It’s hard to imagine a more irrational, utterly non-empirical (sorry, anti-empirical) faith than scientism:
1. Out of utter nothingness, stuff happened (or to put it more crudely, as the foundational catechism of this supernaturalist religion, “sh*t happens). Out of pure chaos, order arises. As Richard Dawkins put it, in a purely chance based random occurrence, order happens.
Ok, so maybe 1 in a quadrillion changes against it, something orderly occurs.
AND IT KEEPS OCCURING. What keeps it in place?
“The laws of nature.”
What do you mean, ‘laws of nature?”
“Oh, that’s the phrase we use to describe the orderly occurrences, and in particular, our mathematical measurements, of the orderly occurrences that we observe.”
Can you say “tautology?”
Ok, so these end up with all these brilliantly lit stars and red suns and all that?
Oh no, there’s no light or color anywhere, that’s just a construction of our brains?
And how do these brains end up creating this experience of light and color and sound and so on?
Well, according to philosopher of mind Jerry Fodor, not only do we not have any idea how purely material brains create experience, we don’t have any idea how to have an idea on how purely material brains create experience……”So much for the philosophy of mind,” he concludes.
Ok, let’s go on. Nowadays, despite the alleged overcoming of the “elan vital” some time around 1840, there seems to be increasing agreement that we can’t explain life in purely material terms.
Oh no, we have that covered.
Really/. You can explain how life emerges?
Absolutely.
Well, how?
Through emergence.
I’m sorry, what?
Yes, we have a wonderful theory. It even covers the laws of nature. How did they emerge? By means of a complex set of equations related to complexity and chaos theory. It explains everything:
Order emerges from nothingness
Life emerges
Sentience emerges
Emotion emerges
Rationality emerges
Self awareness emerges.
Ok, so things emerge by means of emergence. I’m not sure how different that is from the Catholic catechism where we celebrate Christ bringing all things into being; well, no, Christ, rather than being a “belief” (philosophers nowadays seem to think even the mystics were like early versions of Ryle, trying to come up with rational analyses of how the world works), was referring to an experience; well actually, referring to a particular gnostic apprehension of the cosmos which does not seem even remotely accessible to modern philosophers.
But anyway, it seems that one of the areas where religions and science might meet is in your vaunted science of parapsychology. I understand as long as 15 or possibly 25 years ago, the psi researchers had conducted a sufficient number of experiments - well over 1000 - that met all the criteria that skeptics had been asking for since the late 1800s.
Scientist/“philosopher” - yes that’s true. By 1996, every request we had EVER made was met. Perfect methodology, statistics, replication, effect size, etc. That could have been a good meeting place. Except for one thing.
Sane person: “oh, really, what is that?”
Scientist philosopher: we were never even remotely sincere about our requests. We have been terrified of psi since scientists started offering valid proof for it back in the late 1800s. WE were absolutely committed, much like the most extreme fundamentalists, to the creed that psi is impossible (it violates the laws of nature!). So we simply changed tactics. Experiments conducted in the last 25 years continue to be as good or better than those in most areas of physics, biology, etc. So we just say, “We don’t care if you’ve met all the criteria we set out. We have new ones. You have to do BETTER than any other science.” And if they do, we’ll just find a new excuse. And in fact, one of the high priests of scientism has one. Arthur Reber, in a response to an American Psychological Association article summarizing decades of valid psi research, replied, in essence, “I didn’t even bother to read the article” (yep, the APA actually published this). “I don’t have to because we know psi violates the laws of nature. Therefore ANY scientific experiment of any kind, no matter how large the effect size, no matter how often it’s replicated, has to be wrong.”
****
If you think about it, if you resort strictly to the third person method of most science, you wouldn’t even have evidence that the unvierse as we experience it exists. A psychiatrist once said to Huston Smith, the writer on world religions, that from a strict DSM point of view, scientism would qualify as a delusional disorder.
And that’s an insult to people with delusional disorders!
Religious beliefs are not irrational, but necessary to human society, because humans as a group have an ineradicable religious streak. When not channeled into religion this impulse simply resurfaces in another, usually deleterious, form such as dialectical materialism or climate fanaticism. Human nature doesn’t change, at least over the time scale of human history (a few hundred thousand years). Those who have thought deeply about the problem going back thousands of years conclude that religion is essential to human society. If it addresses, and is indeed the product of, a deep human need while helping to preserve society then it is not irrational.
That the nearly universal faith in a god has been replaced by a nearly universal faith in psychiatry is not progress, and is not evidence that secularists form beliefs more rationally.
3. Because the big bang created time and space, this something exists outside of time and space
4. This make this being incredibly powerful.
5. Now at this point you can stop and declare yourself agnostic, there was a force that created the universe but we don't know much about it.
Perfectly rational.
You may also continue on to
6. Is it likely that this force communicated with his creation?
If you answer yes, then certainly this would be written down. And the all powerful force would not want his message to disappear forever so it must be in one of the world's existing religions.
So then you can take your pick of the religions.
The counter to this..... all of these mathematically impossible things happened randomly... is not logical.
I know some people who claim to have received direct revelations while standing in the presence of a deity. I myself have not, nor have I seen evidence that what they claim happened to them did indeed happen to them, so it would be irrational of me to accept their claims as to that deity's opinions as fact.
However, I suppose it would not be irrational of them to accept those supposed opinions as fact based on what they experienced.
It's not that the material costs of embracing irrational belief systems are always low; some people make very high sacrifices to spread their religious views (values like martyrdom, crusading, evangelism, and elevated natalism being oriented towards sacrificing personal happiness for the wider propagation of the religion).
Successful religions become widespread precisely because true believers are motivated by such propagative values being a part of the belief system. Such religions also succeed because they incorporate other kinds of norms favored by cultural selection, notably norms that happen to be more closely aligned with the innate psychological needs of individuals and/or with the material interests of institutions that invest in belief propagation. While successful religions can't offer a rational explanation for their world-views or a rational justification for their norms (which does impair their persuasiveness among people who do sharply focus their rational faculties on important philosophical questions), they do offer norms that are more culturally competitive in other respects.
Indeed, a rational ethics must take into account man's innate psychological needs too, so cultural selection is capable of favoring equivalent values even in the absence of rational justifications for them. For some traditional values (especially those emerging in a free society), there is at least a presumption in favor of the value's utility in promoting the happiness of most people. Where irrational traditions become suspect is when the propagative or institutional advantages are driving the cultural selection of a norm at the expense of individual happiness, or when a particular individual has unusual personality traits that imply abnormal requirements for optimizing their pursuit of happiness.
It's also worth noting that many people who think of themselves as secular may still embrace irrational values in much the same manner; there are more than a few secular intellectual cults with congregations at our universities that function very much like quasi-religions; their self-sacrificing evangelism, etc. is clearly recognizable even a supernatural imaginary friend is missing from their belief system.
Religion is not _supposed_ to be rational. Faith is defined as unreasoned, unconditional trust and acceptance.
Being religious can be rational. A true, valid religion gives its adherents many benefits, not least a systematic guide to right action. Most people have neither the time, the interest, nor the brainpower to reason their way to every decision on first principles.
Religion also provides a framework for dealing with the important points of life, birth, maturity, marriage and children, and death.
With all due respect, this statement shows almost 0 knowledge of the philosophy of religion, and the actual arguments that theists give for the existence of God. I realize theistic philosophers like Feser and Koons weren’t as active back then, but there was still a great deal of literature you should have engaged before asserting that religious belief is irrational.
If a physicists or hard scientist has a criticism of religion, I'll listen. For economists, who insist on so much dogma despite evidence staring them in the face, to criticize it is really quite rich. Compared to the neoclassical economics, the Nicene Creed is a model of rationality. At least it doesn't demand I believe in things I see not happening, right now.
Excellent! As the physicist Richard Feynman said, "I'd rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned." When you ask a religious person a difficult question, they invariably respond, "You just have to have faith." Faith: a five-letter dirty word that is used as a club to short-circuit honest inquiry which might lead to actual truth being uncovered.
I don't care if people want to believe in some imaginary sky creature(s), but I DO take exception when they act all smug and morally superior. Never forget, when the Germans savaged their way across Europe in WWII, they wore belt buckles emblazoned with "Gott Mit Uns". Religion is a tool for rationalizing slaughter.
It's not only the case that people have religious beliefs because such beliefs have low cost; people have religious beliefs also because they provide benefits.
"There is a tendency among rationalists to view “beliefs” as mental objects whose exclusive function is to represent reality from which it follows that beliefs should be evaluated solely according to their veracity and evidential basis. But on the other hand, it could be argued that “beliefs” are for *doing* and that, therefore, it often makes more sense to ask what is it that those beliefs do in practice."
Obviously “religion” as a general term isn’t true, as there are many contradictory religions. It is also kind of meaningless to argue against “religion” in general, because what exactly are you arguing against? Any given argument may be valid against one religion but not another. We all agree that much of what comes under that umbrella is nonsense (though maybe we disagree about which bits). But materialism also doesn’t explain much of life experience, including some very specific experiences I have had, so I will also have to reject pure materialism. What is left is a search for truth that is greater than just “science,” and is obligated to include at least a bit of “religion,” maybe one religion, but certainly not all of religion.
It’s hard to imagine a more irrational, utterly non-empirical (sorry, anti-empirical) faith than scientism:
1. Out of utter nothingness, stuff happened (or to put it more crudely, as the foundational catechism of this supernaturalist religion, “sh*t happens). Out of pure chaos, order arises. As Richard Dawkins put it, in a purely chance based random occurrence, order happens.
Ok, so maybe 1 in a quadrillion changes against it, something orderly occurs.
AND IT KEEPS OCCURING. What keeps it in place?
“The laws of nature.”
What do you mean, ‘laws of nature?”
“Oh, that’s the phrase we use to describe the orderly occurrences, and in particular, our mathematical measurements, of the orderly occurrences that we observe.”
Can you say “tautology?”
Ok, so these end up with all these brilliantly lit stars and red suns and all that?
Oh no, there’s no light or color anywhere, that’s just a construction of our brains?
And how do these brains end up creating this experience of light and color and sound and so on?
Well, according to philosopher of mind Jerry Fodor, not only do we not have any idea how purely material brains create experience, we don’t have any idea how to have an idea on how purely material brains create experience……”So much for the philosophy of mind,” he concludes.
Ok, let’s go on. Nowadays, despite the alleged overcoming of the “elan vital” some time around 1840, there seems to be increasing agreement that we can’t explain life in purely material terms.
Oh no, we have that covered.
Really/. You can explain how life emerges?
Absolutely.
Well, how?
Through emergence.
I’m sorry, what?
Yes, we have a wonderful theory. It even covers the laws of nature. How did they emerge? By means of a complex set of equations related to complexity and chaos theory. It explains everything:
Order emerges from nothingness
Life emerges
Sentience emerges
Emotion emerges
Rationality emerges
Self awareness emerges.
Ok, so things emerge by means of emergence. I’m not sure how different that is from the Catholic catechism where we celebrate Christ bringing all things into being; well, no, Christ, rather than being a “belief” (philosophers nowadays seem to think even the mystics were like early versions of Ryle, trying to come up with rational analyses of how the world works), was referring to an experience; well actually, referring to a particular gnostic apprehension of the cosmos which does not seem even remotely accessible to modern philosophers.
But anyway, it seems that one of the areas where religions and science might meet is in your vaunted science of parapsychology. I understand as long as 15 or possibly 25 years ago, the psi researchers had conducted a sufficient number of experiments - well over 1000 - that met all the criteria that skeptics had been asking for since the late 1800s.
Scientist/“philosopher” - yes that’s true. By 1996, every request we had EVER made was met. Perfect methodology, statistics, replication, effect size, etc. That could have been a good meeting place. Except for one thing.
Sane person: “oh, really, what is that?”
Scientist philosopher: we were never even remotely sincere about our requests. We have been terrified of psi since scientists started offering valid proof for it back in the late 1800s. WE were absolutely committed, much like the most extreme fundamentalists, to the creed that psi is impossible (it violates the laws of nature!). So we simply changed tactics. Experiments conducted in the last 25 years continue to be as good or better than those in most areas of physics, biology, etc. So we just say, “We don’t care if you’ve met all the criteria we set out. We have new ones. You have to do BETTER than any other science.” And if they do, we’ll just find a new excuse. And in fact, one of the high priests of scientism has one. Arthur Reber, in a response to an American Psychological Association article summarizing decades of valid psi research, replied, in essence, “I didn’t even bother to read the article” (yep, the APA actually published this). “I don’t have to because we know psi violates the laws of nature. Therefore ANY scientific experiment of any kind, no matter how large the effect size, no matter how often it’s replicated, has to be wrong.”
****
If you think about it, if you resort strictly to the third person method of most science, you wouldn’t even have evidence that the unvierse as we experience it exists. A psychiatrist once said to Huston Smith, the writer on world religions, that from a strict DSM point of view, scientism would qualify as a delusional disorder.
And that’s an insult to people with delusional disorders!
Religious beliefs are not irrational, but necessary to human society, because humans as a group have an ineradicable religious streak. When not channeled into religion this impulse simply resurfaces in another, usually deleterious, form such as dialectical materialism or climate fanaticism. Human nature doesn’t change, at least over the time scale of human history (a few hundred thousand years). Those who have thought deeply about the problem going back thousands of years conclude that religion is essential to human society. If it addresses, and is indeed the product of, a deep human need while helping to preserve society then it is not irrational.
That the nearly universal faith in a god has been replaced by a nearly universal faith in psychiatry is not progress, and is not evidence that secularists form beliefs more rationally.
It is actually very rational.
1. Nothing cannot cause something
Therefore
2.Something caused the big bang.
and
3. Because the big bang created time and space, this something exists outside of time and space
4. This make this being incredibly powerful.
5. Now at this point you can stop and declare yourself agnostic, there was a force that created the universe but we don't know much about it.
Perfectly rational.
You may also continue on to
6. Is it likely that this force communicated with his creation?
If you answer yes, then certainly this would be written down. And the all powerful force would not want his message to disappear forever so it must be in one of the world's existing religions.
So then you can take your pick of the religions.
The counter to this..... all of these mathematically impossible things happened randomly... is not logical.
I’m curious as to Bryan’s 2024 take on the fundamental irrationality of two modern leftist secular religions:
“Global warming is an existential risk and will destroy the planet unless we stop using fossil fuels”
“Woke oppressor/oppressed theory is correct and justifies any actions by the oppressed against their oppressors”
The link to the *rational irrationality* papers doesn't work for me. I'm very interested in them, though.
We can agree to disagree, you know. Just admit that neither of us knows. It's that easy.
If someone asserts that something is "irrational", then it might be helpful to explain what "irrational" is supposed to mean.
https://jclester.substack.com/p/rationality-a-libertarian-viewpoint?utm_source=publication-search
I know some people who claim to have received direct revelations while standing in the presence of a deity. I myself have not, nor have I seen evidence that what they claim happened to them did indeed happen to them, so it would be irrational of me to accept their claims as to that deity's opinions as fact.
However, I suppose it would not be irrational of them to accept those supposed opinions as fact based on what they experienced.
It's not that the material costs of embracing irrational belief systems are always low; some people make very high sacrifices to spread their religious views (values like martyrdom, crusading, evangelism, and elevated natalism being oriented towards sacrificing personal happiness for the wider propagation of the religion).
Successful religions become widespread precisely because true believers are motivated by such propagative values being a part of the belief system. Such religions also succeed because they incorporate other kinds of norms favored by cultural selection, notably norms that happen to be more closely aligned with the innate psychological needs of individuals and/or with the material interests of institutions that invest in belief propagation. While successful religions can't offer a rational explanation for their world-views or a rational justification for their norms (which does impair their persuasiveness among people who do sharply focus their rational faculties on important philosophical questions), they do offer norms that are more culturally competitive in other respects.
Indeed, a rational ethics must take into account man's innate psychological needs too, so cultural selection is capable of favoring equivalent values even in the absence of rational justifications for them. For some traditional values (especially those emerging in a free society), there is at least a presumption in favor of the value's utility in promoting the happiness of most people. Where irrational traditions become suspect is when the propagative or institutional advantages are driving the cultural selection of a norm at the expense of individual happiness, or when a particular individual has unusual personality traits that imply abnormal requirements for optimizing their pursuit of happiness.
It's also worth noting that many people who think of themselves as secular may still embrace irrational values in much the same manner; there are more than a few secular intellectual cults with congregations at our universities that function very much like quasi-religions; their self-sacrificing evangelism, etc. is clearly recognizable even a supernatural imaginary friend is missing from their belief system.
Religion is not _supposed_ to be rational. Faith is defined as unreasoned, unconditional trust and acceptance.
Being religious can be rational. A true, valid religion gives its adherents many benefits, not least a systematic guide to right action. Most people have neither the time, the interest, nor the brainpower to reason their way to every decision on first principles.
Religion also provides a framework for dealing with the important points of life, birth, maturity, marriage and children, and death.
With all due respect, this statement shows almost 0 knowledge of the philosophy of religion, and the actual arguments that theists give for the existence of God. I realize theistic philosophers like Feser and Koons weren’t as active back then, but there was still a great deal of literature you should have engaged before asserting that religious belief is irrational.
If a physicists or hard scientist has a criticism of religion, I'll listen. For economists, who insist on so much dogma despite evidence staring them in the face, to criticize it is really quite rich. Compared to the neoclassical economics, the Nicene Creed is a model of rationality. At least it doesn't demand I believe in things I see not happening, right now.
Excellent! As the physicist Richard Feynman said, "I'd rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned." When you ask a religious person a difficult question, they invariably respond, "You just have to have faith." Faith: a five-letter dirty word that is used as a club to short-circuit honest inquiry which might lead to actual truth being uncovered.
I don't care if people want to believe in some imaginary sky creature(s), but I DO take exception when they act all smug and morally superior. Never forget, when the Germans savaged their way across Europe in WWII, they wore belt buckles emblazoned with "Gott Mit Uns". Religion is a tool for rationalizing slaughter.
It's not only the case that people have religious beliefs because such beliefs have low cost; people have religious beliefs also because they provide benefits.
"There is a tendency among rationalists to view “beliefs” as mental objects whose exclusive function is to represent reality from which it follows that beliefs should be evaluated solely according to their veracity and evidential basis. But on the other hand, it could be argued that “beliefs” are for *doing* and that, therefore, it often makes more sense to ask what is it that those beliefs do in practice."
https://triangulation.substack.com/i/48429047/epistemic-and-instrumental-rationality
Obviously “religion” as a general term isn’t true, as there are many contradictory religions. It is also kind of meaningless to argue against “religion” in general, because what exactly are you arguing against? Any given argument may be valid against one religion but not another. We all agree that much of what comes under that umbrella is nonsense (though maybe we disagree about which bits). But materialism also doesn’t explain much of life experience, including some very specific experiences I have had, so I will also have to reject pure materialism. What is left is a search for truth that is greater than just “science,” and is obligated to include at least a bit of “religion,” maybe one religion, but certainly not all of religion.