The Wedge

The Wedge Document, which appeared on the internet in 1999, is a curious thing.  I don’t want to discuss is merits and demerits in this post, but what it says about fear: on the one side of the wedge, the fear that motivated its writing, and on the other side, the fear of those who felt targetted by it.

Because even though the document itself has ceased to have force, the mutual distrust remains.

Clearly, the writers of the wedge were very frightened by the prospect of what they call “materialism”, and view as both an ideology and an approach to science – so frightened that they seem almost afraid to give credence to the science lest it let a Materialist Foot in the door.  “Materialist” science they said,

…portrayed human not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment.

But more importantly they went on to allege that:

Materialists denied the existence of objective moral standards, claiming that environment dictates our behavior and beliefs.

Now, I can quite understand the fear of any science that would engender such denial. But what is also deeply frightening to some of us is the idea that any science should be suppressed for fear of its moral implications.  The Copernican model was rejected for far too long because the Church worried that it would undermine the belief that humans inhabited a universe in which they were not central.

So how to heal the rift, rather than drive the Wedge in further?  It was always part of my vision for this site that we would try to do the former rather than the latter.  It’s not easy, and we have not always been successful.  But I am not despondent. I suggest that two things are essential to the project, on the part of “materialists”:
Firstly, to make it clear that “materialism” is intrinsic to scientific methodology, not because of materialistic bias, but because scientific methodology is rooted in prediction. Contrary to the belief of many (materialists included), science does not seek to explain why things are the way they are at a fundamental level.  Feynman puts it well here:

Science cannot go beyond a fundamental description of what the universe is like.  Sure it can construct causal models up to a point, and we may keep moving that point closer and closer to the barrier, but it can’t make the barrier go away.  Instead, it constructs a set of generalisable laws that allow us to predict things, more or less reliably. And a scientific model that predicts things better is preferred to a model that predicts things less well.  No scientific model can be regarded as right, but some are less wrong than others.  And only temporarily in the lead.  All scientific models are provisional.

Secondly, I think that those of us who do not find a use for the concept of a creator God (I have worded that very carefully) need to make it clear that abandoning the idea of a creator God who made us for Her own purposes does not entail abandonment of purpose – it does not render our lives purposeless.  I can breed a llama to carry my baggage.  The llama may, and quite obviously does, have quite other ideas the purpose of her life (eating the hedge, for one).  Not believing that we were made to serve the purpose of a putative creator God does not even mean that my only purpose is to serve myself.

And I think two things are also required of those on the other side of the wedge, both to do with real asymmetries between the positions:

Firstly, I think it is important to understand that science does not, and cannot, claim that God does not exist.  Some scientists may do so – but it would not be a scientific statement.  “Strong atheists” i.e. those who actually think the evidence suggests that there is no god, are rare, although many atheists would have a strong view that certain specific gods are non-existence (e.g. a Sun god; a God that can restore amputated limbs).  But “God does not exist” is simply too vague a statement for anyone to get excited about an ism based on it.  So there is an intrinsic asymmetry here: materialists are not, in general, claiming that theism is wrong, while theists are, in general, claiming that materialism is.

And the second thing is that I think it is important to understand is  just how intrinsically provisional science is. Peer-review is imperfect, and so are the checks and balances built in to scientific methodology – but ultimately, science is designed so that mistakes are discovered.  It lies behind all the tedious methodological procedures we have to go through – null hypothesis testing, blind rating, random sampling, replication, meta-analysis, funnel plots. Sure it is harder to get findings published that overturn consensus than those that support it – but that is as it should be, human nature being to err, and the quid pro quo is that if you do get it published, it will probably be in Nature.  The big rewards in science are for the new and dramatic, not the been-there-done-that.  In fact, I’d say that a much bigger problem in scientific publishing is the difficulty of getting replications published than the difficulty in getting novel work published. And again, there is a real asymmetry here: “materialists” are all too keen to engage with the “other side” – we are the ones regularly banned from discussions, not ID proponents; we are the ones with lax moderation policies, with “comments allowed”.  Yes, we are frightened, but generally, fear takes the form of desire to engage, not refusal (and btw, no, Barry, I am not frightened to post at UD; I just see no point when I can post here where I know my words will remain undeleted).

Anyway, I’d be interested to hear from other people why they fear, or are angry, at the people on the other side of the wedge.  Or, better still, if they are neither.

174 thoughts on “The Wedge

  1. Richardthughes: I believe “I don’t know” should be the default. Then you go looking.

    I have for most of my life considered myself agnostic, or a non-believer. Except for politics, I see no difference between non-believer and without religion. I do not see atheism as positively denying religion, but just denying evidence for religion.

    I put evidence for the various religions in the same mental bucket as evidences for UFOs, ESP, spoon bending, psychic healing, and such. LOts and lots of claims over hundreds and thousands of years, but nothing has panned out.

    Boy, wolf.

    After thousands of years, the default is to doubt evidence until it meets the standards of science.

  2. OMagain:

    William J. Murray: Because, unless there is a reason to use that term, it has always seemed to me that it’s just an attempt to irritate theists.

    Speak to many women do you? No, thought not.

    Well, that’s the other half of it.

    We know that the deep roots of the christian view of god include deliberate sexism dating back to the invented story of Eve’s transgression. Sexism was always part of the reason why the christian patriarchs chose to call god “he” and “the Father” and “King” rather than “she” or “Mother” or “Queen”, because they were always happy to reinforce their supposedly-divinely-ordained male domination over women. They still do; just read the current crop of evangelists.

    So, when using “she” for god reminds theists that god is not really on their side more if they’re male than if they’re female, I say great. Helping them clear up their own theology and striking a tiny blow against sexism at the same time, what could be better!

    I don’t actually want modern christianity to appeal more to women than it already does. I don’t particularly want churches switching to “the Mother” instead of “the Father” in some kind of desperate attempt to stem their loss of parishioners. But I’d be okay with it, while they’re dying out, if they help to reduce the effects of their prior sexism by undoing the “god is he” nonsense.

    That’s surely something non-theists can assist with. And not just women like Elizabeth, but any of us humans.

  3. Elizabeth: Because there is no good reason to use one rather than the other, and the feminine alternative gets underused.

    See. You just contradicted yourself. 😉

    First, you say there is no good reason, then you give a good reason.

  4. hotshoe_,

    So, when using “she” for god reminds theists that god is not really on their side more if they’re male than if they’re female, I say great. Helping them clear up their own theology and striking a tiny blow against sexism at the same time, what could be better!

    I was listening to some Christian talk radio yesterday, and the host of the show was discussing a verse from 1 Timothy:

    But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

    and let me tell you, those guys were into it. It will be a while before they give up that one.

  5. socle: I was listening to some Christian talk radio yesterday, and the host of the show was discussing a verse from 1 Timothy:

    But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

    and let me tell you, those guys were into it. It will be a while before they give up that one.

    Yeah, I know, it’s like that where I live. Sad.

    Dunno what to do about it besides setting a counterexample, places like here.

  6. Mung: See. You just contradicted yourself.

    First, you say there is no good reason, then you give a good reason.

    See, Mung this is a lovely example of just how you make these errors.

    There is no good reason for people to call God he or she, IMO.

    Therefore I choose “she” because most people, despite there being no good reason for it, choose “he”. That is my way of redressing the balance. Sure, I have a good reason for redressing the balance – and the balance needs redressing because there is no good reason why it should be unbalanced.

    See? It’s a form of reverse equivocation that you do: you take phrases used in different contexts and apply them as though context made no difference.

    I

  7. Erik: And phenomena on which we have no effective predictive model, as of yet, are legitimately classified as miracles until we devise the model? (Or did you phrase badly again?)

    I don’t really mind how people class them. Traditionally, people classed them as miracles. But as the explanatory gaps closed, miracles have become rarer 🙂

    I don’t find it a useful term myself, but people are welcome to it. I think it “Divine intervention” might be better. After all we can have a shot at testing that – and have done. Trouble is, it tends not to confirm the hypothesis.

    To be honest, I don’t see any reason why testing Divine hypotheses should be outside science (apart from the biblical injunction not to). What makes Divine hypotheses untestable is when the putative deity is omniscient and omnipotent and utterly unresponsive..

  8. Gregory: Maybe a bit of German thought could help Elizabeth with her shallow ‘predictionism’ stuck funk. Some idiographic vs. nomothetic, perhaps?

    I haven’t read Windelband, sad to say. My rough sense is that this distinction was the beginning of the debate as to whether the Geisteswissenschaften (“human sciences”, or what people in the US call “the humanities” — Wissenschaft having a sense closer to “systematic scholarly discipline” than to “science” in the English sense) had a distinctive methodology that set them apart from the Naturwissenschaften, or natural sciences. It informs much later debates in the 19th and 20th centuries, such as “the positivism debate in sociology”, whether there is something distinctively hermeneutical in the humanities as Heidegger, Gadamer, and others argued and if hermeneutical self-understanding is somehow prior to or more fundamental than scientific knowledge, and so on.

    It is true that Sellars said that “science is the measure of all things,” but this little phrase should be included with some context: Sellars’s full sentence is, “in the dimension of describing and explaining the world, science is the measure of all things, of what is that it is, and of what is not that it is not”.

    Firstly, notice that Sellars says “in the dimension of describing and explaining the world“, and one might ask “dimension of what?” Sellars’s answer is that describing and explaining the world is a dimension of language, or that describing and explaining the world is but one of the many things we do with language. Language is, he stresses, “polydimensional” — there are many kinds of language, or many ways of using language: not just to describe and explain, but also to prescribe, create, imagine, command, invite, suggest, condemn, praise, and so on.

    Secondly, Sellars does not say that our current science is a completely adequate description and explanation of the world. On the contrary, he thought the scientific image (as he called it) was still very much under construction. It is true that Sellars had a slight tendency to see science as a Procrustean bed with which to cut the manifest image (as he called it — our pre-scientific self-understanding, associated with the philosophical tradition that runs from Plato to Hegel) down to manageable size. But I tend to put things the other way around — I’m more of the view that as our science becomes more and more adequate, it will eventually come to approximate more and more of the manifest image.

    Thus, my view is the opposite of, say, Rosenberg’s. Rosenberg thinks that our current science is more than adequate to show that intentionality doesn’t and cannot exist; I think that we are just now beginning to work towards a cognitive neuroscience that will explain just what exactly intentionality is.

    And I’m slowly working towards much the same position about normativity and rationality, although I’m trying to take a work more of an evolutionary and ecological orientation rather than just a neurophysiological one. So I’ve been reading Tomasello and Sterelny and the 4E cognitive science literature, especially the stuff on “enaction”. I’ll probably read Gibson this summer since that’s an important text for most of the people I’m now reading.

    Eventually — as in, by the end of this summer — I want to describe a kind of pre-rational embodied animal intentionality as a phylogenetic and ontogenetic precursor of discursive, social intentionality described by Brandom and others working in that tradition. And crucial to describing that kind of intentionality is describing the kind of inferences that “higher animals” are able to carry out. It’s only by understanding how other animals reason that we can understand what makes human reasoning distinct.

  9. “It’s only by understanding how other animals reason that we can understand what makes human reasoning distinct.” – KN

    That, folks, is one of the most blatant confessions of ‘zoocentric misanthropy’ that I’ve yet read!

  10. Gregory: That, folks, is one of the most blatant confessions of ‘zoocentric misanthropy’ that I’ve yet read!

    I don’t know what that means.

    But surely I didn’t say that we need to compare ourselves with other animals in order to know that we do reason at all, nor that we do reason in distinctive ways. I said, rather, what we need to understand what our kind of reasoning is, and that comparing our kind of reasoning with that of non-human animals will surely help us immensely in doing so.

    Frankly, I’m surprised that someone who frequently takes note of the disenchantment of nature — with a tone of disappointment, I’d thought — would seem to be so dismissive of the thought that other animals possess cognitive and affective capacities similar to our own. Isn’t that part of achieving a non-disenchanted conception of nature?

  11. Kantian Naturalist: I don’t know what that means.

    I assume that means humans aren’t animals.

    That’s what my daughter asserted when she was four years old.

  12. Richardthughes: It will only upset the small-minded, William. Take all of those gender based “marriage arguments” and then use them to think about God. You’ll realize gender is silly concept in that context.

    And using “she” wouldn’t be just as silly as using “he”? Seriously – how many people here are using the pronoun “she” in good faith? Do you actually think god is a she? No? Do you think you’re debating people that also use that designation? No?

    If this is a good faith debate, why is EL using the term “she” when referring to a god EL doesn’t believe exists when she is debating people who most likely commonly use the designation “he”?

  13. Calm down William, the fact you’ve got your knickers in a twist over a deity personal pronoun tells us everything we need to know. You and Gregory (Designer / designer) should form a society for the correct naming of fictional entities.

  14. William J. Murray: If this is a good faith debate, why is EL using the term “she” when referring to a god EL doesn’t believe exists when she is debating people who most likely commonly use the designation “he”?

    Because IMO, it’s time people stopped making sexist assumptions about their putative deity. If I pute a deity I pute a she.

    It makes just as much sense.

  15. Elizabeth: I think that a she-God is as useful, if not more useful, a concept as a he-God.

    Because females reproduce, sometimes without the benefit of males. The ancients figured this out. Some might say that the first Christians figured this out.

    But they couldn’t help tracing Jesus’ lineage through his stepfather.

  16. petrushka: Because females reproduce, sometimes without the benefit of males. The ancients figured this out. Some might say that the first Christians figured this out.

    But they couldn’t help tracing Jesus’ lineage through his stepfather.

    Useful to consider the concept of the deity giving birth to the cosmos IMO. Not that women aren’t designers too, but a male concept does rather lend itself to the guy with the beard and the dividers.

  17. Elizabeth: Useful to consider the concept of the deity giving birth to the cosmos IMO. Not that women aren’t designers too, but a male concept does rather lend itself to the guy with the beard and the dividers.

    If a guy had designed the universe we would not have hernias. If a woman had designed the universe, babies would grow in a detachable sidecar.

    So I suspect the universe was designed by a malicious troll.

  18. Rich:

    You and Gregory (Designer / designer) should form a society for the correct naming of fictional entities.

    🙂

    Next controversial question: Is the Easter Bunny male or female?

  19. petrushka: Because females reproduce, sometimes without the benefit of males. The ancients figured this out. Some might say that the first Christians figured this out.

    But they couldn’t help tracing Jesus’ lineage through his stepfather.

    Ooh, snap!

  20. petrushka: If a guy had designed the universe we would not have hernias. If a woman had designed the universe, babies would grow in a detachable sidecar.

    So I suspect the universe was designed by a malicious troll.

    You’re hitting ’em today, Petrushka.

    Thanks for making me laugh when I needed something to cheer me up.

  21. Kantian Naturalist: Rosenberg thinks that our current science is more than adequate to show that intentionality doesn’t and cannot exist;

    String theory: science without intentionality;
    Biology, physics, chemistry: mainly science with intentionality;
    The social sciences: mainly science with only derived intentionality.

  22. Elizabeth,

    Heal the rift? I think not. These people threaten the world my children will grow up in. Fill that rift with the ignorance and hatred espoused by the intelligent design creationists and bulldoze over it.

    Because I don’t think that the views held by those who commissioned the Wedge are mostly, in practice, held by those who propose ID.

    I suspect the vast majority of the regulars at UD fall close to the Dominionists on social topics such as marriage equality and reproductive rights.

    But I do think the fears it touches on are also felt by many ID proponents — that to deny ID (as they see it denied, not as science, but as possiblity) is to open the door to moral degeneracy.

    It comes back to “if there’s no God, anything goes”. Which of course many of us dispute.

    What would healing the rift look like, to you? Are you suggesting something like Gould’s NOMA, where the intelligent design creationists are convinced that science has nothing to say about their beliefs?

    Ultimately the IDCists are trying to get their theology taught in public schools. There’s no room for compromise there.

  23. Patrick: What would healing the rift look like, to you? Are you suggesting something like Gould’s NOMA,

    Yes, that would be one approach.

    Another would be somehow managing to articulate (on the “materialist” side) that materialism doesn’t entail the abandonment of moral responsibility, nor does it mean that “science has disproved God”.

    And to be even more specific: I think it means tackling the ethics of abortion and homosexuality.

    I often think that those two are at the bottom of entire divide.

  24. From the OP:

    Firstly, I think it is important to understand that science does not, and cannot, claim that God does not exist.

    So just so I’m clear, now you’re talking to people on the ID side of the wedge, not the people who claim there’s a war between science and religion?

    From the OP:

    So there is an intrinsic asymmetry here: materialists are not, in general, claiming that theism is wrong, while theists are, in general, claiming that materialism is.

    Seriously? How many theistic materialists do you know? Why would anyone be a materialist if they believed in the existence of God? Materialists most definitely think theism is false.

    There’s no asymmetry and even if three were, so what? Materialism has so many holes in it materialist can’t even agree on what it means to be a “materialist.” About all they can seem to agree on is that there is no God.

  25. Mung,

    About all they can seem to agree on is that there is no God.

    Whereas theists – they agree on pretty much everything.

  26. Elizabeth: Patrick: What would healing the rift look like, to you? Are you suggesting something like Gould’s NOMA,

    I should invite Jerry Coyne here to disabuse us all of the notion that science and religion are reconcilable.

  27. Patrick, is your argument for the ID = “Dominion Theology” an argument from silence?

    Because seriously, you’re not in the least bit believable to someone who knows what Dominion Theology is. You may fool people here who don’t know better, but that’s just shame on you.

  28. Allan Miller:
    Whereas theists – they agree on pretty much everything.

    They agree on the existence of God. That’s why they are called theists. When you’ve got that list of materialists who believe in God compiled please be sure to post it.

  29. Richardthughes: I should invite Jerry Coyne here to disabuse us all of the notion that science and religion are reconcilable.

    No, please, no.

    Do feel free to post some of his arguments, though.

  30. Mung: Seriously? How many theistic materialists do you know? Why would anyone be a materialist if they believed in the existence of God? Materialists most definitely think theism is false.

    There’s no asymmetry and even if three were, so what? Materialism has so many holes in it materialist can’t even agree on what it means to be a “materialist.” About all they can seem to agree on is that there is no God.

    OK, so you are using “materialist” as synonymous with “strong atheist”. That wasn’t the sense in which I was using the term.

    Let me use the more neutral “ID proponents” and “ID critics”:

    Most ID critics do not claim that the science supports the case that theism is wrong. In contrast, ID proponents claim that science supports the case that it is right.

  31. Elizabeth,

    And to be even more specific: I think it means tackling the ethics of abortion and homosexuality.

    I often think that those two are at the bottom of entire divide.

    I see them more as a symptom than a cause. I have never heard any arguments against marriage equality or reproductive rights that are not based in religion. That’s one reason I have little hope for peace in the culture war, at least in the U.S. You can’t argue a person out of a position they weren’t argued into, and all that.

  32. Mung,

    Patrick, is your argument for the ID = “Dominion Theology” an argument from silence?

    Because seriously, you’re not in the least bit believable to someone who knows what Dominion Theology is. You may fool people here who don’t know better, but that’s just shame on you.

    I’m not trying to fool anyone. The fact is that the Discovery Institute is backed by a Dominionist. The fact is that the vast majority of intelligent design creationists are fundamentalist christians. The fact is that these people are actively working to destroy science education in this country.

    I don’t care if they all have slightly different theologies. What I care about is the culture war they started.

  33. Elizabeth,

    You can’t argue a person out of a position they weren’t argued into, and all that.

    Except that you can 🙂 Those are the easiest ones.

    For your first trick, may I suggest convincing Kairosfocus to support marriage equality? 😉

    I wonder if our difference of opinion is because I grew up in an area with evangelical churches that made the Congregationalists I was subjected to look like Universalist Unitarians. A rare few escape from those generations of indoctrination, but most, again in my experience, keep the faith.

    The only real option is to hold them back until they start dying off.

  34. keiths:
    Why are you asking Allan to support a claim he didn’t make?

    Because one way to respond to a non sequitur is with another non sequitur.

    What, exactly, does your question add to the discussion, if anything?

    Do you have a list of theistic materialists?

  35. Patrick:

    The fact is that the Discovery Institute is backed by a Dominionist.

    So? Is he their only backer, or are you cherry picking?

    Patrick:

    The fact is that the vast majority of intelligent design creationists are fundamentalist christians.

    1. Where do these facts come from?
    2. That doesn’t make them dominionists.
    3. Fundamentalist Christians are opposed to Dominion Theology.

    Patrick:

    The fact is that these people are actively working to destroy science education in this country.

    1. Where does this alleged fact come from?
    2. Fundy Christians or the DI crowd?
    3. Or do you just indiscriminately lump them all in together?

    Do you see Dominion Theology being advocated over at UD, and if so by whom?

    Patrick:

    I don’t care if they all have slightly different theologies. What I care about is the culture war they started.

    The culture war was not started by the DI. Get a grip.

  36. Elizabeth:
    Mung: could you tell me what you understand by the words “materialist” and “materialism”?

    Hi Lizzie,

    Fair enough. I don’t care to go back to the OP at this time to see where you defined how you were using the term, so I haven’t tried to be precise. I have explained how I think it is being used by “my side” and provided supporting references.

    There is no article titled materialism at SEP, instead there is a link to the article on Physicalism.

    So generally I take materialism to by synonymous with physicalism. I am however willing to accept the existence of nuances. So if I wanted to argue explicitly about materialism I would take the position taken in the book The Waning of Materialism.

    “…materialism is a certain view, or family of views, in the metaphysics of mind. Specifically, materialism is a certain view, or family of views, on the Mind-Body Problem, which concerns the ontological status of, and fundamental metaphysical relationship between, the mental and the physical …”

    But I honestly haven’t seen the need for such nuance based on anything I’ve read here yet.

    Regards

  37. The fact is that the Discovery Institute is backed by a Dominionist.

    The fact is that the Discovery Institute is backed by a Dominionist.

    The fact is that the vast majority of intelligent design creationists are fundamentalist christians.

    1. Where do these facts come from?
    2. That doesn’t make them dominionists.
    3. Fundamentalist Christians are opposed to Dominion Theology.

    Eskimos have 100 different words for snow. Those of us not in the arctic just see a lot of the same white stuff.

    As long as intelligent design creationists are pushing to have their theology taught as science, they are part of the problem.

  38. Yes, Patrick, I understand you.

    The “facts” don’t really matter. All this talk about “facts” is just so much smoke and mirrors. All that matters is them v us, even if they did not start it.

    And truth? Just another victim. Far be it from anyone to ask you to demonstrate the truth of your claims. So skeptical of them. Hah.

    Drive that wedge boy!

  39. The fact is that these people are actively working to destroy science education materialist indoctrination masquerading as science in this country.

    Fixed it.

  40. EL said:

    Most ID critics do not claim that the science supports the case that theism is wrong.

    Citation?

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