God-Bashing

After reading The God Delusion when it came out I thought I'd give a miss to Christopher Hitchens's version, God is Not Great. You can have too much of a good thing. But I'm catching up with it now and rather enjoying it - a whisky-sozzled rant, but erudite and entertaining, and spot on in many ways.

In fact I'm slightly disquieted by not finding much in it that I strongly disagreed with, although I would probably have expressed it differently. It's very polemical - Hitchens uses the word 'stupid' a lot, which not many writers can get away with - but applied to the absurdity and cruelty that institutional religion is so richly capable of that seems fair enough.

Unlike other God-bashers Hitchens is quite interested in religion and knows a bit about its history. He engages with the devout parents of female partners, and visits churches, synagogues and mosques. He also argues amicably with religiously-inclined friends, to the extent that they consider him a 'seeker', implying that he is on some sort of spiritual journey.

This annoys him, as he considers himself a born sceptic. He cringed, he says, when, aged nine, a favourite teacher suggested God had kindly arranged for all trees and grass to be green, a naturally restful colour (as opposed to orange or purple), intuitively knowing that eyes were adjusted to nature and not the other way about. He didn't know any science then; he 'simply knew, almost as if I had privileged access to a higher authority...' This clear insight at such an early age intrigues me. I can personally remember being vaguely bothered by these sorts of God-questions as a child, but I put them off as being far too difficult to deal with.

Of course Hitchens targets that very literal view of scriptural religion which I'm tempted to say no serious person could believe, except that unfortunately so very many people do. It's especially alarming to us secular-ish Europeans to see how the wave of fundamentalist religiosity is lapping ever closer to the centres of power in the US, and presidential candidates like Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann with their religious certainties, public prayer meetings and social intolerance.

Reading Hitchens it strikes me over again that the New Atheists' quarrel is really with religion as a social and political force, not as a private, interior relationship with the divine. Not that they are at all tolerant towards New Age-type faith, but here, just as in Dawkins's book there's nothing at all about religion as an inner experience: it's just not on their radar. They give it a sideswipe but don't think of it as 'real' religion, of the kind that they can stick a boot into. Actually I thought Hitchens might have a go in a short chapter headed 'There is no eastern religion', but this turned out to consist of - entirely justified - complaints about dodgy cults and gurus and an equally brief comment on the propensity for warfare and persecution indulged in by those nice peaceful Buddhists.

A key point for atheists is that religion is not necessary for people to behave well. That's true in the most obvious sense. Secularists are not noticeably less principled than religious believers, while some believers seem devoid of conscience (eg sadist nuns and paedophile priests.)

But I wonder if it really is so simple? There's a lot of bewilderment just now, in the aftermath of the riots in British cities, about how even many well-off young people saw nothing wrong in helping themselves to stuff from shops that were being looted, even if they didn't initiate it. Commentators are shocked, as if it's a mysterious aberration. I don't think it is. When I was a student in the 1970s it was considered quite in order not to pay for books, and even friends or people who I respected cheerfully nicked one or two a week. I can't even say it was moral principle that stopped me doing likewise; it might just have been a reluctance to break the law, or sheer cowardice, for that matter. I think it was trendy socialism that justified this - ie education should be free - and I get the feeling that this lot have a similar sense of entitlement.

But any religion tells you theft is wrong, and once you start to engage with it you clean up your act in all sorts of ways. From my own experience, and from what I have observed with friends and acquaintances, contact with religious teaching of more or less any kind actually does sharpen the moral sensibility, even for those who already consider themselves decent and law-abiding. On the other hand these teachings tend to be of the spirituality type, and not the traditional theism that seems so often to breed intolerance and cruelty.

Also atheists rather under-estimate the power of ideology in their own thinking. Intellectually they imagine themselves to be free agents. Hitchens says:

Our belief is not a belief. Our principles are not a faith. We do not rely solely upon science and reason, because these are necessary rather than sufficient factors, but we distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason. We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically...

Well yes, he says that. But I wasn't surprised to find James Randi listed prominently in his list of acknowledgements. As parapsychologists know from bitter experience, the commitment to free inquiry and open-mindedness go out the window as soon as the fundamentals of the secular world view are challenged.

It's absolutely fair to 'distrust anything that contradicts science or outrages reason'. But 'science' may simply consist of an unchallenged accumulation of assumptions, while 'reason' may have been moulded by personal inclination, temperament, peer pressure and the like. In that case a person's commitment to free inquiry is seriously compromised. And if he is constrained in his thinking, how will he ever know?

Comments

[Robert Perry]

"We may differ on many things, but what we respect is free inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake. We do not hold our convictions dogmatically..."

I liked your response to this, Robert: "Well, yes, he says that." My experience of the New Atheists is the absence of this spirit is precisely the problem.

To me, free inquiry, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of ideas for their own sake would start with "We don't know if there is a God," and go from there to "But the question is so momentous that we are willing to look at any potentially relevant evidence in pursuit of an answer."

But instead they start with, "We know there is no God," and go from there to "And we will spend all of our time skewering the straw man of traditional religion."

[Bruce Siegel]

Great post, Robert. I especially like the last paragraph.

"We don't hold our convictions dogmatically." Yet Hitchens is the one who said that no matter what happens on his deathbed, no matter what claims he might make to having a spiritual experience, don't believe them. See them as the ravings of a fearful, compromised mind.

In other words, as he approaches death, it is 100% impossible that Hitchens will gain fresh insight into it.

How's that for keeping an open mind?

By the way, Robert, I'm not sure if I ever properly thanked you for sending me a free copy of Randi's Prize earlier in the year. My finances were atrocious at the time, and I really appreciated your generosity.

And I love the book!

[Paul]

Interesting review Rob. I read the God Delusion and found that I agreed with pretty much most of what Dawkins wrote - having said that it seemed to me like a rant. It also didn't appear to be particularly well-researched.

I felt it was more aimed at organised religion per se than whether God existed or not. I found it quite a disappointing read to be honest.

[Robert McLuhan]

Thanks for the comments. Yes it's interesting that Hitchens's faith is being tested so dramatically with his illness - although from his own account he can easily withstand the temptation to recant.

As an antidote I've been reading Karen Armstrong's The Case for God , which puts all this into context. The fundamentalism that the atheists attack is a very modern phenomenon, she makes clear, quite at odds with ideas of God that have developed through the ages. It's a terrific book - I might write something about it.

Bruce, you did thank me, and I'm glad you liked the book. One of the best things to come out of it for me has been developing contacts with people like yourself who understand this stuff - there aren't enough of us about :)

[Robert Perry]

I didn't read Armstrong's book, even though I generally like her. The reason is that the interview I heard and reviews I read all portrayed her as removing the question of God so far from reason and theory that it ended up being both immune to rational and scientific cricisim and intellectually and metaphysically vacuous.

I am all for practice-oriented spirituality, aimed at turning us into better human beings. That's certainly the focus of my own spirituality. But unless it is grounded in a view of reality that can be tested and verified, then I think we should just fess up and stop talking about God, Heaven, and anything else that shows up on the metaphysical radar screen. Maybe we can find some other foundation for the transformative practices, but in all honesty we should jettison the current one. That's basically what atheist Sam Harris has done. He is an unabashed meditator; he just takes away all notion of there being some ontologically real spiritual foundation for his meditation. I would prefer that to what I gleaned of Armstrong's approach.

[Michael D]

Just about the worst thing I often hear skeptics brag that they came to their conclusions at 10 years old, plus or minus a couple of years. Fundamentally, all they're saying is that the conclusions of an immature, uneducated mind have shaped their behavior ever since. This really doesn't impress me a whole lot, for some reason. I've wandered through so many different different ways of thinking and selected or rejected so much along the way that this cocky statement of juvenile "wisdom" is offensive to me, and should be to you, too.

[badocelot]

I haven't read Hitchens' book, but as a former victim of Sam Harris' rhetoric, I've come to see the Harris- and Dawkins-style atheism as akin to Dworkin-style feminism. They're trying to fight a real cultural and societal evil, but their reaction is so over-the-top and poorly-thought-out that it's transparently ludicrous (and at times frightening) to almost everybody else.

[Ron Murphy]

I agree partly with the sentiments of your last paragraph. Science is an unchallenged accumulation of assumptions. And they still remain unchallenged. The failure by anyone to challenge them is the reason they remain useful as working assumptions. So challenge them.

Personal inclination, temperament, peer pressure and the like applies just as much to parapsychologists. We are all human after all.

I appreciate that the basic claim is that psi goes beyond physics to some extent. If psi is really beyond physics, then presumably you have no experimental data based on measurements by physical instruments. Or if you do have physical evidence of non-physical phenomena I presume you have evidence of and an explanation for the resulting discrepencies one might expect to appear with regard to the natural laws of physics. Do you have any theories that explain the breakdown of various physical laws regarding the conservation of mass and energy when a non-physical event causes a physical effect? How do you actually assure yourself that any perceived effects are not naturally occurring events? The theistic argument from incredulity - we can't explain it so it must be God - isn't a convincing one when applied to psi either: there's (currently) no natural explanation, so it must be outside the realm of physics.

"And if he is constrained in his thinking, how will he ever know?" - Well, I don't think most maisntream science and psi 'deniers' are so constrained. There are plenty that would be fascinated by real results.

But really, all you have to do is show useful results. Better still, show results that make or save money. You know how internet users like free apps. I use Skype regularly to talk to my kids who live in London and New York. But the reception is poor sometimes. Demonstrate how I can have a regular conversation with my kids using our interacting consciousness alone, and you're onto a winner.

You'd also have immediate support from those pious souls who think gambling is the work of Satan. Show the public how to use pre-cog to predict sports results and all betting systems would collapse overnight. Why are there no pre-cog betting pools? Or perhaps there are - they are secretly scooping wins from unsuspecting bookies. Or maybe the bookies have the pre-cog down in order to set their odds.

Can you imagine scientists and policy makers not paying attention if the results were real? MI5/6 operatives would stand out a mile - they'd have metal foil shields around their heads to avoid inadvertently giving away secrets. Why would I bother carrying a mobile phone that I have to pay for and charge. David Cameron's concerns about the use of the Blackberry for riot incitement would pale into insignificance.

Do you have a web page that describes a simple to do experiment at home that would be convincing? Or is all your lab data no more statistically significant than homeopathy?

I know this sounds like ridicule, and it is. Not about psi itself, but about the bitching about denial when you don't provide anything worth denying. Denial is only real when the evidence for that being denied is so firm that it's irrational to deny on normal grounds, and where the denial can be explained only by irrationality or ulterior motives. Scepticism in the face of insignificant lab results and any real application isn't denial, it's common sense.

[Robert McLuhan]

Ron, some interesting points here. Here's my take. To start with, as I'm sure you'd agree, science isn't solely about developing new technologies, even if many people conflate the two. In a wider sense, it's about developing an understanding about the universe and humans' relation to it.

Humans report psychic experience of many kinds and responsible researchers have endorsed this as a genuine anomaly of consciousness, since it isn't always explicable in terms of fraud, imagination, wishful thinking, etc. Lab research has provided an abundance of statistically significant evidence for psi in a variety of contexts - eg card guessing, remote viewing, ganzfeld, staring - in the order of 33% where 25% is expected by chance. Fraud has long ago been abandoned by serious critics as a serious alternative in favour of methodological error.

Very few sceptics have engaged with this material in any depth, but two who have, Ray Hyman and Richard Wiseman, are both on record as having run out of objections in this regard. But they still refuse to accept it, Hyman arguing that the true (normal) explanation will eventually emerge and Wiseman that the proof that is offered doesn't match the strength of the claim.

Given the enormous implications of psi that's understandable and perhaps even justified. But anyone who dismissses the lab results as 'insigificant' is either hypberbolising or isn't up to speed with the debate.

I do agree that scepticism is natural, and probably the default starting point for anyone who thinks rationally. But in the light of the above, I'd argue for a more nuanced approach. The denial psi-advocates complain of is more in the refusal to engage with the subject and the preference for ridicule over debate.

On the other hand my understanding of the history of science, reinforced recently by Michael Brooks's Free Radicals, is that this is quite normal. An apparently nonsensical proposal may eventually become an acknowledged truth. It may of course turn out to be nonsense, but the incredulity of other scientists is not a sufficient reason for thinking so.

[Ron Murphy]

Hi Robert,

I agree that it's problematic for psi proponents who think they are really onto something. Tectonic plate theorists had good data, but a similar battle against denial.

But from Wiseman's perspective there are plenty of examples where 'natural' explanations have explained previous psi results. The real problem is that the nature of consciousness and subjective experiences is not well understood. But out of body experiences can be reproduced by the direct stimulation of neurons. Christof Koch's experiments can produce real body mislocation experiences. Michael Persinger's 'God helmet' can induce spiritual perceptual experiences. Susan Blackmore, who has experienced out of body experiences has since performed experiments to test the idea as a real phenomenon and found it wanting.

Psi will itself be a 'natural' explanation once it's mechanisms have been explained in terms of verifiable physics. Even if that means 'physics' has to be extended to include some extra phenomena. For example, it wasn't until sub-atomic theories and experiments extended the understanding of the atom that the nuclear forces were known at all. Even gravity takes on a new face in the light of relativity. And the wave/particle duality of light still remains spooky to our basically Newtonian thinking brains.

Probably the best that psi research could do for now is distance itself from the anecdotes. Anecdotes about your dog predicting when you come home, or someone calling you just after you were thinking about them are all hopeless. Even if there is no direct evidence of more 'natural' explanations, those more natural explanations are still the best bet. They are akin to many religious anecdotes about prayer, and so it's no surprise that mainstream science lumps psi in with religion as inventions of the human imagination.

"...in the order of 33% where 25% is expected by chance" - Can those results be repeated consistently? Or are the 33% results themselves a subset of tests that range from 10% to 33%? What's the meta-analysis over all trials in the literature? Is the literature reliable, or are favourable results publish more than unfavourable ones?

Statistical significance is under a great deal of scrutiny even for natural phenomena. Who decides what counts as statistically significant? What does the 25% mean? Why would a chance significance be the relevant figure? What effect does second guessing have? After all, one of the capabilities of consciousness in humans is prediction based on limited data. If non-psi second guessing takes the results up to 30% rather than the chance 25%, what significance is a 33% result?

[Robert McLuhan]

‘But from Wiseman's perspective there are plenty of examples where 'natural' explanations have explained previous psi results.’ Yes indeed, but how good are these ‘natural’ explanations?

When it comes to the most striking claims psi-advocates would say, not very. That’s why they continue to take psi seriously. The claim that sceptics like Wiseman can explain away psi experiences is just that, a claim, and one which is widely - and for the most part uncritically - accepted because it concurs with the received wisdom that such things are impossible.

In his recent book Paranormality Wiseman offered a number of psychological explanations for psi phenomena, mostly already well-known, but failed to apply them closely to the data of psychic research. He told me this would have been difficult to do in book meant for a popular audience, which is fair enough – and in fact he is more prepared than some other sceptics to battle with parapsychologists on their own ground. But another reason might be that it’s difficult to do convincingly without being highly selective with the data.

I publicly crossed swords with him about his views on dream precognition. In his book he elaborated on the standard argument from coincidence. It’s obviously true that a dream about an aircrash is likely to coincide with an aircrash somewhere in the world, and that the dreamer may hold this to be spooky and meaningful. But I pointed out in my Guardian article that people who report this phenomenon (JW Dunne’s Experiment with Time, for instance, and Andrew Paquette’s more recent Dreamer) say their dreams match closely on a number of details, to the extent that they feel they have precognized an event that takes place the following day, and which could not reasonably be held to be a mere coincidence. If Wiseman had been serious about debunking the phenomenon he would have engaged with this claim, but he did not.

I wrote in my book Randi’s Prize about his research of Sheldrake’s telepathic dog. I pointed out that he did four – in my view (which I explained in detail) poorly conceived – experiments, compared with more than a hundred carried out by Sheldrake. Sceptics still maintain that Wiseman’s experiments were superior and believe that Sheldrake has been debunked. Yet Wiseman, under pressure, eventually conceded that his data actually confirm Sheldrake’s, which show an unambiguous spike correlating the dog’s anticipatory behaviour with the owner’s return journey. Wiseman claims the area of dispute is the reasons for it, but as far as I’m aware he hasn’t pursued this line, and his supporters don’t seem to be aware of it.

All of which is simply to point out that the claims of debunking sceptics can’t be taken on trust, as my book describes in detail.

‘out of body experiences can be reproduced by the direct stimulation of neurons.’ Two points here. One is that artificial experiences tend to be weak compared with those reported in the NDE literature. I don’t think anyone outside the sceptic community takes seriously Persinger’s claims of having artifically induced NDE characteristics: in a 1999 survey a debriefing questionnaire the statements made by participants in his experiments were striking for their absolute lack of concordance (Kelly, Irreducible Mind, p. 383). Blackmore’s experience is typical of one kind of OBE, but not of the kind that occur in NDEs.

The other point is that the possibility of inducing OBEs artifically does not itself force a physicalist interpretation of their source.

‘Psi will itself be a 'natural' explanation once it's mechanisms have been explained in terms of verifiable physics.’ I think most parapsychologists would agree. They’re not pushing a supernaturalist agenda for its own sake.

‘Anecdotes about your dog predicting when you come home, or someone calling you just after you were thinking about them are all hopeless.’ The scientific animus against anecdotes is understandable, but overdone. Anything that has to do with human consciousness begins anecdotally, in medicine for instance. Science applies itself to understand natural phenomena in the field, as well as creating it in the laboratory. I agree that the issues are harder to untangle, though.

The meta-analyses consist of large blocks of data, ie from the first known trials to the date when the study is carried out. For instance a total of 88 ganzfeld experiments carried out between 1974 to 2004 showed a combined hit rate of 32% where the chance-expected rate was 25%, at odds of 29 quintillian to one. Psi researchers are deeply sensitive to the charge of selective reporting, which as a result the studies are typically controlled for. In this case, a funnel plot showed it not to be an issue, and in any case was ruled out by the number of unreported studies that would have to have been generated.

Meta-analyses aren’t invariably significant, but they usually are. Wiseman and Milton found no significance in his earlier study of 30 trials carried out between 1987 and 1997. However Milton later added ten new studies, which on their own had a combined hit rate of 36% and, when added to the earlier set yielded a 30% rate.

Interestingly, Wiseman excluded from his analysis (on the grounds that it was anomalous) a highly successful study carried out with creatives as subjects, which yielded something in the order of 50%. Some parapsychologists argue that the effect size would be more constant if they weren’t constantly trying out new approaches, only some of which work while others dilute the database.

Not sure exactly what your point about ‘second guessing’ refers to, but the only data (in a ganzfeld experiment, for instance) available to the subject are the images in his/her head. If there is anything that can aid the guess, the experiment is flawed. Once the potential flaws have been identified and eliminated – and they have been - there is nothing else that can aid the subject. That’s what makes the stastical effect so remarkable.

[Robert Perry]

About Wiseman, I was in a bookstore the other day and saw his book Paranormality there. I think the first words on the back cover were: "One thing Richard Wiseman is certain of: psychic phenomena do not exist." If that is accurate, then that statement strongly implies he is not on a search to discover truth. He already "knows" and is on a search to persuade others of the truth he knows. Given the nature of the data in question, data he has admitted would settle the matter in any other area of science, does this stance inspire our trust in him?

[Ron Murphy]

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the detailed response.

There still remain a couple of issues for me.

The first is that if, as you say, there is no claim for supernatural forces, is it the case that psi researchers think that the effects can be explained by the natural physical laws as we understand them, or are they suggesting something more? There are many scientists and philosophers who claim, for example, that consciousness is not just an epiphenomenon of brain processes. They use concepts like 'qualia' to supposedly explain subjective experiences and say that science can't access these in any way that would be considered a thorough understanding of consciousness.

Determinist physicalist think that qualia, subjective experience, is down to some basic processes of the brain, and that consciousness, and free-will in its commonly used sense, are just natural deterministic phenomena complying with the basic laws of physics.

The psi researchers seem to have a foot in both camps. They are running experiments to try to examine phenomena they think are associated with consciousness. But if as you say they are proposing nothing supernatural, then this would imply there is a clear causal connection from basic physics all the way up to consciousness and the phenomena they investigate. In that case the phenomena you describe, such as precognition would require some explanation in terms of the physical sciences. What's the mode of information transfer? Information transfer requires energy transfer, dynamic processes, etc. Precognition in a non-supernatural sense would require that a brain experiencing a dream of an event that was to happen the next day would have to have some mechanism for constructing that pattern match - a match of brain states in a dream, to physical states of an event, such as a plane crashing.

Given that we know false memories can be created, and that memory recall is in itself a form of re-creation, with any adaptation at the time of creation that this might imply, wouldn't the natural explanation be that their memories of their dreams were 're-constructed' to include the information about the crash? are there sufficient psychological effects of suggestion that could explain this?

And how do you explain the relation in terms of our perception and understanding of time for dream precog? If the event hasn't happened then how does it get into the brain prior to the event?

The second issue is the practical one I mentioned earlier. Unless you require very specific, unusual and expensive equipment you should be able to describe useful experiments that people could do in their own home. They'd already be party tricks, as is often the case with conjuring. I'm sure there are good dog training tricks that would be useful around the home if a dog can detect its master's imminent arrival.

So is there anything useful at all, or is it just data which is thought to be of statistical significance, but with no practical application?

[Ron Murphy]

Hi Robert (Perry),

It could be a sign that he thinks it is falsified to a sufficient extent. But it could also be a publicist's selectiveness of words. I wouldn't generally go of the blurb on the back of a book. I guess you'd have to ask him.

[Robert Perry]

Ron, maybe he thinks it is falsified to a sufficient extent. But he's also on record as saying this: "I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven." Not sure how those two go together.

[Robert McLuhan]

Ron, good points. Parapsychology is weak on theory. Difficult area, no question.

Psi is clearly incompatible with a physicalist view of consciousness. As you say, there are other reasons for questioning this view, and not just the 'qualia' issue. Since the study of consciousness is still in its infancy psi-researchers don't particularly worry about being out on a limb on this, though.

A favourite area of discussion is quantum mechanics. Obviously this is speculative, but parapsychologists will argue that if psi is incompatible with classical physics it's not necessarily incompatible with a reality mediated by quantum processes.

But clearly precognition is hard to reconcile with what we know. JW Dunne had quite a lot to say about this in his book, but as far as I'm aware it didn't gain any traction.

Michio Kaku talked about grades of difficulty in his most recent book - I briefly commented here
http://monkeywah.typepad.com/paranormalia/2008/04/michio-kaku.html

There is an issue about what we mean by terms like 'magic' and 'supernatural', as they are used by critics especially. The assumption in psi research is that psi will one day be explicable in terms of natural laws that are understood, but that this paradigm will be different to the one we know today. That doesn't make it supernatural.

Yes people can experiment at home in all sorts of ways - card guessing, staring, remote viewing, etc. I think some people in the psi community do believe it will have practical applications when it is acknowledged to occur. Remote viewing clearly has applications for military and police intelligence.

For me that's not the point, though. If psi is real it has profound implications about what kind of reality we are experiencing and our place in it. That's plenty to be going on with.

I agree that the lack of any kind of theory is a big difficulty. I just note that we have been here before: observation of anomalies typically precedes a new paradigm.

So it could go either way. If someone says, granted, the evidence of anomalies is interesting and suggestive, and no, I can't explain it all away, but I still can't accept it because of the violence it does to established scientific thinking - that's a position I have to respect. What I don't accept is that it justifies ridicule.
It surely won't hurt to keep an open mind.

[MJS]

Robert have you read "The Last Superstition" or "Aquinas" by Edward Feser?

After reading TLS you may reevaluate "The God Delussion" and "God is Not Great" as the intellectually dishonest trash that they are.

Maybe this link will help you get started and understand the real motivations and stupidity of these "New Atheists:"

http://www.american.com/archive/2010/march/the-new-philistinism/?searchterm=feser

[Al]

Hi, you may be interested to know Chris Hitchens has a brother. Peter Hitchens is also a journalist and author, though his political and religious views are vastly different from his brother, being a conservative christian.
Understandably there has been a fair amount of disagreement between the two of them, i read during one recorded debate they almost came to blows! They didnt speak for a time after Peter reviewed god is not great unfavourably. I think theyre both on speaking terms again now and have a grudging respect for the other. Theyve both had plenty to say about each other, worth a google when you have chance :)