[lbo-talk] Appeal to Ignorance

snitsnat snitilicious at tampabay.rr.com
Fri Jun 17 06:32:07 PDT 2005


At 04:14 PM 6/16/2005, Jeffrey Fisher wrote:


>that's what i've been trying to say all along (and carrol gets this, i
>think) and it's why i have trouble less with a scientist saying "i
>reject religion" than with a scientist saying "scientists reject
>religion" or with people on a mailing list deploying either of the
>latter in an argument about how nonsensical "religion" is because
>scientists reject it. that's all. it's about the kinds of claims we
>can make.

But, this is where Yoshie was completely misunderstood -- and I'm starting to wonder if what's going on here.

chuck0 maintained that we needed in your face antreligious activism to get "religion out of my life". You replied sarcastically, "the only reason there's still religion in the world is that there's not enough anti-religion activism. check."

Yoshie replied with a study about scientists beliefs and from that she concluded that, if you want to "get religion out of your life," then we should promote science education, especially in biology.

Now, your response to Chuck, below, is interesting. Usually, when that statement is put forth, the speaker means "look, all these people believe in religion, there must be something to this religion stuff." And usually this means that the speaker thinks that

1. there is something supernatural to believe in and worship because, otherwise, people wouldn't have been doing it since dogs ruled the earth.

2. humans are, by nature, inclined to construct religious belief systems

3. There is something about human being that means that they will believe in something we call religion and it will always be around, even we try to social engineer it out of existence. (Often, this is cast in pop psychoanlytic terms such that it is dangerous to try to suppress religion -- you might get blowback or it will just be a fruitless waste of energy.)

I suppose there's more and I'll leave it to you to fill that in for me, if there's another reason why you'd make the claim.

If there's not, I see no reason why the existence of religious belief and cont'd religious belief in nominally secular societies is evidence of any of the above.

you also wrote:


>it seems to me that the burden of proof is on people who want to make
>(especially really broad, ambiguous) assertions like "real scientists
>reject religion" to explain what they mean, not on the rest of us to
>figure out what they mean (although i've been trying) or to show
>what's problematic about it before they have to commit to what they
>mean (which i've also been doing).

did yoshie say that? Yoshie said that a more effective way to get religion out of chuck's life might be to increase science education.

If a whopping 80% of scientists are nonbelievers -- and I think Yoshie's def here is whatever people are describing to themselves as belief/nonbelief -- then it looks like pretty good place to start.

The scientist that got your back up? ""You clearly can be a scientist and have religious beliefs. But I don't think you can be a real scientist in the deepest sense of the word because they are such alien categories of knowledge."

I think you're just reading more into it than he meant. Go write him and ask, but I think he was saying "deepest sense of the word" with word being _scientist_. And by that I think he probably meant what I mean and I agree with him, in spite of the lecture on theology. He has a definition of science and his def is that it's alien to religion as a category of knowledge. I don't think he meant whether you're any good or whether you're real or not. It wasn't an opposition between real and not real, but between good and really good, good enough and science as, for lack of a better word, a calling. (If you understand origins of 'calling' that is a HA! HA!)

I think what he meant was the same thing as a soc prof said to us on my first day in grad school. "you're a sociologist. you're not a feminist sociologist. you're not a black sociologist. you're a sociologist."

This irked me that first day, but I later learned that his comments were an expression of the political conflicts that had been tearing apart the department for years and would continue to do so, though they'd take on a different form as the university told us to knock it off and start producing TBBs, funding, grants, etc.

But, I came to agree with him, probably because I was more easily seduced, not thinking of myself as a sociologist (disciplined!) and more interested in interdisciplinary studies, but going the road of a discipline because it was the smarter thing to do if you want a job. plus, no one in my family was going to applaud majoring in philosophy as a wise thing to do. the wasband probably would have burned my typewritter and the case of white out he gave me for a christmas present.

kelley


>On 6/8/05, Chuck0 <chuck at mutualaid.org> wrote:
>>I don't care about the nuances of the progressive religious left. I know
>>they exist, they can go do their thing. I want religion out of my life so
>>I will opt for anti-religion activism.
>
>so i guess the only reason there's still religion in the world is that
>there's not enough anti-religion activism. check.
>
>Leading US scientists overwhelmingly reject beliefs in personal God and
>immortality. I conclude that the most potent antidote to beliefs in the
>supernatural, in countries such as the United States that are highly
>economically developed, is thorough scientific education. Advanced study
>of biology appears to be especially helpful.
>
><blockquote><http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html>

"Finish your beer. There are sober kids in India."

-- rwmartin



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