http://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(15)00743-5.pdf
Seems to fit in with recent threads.
His latest book, Faith Versus Fact, is
intended not to pile on the arguments
for atheism but to advance the debate
into its next round. It is a brief against the
faitheists — scientists and religionists
alike — who advocate a make-nice
accommodation between science and
religion. As with Michael Corleone’s offer
to Nevada Senator Pat Geary in The
Godfather Part II, Coyne’s offer to religion
on the part of science is this: Nothing.
This sounds more imperialistic and
scientistic than it really is, because Coyne
defi nes ‘science’ broadly, to encompass
any system of belief grounded by reason
and evidence, rather than faith. On
this defi nition, many of the humanities,
such as history and philosophy, count
as ‘science’, not just the traditional
physical and social sciences.
Coyne quotes several historical and
recent writers, particularly Carl Sagan
and the philosophers Yonatan Fishman
and Maarten Boudry, while adding some
examples of his own, to show how the
existence of the God of scripture is a
testable empirical hypothesis. The Bible’s
historical accounts could have been
corroborated by archaeology, genetics
and philology. It could have contained
uncannily prescient truths such as “thou
shalt not travel faster than light” or “two
strands entwined is the secret of life.” A
bright light might appear in the heavens
one day and a man clad in white robe and
sandals, supported by winged angels,
could descend from the sky, give sight
to the blind, and resurrect the dead. We
might discover that intercessory prayer
can restore hearing or re-grow amputated
limbs, or that anyone who speaks the
Prophet Mohammed’s name in vain is
immediately struck down by lightning,
while those who pray to Allah five times a
day are free from disease and misfortune.
And with that we have basically a recap of the total contribution of phoodoo to this website.
Me either.
Brief LRB review of Coyne with a longer comparison to and look at an historical analysis of the issue.
Horseshit, and nothing you say subsequently to this accomplishes even an attempt at substantiating the claim.
Look up Bayes theorem. Twice.
Oh, c’mon phoodoo. It may be a bit rannygazoo, but there’s no way knowledge of the world is effutiationous, I mean even if Elizabeth is right about it being re-entrant.
I can’t even believe you’re suggesting this. So so wrong. X>{
He writes:
“To take just one recent salvo in this centuries-old fight: The biologist Jerry A. Coyne’s Faith Versus Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible, which argues, once more, against the pernicious folly of religion and for the inviolable truth of science.”
And as such consigns himself to instant dismissal since he can’t get even the basics right. The book argues no such thing. What a crock of shit.
Nick Lane’s latest covers this issue (I have not read yet) and got strong reviews in UK where it came out some time ago
The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life
Rumraket,
I know perfectly well what Bayes’ Theorem is. (I teach and publish in epistemology and philosophy of mind.) But in order to apply Bayes’ Theorem to Scripture, one has to first adopt a specific way of interpreting Scripture such that Bayes’ Theorem can apply to it. And it is specifically that interpretation that is utterly misguided.
For one thing, treating Scripture as if contained assertions to which empirical considerations apply is not the only way of reading Scripture; for another, there are millions of persons of faith who not read Scripture that way; and for a third thing, reading Scripture that way is a slap in the face to religion scholars whose expertise lies in explicating different ways of interpreting Biblical texts.
Galileo might differ. What Protestantism offered was a less authoritarian approach to empirical knowledge, or perhaps just a greater appreciation of the commercial value of empiricism.
Kantian Naturalist,
It is, however, exactly the way that the theists I grew up around read it. I strongly suspect it is exactly the way that many of the theists at UD read it.
There are millions of people who claim that their deity exists in the real world. That is an empirical claim that demands empirical evidence.
Granted. But there are also millions of serious adult Christians and Jews who don’t read Scripture that way, and they deserve a voice in the conversation that atheism refuses to acknowledge.
This is one of the best statements about religion that I have read in a long time.
I cringe at some of what Coyne says on religion related topics. He is one of the reasons that I prefer to consider myself an agnostic or just “non-religious”.
That seems unfair.
Reading the review in context, it is clear that “pernicious folly of religion” and “inviolable truth of science” are the reviewers terms, and not Coyne’s words.
I take the reviewer to only be saying that Coyne argues against religion and for science. The rest of the quote is the reviewer’s characterization of religion and of science.
Now perhaps a reviewer should not interpolate his own opinions in that way. Yet what would be the point of a review if it were not an expression of opinion?
I agree with Neil that this should not be read a an literal attempt by the reviewer to summarize the contents of the book, but rather as the author’s attempt to characterize the futility of such books (in his view) by caricaturing their message.
I think the central point of the review is given by this quote:
But the problem with all of these arguments is the belief that the debate between science and religion is a thing one can “win,” as though there were some central set of propositions and axioms that all parties could agree to, a basis for some kind of lucid exchange and final judgment everyone would accept. If there is one belief one can empirically demonstrate to be wrong, it’s that these debates are anything but circular and fruitless.
The rest of the review is in service of the author’s ideas on philosophy of science, the role of science popularizations in putting forward what he thinks are wrong views of science, and on how people should consider the narratives of science and religion in living their lives.
I don’t agree with everything he says, but I think they are interesting points that add to the discussion in this thread.
(Full disclosure: I have not read the Coyne book, but I have read similar by Stenger, Dawkins, Harris and others).
I understood the review author’s point differently.
When there was only one religion, which all accepted, then there was no apparent need for an assessment of the beliefs.
But with two religions with conflicting dogmas, the way is open for an objective analysis of which is right, eg for science.
Kantian Naturalist,
If they aren’t making claims about reality, then I’m not sure how atheism is relevant. Atheism simply means a lack of belief that a god or gods actually exist.
I get the sense that KN wants to eat his cake but not be accused of having one.
It’s not that — it’s that there’s pie (so many kinds!), and cookies, and pastries, and brioche — that is, many different kinds of language and not all of which are evaluable in epistemic terms. I still like cake (= assertoric discourse with ontological commitnents and subject to epistemic norms).
That’s fine, but then one has to be willing to come right out and say, “You know what, this stuff isn’t really cake, it never was cake, and it’s never going to be cake. It’s more like, well, fairy cake.”
He speaks to some of the ideas here
Mung: The scientific method is not the only way to gain knowledge.
Rumraket: Yes, it basically is. Sensu Coyne’s definition of the scientific way of knowing, it is.
Says the person who claims that otherwise knowledge is based on circular reasoning.
If we define knowledge as the result of using the scientific method, then when we use the scientific method we have knowledge. But that’s not circular.
Let’s just call it begging the question then, if that makes you feel better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-epistemology
No, it’s not importantly circular. It is defining terms, and that has its place. However, I’m not persuaded that’s a useful definition of “knowledge”.
And Neil chimes in right on cue. It’s not circular! Definitions are important!
ok, so it begs the question then. But it’s apparently not important to not beg the question. Neil the “impertinent philosopher” probably has no clue what I am talking about.
Atheism is a worldview which embraces far more than a simple lack of belief that a god or gods actually exist.
Are you still off on vacation? If so, why on earth are you posting here! lol.
I find this statement interesting, and if you are not yet returned from your vacation perhaps we could take it up at another time.
But it seems to me that all Scripture is concerned with revealing or declaring truth. Empirical considerations however appear much more vague.
So what would it mean to say that empirical considerations do not apply to the assertions of Scripture?
As a side question: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all claim to be grounded in actual historical events. Don’t you agree? But as far as testing the historical claims, how do the three stack up?
Actually it’s not. That’s all it means. You can look it up.
Actually, walto, I prefer to observe atheism in action. It’s blatantly obvious to me, if not to you, that there is far more tied up in what it means to be an atheist than a simple lack of belief that a god or gods actually exist.
So I am saying that I did look it up. I looked it up right here at TSZ, where if nothing else, atheists are as dogmatic as the most fundamental of fundamentalists.
I dogmatically assert the earth is spherical and is significantly more than 10,000 years old.
How do children acquire knowledge? Or do they not acquire any knowledge at all until they begin to employ Coyne’s scientific way of knowing?
How do children come to know the difference between ways of knowing?
Doesn’t the very use of the phrase “the scientific way of knowing” admit that there are other ways of knowing?
I always suspected you were an old earth creationist.
I find your disregard for the assumption of honesty to be disturbing.
When you say or imply you believe something, I accept it at face value. I expect the same courtesy from you. Do not read anything into my non-belief.
Mung, your bible must have way more craters, due to your regular thumping of it, than the moon.
I think Mung is completely right in noticing that a great many of us here at TSZ do, in fact, very much the same world-view.
He is wrong only in thinking of it as “atheism”, which does have a narrow and precise meaning, as noted above.
I am not fully persuaded of the thought that we tend to be as dogmatic about the “foundations” of our world-view as we accuse “theists” of being, but there is some validity to the criticism.
I find this response very suprising because the potential existence of millions of variations on the same basic hypothesis does not invalidate the use of Bayes theorem. It doesn’t matter that theoretically every person on the planet has their own version of god (or how sophisticated it is), in so far as those people believe god interacts with the material world (and as Coyne points out by citing actual polling data, most believers DO believe god somehow manifests his actions in the material world), those god hypotheses (all of them) are subject to falsification one by one.
It might not be practical of course to try to falsify every single one, but you can certainly go after the things they usually have in common (such as the claim that god answers prayers).
And these things actually work. There are people and many of them, who when exposed to the facts of the matter, actually either give up their religion, or possibly become more moderate and vague in their beliefs(which I think is preferable to fundamentalism).
Mung,
Not even close. The only shared attribute of atheists is a lack of belief in a god or gods. There is no more baggage*, no matter how much the religious right and SJW left would like to load it up with such.
* There is social baggage, but that’s about what other people think, not what atheists don’t believe.
A lot of the people who post here have many things in common besides their atheism. All of us speak English, e.g., and for most of us, it’s our first language. We all went to school for awhile, we all play around on the internet. I doubt anyone of us is posting from a heart-lung machine. A lot of other things unite us too. And, for those who care about such things, if there’s no God, there must be other types of explanations of the things that end in God for theists. But many atheists, like many theists, don’t care too much about explaining everything.
Anyhow, as G.E. Moore said, everything is what it is, and not another thing. Atheism is atheism, it is not all the things you don’t like about some of the people who post here. That’s just team pep-talk stuff. Not much different from West Side Story’s “Every Puerto-Rican’s a lousy chicken.”
There is no validity to the charge of atheistic fundamentalism. It is factually wrong, personally insulting, and a dishonest debate tactic. It is vacuous and intellectually bankrupt.
Who do publishers expect to sell books like Coyne’s to?
I suspect there are two main target markets:
1. Non-believers who enjoy reading another rehearsal of arguments they are familiar with. This is a similar marketing strategy to the creation of hits in music by slightly varying what worked before.
2. People who like reading popularizations of science. There are many such successful books covering, eg, biology, astronomy, neursoscience.
On the other hand, I don’t think that publishers expect to sell many books to:
1. Religious people who are looking to change their mind. Not enough of these to matter.
2. Religious people who have an intellectual curiosity about what non-believers think.
3. Non religious people who are genuinely interested in the arguments. I don’t have the money to buy every bestseller that interests me, but I am interested in the debate. I come to places like this hoping to be challenged by something besides personal insults.
BruceS,
Bruce I think I’d add one more to your list:
3. Religious people who want to show the stupidity of another infidel who’s completely, demonstrably wrong, I take it various activists at places like UD might want a copy for that purpose. They could start a thread with the title like More Dumb Arguments the Faithless Will Buy
4. Apologists who’s job it is to “debunk” arguments against their faith might buy and read the book, then produce a “review” on a blog or something.
This is a valid point, but why are there so many similar books out there? That is the point I was trying to make with 1.
Definitely! But how many buy the book?
I would say most just echo what they hear on other blogs/reviews and don’t bother reading for themselves, let alone buying.
This seems to me to be a fairly standard tactic among the blogging and commenting opponents of (eg) evolution.
( I have to take care to avoid making the same mistake myself, since I have not read it, although I do have a copy to look at now.)
I’m not sure what hypotheses KN had in mind, but here is one that I can think of:
I understand that the consensus of archeologists is that there never was a large population of the ancestors of Jews enslaved by the Egyptians. And there never was an outside nation that conquered Canaan, (eg as in the battle of Jericho). Rather, what happened historically was the takeover of Canaan by one group of (rural) Canaanites from another (more urban) group of Canaanites.
So what is the background to the biblical story?
The hypothesis is that this story as written in the bible is an attempt to emphasize the separateness of the Jews and the uniqueness of their religion and God.
Why would such a story be told instead of the literal truth? Because the writers of the bible (perhaps divinely inspired?) knew that mythological narratives were much more effective at communicated deeper truths to people.
Books like Coyne’s often deride these “allegorical” interpretations. They point to surveys showing most religious people believe in the literal truth of the Exodus, or Adam and Eve, or the transfer directly from God to Moses of the ten commandments.
But perhaps all these surveys show is the the writers of the bible had a correct understanding of human nature.
Same reason there are so many similar blogs, so many similar politicians, so many similar posts.
What was the question again?
Hitler had a good understanding of human nature.
Natural is not necessarily good. Or true. Or desirable.
(That was a long run-on sentence).
However, many of those observers also believe that God acts in the material world in ways that are not empirically detectable.
As I said to KN, that’s all fine so long as one is willing to admit that the stories are literally false. Concede that and we can move on to alleged psychological or moral benefits, etc. What I see with KN is a reluctance to concede the straight falsity in plain English and a preference for the sort of obfuscation-via-big-deep-sounding- words that phoodooo derided in a recent post of his.
Perhaps this is just my disdain for Continental philosophy showing, but, you know, we all have our prejudices.
That was probably a good analysis (not quoted), though perhaps incomplete as others have suggested.
For myself, I have no interest in Coyne’s book. I didn’t read Dawkins’ “The God Delusion” either. These arguments from Christian apologetics and from atheist apologetics just seem tiresome.
Haven’t read Coyne’s book, but I read his blog, and he blogs most of his ideas.
I would hesitate to call his writing apologetics. He seems most interested in a straight up discussion of facts. I don’t think he’s interested in discussing mystical notions of god, aside from noting that they have no use other than comforting the afflicted. And I think he would argue that medicine and social welfare are more effective at comforting the afflicted.