Kottmeyer: Why have UFOs changed speed over the years?

There's an excellent article by Martin S. Kottmeyer in The Philosopher's Magazine titled, "Why have UFOs changed speed over the years?" In the essay, Kottmeyer argues that UFO sightings are very much a product of observation selection effects and a kind of 'sightings bias'. The nature of UFO sightings, he says, change over time and are impacted by everything from advances in technology to sci-fi movies. Kottmeyer is basically arguing that people are seeing what they expect to see, and by consequence, are working within a "search template":

Despite a considerable variety in the reports, the form of the objects was always consistent with a type of aircraft. Propellers were often seen, one witness even claiming it was larger than the rest of the plane. Jet pipes, pilot’s cockpits, glass domes, fins, legs, and antennae featured on some of the objects. Smoke, vapour hails, and rocket flames repeatedly marked their flights. A wide range of aerobatic stunts turn up among the reports: loop-the-loops, roll manoeuvres, banking, weaving, climbing, diving, tipping, circling, and swooping. Some “UFOs” buzzed cars, but unlike decades later, the car engines never died. It has been thought significant that animals sometimes reacted to the objects, yet a close reading suggests it wasn’t because of their spooky alien-ness; the saucers were doing barnstorming manoeuvres.

Notable by its absence is any indication of extraterrestrial technology: no lasers, heat rays, paralysis rays or gases, mind control rays, power rings, levitation of people or objects, denaturalisation, matter interpenetration, space-suited entities, robots, remote eyes, or even simple observation ports. Nobody was looking for aliens and nothing was seen to suggest any were there.

He continues,

Why did this shift from fast to slow take place? The simplest answer has to be the fading of memory. Arnold’s report lost its fascination as newer, better, shinier cases crowded it out for public attention. Cases like Socorro, Exeter, the Swamp Gas saucer of Dexter, Flynn, and The Interrupted Journey of Barney and Betty Hill captured people’s imaginations and became the models to which later experiences would be compared. The search template of what should be considered wondrous filtered out what seemed irrelevant. In 1947 people looked for speedy things and things that looked like discs, and ignored the slow stuff and the lights floating around at night. There was a heavy bias to misinterpreting flocks of birds.

Later, people searched for bright lights and slow, hovering objects and, as Allan Hendry showed, people had a bias towards misinterpreting stars, planets, and aeroplane lights.

He concludes:

Does this prove UFOs are unreal phantoms that blend in with their times? No. Strictly, it only proves that there is a cultural dimension in our assumptions about what constitutes the behaviour of a flying saucer. People do not report everything that is present in the sky but select only what is presumed to be interesting. What is interesting changes year to year, decade to decade, century to century. We’ve forgotten that Kenneth Arnold was interesting for reasons that no longer interest us. That, in itself, is interesting.

Pigliucci on science and the scope of skeptical inquiry

Russell Blackford is a guest blogger for Sentient Developments.

Over on his Rationally Speaking blog, Massimo Pigliucci has an interesting post on the nature and scope of skeptical inquiry. He is particularly keen to nail down the relationships between scientifically-based skeptical thought, political philosophy, and philosophy of religion (he actually says "atheism", but I think this is a mistake). Pigliucci is a biologist and a philosopher, and these are his three main areas of intellectual interest.

To illustrate his points, Pigliucci introduces a diagram that shows skepticism overlapping with both "atheism" and political philosophy, though they do not overlap with each other. On this diagram, all three fall into a larger realm of critical thinking and rational analysis. Although it's a neat diagram, I think that it (along with the analysis that it illustrates) is somewhat misleading, and in at least one respect even wrong.

On skeptical inquiry

First, however, let's consider something that Pigluicci clearly gets right. He says:

Skeptical inquiry, in the classic sense, pertains to the critical examination of evidential claims of the para- or super-normal. This means not just ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance, UFOs and the like, but also — for instance — the creationist idea that the world is 6,000 years old. All these claims are, at least in principle, amenable to scientific inquiry because they refer to things that we can observe, measure and perhaps even repeat experimentally. Notice, of course, that (some) religious claims do therefore fall squarely within the domain of scientific skepticism. Also in this area we find pseudohistorical claims, such as Holocaust denial, and pseudoscientific ones like fear of vaccines and denial of global warming. Which means of course that some politically charged issues — like the latter two — can also pertain properly to skeptical inquiry.

I'm with him completely on this. Claims about ghosts, the age of the Earth, and pseudohistorical or pseudoscientific theories, are all within the ambit of skeptical inquiry as so defined. Skeptical inquiry in the sense under discussion is not about taking positions that are in the minority. It is about rational inquiry into various claims, popular or otherwise, using the means available not only to science but also to such fields as history. Accordingly, when someone claims to be a "climate change skeptic" she is using words in a different sense.

It is always possible, of course, that a view with widespread, or even consensus, support from current science is nonetheless incorrect. Still, skepticism in the sense that Pigliucci is discussing is not about challenging the majority position. It is about rational investigation, especially of extraordinary claims - extraordinary in the sense that they fit badly, or not at all, with the best picture of the world built up through science, scholarship, and ordinary observation.


In particular, we are not talking here about some kind of radical epistemological skepticism, such as Descartes wrestled with and sought (unsuccessfully) to transcend or escape. Nor are we talking about skepticism as regards the status quo of scientific and scholarly knowledge. That sort of skepticism is possible, of course, and it may sometimes be justified. However, it is not legitimate to act as a skeptic merely in this sense, while attempting to get approbation for being engaged in skeptical inquiry in the different, and quite familiar, sense that Pigliucci describes.

Accordingly, I think that Pigliucci is correct when he later denounces the practice of "using the venerable mantle of skepticism to engage in silly notions like denying global warming or the efficacy of vaccines." As he says, "That’s an insult to critical analysis, which is the one thing we all truly cherish."

Pigliucci is also quite correct to show an overlap between atheism and skeptical inquiry, although atheism is a substantive position, not a field of inquiry, so he should really have written "philosophy of religion". He is correct that what philosophers of religion do when they investigate religious claims, such as those about the existence of various gods, overlaps with scientific skepticism or skeptical inquiry. I think, however, that he unnecessarily deprecates the extent of this overlap. This I'll return to.

On political philosophy

As for political philosophy, Pigliucci sees this too as overlapping with skeptical inquiry. After all, he says, some skeptical inquiry (e.g. into the claims of holocaust denialists) has implications for political philosophy.

This seems to be correct. However, he doesn't seem to have noticed that philosophy of religion may also have implications for political philosophy, and vice versa. For example, some religious positions, if correct, have definite implications for the role of the state. After all, various comprehensive worldviews based on religion claim that the state should enforce religious systems of morality or law; these worldviews are starkly opposed to liberalism and pluralism.

Less obviously, it is at least conceivable that a political position on an issue such as social justice could have implications for whether we should accept certain religious positions. We might develop a politically-based theory of justice, then ask, "Does the world seem to have been created by a just God?" Surely the answer could feed back into at least some views about the existence or nature of God. In any event, the diagram seems to be wrong, not just misleadingly presented, when it shows no overlap between political philosophy and "atheism".

Science and philosophy

While this may be the only error, strictly speaking, there are other problems with the analysis. They emerge when Pigliucci tries to defend the view that atheism is a philosophical position, rather than a scientific one. There is a sense in which this is clearly, but rather trivially, true. The issue of God's existence is, after all, examined by philosophers of religion, and not usually by biologists or physicists, and the pedagogical and other decisions that have led to this have not been merely arbitrary. But there's also a sense in which Pigliucci's account is misleading. Here's how he attempts to persuade us:

Now, I have argued of course that any intelligent philosopher ought to allow her ideas to be informed by science, but philosophical inquiry is broader than science because it includes non-evidence based approaches, such as logic or more broadly reason-based arguments. This is both the strength and the weakness of philosophy when compared to science: it is both broader and yet of course less prone to incremental discovery and precise answers. When someone, therefore, wants to make a scientific argument in favor of atheism — like Dawkins and Jerry Coyne seem to do — he is stepping outside of the epistemological boundaries of science, thereby doing a disservice both to science and to intellectual inquiry. Consider again the example of a creationist who maintains in the face of evidence that the universe really is 6,000 years old, and that it only looks older because god arranged things in a way to test our faith. There is absolutely no empirical evidence that could contradict that sort of statement, but a philosopher can easily point out why it is unreasonable, and that furthermore it creates very serious theological quandaries.

The difficulty here should be obvious. Scientist do use logic and "more broadly reason-based arguments"; they do so all the time. Much of science proceeds by processes that include logical deduction, and there are no a priori boundaries to the kinds of "broadly reason-based arguments" that scientists can use.

Let me qualify that: there may be some claims that should be conceded as lying outside of science. These may be more a matter of the historical construction of science as a set of institutions than anything else, but I'll not press that issue. Instead, let's agree, for the sake of argument, that scientific reasoning alone cannot give us correct values or correct moral norms. Let's also assume that such things as correct values and moral norms actually exist - though there's much to be said here - but that science alone cannot provide them.

It's also strongly arguable that science is unable to deliver correct statements about fundamental epistemological principles. Take, for example, a principle such as, "All truths except this one are truths that are known through science." A claim like that, whatever its other features, does not seem to be known through science. Nor does its negation seem to be known through science. I'll assume, then, that some meaningful and rational discussion of epistemological issues lies beyond the boundaries of science.

Still, this is not the sort of example that Pigliucci offers. Instead, he begins with the claim that the universe is really 6,000 years old. Science has, of course, produced plenty of evidence that this is just false, that the universe is more like 13 to 14 billion years old. Our own planet is roughly 4 to 5 billion years old. All of this surely counts against the claim that the universe is really only 6,000 years old. Pigliucci is quite correct to see this as an example of science falsifying a religious claim, and I suspect he'd think there are many such examples. Furthermore, he doesn't try to assert, in the fashion of Stephen Jay Gould, that there are some kinds of claims that it is illegitimate for religion to make. Thus, quite correctly in my view, he does not accept the principle of Non-Overlapping Magisteria.

However, what if somebody replies that God arranged for the Earth to look far older than it really is, in order to test our faith? Here, Pigliucci thinks that science (and hence skeptical inquiry) reaches a limit. He claims, in effect, that philosophers have a reply, whereas scientists must stand mute.

I disagree with this. The scientist is quite entitled to reject the claim, not because it makes falsified predictions or conflicts directly with observations (it doesn't) but because it is ad hoc. It is perfectly legitimate for scientists working in the relevant fields to make the judgment that a particular hypothesis is not worth pursuing, and should be treated as false, because it has been introduced merely to avoid falsification of a position that is contrary to the evidence.

Scientists might take some interest in claims about a pre-aged Earth if they were framed in such a way as to make novel and testable predictions, but as long as all such claims are presented as mere ad hoc manoeuvres to avoid falsification of the claim that the universe is really 6,000 years old, a scientist is quite entitled to reject it. A philosopher should reject it for exactly the same reason. Philosophers don't have any advantage over scientists at this point.

Thus, Pigliucci is unnecessarily limiting the kinds of arguments that are available to scientists. He writes as if they are incapable of using arguments grounded in commonsense reasoning, such as arguments that propose we reject ad hoc thesis-saving hypotheses.

That's not to say that the resources of science never run out. But when they do it is often for merely practical reasons. For example, it may be because of because a problem that confronts us requires that we consider points that scientists are, in practice, not well-trained to consider. If that's the problem, it's a matter of pragmatic division of labour, not of an epistemological resource that's out of bounds to scientists in principle.

Accordingly, we might have good reason to say that scientists, as a class, are not that well-trained to solve puzzles that arise within philosophy of religion. But it doesn't follow that any specific scientist - Richard Dawkins, say - is poorly equipped to do so by his training and study. Nor does it follow that whatever arguments Dawkins uses are "not scientific". They may be shared with philosophers, but it by no means follows that they are out of bounds for use by scientists. They may not be distinctively scientific, but that's another matter.

Moreover, it is possible that certain arguments that are legitimately open to scientists to develop might turn out to be decisive, one way or another, with respect to issues in philosophy of religion. Pigliucci says: "When someone, therefore, wants to make a scientific argument in favor of atheism — like Dawkins and Jerry Coyne seem to do — he is stepping outside of the epistemological boundaries of science, thereby doing a disservice both to science and to intellectual inquiry." But we can't know that in advance. It's certainly not a truism which we're compelled to accept.

Two examples

It might help to consider some contrasting examples. First, suppose that a cryptozoologist claims that a gigantic, previously undiscovered species of ape lives in the forests of New England (I'm thinking of the location in North America, not the identically-named location in Australia, or any other place with the same name). I assume that it would be pretty straightforward to work out what would be good evidence for or against the existence of this new species - what kinds of observations we would need to make to confirm its existence directly, what kinds of observations would pretty much preclude its existence, and what observations would be inconclusive. It wouldn't be too hard, at least in principle, to get together a group of zoologists, ecologists, and the like, to investigate the matter. Thus, no one doubts that the existence or otherwise of this spectacular New World primate is a scientific question.

What, however, if the claim is made that a Jewish apocalyptic prophet performed miracles during the first century of the Common Era? This looks like a job for historians - thus we immediately assign it to folks in the Faculty of Arts, rather than the Faculty of Science. The historians are likely to ask for historical evidence of the existence of this prophet and of his alleged miracles. Surely that's reasonable? This may involve (among other things) investigating various documents that supposedly record the prophet's acts, including the miraculous ones. How should the historians proceed?

Well, it will be a bit complicated, though perhaps no more so than the job of the scientists looking for the giant ape.

The historians might wish to establish, using a variety of means available to them, whether the documents were contemporary with the events described. They might examine the documents to try to determine whether they were originally created in their current form, or whether some parts are older, and perhaps more reliable than others. They might attempt to determine whether any of the events recorded in the documents are of such a nature that, if they really happened, they would have been recorded in secular texts of the time. For example, the documents might claim that on such and such a day five hundred long-dead corpses rose from a major cemetery and wandered the streets of Rome, accosting sinners and soldiers. Historians can check whether any of the secular historical texts and other unbiased records describe such an event.

They might also check carefully to see whether the documents are internally consistent and consistent with each other, and the nature of the inconsistencies if any are found. They might take into account whatever is known about the propensity for the lives of prophets to be mythologised, in the sense that the truth is embroidered with (false) accounts of miracle working. They might look to forensic psychologists, among others, for knowledge of when and how people come to believe things (and even to believe they saw things) that turn out to be false.

Many of the skills needed to do all this (including language skills) are taught in arts faculties rather than science faculties. And yet, there is nothing in the kinds of investigations that the historians will be involved in, or the kinds of arguments that they will use in attempting to settle the issue, that is conceptually remote from scientific reasoning. The same sort of logic will be employed; ad hoc hypotheses will be rejected; facts will be weighed.

It's true, of course, that the job will be assigned to people who are well trained in interpreting the nuances of language and the effects of culture, rather than in (for example) mathematics and the conduct of experiments. On the other hand, some scientific apparatus might be used, such as computers programmed to analyse texts to help determine whether they were written by the same person. Hypothetico-deductive reasoning might be relied on at various points. Most importantly, none of the techniques that I am describing are totally unavailable to scientists - it's more a question of emphasis in training. It makes sense to call the investigation a "scientific" one, even though conducted by people employed within arts faculties.

Or we might say that it's an issue for historians, not scientists, while adding that there is no radical difference between the epistemological resources of history and science. It's just that different emphases in training and skill mixes tend to be needed, for everyday purposes, by scientists and historians. If someone had all these skills, they would complement each other and mesh together just fine. When we talk about the methods of scientists and compare those of historians, there are no radically different "ways of knowing" involved. Moreover, there is no reason in a case like this why the historical evidence and arguments should be considered anything less than decisive.

What about philosophers?

Imagine that a philosopher seeks to investigate whether a divine being created the Earth. In that case, she might be faced with evidence of many kinds. For example, one item of alleged evidence, among the many, might be the claim that a Jewish apocalyptic prophet who performed miracles in the first century of the Common Era claimed to be the son of this being. The philosopher might conclude that the alleged testimony of the apocalyptic prophet would carry weight if: (1) he really existed and said what is recorded, and; (2) he really did perform the alleged miracles.

In checking into this evidential issue, the philosopher is likely to ask for help from historians, at least in the first instance, rather than from scientists, thus keeping the investigation within the Faculty of Arts. But, let's remember, the historians will not be using techniques or arguments that are radically foreign to science and scientists - they have a different skill mix but not a radically different way of knowing.

What if the apocalyptic prophet were alleged to have made various claims that are in conflict with current science, e.g. that the Sun is a ball of white hot metal circling the Earth? A philosopher might take this as evidence (perhaps not strong evidence, but still ...) that the prophet was all too human and not, in fact, the child of a divine being. Note, however, that she would depend on scientists to tell her that the claim is, in fact, incorrect, and on historians to tell her whether it is likely that the prophet really said what is attributed to him. At no stage in this inquiry - at least no stage discussed so far - does the philosopher do anything that's radically foreign to the scientific reasoning.

In the upshot, the question about a divine being who created the Earth is likely to involve input from many disciplines, with people who have many different skill sets providing relevant data and sub-conclusions. The beleaguered philosopher must sort out highly complex arguments using all this material, while (probably) not having the skills herself to undertake the textual analysis performed by the historian, or the physical experiments that were performed by scientists in the past when they discovered the true nature of the Sun. But she has not yet used arguments or evidence that are beyond those available, in principle, to scientists. It's simply a matter of division of labour within academic institutions and the availability of people with different skill sets.

Accordingly, a question about the existence of a divine creator is different, in a practical way, from a question about an unknown species of gigantic ape in New England. Whereas the latter can be assigned to scientists from a small group of relevantly related disciplines, the latter may call on data and conclusions from many disciplines, across faculty boundaries, and involving many different skill sets. The overall argument may be extremely complicated in the sense that there are many sub-arguments (from many disciplines) feeding into it. Accordingly, this kind of argument gets assigned to philosophy, the repository for arguments that involve many considerations (and sub-conclusions) from many fields.

But, while that is a reason to say that a question such as this is philosophical, it still does not follow that any of the reasoning done is unavailable to scientists who are broadly enough trained. It is simply that some of the skills depended on at different points in the overall argument come from people with training that scientists don't usually have - e.g. advanced knowledge of ancient languages.

Not only that, but some of the sub-conclusions derivable from science might turn out to be decisive. If we're told enough about the God concerned, we might be able to deduce that it doesn't exist (or that it does) purely on the basis of data and arguments that are available to scientists, without even calling in the historians to help establish what took place in the Middle East 2000 years ago. Thus, Pigliucci is wrong when he suggest that atheism cannot, as a matter of principle, be established by scientific arguments. Whether or not it can be, in respect of one god or another, remains to be seen.

For example, consider the claim that an all-benevolent, all-powerful, all-knowing God exists, and has existed from eternity. It is well within the skills of scientists to give this consideration, deduce what kinds of events would contradict the claim, and look for evidence of such events - e.g. evidence of nature red in tooth and claw, the existence of horrible pain experienced by sentient creatures, and that much of this has nothing to do with any exercise of free will by human beings.


Although there is no science that is specifically charged with investigating the existence of such a deity, there easily could be an interdisciplinary effort by various scientists, particularly including biologists, that justifiably concludes that a god of this kind does not exist. If a theist who supports the existence of a god of this kind resorts to ad hoc manoeuvres, the scientists will be well equipped to recognise them as such.

None of this is to deny that some of what goes on in philosophy is different from what goes on in any scientific discipline. But it is not known in advance that any of these things will be required to settle, decisively, the truth of a particular religious claim.

Perhaps, however, there could be religious claims that it is possible to settle only if we first settle issues of morality or fundamental epistemology that lie outside of science. Accordingly, there is a possibility that some claims about the existence of a god will require sub-conclusions that seem to lie beyond the scope of science. Thus, we can't guarantee that all questions about the existence of a God or gods are decisively resolvable by science, or by methods (such as those of historical-textual scholars) that are allied with it.

Conclusion

We should come to a weaker conclusion than Pigliucci's. Pace Pigliucci, it is not wrong in principle to put scientific arguments for atheism (or for theism). It cannot be ruled out in advance that the kinds of arguments used by scientists will be decisive.

Even if the scientific arguments are not decisive by themselves, they may be when taken in conjunction with other considerations. In that case, they may still be of crucial importance in reaching an atheistic (or, indeed, theistic) conclusion and in that case it appears unfair to criticise somebody like Richard Dawkins for overstepping the bounds.

After all, philosophers are forced to draw upon resources from other disciplines. Why can't a biologist do likewise, obtaining important data and sub-conclusions from his own field, while also relying on input from (say) historians and philosophers for the full argument? If we accept that picture, scientists in the relevant field(s) do have an advantage over people with no scientific training. The advantage will consist in a the possession of both a useful knowledge base and the skills in developing relevant kinds of arguments. While the ultimate conclusion may turn out to require assistance from, say, historians or philosophers, that does not render scientific qualifications irrelevant.

In any event, Pigliucci is surely correct about one thing: the questions relating to theism, atheism, and philosophy of religion in general, should be investigated rationally. Philosophers, historians, and various kinds of scientists may all have a role to play in that investigation (though it is still possible that one or other set of arguments by itself will be decisive). There is no "way of knowing", lying somewhere beyond the realm of rational inquiry, that can solve the problem for us. We are left with our reason and intelligence, and the ongoing advance of knowledge.

But possessing those is no small thing. It's something we must always celebrate, the only key to a (post)human future on or beyond our blue-green Earth.

Russell Blackford's home blog is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club. He is editor-in-chief of The Journal of Evolution and Technology and co-editor, with Udo Schuklenk, of 50 Voices of Disbelief: Why We Are Atheists (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

Welcome to the Machine, Part 2: Descartes's malicious demon

Previously in series: "Welcome to the Machine, Part 1: The ethics of simulated beings."

A little over 350 years ago, philosopher René Descartes was struck by a rather disturbing thought. Is it possible, he wondered, that what we think of as reality is nothing more than an elaborate hoax?

Descartes, who was writing in his Meditations on First Philosophy, conceived of this possibility while formulating his principle of methodological skepticism. He was trying to find a fundamental set of principles that he believed could be known without a modicum of doubt. He ended up concluding that any idea that can be doubted should be doubted, giving rise to what is now known as Cartesian skepticism.

Consequently, Descartes doubted a lot, including the efficacy of our senses to convey reality as it truly is. He used the example of dreaming to illuminate the point. When dreaming, our senses perceive things that seem real, but do not actually exist. "Thus what I thought I had seen with my eyes," he wrote, "I actually grasped solely with the faculty of judgment, which is in my mind." From this observation Descartes concluded that we cannot rely solely on our senses, as they may not be telling us what is necessarily true.

Taking this line of inquiry further and applying it to the "real" world, Descartes thought it conceivable that the reality we take for granted may actually be a complex hallucination orchestrated by some kind of powerful intelligence, what he referred to as a "malicious demon."

"It is at least possible that there is an all-powerful evil demon who is deceiving me, such that he causes me to have false beliefs, including the belief that there is a table in front of me and the belief that two plus three equals five," wrote Descartes. The all-powerful evil demon, he argued, could feed us whatever experiences he chooses. "I shall think that the sky, the air, the earth, colors, shapes, sounds and all external things are merely the delusions of dreams which he has devised to ensnare my judgment."

Undeniably, Descartes was on to something, but because of his place in time and history, he was unable to formulate sound technical explanations to describe how such a hoax could come about, save reference to supernatural intervention.

More recently, however, philosophers and scientists have come up with novel theoretical scenarios describing how such a hoax could in fact be perpetuated. Thirty years ago philosophers envisioned vats with floating brains that were fed sensory experiences. Today they envision powerful haptic and neural interfaces, virtual realities and sophisticated supercomputers running elaborate simulations.

Indeed, given the radical potential for supercomputers and our growing understanding of mental state functionalism (i.e. cognitive computationalism), we are coming to realize that even consciousness is subject to analog-to-digital conversion. And while we no longer speak of demons, we now consider the work of superintelligences running simulations of mind-boggling complexity and power.

Tomorrow: The Simulation Argument.

The dumbing down of America continues

Ugh, I can't believe this: NBC is about to air a new special called Phenomenon that will feature "mystifier" Criss Angel and "mentalist" Uri Geller:

Mystifier/artist Criss Angel ("Criss Angel MINDFREAK") and famed mentalist Uri Geller will host this mysterious live competition series in which they will conduct an intensive search for the next great mentalist. The series tests 10 hopeful mentalists who must compete each week to demonstrate a wide spectrum of mystifying talents for a panel of weekly celebrity guests and a studio audience. Geller and Angel will assess the contestants but ultimately the winner's fate will be determined by the viewers at home. In addition to voting, each episode will also contain an interactive component to engage the at home audience.

You can catch a preview here.

Or, you can watch Geller's infamous performance failure on the Tonight Show:

As P.T. Barnum once said, "There's a sucker born every minute."

Strange how things haven't change since Barnum's day.

Hitchens gets it wrong about Buddhism

"Don't believe me, don't believe anybody, don't accept anything based on tradition. Don't believe anything based on the fact that your community believes this or your country believes this or the people that you are around believe this." - Buddha

I’ve never really paid much attention to Christopher Hitchens, renowned and reviled critic of all things religious. But when my brother recently brought his anti-Buddhist sentiments to my attention I had to take a closer look.

As it turns out, he does indeed have some very uncomplimentary things to say about Buddhism.

Hitchens essentially believes that the West has been duped by what he regards as just another religion filled with all the usual trappings. He regards Buddhism as a “faith” that “despises the mind and the free individual." He says it preaches submission and resignation, and that practitioners come to regard life as a “poor and transient thing.”

In his book, God is not Great, Hitchens writes,

"Those who become bored by conventional "Bible" religions, and seek "enlightenment" by way of the dissolution of their own critical faculties into nirvana in any form, had better take a warning. They may think they are leaving the realm of despised materialism, but they are still being asked to put their reason to sleep, and to discard their minds along with their sandals."

Wow. Pretty harsh stuff. Hitchens doesn’t mince words and slams into Buddhism like he would any other religion.

That's all fine and well, except that Buddhism isn’t just any other religion.

What Buddhism is

Yes, Buddhism has the characteristics of religion, but it offers much more than that.

It’s an epistemological philosophy and an intrapersonal approach to perception, self-awareness and self-regulation. It’s an aesthetic. It’s a non-anthropocentric ethical viewpoint that places an emphasis on meaningful, compassionate and genuine relationships. It's a type of Humanism. It encourages meditation and a mindful approach to living. It’s a worldview and methodology that promotes skepticism, rationality, empiricism and even non-conformity. It is the practical acknowledgment of the unavoidable perceptual subjectivity that is part of the human condition. It is the recognition that the mind matters and that conscious awareness can and should be optimized.

Buddhists believe that by paying close attention to moment-to-moment conscious experience it is possible to move beyond the sense of “self” in favour of a new state of personal well-being. And if this can be incorporated within the framework of formal scientific investigation, then all the better.

And all this without the usual baggage and expectations of most religions, namely belief in God, the soul, judgment and the afterlife. It does not promote any fixed dogma, nor does the practice result in feelings of guilt or shame. There are no 'sins' to be committed in Buddhism, nor are there highly polarized notions of right and wrong; practitioners simply do the best they can to mete out as little suffering to the world as possible.

But like all Big Ideas, Buddhism can be prone to abuse and misunderstanding -- and as Hitchens has correctly noted, even tribalistic tendencies.

Institutionalized Buddhism

Indeed, a big part of Hitchens’s grief with Buddhism is its questionable history and how it has become highly ritualized and filled with other-worldly beliefs. As he has said, “Buddhism can be as hysterical and sanguinary as any other system that relies on faith and tribe.” Hitchens has railed against the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan Buddhists. He condemns the Burmese dictatorship as a Buddhist one (which seems a suspicious claim to make these days seeing as thousands of monks have recently stood up against this regime). Hitchens dips deep into history and blames Buddhism for a number of misguided practices and atrocities.

While I agree that Buddhism has been used in this way and that blood has been shed in its name, I can’t agree that Buddhism is the cause of these things. What Hitchens is describing is the failure of human nature, the perils of insular groupthink, and politics itself. It is the same phenomenon that has led to the bastardization of the teachings of Jesus and the rise of such monolithic institutions as the Catholic Church (along with its sordid history of conquest and persecution). Consequently, Hitchens’s ire should be directed at the phenomenon of tribalism and not religion itself.

Buddhist faith?

Hitchens also makes the claim that Buddhists rely on faith. Undoubtedly, beliefs in reincarnation, karma and transcendence run deep within various Buddhist strains. This is currently a point of great contention among Buddhist scholars, some of whom, like the secular Buddhist Stephen Batchelor, contend that these precepts are unnecessary and that when it comes to metaphysics Buddhists should actually be agnostic. More traditional Buddhists, on the other hand, argue that belief in rebirth is absolutely necessary to the practice.

Interestingly, the Dalai Lama himself – a believer in reincarnation – maintains that science should take precedence over these sorts of notions. He once said, “My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation: if scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”

Easier said than done, of course. Deeply embedded and ritualized religions have an incredibly hard time adapting to change -- including Buddhism.

As for the accusation that all Buddhists rely on faith, that's clearly a generalization. Most Buddhists, I would say, likely take nothing on mere faith alone.

Alternative perception

Hitchens also critiques the aims of Buddhist practice itself. He makes a number of suspicious claims -- that Buddhists despise the mind and the free individual, that Buddhism teaches submission and resignation, and that practitioners regard life as a fleeting thing full of suffering. He contends that Buddhists require a surrendering of the mind.

This is mostly nonsense. These claims have been countered elsewhere, so I won’t replicate them here, but there are a pair of issues I wish to address.

First, Hitchens appears to be confused. He seems to be conflating transcendental meditation (or something like it) with the more traditional practice of Vipasanna meditation and its focus on mindful awareness. There is nothing escapist or transcendent about this practice; rather, it's very much about focusing on the here-and-now and correcting the processes of a conditioned mind.

Second, Hitchens complains that Buddhists favour subjectivity over objectivity. “[Y]ou're supposed to be the subjective judge of what you're experiencing, are you not?,” he asks. Hitchens, being the uber-materialist that he is, is concerned that Buddhists don’t believe that anything can be accepted at objective face-value, that Buddhists merely see existence as some sort of grandiose illusion.

Hitchens's special claim into the true nature of reality aside, he is a bit off course here and his concern is exaggerated. Buddhists do not deny the presence of the material world or the value of objectivity – far from. What they assert is that the Universe will always be perceived through the lens of an observer and that our comprehension of reality must always take this into account. The only way the world can be observed is subjectively; there can be no such thing as a truly objective observer. We can and should strive towards an objective frame, but the world will always be perceived by an observer, which is by definition a subject.

It’s okay to be spiritual, really it is

What irks me most about Hitchens’s critique of Buddhism is the sense I get that what he is really complaining about are personal quests for spirituality. In fact, some of his arguments are so pithy (like making fun of Buddhist koans and Steven Seagal) that I'm inclined to think he is slamming into Buddhism just for the sake of it -- because it's just another "religion" on his hate list.

But Hitchens hasn't done his homework and it shows. Moreover, his limited acceptance as to what kind of worldview and perceptual lens is acceptable is extremely limited and narrow-minded.

Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with spirituality. Or, if you hate that word, a sense of existential awareness. In fact, I wish more people would consider the philosophic implications of existence and look deeper within themselves. There is far too much daydreaming going on today with people living way outside their heads.

On the issue of spirituality I’ll give Sam Harris the last word:

"There is clearly a sacred dimension to our existence, and coming to terms with it could well be the highest purpose of human life...[I]t must be possible to bring reason, spirituality, and ethics together in our thinking about the world. This would be the beginning of a rational approach to our deepest personal concerns. It would also be the end of faith."

Sources:
"An Interview with Christopher Hitchens," C. P. Farley.
"Christopher Hitchens reduces Buddhism to a phrase," True Ancestor.
"His material highness," Christopher Hitchens.
"Christopher Hitchens: Religion Poisons Everything," Jon Wiener
"Hitchens - Zen is not Great?," Flapping Mouths.
Wikipedia and Wikiquote.

Scientific literacy as a means to inoculate against religion

"My only wish is…to transform friends of God into friends of man, believers into thinkers, devotees of prayer into devotees of work, candidates for the hereafter into students of the world, Christians who, by their own procession and admission, are "half animal, half angel" into persons, into whole persons."

– Ludwig Feuerbach

There’s a current billboard in Toronto that reads, “Literacy is a right.”

Now, we’ve all be told to believe that rights are nonsense on stilts, but there is a certain significance to these sorts of proclamations. Clearly, when someone declares something to be a ‘human right’ they are making a very serious claim. They have pinpointed something they feel no person should have to do without, whether it be protection against racial discrimination, access to clean water, or in this case, the ability to read.

The impetus behind these sorts of social efforts is the assurance that persons be guaranteed the most basic tools and protections required to get through life fairly and safely. In the case of reading, it is generally acknowledged that illiteracy debilitates a person to the point where they experience undue difficulty engaging in all that life and society has to offer.

Interestingly, there’s a normative aspect to these sorts of ‘endowments’ and privileges. A few centuries ago most people did not need to know how to read to get through life. Today, however, it is near impossible – hence the call for literacy as a basic right.

But it’s not just the ability to read that is crucial today. Given the intricacies of the modern age and the ever-growing complexification of ideas and technology, it can be said that a scientific education is also increasingly necessary; if literacy can be considered a basic right, then so to must scientific literacy.

Yet, far too few people truly understand science and technology today. This is proving to be extremely problematic, particularly at the dawn of what looks to be a transformative future. Scientific illiteracy, quite unfortunately, appears to be an issue that will only get worse and create a slew of social problems.

Including the ongoing entrenchment and spread of religion.

We currently live at a time when rationality and tolerance have never been more important to the human species. Religion, with all its prejudices and devotion to ignorance, continues to present a threat to not just healthy and inquisitive minds, but to civilization itself.

Consequently, we need to place a much higher value on a scientific education. Simply put, there’s no better way to inoculate against religion and other forms of misinformation and unhealthy thinking habits. Our children deserve the right to a scientific, critical mind.

Soft memetic engineering

Indeed, the only truly effective and ethical way to combat viral religious memes is to nip them in the bud and prevent them from taking root in the first place. Prevention is what’s required rather than a cure.

Memetic theory -- the notion that ideas replicate by spreading from mind to mind – suggests that memes are only effective if they find a home in a sympathetic brain. The ability of a meme to take root in someone’s consciousness is a reflection of its ability to exploit human psychology (consequently, memetics can be thought of the science of understanding how human psychology responds to information). But this is only part of the story. Not all minds are alike, and not everyone is subject to the same information acquisition/transmission tendencies.

There are currently 6.6 billion human minds on the planet in various states of memetic receptiveness. Owing to new technologies, many these minds have unprecedented access to the world’s information. The current memepool is an anarchic mix of ideas bursting open like the Cambrian Explosion --each idea waiting for the opportunity to copy itself from one mind to another.

These conditions are the result of human ingenuity, creativity and tolerance. In free societies memes remain largely unchecked and are allowed to proliferate and mutate at will. In liberal democracies we consider freedom of speech and the right to free expression as among our highest values.

We also live in a world, quite thankfully, where people cannot be coerced into adopting a specific mindset. This was attempted in the 20th century by totalitarian Marxist regimes who, in the case of religion, banned spiritual practices, burned down churches and executed priests. The end result, particularly in post-Soviet Russia, was a religious community who survived the persecution only to come back with more power and fervor than before.

In other words, it backfired.

Indeed, this kind of ideological ‘memetic engineering’ is very much frowned upon today and should not be considered a viable solution in the struggle to maintain cultural health.

Unfortunately, however, there are consequences to having an anarchic memepool, namely the unchecked proliferation of misinformation, superstition, and of course, religion. These types of ideas are more than mere falsities, they create problems as well. Recently in Canada, for example, Catholic girls were nearly denied vaccinations for for human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease. As a result, these girls were put at risk of developing cervical cancer on account of religious sexual taboos.

As Thomas H. Hulxey once noted, “Irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.” As we can attest to today, religious notions are interfering with the quality of human lives, whether it be public health issues, hallucinations of an intelligent designer or the blood lust of a suicidal would-be martyrs.

Thankfully, there is a gentle and elegant way to steer people in the direction of truth and rationality – what we can call a soft form of memetic engineering. I’m speaking, of course, of scientific literacy. Given our society's laws and values, the best we can do is to prime minds in such a way that they are equipped to fend off superstitious nonsense. A mind in tune with scientific methodology can better sterilize religious memes, and at the same time guard against other psychological pot-holes like pseudoscience and conspiratorial paranoia.

A way of thinking

A scientific education consists of more than just memorizing the periodic table of the elements or understanding Newton’s basic laws. In addition to these things it is the acquisition of the skeptical mind and the capacity for critical thought. Carl Sagan once noted that, “Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.”

Skepticism should be considered a virtue and a redeeming characteristic. Physicist Richard Feynman agreed, “There is no harm in doubt and skepticism, for it is through these that new discoveries are made.” Conversely, Richard Dawkins describes the religious mind as being unimaginative, not poetic, not soulful. “On the contrary, they are parochial, small-minded, niggardly with the human imagination, precisely where science is generous,” he says.

Needless to say a number of things have to change. The education system needs to be reformed, while popular media needs to take on a more positive outlook when it comes to science.

Take school, for example. In addition to regular science classes students should have lessons dedicated to critical and healthy thinking (including lessons in emotional intelligence). These classes should teach the scientific method, empiricism, how to recognize biases and extraordinary claims, and how to properly source data and work with credible sources.

This would go a long way in making the learning of science much more palatable for students. Today, most students, particularly girls, find it off-putting. It’s geek stuff. It’s supposed to be hard. Moreover, science is often relegated to the sidelines in favour of easier or more romantic and exciting subjects, including athletics.

Districts should establish pro-science campaigns and bring in expert speakers and science-focused entertainers. Schools need more money, better equipment, and enthusiastic teachers. Students should have more time allocated each week to learning about science and critical thinking. Pop culture needs more positive role models like Bill Nye and outspoken individuals like Richard Dawkins and the late Carl Sagan.

Science can be sexy. It just has to presented that way.

Liberal education and home schooling

All of this, of course, cannot happen in a vacuum; science most certainly needs to be part of a broader liberal education. Students should understand the width and breadth of the world and avoid the insular thinking that characterizes religious minds and communities.

To this end, schools should introduce students to psychology, history and cultural studies at an earlier age. World religions should be taught to expand otherwise limited faith-based views, thus greatly reducing xenophobia and general lack of awareness. It would also establish a sense of humility and reduce notions of cultural relativism.

As for the issue of home schooling, yes, parents deserve the right to keep their kids at home or send them to private faith-based schools.

But such a decision may eventually come at a price. Standardized testing should be implemented and no student should be able to earn a high school diploma without a solid grasp of the basics of science and its methodology. Should some parents insist on teaching creationism instead of evolution, their children will have to face the consequences. The outcome may be that faith-based schooling will eventually carry a stigma. It’s conceivable that these children will have low employability and have difficultly earning admission to universities.

Democratic process

An implicit assumption in a democracy is that the collective actions of an informed populace will be to the benefit of both individuals and the community. The world, in order to be properly comprehended, and for an individual to fully engage in life, is increasingly dependent on persons having a scientific rather than a metaphysical interpretation of existence. Today, without critical thinkers, democracy and effective governance is in peril.

Moreover, given the complexity of today’s technologies and the dire consequences (or benefits!) of their development, the need to address global scale problems has never been more important. Scientific minds are absolutely necessary to not just identify these problems, but to solve them as well. Today we face such calamities as global warming and the spread of catastrophic diseases.

It should be noted that many Christian evangelists are global warming deniers -- not because they claim any special scientific knowledge, but because they are skeptical of any scientific claim, and any other 'belief system' like environmentalism that could rival their own. This is a recipe for disaster.

Close-mindedness is not what's required here; instead, we need dynamic and effective people to help humanity deal with problems like climate change.

Helping people and society

Scientific illiteracy is an impairment. Individuals without the capacity for critical and rational thought are increasingly having a difficult time understanding their world and relating to ‘mainstream’ society. There is a growing divide between the secular and religious worlds, giving rise to two distinct cultures who are increasingly unable to converse with each other.

Worse, those individuals who embrace more extreme or fundamentalist versions of religion feel increasingly alienated by modern society. The urge is to rail against the tide rather than seek a kind of reconciliation or understanding; cultural relations ends up regressing to an 'us versus them' mentality.

But a common ground does exist. Science is the universal language.

If literacy can be declared a right, then so too must scientific literacy. The health of individuals and society depends on it.