformity, and Pinker's of the day.
7
The strengthening of "irrational hugger-mugger" may coincide with rapid change, but it's certainly NOT because a society is more open to new ideas.
When new theories (the heliocentric solar system, evolution, the germ theory of disease, plate tectonics...) and technological advances (gunpowder, steel, steam power, internal combustion engines, space travel...) come along, they disrupt or destroy the old ways. Seeking answers to questions outside the mainstream or in traditional lore/mythology/religion is just a fearful reaction to this change and disruption.
We humans have an insatiable urge to understand the forces that affect our lives. We are remarkable in our ability to see patterns and will often invent them when coincidence is the only factor at play.
The "smug certainty" of those who hold unsubstantiated beliefs deserves a closer examination than those who offer reason and evidence for what they believe to be true about the world.
53
What is consistent in the rhetoric of Ross is the use of the exhaustive disjunction. Here he describes those who are personally empirical as either engaged with a transformative power or mentally ill. I would suggest another possibility. I grew up as a charismatic protestant evangelical. I can recall moments of prayer when my sense of non-deliberative prayer gave me such a sense of the presence of God that it seemed to confirm the literalist reading of Biblical text we took for unavoidable. Through reading the entire Bible I came across so many contradictions and so many profoundly immoral injunctions, such as the execution of men who engage in homosexual activity , that my faith withered. I then practiced Rinzai Zen Buddhism. Sitting to I experienced such a sense of the freedom of the self that it was obvious to me that Buddhism was the ultimate truth. Then I read more of the original texts and encountered many example of incoherence and special pleading. I wish to make two points regarding these events. 1)one of these sort of experiences may both of led me in false directions. Or one may have been true and the other false. But since these religious traditions profoundly contradict one another they cannot have both been true. Thus personal experience is not self validating.2) It is quite possible to have profound experiences during prayer, meditation, or even drugs where one is in no sense mentally ill but where they tell you nothing about anything beyond one's mind.
68
I am surprised Ross Douthat does not discuss the concept of poetic naturalism, a term coined by physicist and philosopher Sean Carroll in his book “The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself”. It contains the idea that the rigor of the scientific method explains the world and universe, but that we need other concepts to find meaning in life. We develop theories for each layer of the natural world, and one emerges from the other, using different language to describe it. We have only discovered a fraction of the scientific laws the universe is built upon and we fill the void with ideas and intuitions that elude reason, until of course more laws discovered fill the gaps.
10
You join David Brooks in discussing Pinker, but whereas David praises him, you feel he's missing out on how the "other half" lives.
I just think that the scientific method and personal trial and error aren't mutually exclusive. Can't we have both?
Most do. If we're physically sick--not just soul-sick--we rely on FDA-tested medicines.
And then, if we still feel lousy, we might go to the alternative route on the theory it can't hurt, assuming we've done some careful research on side effects.
But if we're depressed, disquieted, fearful, or just searching, we might look into some touchy feely movements or more expressive forms of religion.
I agree an inquiring mind should be inquisitive on just about everything. In other words, Pinker aside, I'm not sure that one has to live as if only one form of inquiry or solution has to fit all situations.
See, Ross Douthat, I actually agree with you! Which, perhaps to quote a cliche, proves that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
25
A classic conundrum of either/or. Objective vs. subjective. Private vs. public. Mind vs. matter. Deductive vs. inductive. Math vs. art. Whole vs. part. Prose vs. poetry.
Some prefer the versus, others are fine with the and.
20
I rarely attended church as a child and after graduating from college with a degree in science I had little belief in the supernatural. But the girl that I met and wanted to marry was a Bible college student with a strong Christian faith. She would marry me only if I became a Christian-- which I did but it was out of obligation and not a result of searching for meaning in life. But as I began to study the Bible and books by Bible experts I discovered that there was really strong truth in the Christian faith. For example, I learned that a true Believer is indwelled by the Holy Spirit of God who is a helper and a source of inspiration in difficult times. By continually allowing the Holy Spirit to be a guide for me I had capabilities and abilities that I did not have before and I have had a long and, in my opinion, successful life.
11
"I discovered that there was really strong truth in the Christian faith".....And the Jewish faith, and Muslim faith, and in Buddhism and Hindu religions. And even Atheists have some good ideas. There is also a lot of crazy stuff mixed in because a lot of religions were invented before people had a better understanding of how things really worked. There is both enlightened thought and some really dark corners; but as the parable of Adam and Eve relates, if you have tasted the apple of knowledge it is up to you to figure it out.
18
Gee, I've led a long and succesful life, am somewhat famous, recognized on the street. But I am a non-believer. Where did I go wrong?
7
Steven Pinker was an able psychologist of language acquisition who followed his mentor, Noam Chomsky. Chomsky and his followers believe that some knowledge is innate. Specifically they believe that acquiring a language as a child is innate as opposed to learning a language as a young person or adult.
Innate knowledge was a concept that goes back to Plato's Meno, but was elaborated by rationalist philosophers in the 17th century-- Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz.
Pinker writes clearly and provocatively, and has turned his attention to pop sociology. He has become a second-rate dealer in second-hand ideas, unlike, say, Anthony Gottlieb, who has written a pretty good book on the rationalists and empiricists of the Enlightenment.
As Mr. Douthat says, Pinker is guilty of scientism, of reducing religion, prayer, and the humanities to nonsense or trivialities. He doesn't see that there are limits to reason and that faith has played a crucial part in the history of mankind--from the person lost in a cave praying for rescue and salvation to the scientist who has faith that his ideas will be accepted by his colleagues.
Mr. Douthat, however, is wrong to put much weight on people's beliefs in the value of health foods and macrobiotics. The human mind is an inference machine but not a reliable one, especially when it comes to making complex decisions. We need experimental methods and statistical inference to make such decisions and choices.
15
Ross, There is not such thing as secular. Liberalism its own religion. No more or no less based on scientific evidence than classical religions.
3
Not Thinking With A Cool Head,
Oh, but there is such a thing as 'secular'
"secular - not connected with religious or spiritual matters"
Everything in the world is secular, although many small childlike minds over the millennia have been intellectually brainwashed, concussed and frightened into believing in religious magic that tragically constricts their neurotransmitters into thinking that the human species is 'special' and was 'invented by God'.
Religion is utter invented nonsense that is constantly forced to adapt to reality, modernity and humanity since it lacks the human decency of actual humans.
And yet reality and modernity never have to adapt to religion, except to the extent that reality is temporarily held back and imprisoned from the oppressive nature of religion in religious societies....(see the medieval Middle East and the backward coal-loving Bible Belt for religious society award-winners).
Liberalism worships reason and human decency, the very antithesis of America's blind bamboozled religious faithful, anti-Christs, whited sepulchers, gun-lovers and healthcare-haters.
“For me, it is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.”
― Carl Sagan
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It would be interesting to hear you explain just how liberalism is a religion, as it would be to have you explain why conservatism is not - or is it just that the other person's political philosophy is based on nothing, while yours is apparently the result of deep pondering of personal experience. It seems to many that conservatism is a bastion of belief against the intrusion of other, threatening ideas.
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The Buddhist think our perception of the world is shaded by uncertainties and delusion. Materialist, such as Pinker, Kurt Anderson and @socrates, perceive the world through a lens they believe refracts only hard, cold, provable facts. If I had to choose which of the two belief systems is closest to the truth, I'd go with the Buddhists.
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So, I guess the argument is to listen to Tom Cruise because, heck, you never know – Scientology may NOT be whackazoid. (Or did I read in a supermarket tabloid that he’d abandoned it? Possibly because he finally contracted a disease that God couldn’t spell?)
As a child my “other worlds” consisted of dreams of conquering the universe and slaying space monsters, and as an adolescent they consisted mostly of girls. It could be that Ross’s weren’t exactly … representative.
The facts of the real world have been demonstrated to be true, by observation repeated millions of times by real people and premised on principles that can be and are subjected to experiments whose results are repeatable, yielding expected outcomes every time. Are we now to pray, even without faith, on the off-chance that, like sticking a finger in a power socket by way of our first Hail Mary, we MAY develop larger hands?
Most of us, as we grow older, find that the wheelhouse of Reason, rather than its edges and beyond, is consuming enough that we don’t need to wander TOO close to its edges. For those like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and perhaps even Pinker, curiosity obviously co-exists quite well with reality.
But it must be nice to be Ross.
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You are sadly mistaken unless you are operating under a different definition of true than the one most of employ.
Facts of the real world - whether in physics or chemistry are no longer considered 'true' they are considered accurate and predictive within certain statistical parameters.
Consider the groundbreaking discovery of the Higgs Boson announcement - and read it carefully:
"CMS and ATLAS have compared a number of options for the spin-parity of this particle, and these all prefer no spin and even parity [two fundamental criteria of a Higgs boson consistent with the Standard Model]. This, coupled with the measured interactions of the new particle with other particles, strongly indicates that it is a Higgs boson."
I do wish everyone who attends university were required to take at least one philosophy course in scepticism.
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SteveRR:
I studied a hell of lot more than merely ONE philosophy course in skepticism, as it was my major. Do you have even the slightest idea of what you're talking about?
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It seems that SteveRR has RailRoaded himself into thinking that all of physics and chemistry and indeed all sciences have become like quantum mechanics so that there is no longer any such thing as simple truth.
He would likely also argue that the existence of dark matter and dark energy indicates the possibility of a spiritual realm. In other words, he’s looking for a god of the gaps.
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I imagine this column will annoy many, but rather than focus on its specifics, about which, on a case-by-case basis, I have varied views, I’d encourage interpreting it as a contribution to scoping out of the grayness of a possibly large area between science and some of what is seen as non-science. The usual narrative is the duality between science, or the related data, facts, numbers, reason, truth; versus everything else, such as (trying to avoid the pejorative), intuition, religion, the unexplainable. There is a need to recognize levels of actual overlap, which is not necessarily a bad thing, could be real, and maybe useful as we struggle to understand and muddle through the lurking challenges ahead. These include: the necessary connection between science and ethics/politics/policy—no matter how much public policy schools say they should be kept separate; science and emotion (which has a bad name—at least in this context) are more related than we’d like to admit; and systems thinking, which deal with connections more than parts, and helps us see larger pictures. This doesn’t have to weaken science or its defense against “false facts.” However, that area is already getting a lot of focus, which, while important, is crowding out realization of the need to construct a useful hybrid. A big omission of Ross, although scientists can be prone to it, too, is the seduction of confirmation bias. How do we know what we think we know isn’t because that’s what we want to believe?
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None of us can say definitively what is or is not beyond this life. People can cite profound spiritual or supernatural experiences, while others are deeply connected to the here and now. Neither should cancel out the other.
But in any case, we have to treat our time on this earth as sacred. That means treating one another, and our one planet, with care and respect. We need both reason and feeling to make life as good as possible. Beliefs (or lack thereof) are personal, but our life is shared.
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"Will no one rid us of this meddlesome priest?"
Steven Pinker has written a lovely manifesto about optimism and scientific progress while offering compelling evidence that the arc of the moral universe is long and that it bends toward reason, not religion.
Pinker writes that IQ scores have risen globally by 30 points in 100 years, meaning that the average person today scores better than 98% of people a century ago, surely disturbing news for the inevitably failing religious ignorance industry.
Pinker notes that even the most conservative places are loosening up; young Muslims in today's Middle East are about as liberal as young western Europeans were in the early 1960s...that's progress.
Most Christians have no problem with gay marriage today, except for America's and Russia's radical regressive religionistas hellbent on prehistoric patriarchy, who are a wretched but dying breed...more progress.
Pinker - and hundreds of millions of atheists - happily note the decline of faith.
Globally, 59% of people are religious today, down from nearly 100% a century ago. As the world's citizens grow incrementally richer, incrementally smarter, they steadily and surely abandon the antediluvian crutch of belief, superstition and imaginary magic men and rely more on reason, their brains and actual thought.
There's always horrible news to behold - to wit, our Toilet-In-Chief - but our own nation's raised IQ will correct that mistake in the next election or two.
Things are looking up.
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I would add in response to Douthat that religion is ascendent in places like Africa and Latin America not because of economic development in those places: it is precisely the opposite. Christianity exploits the poor and the un/under educated.
'Faith' is their substitution for the absence of prosperity.
It gets them through lifes travails which they have an unfortunate, inordinate, share of.
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Previously I had only peripherally noticed Pinker, as a disciple in cognitive linguistics of Noam Chomsky and as a commentator on statistical distributions of ability in math and sciences. I was unaware of his large work in this area.
Several commenters have said Douthat has misrepresented Pinker on reason and unreason. So I went first to the wiki article on Pinker, and then to prefaces and conclusions of works including the book cited by Douthat. I am still unqualified to comment on most of what Douthat wrote about Pinker's views. But I can reasonably assert that Douthat's paragraph-long concluding sentence gets Pinker wrong. I suggest that others like me unfamiliar with "Enlightenment Now!" read the book, take note of relevant facts of Pinker's life, and make their own conclusions.
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Incisive excellence - once again. Truth can win.
A thousand thumbs up. Bravo.
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You have shared a bit more about yourself in this column, and have never offered another that I was more in agreement with. I hope that will not dismay you!
Pinker, IMHO, for all of his pretensions, is living in his own bubble – and doesn’t even know it. I addressed some of my qualms about his intellectual objectivity and emotional intelligence in my comment yesterday in response to David Brooks, and rather than repeat them here, would refer others there (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/22/opinion/steven-pinker-radical-honesty....
I find it shameful that so called empiricists continue to misrepresent the story of the Enlightenment. The American Enlightenment, the Enlightenment that actually succeeded, as opposed to the blood curdling French version, which did not, was a hotbed of obscurantism. Freemasonry, with all of its quirks, including elements like astrology, thoroughly permeated it, to such an extent that a scandal would emerge within a few decades. And yet it appears that its mélange of freemasonry, deism, and Christianity provided so sufficient a curb that the fledgling democratic vehicle stayed safety on the road – as opposed the Jacobin vehicle, which largely dispensed with such curbs, believing appeals to “reason” alone sufficient, and did not.
As mentioned in my comment yesterday, I want to like Pinker; but I fear for the fate of those feel they have reason to retain what he deems their “superstitions” were he to carry the day.
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Matt, I read, in your attachment the response to David Brooks column how you see that the American Revolution was a success while the French Revolution was not. It depends on your definition of "success". The French Revolution was a reaction to the absolute and corrupt power of the monarchy, the aristocracy, and the church. The purge (Reign of Terror) that followed went too far but results in forcefully placing citizens as the focus of succeeding republics. That continues today in an extensive social contract between government and the citizens. The American Founding Fathers were the landed gentry who fought against "unfair" taxes levied by their colonial overseer: the Crown. That anti-tax focus, along with the well regulated militia that enabled it, remains part of the American DNA. We are the descendants of our histories.
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One of my definitions for success is that of the revolutionary generation not consuming itself - as happened in France, with many, many innocent people also being sacrificed as part of the maelstrom, before the entire revolution surrendered to tyranny, as in Napoleon; and as also happened in the Soviet Union.
Once counter-revolution emerged in France (which was surely inevitable, given the abruptness of the change envisioned), the Jacobins embraced terror - believing that the imposition of terror had become rational (as would the Communists in Russia and China in the 20th century).
Thomas Paine was considered a radical here in America and in England, but he became associated with the more moderate wing of the French Revolution (after traveling to that country to help in the struggle) - and apparently only escaped execution due to a clerical error by a jailer collecting victims for the guillotine!
Meanwhile, the American Revolution could not have succeeded without strong grassroots support - even if the settlement after the war left many outside of the circle of protection that the victory is said to have created. Extending that circle has been the business of the last 200 years.
The legacies of the past cast their shadow over every country - but it nonetheless strikes me that best course when plotting change is to choose, wherever possible, graceful evolution rather than violent revolution, and emotional intelligence over ideological triumphalism, in all things.
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Being educated by highly qualified teachers ,some dedicated by heart and soul to emphasize a scientist’s responsibility to weigh critically and morally results ,
inevitable bound by what knowledge imagined should be.
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Try as I might, I see no real semblance of 'reason' in the world today -- much less in this country.
And while Mr. Pinker's argument that we are ostensibly in better shape today than say, a few generations ago, the fact remains that there is still way too much suffering, too many divisions, still too many wars, and poverty, and socio-economic injustice for anyone to think that we as a race, have made such brilliant progress -- because quite frankly, the material and scientific world has left so many behind in the process.
It's therefore hard to concur that we are now living in some sort of state of 'Enlightenment', especially when so many appear to be in a state of just the opposite -- and this doesn't only apply to those who voted for a president who has so negatively impacted our current state of affairs; it applies to a worldwide pandemic where all reason seems to have departed, only to be replaced with threats of military might. And religion has nothing to do with it. Because if anything, it only gets in the way.
That is why, for risk of sounding "smug" and insouciant, I must nevertheless state that we are no closer to Kant's theory of Enlightenment, than we are to Steven Pinker's, but that's no reason to despair -- it only means there's still a lot of work to be done.
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I think what Pinker and the rest of the people trying to live in a world based on science and reason are worried about is the undue influence on our government by those who believe that man-made climate change cannot exist because only God can destroy mankind.
For people like Ross, the Enlightenment was the worst thing that happened to us. All the wars since the 18th Century, the Holocaust, the gulags, etc., is because we became a more secular civilization and looked to science for answers.
Ross ignores the millions who died over religion.
My smug certainty is that God---at least Ross's God---does not exist.
Ross is free to believe in anything he wants. Just keep your beliefs to yourself.
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You ignore the millions who have died in the absence of religion. How many did pre-Christian Rome kill? How many died at the hands of officially atheist communists? The ice age man found thawing in the Alps, was killed by an arrow in the back, I believe. He died thousands of years before any organized religion. You may have to accept, like Pinker, that humanity is not all that humane, and no era or culture can prove otherwise.
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We don’t remember and revere Isaac Newton for his interest in alchemy. We regret the countless people who have died for lack of proper medicine, or who are currently sick and dying from the flu because they don’t believe in vaccination.
There’s no limit to what people will believe in. If we spent time worrying about those who are in the thrall of some religious nonsense, or reading tea leaves or worried about astrological signs, we would be living as people did before the Enlightenment. If they were given a view of our world today, we might forgive them for thinking it worked by magic.
There’s a place for belief in nonsense, in that it encourages the embrace of actual knowledge when nonsense doesn’t work.
Unfortunately, we can’t dismiss this tendency for woo-woo beliefs. Our brains have the ability to intuit what’s in the minds of others. This gives us a powerful advantage over other creatures, but it also lets us imagine that human-like agency is behind everything.
We can’t shake this belief, which puts gods in the sky and monsters in the closet and allays fear of death by imagining a Disney World afterlife. All we can do is get off of our knees and look for a cure that actually works.
So mutter Latin if you must, but if you’re going to gorge yourself at the buffet of wonders that science and rational thought have created, and that Steven Pinker reveres, at least have the courtesy not to talk with your mouth full.
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"We don’t remember and revere Isaac Newton for his interest in alchemy." That's true enough. What Douthat is praising is the feature of Newton's mind that we could all use more of: curiosity. Besides alchemy, Newton also wrote thousands of pages of theology, most of which is only of interest to scholars. The irony of "gemli"'s comment is that scholars also know that many in Newton's day mocked him for being "in the thrall of some religious nonsense." Newton is an immortal for uniting a myriad of phenomena under a few simple laws. Why do projectiles follow a parabolic curve, why does the moon orbit the earth, why do the tides ebb and flow in cycles? Could these questions be related? When Newton united answers to these questions by by positing a force called "gravity", the "gemlis" of his time accused him of magical thinking. (A force that acts on objects at a distance in no time at all? Ridiculous.) Newton may have explored similar questions in his alchemical explorations but with less fruitful results. But his curiosity was unbounded, and his ability to unite phenomena under simple laws was more magical than any alchemy. He was a visionary and went on undeterred by the "gemli"s of his day. We should hope today's visionaries do the same.
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Every time someone dismisses the unorthodox, I am reminded of Dr. Barry Marshall who dared to suggest that ulcers were not caused by spicy food and excess worry.
The medical elite thought they knew what caused ulcers and stomach cancer. But they were wrong—and did not want to hear the answer that was right.
http://discovermagazine.com/2010/mar/07-dr-drank-broth-gave-ulcer-solved...
To paraphrase Nietzsche - what we know to date [admittedly the end of the 19th century] is that every scientific theory has been supplanted by another better scientific theory - so was the prior theory "right"?
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@Dimitri,
I have it on good authority that "gemli" keeps an open mind about lots of things, but not so open that his brain falls out.
There's a difference between the efforts of scientists who do the difficult work of finding predictable, reliable understandings of the universe compared to people who stake out the Great Unknown as their territory and then pretend to know all about it.
It's the ability to look at the evidence and refine and reevaluate ideas that has made science so successful. Dogmatic beliefs about the invisible man in the sky and what he gets up to are holding us back.
There's solace to be found in knowing the truth that is far more comforting than any primitive mythologizing. Listening to arguments about which sect believes in the True Placebo gets us nowhere.
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