Binary Oasis

Daniel Dennett’s 2006 book Breaking the Spell is a book that was recommended to me by Adam, whose book review of The God Delusion at secweb.org suggested that reading Dawkins might not be the most useful book for me to read (since I am a theist). I’m glad for the recommendation, and I have tried to summarize my thoughts on Dennett’s work.

* I tend to agree that we can and should study religion scientifically, at least to an extent, though I don’t think it is dishonest to suggest that elements of religion will be outside of the realms of practical science.

* Is it okay to subject religion to this study and analysis? Drawing parallels to taboo subjects in fairly recent history (like the study of the human body using cadavers), he is trying to strengthen his eventual argument that we will be better off for the study of religion.

* Do most priests/pastors/rabbis/etc. believe that we should not use our intellect? Or, at the very least, do these religious teachers suggest that we should deny or suppress information that conflicts with our beliefs? I’m inclined to say that it is often true that religious leaders don’t allow for the possibility of mysteries in our lives. Our leaders come to resolute answers, but perhaps we need to come to humble conclusions, so that we are not blind to truth that is clearer to see in the future.

* Definitely don’t read this book if you don’t believe in evolution. It would be largely wasted time, though not entirely so, since he does use logic and philosophical arguments as well.

* Dennett has been categorized as a “Darwinian fundamentalist” by Stephen Jay Gould for the “influential but misguided ultra-Darwinian manifesto,” Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. That perspective rears its head in this book as well. While Dennett, on some level, realizes that he is presenting only theories (albeit compelling theories in some cases), he nonetheless tries to attach a sort of purity to his ideas about cultural evolution (and in particular religious evolution) by using the consensus of biological evolution as more than just an analogous idea.

* Dennett has a different idea than that of most of the atheists that I’ve heard, who claim that a particular religion or religions in general are man-made deceptions. While Dennett endorses the idea that elements of religion are due to outright or subtle deception, he instead notes that “at the root of human belief in gods lies an instinct on a hair trigger: the disposition to attribute agency — beliefs and desires and other mental states — to anything complicated that moves.” In other words, Dennett’s view is that religion is not fundamentally a deliberate fraud. Instead, his primary proposal seems to be that religion and its accompanying rituals were designed by cultural evolution.

* Dennett is very good at pointing out the common fallacies of religion in practice. In that sense, his book might be similar to reformation literature put out by religious leaders. Unfortunately, he doesn’t seem to allow for the existence of the religious reformer, and this weakens his argument considerably. In one particular case, he notes that religion (presumably through cultural evolution — not by the design of any particular person) holds up the “fundamental incomprehensibility of God” as an implication that so-called religious “experts” “don’t understand what they are talking about.” Certainly it is true that some “experts” are not fit to be called experts, but it is deceptive to suggest that difficult problems are not seriously considered by honest and conscientious religious leaders. Theology? You might not know that it is a serious study if you relied solely on Dennett.

* Dennett claims that “the fine tuning of the laws of physics can be explained without postulating an Intelligent Tuner…” and then says he has covered this “extensively” in “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea” “(especially ch 1 and 7).” This, at least on the surface, appears to be a deceptive statement. I would suggest that he has only very weak explanations for the apparent suitability of the universe for life. His arguments are heavy in analogies to biological evolution (and analogy does not a strong argument make). He is not out of the mainstream in this respect, however, since most explanations for the surprising suitability of the universe for life depend on arcane proposals of multiple universes or repeating universes. He also tries to avoid the problem by drawing the reader’s attention to the supposedly more difficult problem of the existence of God. He leverages Dawkins’ argument that the possibility of God existing is vanishingly small since (I paraphrase) the idea of such of profound and complex God is much more of a stretch that the idea that something as complex and unlikely as DNA could be created by chance. Dennett then addresses the theist’s objection that God is likely outside of our scientific rules: for instance, God has always existed, in spite of the profound nature of that proposal. That’s not playing fair, he claims. Perhaps he is right, but perhaps not, though Dennett does not effectively address this possibility (in my opinion).

* Now I draw a similar analogy and call to Dennett’s search for better understanding of cultural and religious evolution: just as he acknowledges that his story as he presents it may need to be revised, we can, in good faith, do the same with our understanding of God. For instance, I can update my theology to include a God that has worked through evolution (a statement that invites attack the way I have said it) and a Cosmological Big Bang. That is to say that I don’t have all the answers — in fact, I may be mistaken when I think that I have certain answers — but it does not follow that I have to reject religion or the existence of God.

* Dennett puts a great deal of value in some things that most religious people at least give lipservice to: namely, love and humility. In fact, he seems to profess that love is the most important thing in this world, and I would dare to interpret him as saying that a humble search for truth is a close second.

* Dennett’s Appendix B entitled “Some More Questions About Science” is some of his best writing, in my opinion. In it, he is careful to note the limitations of sciences while retaining the reasonable and consistent view that science is a reliable source of objective knowledge. He effectively counters the arbitrary dismissal of certain scientific conclusions by those who might wish to avoid those conclusions based on ideological reasons. Of course the key word here is “arbitrary.” Certainly we can and should question conclusions, and we can be suspicious of certain conclusions if were made by those with a conflict of interest, but we still need to judge the conclusions based on their merits.

* In general, Dennett appears to be objective, though he does make it fairly clear in the end that he believes that there is no God and that religion is bunk (though he usually uses softer language).

Ultimately, I like to think of the central issue of this debate as being this: can we explain away our existence using purely materialistic methods? We have not explained our existence satisfactorily using materialistic explanations in my opinion. Perhaps I am too greedy, since we have apparently explained so much (with perhaps the best materialistic successes being evolution and also our highly validated timeline of the Big Bang shortly after what we might call the beginning), but we still have in front of us the two most difficult problems known to man:

1) How did life first begin from non-life?

2) How do we explain the beginning of the universe?

I have much faith in science and logic, though I’m certainly not ready to put my faith in science to explain these things. Can we explain them by resorting to God? Well, certainly it is not a logical fallacy to suggest that he created the first self-replicating organisms or that He kicked off the Big Bang. Are there compelling reasons to put our faith in that explanation? Are there compelling reasons to believe that God exists and that we should live in a manner that would bring Him glory? I for one intend to find out.

While my investigation could be a lifelong journey, I plan to spend extra time in 2008 to examine any evidence, as directly as possible, of God’s revelation to us. Please feel free to give me food for thought or pointers to more resources.

Newsweek published some interesting survey results this week. If I had to summarize the main thrust of the survey, I’d say that it concerned religious belief systems and how it shapes ideas about evolution. Surveys can be colored to support a particular bias, but this particular subject matter is straightforward enough, and I can’t see any motivation for Newsweek to try to skew the results, so I assume that they are credible and representative.

Getting to the point, a few of the results of the survey are as follows:

• 91% of American adults believe in God
• 82% identify themselves as Christians
• 48% reject the theory of evolution
• 34% say that they accept the Biblical account of creation as fact
• 73% of Evangelical Protestants believe that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years

Apparently just about 40% of Catholic and non-Evangelical Protestants believe that last statement (that is, that God created human in their present form within the last 10,000 years).

This is very interesting to me. I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how we learn and form our thoughts, ideas, and beliefs. On those subjects that have any degree of complexity, or those subjects for which we gain the knowledge indirectly, we very often rely on sources that we believe to be credible. If I am correct, the “credible source” that shaped the thought of Evangelical Protestants is Henry Morris. For a slightly younger generation (perhaps those in their 20’s and 30’s), Ken Ham has been the source.

To the consternation of many Evangelicals, Young Earth Creationism has fallen out of favor with many Christians. I suspect that there are a number of interworking factors behind this trend, but perhaps the most significant factor was the rallying of a particular credentialed community to create a structured argument for Intelligent Design. This community was (and still is, I assume) comprised of individuals from a variety of faiths, but each was/is trying to use scientific principles, logic, and philosophy to build support for a theistic world view. While the impact of the ID argument has been limited outside of Christian circles (and other theistic circles), it did have the impact of opening many eyes within the Christian community. As a general rule, ID accepts the old universe (i.e. 13 to 14 billion years old), though ID’s proponents typically deny that evolution can explain the variety of life that we see on earth.

So here we stand with a seemingly insurmountable gulf between the belief system of Christianity and the theory of evolution (which, as I understand, is nearly universally accepted by those in the bioligical sciences). Where do we go from here? If Francis Collins has his way, we will try to bridge these together. Could we actually believe both in God and evolution without destroying one or the other? Collins believes so. In his book The Language of God, Collins argues for the existence of a personal God, and he also argues that we have, in DNA evidence, compelling and indisputable fingerprints of evolution.

It’s easy enough for a Christian to accept the argument that an atheist only believes in evolution because of his bias against God. It’s not as easy to reject a credible and accomplished Christian physician and geneticist like Dr. Collins. For that reason, I suspect that his book would receive a more than a mention if we were to compare the survey results of a similar Newsweek poll 10 years into the future. My own opinion is that the statistics will slowly change, with fewer Christians viewing evolution as a hostile ideology and more Christians viewing it as pretty good science and the best science that we have to offer.

6/12/07 edit: an updated poll and analysis.

I’m catching up on my Science Friday podcasts, and I found this one on pigeons to be very interesting. Ira Flatow interviews Andrew Blechman, author of “Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World’s Most Revered and Reviled Bird.” Most of us are familiar with the reasons to not like pigeons, but this book gives us some reasons to like them (and perhaps be inspired by them?). Pretty interesting stuff.

Well, I only had to renew the book four or five times (from Chandler Public Library), but I finally made it through Brian Greene’s “The Fabric of the Cosmos.” I strongly recommend it to those looking for an overview of string theory, though it is a relatively small portion of the book that is devoted to string theory. Even if you read just the first half of the book (before it touches on string theory), it’s a good read, and it feels like it can stand alone. There’s some great history in here as well. The historical overview ends up being perhaps the best part of the book.

Most of the topics are fleshed out with analogies, and he shies away from even the simplest math (though I understand he hits on the hard math in “The Elegant Universe”). Most of the time, his analogies and analysis are very good, but there were a few times that I felt his intermediate analysis (that is, not his final analysis) was not sound (or at least I didn’t follow him), particularly with respect to entropy increasing toward the past. He seems to be leading into the philosophical question of “How could things have begun?”, but he doesn’t actually phrase it that way, and he mostly ignores some of the philosophical questions (or at least lack of answers) that a beginning highlights.

The chapters on general relativity are good. It turns out that “spacetime” is absolute according to the general theory of relativity. Time is relative, and space is relative, but spacetime is absolute. So not everything is relative, even in our postmodern world.
The most important thing that I got from the book is that the motivation for string theory is not just a desire for a “beautiful unification” of the four forces. Instead, the primary motivation is that nonsense results when we try to combine quantum theory with general relativity theory. Both of those theories have ample theoretical and experimental support, but they break each other. That’s not a problem for just about all of our regions of interest, but it’s a huge problem for small, massive things like black holes and like the assumed early condition of the universe. We’ve always found that nature follows rules, so to have nonsensical or unspecified rules is a huge irritant for scientists.

String theory holds the hope of addressing some other questions such as “How is it that the universe seems to be designed for life?” Certain values and ratios and characteristics of things just “are,” and they are “just right” (see the anthropic principle for some more discussion). Greene thinks that string theory could help to address this issue from a scientific, not philosophical, perspective.

This book has certainly changed my perspective on string theory. I used to have some animosity toward the theory; now I am just one part indifferent and one part curious.
It will be interesting to follow some of the upcoming experiments that have the (small) possibility of providing support for string theory.

Louis Uchitelle’s 2006 book “The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences” is a fairly easy read, primary because he focuses on the story aspects of layoffs. Depending on the reader, that could prove to be frustrating since he doesn’t really discuss the alternatives to layoffs until the last chapter. His ultimate theme seems to be that the balance of negotiating power between workers and companies is resting too firmly with companies.

What are some of the costs of layoffs?

• Psychological stress and depression of both the laid-off workers and the workers that kept their jobs during a company’s layoff (this is perhaps the consequence that he focuses on in the book)
• Cost of lawsuits to companies (i.e. wrongful dismissal suits)
• Rising absenteeism among remaining discontented workers
• Lower productivity of workers due to lower commitment and motivation (”Why should I work so hard if my company has little commitment to me?”)

What are some of the author’s proposed alternatives or solutions to layoffs?

• Federal legislation to eliminate competition between municipalities to entice companies to locate within a particular city or state; in effect, this would be like enforced collective bargaining between local governments
• Stronger employee coalitions and unions
• Better data collection, including changes to the Bureau of Labor Statistics survey methods (with updated and more nuanced questions and with an annual survey as opposed to a biennial survey) and legislated public reporting of layoffs (and the related statistics of retirements, buoffs, temp work, and contract work) by companies
• Higher tax rates for high-income households to finance the expanded government programs related to the layoff reduction and management efforts
• Elimination of stock options and other short-term incentives to discourage layoffs as short-term profit or stock price boosters (he doesn’t clarify this point, but I feel compelled to note that layoffs, when they are done, should have a company’s long-term health in mind)
• Minimum severance packages as mandated by Congress
• Federally subsidized wages (”wage insurance”) for those taking jobs at lower pay after losing their jobs
• Elimination of “employment at will” clauses in legislation and employment agreements (I’m not positive that the author would agree with my summary of his view on “employment at will,” but I think that’s what he was saying)

Some of his “solutions” he recognizes as treating the symptoms only. For instance, his proposed reporting requirements on layoffs would serve to embarrass companies that are overly aggressive and harsh with respect to their layoffs.

He doesn’t say that layoffs are completely preventable. I’m sure he would have lost his credibility had he said so. Instead, he proposes that governments (primarily the federal government) should take a much more active role and that we need to focus on restoring a “communal society” in which we look out for each other.

The author tends to remain objective, though I’m sure that he hopes to pull on some heart strings with the stories that he relates. The book is well footnoted, though the footnotes are not referenced in the main text. You’ve have to proactively flip to the back of the book if you are looking for more background or a citation on a particular piece of text.

All in all, it is a good read with some good background on the history and underlying principles in the debates.

Don’t want to read the book? Check some recent podcasts by the News Hour, including an interview with Louis Uchitelle and an interview with Jeffrey Brown and Tom Friedman, authors of “Take This Job and Ship It” and “The World is Flat,” respectively.

I just started reading Richard Feynman’s book The Meaning of It All: Thoughts of a Citizen-Scientist.  Already I have a good quote (from the first page):

In these days of specialization there are too few people who have such a deep understanding of two departments of our knowledge that they do not make fools of themselves in one or the other.

That really struck a chord with me, and it also poses a problem of sorts: I have many interests, and I like to blog about many things, but as I widen my scope, I am more likely to turn off readers or embarrass myself.  Sure, it’s a risk that I’m willing to take.  If we are not forthcoming about our ideas, how can we effectively engage in “The Great Conversation” that exists in society?

10/12/06 update: I’ve been finished with the book for a while, but I thought it would be good to post a couple of other highlights:

* He talks about the “humility of the intellect,” or what I would usually refer to “intellectual honesty.”  It certainly seems that we could use more of that, especially with respect to politics.  (He talks about politics too. )

* He has a very interesting section that I would classify as relating to skepticism.  Namely, there are many things that we can’t disprove, but that don’t fit within what we know or believe to be true.  Now, there is perhaps the chance that we are wrong about them, but we should be able to get a good idea by applying some good logical thought.

I didn’t take very careful notes with this book, so I’m sure I’m not doing it justice.  It’s a fun read, and it has enough good principles and good discussion in it that most readers should be a little smarter and wiser after finishing it.