The zealously religious often express mistrust and disdain for academia. They direct ire toward scientists. Why? Because these people are too head-oriented. They are removed from the truth of a god “in their hearts.” Or wherever else that truth may reside. Maybe the spleen.
Me, I certainly heed the hunches of my feelings and allow them to guide my behavior, like a personal advisor might suggest a course of action. But when it comes to making decisions in which I have the time and information to do so consciously and deliberately, I rely on my head.
For example, as a rule I don’t gamble. When I break that rule I do it fully knowing I am paying to entertain myself. If I am willing to shell out a few bucks to generate some excitement, fine. The reasoning section of my brain understands, fortunately, that gambling is a losing proposition. Feeling lucky? Take a cold shower.
I also choose not to gamble with what I believe about the universe. The cold showers to which I subject my craving for knowledge consist of books, websites, magazines, courses, presentations, and discussions with knowledgeable others.
On the subject of gods, the human experts of the known — scientists — have found no evidence of The Big Guy. None. Zero. Those who claim they have evidence mean to say they have inferences, and there is a difference.
Are scientists biased, not looking hard enough? Are they fudging the numbers so Satan has a comfy home in the university lab? I don’t think so. Finding credible evidence of a god, in data that could be verified and validated by other experts, would be bigger than big. The scientist or group of scientists who did would be awarded the Nobel Prize and more. Scientists are human. In other words, they are motivated by recognition and reward.
Why are no teams of serious experimenters working on a god-detector? Why aren’t engineers planning and building a device for tracking down the tracks of The Almighty? Certainly human ingenuity and technology are up to the task. Heck, physicists have positively confirmed the existence of particles called “neutrinos.” These subatomic particles can pass through walls of material thousands of miles of thick without so much as causing a squeak. Nonetheless, cunning engineers have found a way to pry their existence out of background noise and a previous void in the data. Not even the Crossing Over guy can detect neutrinos. But scientists have.
Why do the vast majority of scientists leave gods out of their research? Because they full well know that all previous gaps in our knowledge have been filled with naturalistic mechanisms. All. And they see no reason why that won’t be the case in the future.
When a god’s batting average is a perfect zero, it’s time to pull him from the field of play.
Every Sunday over the coming months I will engage in irrational behavior. I will jump up and yell when a man I’ve never met carries a stitched-together, inflated, oblong pigskin ball over a line drawn in the artificial turf. Yes, I am an NFL fan. And although I have never met any of the current members of the New England Patriots, whenever something good or bad happens to them, I will feel it. (In my defense, I grew up in a town outside Boston. I guess old allegiances die hard.)
It’s crazy, I know. Maybe my behavior should be criticized. Maybe psychologists should study why I do it. Here’s a hunch: Perhaps it has something to do with the misplaced tendencies of my “tribal mind.” On some level it’s possible that I believe the men on the team I have adopted as my virtual coalition are going to bring home some of the spoils of their victory. Among these is status. (The cheerleaders I could do without. But I guess the winning team doesn’t get to keep them as the pom-pommed booty from battles won.) Is that what is really going on with me and millions of others? I’d like to know. And once I did know, I just might persist in loving pro football.
Because I am well aware I engage in what can only be described as irrational behavior, I try to be tolerant of other types of activities that make absolutely no sense to me yet other people nonetheless get passionate about. Such as NASCAR and television soap operas.
I also try to view religious behavior the same way, with one significant exception: that practitioners of religion understand what they perceive as important and are passionate about is a personal matter. Sure, go ahead and believe Jesus once walked on water and will one day return to Earth. In my semi-facetious analogy, so, in my own way do I believe that Tom Brady performed a number of miraculous feats. But not in recent seasons. For he fell and has yet to rise again. Maybe this season he will prevail over the forces of evil — such as the New York Jets.
I have no qualms with personal irrationality provided believers don’t claim that what they are irrationally exuberant about is a truth that all others need to recognize and respect if not likewise participate in.
Unfortunately, many, many believers do make those claims. They force what should be a personal matter into town square. And that is why others, like me, deem it necessary to speak up in opposition.
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Word choice. So important. Not just to advertising companies and politicians. Scientists and science writers should likewise pay attention to the words they use. Not because they want the most bang for their syllables, but because words can be misleading. Inaccurate. They can slant and spin the issue. And no good scientist wants that. Does she?
Two recent news releases about research into religious matters set off the language-police siren in my mind. Oh sure, the perceived mis-use of language may seem slight . . . but the smallest turn of a vehicle steering wheel can add up to a big influence. By “vehicle,” I’m talking public perception.
The first I encountered over at ScienceDaily: Doctors’ Religious Beliefs Strongly Influence End-of-Life Decisions, Study Finds
The finding, as worded in the lead . . .
Atheist or agnostic doctors are almost twice as willing to take decisions that they think will hasten the end of a very sick patient’s life as doctors who are deeply religious, suggests research published online in the Journal of Medical Ethics. [emphases added]
Interesting.
Word choice question #1: Why take decisions and the the customary make decisions? Seems to have more radical connotations to me.
Word choice question #2: Why the following switch-a-roo with terms?
And doctors with a strong faith are less likely to discuss this type of treatment with the patient concerned, the research shows.
I thought the variable in question was religious belief. Why the use of strong faith? That term seems to have slightly different connotations. Will it steer people’s perceptions away from the bedrock of the more scientific elements? I wonder.
In the following sentence we do not see the same type of verbal polish applied to the other extreme:
But irrespective of specialty, doctors who described themselves as “extremely” or “very non-religious” were almost twice as likely to report having taken these kinds of decisions as those with a religious belief.
Why not refer to these individuals as “doctors with fully naturalistic worldviews” (or some shorter alternative)? And why was the adverb extremely applied only to the strongly non-religious? Why not extremely religious? Hmm. Extreme seems to have negative connotations.
The final sentence pulls yet another verbal switch:
The author concludes that the relationship between doctors’ values and their clinical decision making needs to be acknowledged much more than it is at present.
Wait. I thought we were talking religious beliefs and lack thereof. How did values get in there? Granted, they probably do play a role. But good science and science writing plays no such shell games; it makes clear when it has veered away from the research results into a more speculative area.
As for the values and decision-making, I can hear some folk spinning the finding now. Non-religious doctors, you know, atheists, do not value human life like religious doctors do, thus they are more likely to pull the plug and or let their patients die.
That would be quite a spin. For another possible interpretation might be: Non-religious doctors feel freer to heed the wishes of their patients and/or to help ease their suffering by allowing a quicker, less painful death. Or something.
Yet another spin: The beliefs of strongly religious doctors cause them to ignore the patient’s needs and suffering at end-of-life.
Words. How you use them makes a world of difference. They can paint a picture that may inaccurately reflect the complex truth of an issue.
The second article a ran into over at EurekAlert — Study: Generation X more loyal to religion. Notice in the following how the choice of just one word can have such important connotations.
As Generation X continues to grow older, this loyalty may translate into a more stable nation in terms of its religiosity, he said.
A stable nation. Stability is good, right? What if the word had been static? What if the the words were, “may translate into a less dynamic nation”? Or “less progressive”?
Okay, I’ll shut down my verbal radar and quiet the siren. For now. Maybe the above is much ado about little. But then again, maybe it isn’t.
As an altar boy decades ago I was informed that when I rang the bells after the priest had raised the chalices toward heaven, transubstantiation occurred. Right there and then the wine became the blood of Jesus, the bread his body. Yuck! I must have written it off as adult make-believe, for as I helped with communion, holding the shiny golden plate beneath the chins of my neighbors, I could plainly see that the round, white wafers hadn’t changed one whit. And the wine still had the same grape juice color and was giving off its unmistakable alcohol vapors.
Sure, the every-Sunday, supernatural feat of transubstantiation is Catholic doctrine, but do any modern folk believe it actually occurs and is not just religious poetry? To enlighten myself on the matter, I consulted the almighty Google, and found this very helpful quote at www.rosary-center.org:
We are dealing here with something that cannot be verified or even examined by natural science. The nature of the change brought about in the Eucharist as taught by the Church, lies beyond what chemistry, physics or biology are able to establish. We have it on the clear words of Our Lord, and we can only assent to it through the supernatural light of faith.
I see. But this raises a number of questions. We need not heed the data of the real world; we must accept that something really does happen on the clear words of Our Lord. Hmm. Are the words truly that clear and not subject to different interpretations? Are they in fact the words of a lord? How do we know? Is one person’s hunch, I mean faith, as good a guide to truth as another person’s?
And what about that bit about supernatural light? Does this supernatural light have similar qualities to electromagnetic radiation in the visible spectrum — pleasantly colorful and potentially warming? Or is supernatural light more like light of the x-ray frequency? Or is it so super that it has a frequency and thus energy beyond that of gamma radiation? What does it all mean?
In a liberal (meaning free and progressive), educated, democratic society, the gods of religion rule in the ever smaller niches not occupied by reason, vote, and scientific methodology and knowledge. Modern medicine, law enforcement, and technological advancement make the domains of the gods ever smaller. To insure bountiful crops we spread fertilizer. To reform a person who has behaved badly, previously referred to as a sinner but now more often called a criminal, we send him to prison or to counseling or make him do community service. To ensure a safe passage home for the holidays we check the Weather Channel and have the guys at the local Spiffy Lube give the car a 32-point inspection.
The domain of gods is indeed getting chiseled down. Me, I’d like to get it done with once-and-for-all. How? Perhaps by grabbing “God” by the scruff of his neck and drop-kicking him into oblivion. And I could do it too, with my holy kicking power. Oh no, you can’t see or verify this power. You have to accept it on the supernatural light of gullibility.
[cartoon thanks to jesusandmo.net]
Not thirty feet from my head a shark sliced along the clear wall of a building wave. Its dorsal fin briefly split the surface before it descended and was gone. I had just surfed into an area of mush — topside evidence of an underwater breach in the sand bar. As I turned and paddled back out I spotted the five-foot shark. I pushed past the break and sat up, my toes dangling in the home of the toothed torpedo. Moments later everyone was called out of the water. When a nineteen year-old with white goop on her nose, designer sunglasses, and red flag blows her whistle, I guess it’s serious. I paddled in.
I live in the shark-attack center of the world. Around the globe there are roughly 70 reported “shark incidences” each year. Florida’s eastern shore accounts for nearly 30 of them. Fortunately, no Great Whites inhabit our waters. The shark attacks at the beaches I surf are of the you’ll-need-a-few-quick-stitches-in-the-emergency-room variety. Hands and feet get bloodied, not outright stolen. Still, no one wants to get bitten by a shark. But there’s no way to surf without running the risk.
While surfing gives me a physical thrill, science mentally excites me. Both are risky pursuits in their own ways. With science you put your beliefs to a test; you conduct research to see if they withstand challenge.
The risk is that when it comes to the actual data, your belief/hypothesis may take a wipe-out. Then what?
Then you jettison your bruised ego and head back into the action.
Consider this scenario: A surfing friend tells you that when you were out of state, for 7 days and 7 nights there was an endless procession of perfectly glassy waves tubing their way to shore. He had the waves all to himself and he surfed until his arms quit. Would you believe him? I might say, Dude, your beautiful story is making me cry. But until I see the photos, I ain’t buying it.
Tales are like the wake of a surfboard. The scratch a surfer leaves in the face of a wave quickly disappears after the fact; the storyteller is then free to say anything he or she wants about it. Without somehow catching the bubbling slice, there is no hard evidence to prove a tale right or wrong.
It is not, however, up to the listener to prove the tale-teller wrong; it is the tale-teller’s responsibility to provide something more substantial than yet more words to establish the veracity of his or her claim.
Of course, if a claim can’t be verified there is no risk involved. Is it any wonder that the bulk of religious tales and claims can’t be tested? And so they are safe.
Accepting dogma and having faith is easy. Just listen and let be. “Doing science,” however — formally or informally — takes time, effort and exposure to potentially embarrassing, bruising correction.
Not many people surf. There is less danger and more comfort on shore.
One week in 2008 the Orlando Sentinel carried a story of what was basically a non-fatal, freak accident that very well could have been fatal. The word “miracle” appeared in the headline. A boy had been following behind a heavy-duty lawnmower when a long, thin shard of metal shot out from beneath. The projectile nearly flew completely through the boy, but didn’t. After piercing his pancreas and abdominal aorta, it stopped. Because the projectile didn’t have the necessary momentum to continue its flight, the piece of metal sealed its own hole in the boy’s aorta. Otherwise he would have bled to death.
The newspaper dutifully reported the father’s conjecture: God had has hand on the boy. While the boy came very close to dying, he didn’t, thus a god was involved.
Critical thinkers and non-believers in miracles might venture to wonder why the god hadn’t completely deflected the path of the metal shard, sparing the boy all trauma. It is actually as much a miracle (i.e., highly improbable event) that the boy was not only hit, but hit above the waist. Most mower accidents of this kind involve injury to the lower legs.
Of the fat pie slice of a direction it could have flown in, the projectile seemed to have zeroed in on the worst target possible. The vital organs of an innocent boy. But it only “seemed to have zeroed in” if you bother to inject meaning into what was an accident.
In cases such as these, thoughts of miracles are a cognitive Band-Aid placed over an ugly truth that could have been uglier. In reality, miracles have nothing to do with truth, besides masking it.
Because people like to read and hear about improbable events (the seemingly miraculous), news agencies repeat them. Next story: Video of a cat that rescues a drowning mouse! Now that’s news!
