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ciphergoth comments on Rationality Quotes January 2010 - Less Wrong
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Armstrong's reply is nothing but chiding Harris for being rude, and waffle. Returning to the "niceness" discussion, it strikes me that if Harris had made the same points with a straight face and without sarcasm, Armstrong would have been left with nothing but waffle.
He absolutely gave her something to use against him by being sarcastic in a public forum, but I think he made a rational decision that an interesting dialogue in which he could be called snide would catch much more attention than the dull one in which he makes a polite, logically airtight case and receives a shorter reply full of nothing much.
Edit: Oh, I was going to add: and I now know a lot more about Armstrong than I would otherwise, namely, that her argumentative approach is deceitful and based on manipulating her audience's moral feelings.
I'm not sure Armstrong's reply is so bad as all that-- it's legitimate to point out that there's a difference between doing science and using the reputation of science as an excuse to commit atrocities, as in Communism and Nazism.
Armstrong's reply was not up when I first read the article. I am glad you brought that to my attention.
I am stunned at her reply. She completely missed the point that Harris was making (not surprising, I have known some pretty smart people who were caught flat-footed by the philosophical tool of object replacement). That she did not catch the comparison of witchcraft in Africa as a form of religious practice is... well, stunning.
Yes, Karen, what we need to do with Theologists such as William Lane Craig, who whole-heartedly defends the genocidal acts of his God in the old testament, is to have their theology enriched by rationalizing of those atrocities rather than have them understand why they do not stand up to a rational criticism.
Can you elaborate? What is the tool of "object replacement"?
It is essentially what Harris did in the article. He replaced the noun objects of Armstrong's point with other, analogous/isomorphic objects to illustrate that the point being made did not have the merit that Armstrong thought it did.
I'll see about looking up the term as it applies to Propositional Logic. It's a more widely recognized term (at least here).
Yeah, but waffle is all Armstrong ever writes when she puts her theologian hat on, and it doesn't seem to bother her fans in the slightest. Using sarcasm allowed Harris to point out the ridiculousness in her article without giving the impression that it was sane enough to deserve a respectful reply.
To "point out" means to induce others to see what you see. Do you think that Harris's approach reliably induces people who don't already agree with him to see the ridiculousness that he sees? I suspect that he accomplishes little more than signaling his tribal loyalties, while exacerbating antipathy towards his tribe by non-tribe-members.
Since the people he has to convince are religious believers, I think his approach is about as reliable as the 'nice' approach, which is to say it's almost completely worthless. However, it has other benefits that the nice approach doesn't have.
Unless I'm reading you wrong, those "other benefits" amount to no more than signaling tribal loyalties, at least in practical terms.
ETA: . . . and if that kind of behavior helps a tribe to grow, it does so for non-truth-tracking reasons, producing a tribe full of people who are there just because they like the company.
The benefit is to help other non-believers (and perhaps a few believers) realize that Armstrong's article (and defense of religion in general) doesn't fit into the category of "Respectable beliefs I disagree with", it fits into the category of "Intellectually dishonest nonsense that should be scorned and ridiculed".
It's a benefit closely related to breaking the taboo that protects religious beliefs and raising the sanity waterline.
If the benefit of scorn and ridicule is just to inform others about what to scorn and ridicule, then I don't see the point. Scorn and ridicule aren't terminal values.
That would be true if the ability to deride were a reliable signal of sanity. But derision is cheap; it's a tool that is equally available to the insane.
One of the things that keep religion alive in western society in the 21st century is the dogma, widespread even among atheists, that even if religious beliefs are false they're sane enough to deserve respect. In other words, most non-believers treat mainstream religious beliefs as if they were like the belief that the Washington Redskins are going to win the 2010 Superbowl rather than like the belief that Tom Cruise is the son of Xenu, Lord of the Galactic Confederacy.
The first step towards a society in which ridiculous beliefs are acknowledged to be ridiculous, is to stop acting as if these beliefs aren't ridiculous. The point of ridicule is first to make those who hold ridiculous beliefs feel ashamed or at least uncomfortable, and second to help make rationalists feel the appropriate emotion when dealing with such extremes of irrationality. The end goal is a society in which people have the same attitude towards religious beliefs than they do towards belief in alien abductions.
I'm dubious of militant atheism, as it seems counter-productive. Promoting atheism is closely related to promoting science. Aggressively promoting science and proclaiming it to be in direct conflict with religion will polarize society as religious groups will in turn attack science. On the other hand, if you just quietly taught science to everyone and not mention anything about a conflict, religious people would just compartmentalize their beliefs so that they didn't interfere with the things science teaches. You'd basically get people who were technically religious, but close to none of the negative sides.
This has pretty much already happened in my country (Finland). The majority still belongs to a religious domination, but religion is considered a private thing and actually arguing in favor of something "because of the Bible" will get you strange looks and likely branded as a fanatic. Yes, there is still a Christian political party in parliament, but they're a minor player, fielding 7 representatives out of 200. There has traditionally been practically no public debate about any sort of conflict between science and religion, though that's possibly changing as parts of the populace have began to express a fear of Islam. Judging from past evidence, that is probably just going to make any clash of cultures worse. That article is also a good example of the results you'll get when the debate gets polarized, as it shows people who might otherwise have been moderates become extremists.
And yes, we should regardless still continue to provide some critique of religion and the fallacies involved, to shift the social consensus even further into the "religion is just a private way you look at the world, not something you can base real-world decisions on" camp. But one can do that without being overly aggressive.
Pardon my drooling - I live in the United States. The inmates run much of the asylum here.
Do you know the history of how Finland acheived this compartmentalization of religion? Are there lessons in the path you followed that we can learn from? We can't directly follow your current-day practices because our would-be theocrats are still quite rabid, and hold significant power. I agree that head-on confrontation doesn't work. What did work?
Humans are social animals. Inducing shame and discomfort might be useful if the believer is isolated away from other believers and cannot rely on them for emotional support. If not, he or she will likely relieve their shame by seeking the company of fellow believers, reinforcing the affiliation with the believing group.
Or they'll give up their belief to avoid looking like a nut. I know several Christian fundamentalists who've done just that. Unfortunately, since 'moderate' or 'liberal' religion is still respected, they just became Christians of a different type instead of atheists.
How exactly do you expect to make humanity acknowledge the ridiculousness of religion if you yourself continue to act as if it was a respectable position?
Perhaps it seems tautologous that ridicule is the best way to deal with the ridiculous. So I'm tabooing the word "ridiculous". What do you mean by it?
Does it just mean "crazy" in the sense in which Eliezer uses it? Then, for what reason do you believe that ridicule (e.g., sarcasm and contemptuous scorn) is the best way to achieve your end goal?
If I read "crazy" where you wrote "ridiculous", then your claim is that the first step towards a society in which crazy beliefs are acknowledged to be crazy is to heap scorn and contempt on them. But this is far from obvious. How do you make this argument without relying on the verbal similarity between the words "ridiculous" and "ridicule"?
Pretty much.
Well, not in all situations, and it doesn't necessarily have to be scorn and contempt, it could also be incredulity ("You believe WHAT?!"), for example. The point is to shock people out of their usual way of thinking, and that sometimes requires a bit of finesse. But a lot of the time scorn and contempt is necessary, yes.
The idea is that faith and self-deception are bad, while truth and rationality are good. So we reward good behavior and punish bad behavior.
How did the gay movement make so much progress in so little time? Was it by engaging in gentle, respectful debate with their opponents? Of course not. They just pointed out the obvious repeatedly: Those people are intolerant bigots. It was obvious, and yet somehow it hadn't really entered public consciousness, even among those who had the kind of morality that should have lead them to support gay rights. Now that it has, most of those whom we now call homophobes haven't suddenly become enlightened, but they've been forced to dilute their language if not their beliefs if they want to be part of the public sphere.
There's more than that to the gay movement's accomplishments, but heaping scorn and contempt on their opponents is definitely a big part of it. If it worked that movement, why not for this one?
It's not just verbal similarity - one is derived from the other. It indeed seems merely definitional that the ridiculous ought to be ridiculed, though not necessarily that it is 'the best' way of dealing with it.