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CCC comments on Rationality Quotes Thread September 2015 - Less Wrong
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The thing is, if it really was such a low-hanging fruit, then it would seem likely that the most successful scientists would have done so already (there's a lot in rationality which makes it good at science). Since the same article points out the existence of Nobel laureates who are religious in one or other way, I think it is not nearly as obvious a matter as the article suggests...
Religious belief is apparently much less common
especially if one defines "religious belief" in a way that makes it have actual consequences for the observable world (e.g., a god who actually affects what happens in the world rather than just winding it up and then leaving it alone).
See e.g. this summary of the results of asking scientists about their beliefs and the letter to Nature that the summary is mostly about. (Note: there's some scope for debate about the interpretation of these results, though I find the arguments at the far end of that link extremely unconvincing.)
[EDITED to fix a wrong link; thanks to CCC for pointing it out.]
I notice that their definition of "greater scientists" - which seems to have been what you referred to as "very successful scientists" - was "members of the National Academy of Sciences". While I have no doubt that one needs to be a pretty great scientist to become a member, the results lead me to wonder whether the membership process for joining the Academy has an atheist bias in it somewhere.
I notice that the figures for scientists generally are more constant from 1914 to 1996, with approximately 60% of scientists expressing "disbelief or doubt in the existence of God" - since the selection of respondents here is not subject to the (potentially biased) membership process of a single organisation, I would give this general figure far greater credence that it shows what it purports to show.
(Also, I think you may have linked the wrong page in your "scope for debate" link - it's linking to the same page as your "this summary" link)
It's possible. (I suppose new members are nominated and elected by existing members, and people may tend to favour candidates who resemble themselves and be influenced by politics, religion, skin colour, etc., etc., etc.) It would need to be quite a strong bias to produce the reported results in the absence of a tendency for "greater scientists" to be less (conventionally) religious than scientists in general.
The last paragraph of the Larson-Witham letter to Nature looks to me like (weak) evidence against a strong atheistic bias in the NAS, in that if there were such a bias I would expect its public utterances and those of its leaders to be a bit less conciliatory. As I say, weak evidence only.
(There could also be a bias in responses; maybe atheists are more cooperative in surveys or something. I would expect any such bias to be small and it's not obvious to me which way it's more likely to go.)
Yup, I did. I've linked the right one now. Sorry about that.
Yes, that's the sort of thing I'm thinking of. People (in general) are usually more comfortable associating with people who share their opinions.
Very weak evidence; it's easy to be conciliatory if one can also be smugly superior in pointing out how wrong the other party is (which is one possible, not necessarily correct interpretation of the last sentence of that paragraph).
That is a point which I had not considered. I'm not sure which way it would go either (unless they did the survey by phoning people at their homes on a Sunday morning, when many Christians would be at church, but that would just be stupid)
Ah, thanks.
...that Gallup evolution poll at the start seems quite telling. It suggests that the difference between scientists and the general public is entirely in the (much larger) rejection of young-earth creationism. This fits with my expectations (which is probably why I draw attention to it).
Don't forget that at that point the atheists are all out at orgies and baby-killing parties. (Seriously: yeah, that would be stupid, and I'm pretty sure they weren't that stupid.)
I don't agree with your interpretation of it. The reported numbers (no god : theistic evolution : creationism) go 55:40:5 for scientists and 9:40:46 for the general public; both the no-god and creationism options are very different between those populations.
It's hard to infer anything from only three numbers per distribution, but it looks to me very much like an overall shift, with the similarity of the "theistic evolution" numbers on both sides being basically coincidence.
Really? I would have expected either sleeping late or watching the rugby.
Fair enough. It's only three numbers, that's consistent with thousands of possible reasons.
It's not impossible. I don't see it as a spectrum, though; I see it as three entirely opposing positions. And the young-earth creationists either change their minds when becoming scientists (and since, in their minds, the concept of God is tied up with young-earth creationism, they abandon both) or fail to become scientists entirely.
...actually, now that I think of it, it should be possible to tell the difference between those two ideas, at least. Young-earth creationism is linked to geography in America, right? So if there are less scientists who grew up in in areas where young-earth creationism is more widely known, then that would imply that fewer young-earth creationists become scientists. That, in turn, would imply that my interpretation is incorrect, and there is something about becoming a scientist which makes theistic evolution also less likely than in the general population...
Do you have any idea where these stats can be found?
In case it wasn't obvious: I was joking. (I, for one, spend very little of my time at orgies and baby-killing parties.)
I think actually both views are right. I mean, (1) there is definitely a spectrum there (there is no god - there is a god, who set up the universe and has left it alone since then - there is a god, who mostly leaves the universe alone but sometimes gets involved in subtle ways like inspiring people to do good - there is a god, who mostly leaves the universe alone but sometimes tweaks evolution a bit to arrange for the emergence of a species capable of loving relationship with him - there is a god, who made a world in which life evolves precisely so that he could steer that process in all kinds of ways, which he does - there is a god, whose influence on the variety of life on earth mostly operates through evolution but who also sometimes makes more dramatic changes - there is a god, who directly created lots of different kinds of living thing but who has let them evolve since then, which is responsible for much small-scale variation - there is a god, who created every species separately in recent history, and evolution is just a lie) but (2) the gap between theism and atheism is a particularly big one, and so is the gap between "life is old and basically has common ancestry" and "life is recent and involves lots of special creation" and (3) I'm sure quite a lot of people do flip from near one end to near the other when they change their minds about what gods, if any, exist.
I worry that they'd be hard to disentangle from other things (e.g., wealthier versus poorer areas, which would affect education and what kinds of jobs people do and so forth; socially entrenched attitudes to academic learning; etc.). I'd guess that (1) there are indeed fewer, and worse, scientists from areas with a lot of young-earth creationism but (2) this doesn't really tell us much about direct influence of science on religion or vice versa, because of all those other factors. There are some US government statistics that might tell you some of what you want to know.
[EDITED to add: If anyone has a clue why this was downvoted, I'd be very interested. It seems so obviously innocuous that I suspect it's VoiceOfRa doing his thing again, but maybe I'm being stupid in some way I'm unable to see.]
Look at the first paragraph of your post. Using "humor" to cover bad arguments.
Yes, I tend to apply a higher standard to comments then just about everybody else.
Including your own? I beg to differ.
OK, I looked at the first paragraph. I see the (attempt at) humour. I don't see how it's covering (or trying to cover) a bad argument, or indeed any argument at all. What bad argument do you think I was attempting to cover?
I don't think "higher" is the right word here. That impression you have that no one else appreciates how awful your political opponents' arguments are? That's what being mindkilled feels like from the inside.
I... occasionally find humour in taking things very, very literally even when clearly intended otherwise. (That, and accidental puns. Accidental puns can be hilarious.)
Alright, yes, you can create a spectrum between "there is a god, who set up the universe and has left it alone since then" and "there is a god, who created every species separately in recent history, and evolution is just a lie" - but I don't think that you can really tack "there is no god" to one end of the spectrum and consider it part of the same thing. That's like saying that there's a spectrum from "planet teeming with life" to "lifeless planet" and then sticking "planet does not exist" onto the lifeless planet end of the spectrum.
...agreed.
The way I see it, people decide where on the spectrum they think the universe is. And some of them sit on the "evolution is a lie" end. And, if and when they find evidence that evolution is, in fact, not a lie, they don't generally just adjust their position on the spectrum; many of them will rather jump off the spectrum entirely, becoming atheists.
...you're probably right. A survey could be created to try to avoid these problems, but it would have to be specifically created, simply looking up old stats probably won't do it.
You can talk about a spectrum between "planet large enough for life to exist", "planet which is a little smaller which makes it a little harder for life to exist" all the way down to "no planet with no life". You can do that because in this spectrum, the extent to which the planet exists and the chance of life are connected. In the God example, the spectrum is "degree to which things can be explained without God". If you have evolution, there is one less thing that you need God to explain, and you get one step closer to not needing God to explain anything. And with nothing to need God for you can then reject the existence of God.
Ah, OK. Yes, I do that too. I just thought I should check :-).
"No god" and "god who does nothing" are very different metaphysically but have the exact same observable consequences, and evidence for or against one will equally be evidence for or against the other. I don't see that it's obviously inadmissible to put them next to one another. Of course the more interesting notions of god are ones that do do something (even if only to create a universe according to their whims rather than according to the dictates of some "mindless" physical theory), but we've already agreed (I think) that those can be put on a spectrum that has "perfectly inactive god" on it.
My perspective is a little different. They decide the following three interlinked things: (1) where the observable features of the universe lie on that spectrum, (2) what their religious position is, and (3) how the universe should look if #2 is correct. They generally decide these so that they're reasonably consistent with one another. Then if they learn new things about #1, they may change either #2 or #3 to make it match; if they change #2 they may convert or deconvert; if they change #3 they may change their theology or their ideas about physics or something.