5 days a week I listen to KPFK Pacifica radio during the day and I generally enjoy it. Needed escape from the so called liberal corporate media. I have noticed, however a high degree of tolerance and even bias towards alternative medicine quackery and wacky new age spiritualism.  Yesterday there was a woman on talking about how to find your guardian angels and how if you see a blue butterfly then that means a certain kind of angel is trying to get in touch with you.  Today there was some nutjob talking about healing touch and the living matrix, and how he cured a 13 year old Spaniard of cerebral palsy.

As a general rule it seems based on the programming that modern mainstream medicine is bad and alternative medicine is good and vaccines no doubt cause autism and the truth is being suppressed. Also there’s a fair amount of law of attraction/Secret mumbo jumbo.  And its such an odd incongruity when the next segment is a clip of Noam Chomsky speaking at MIT about the situation in Gaza.

It got me to thinking that while The Right rightfully receives critique for its pseudoscience leanings on issues like evolution and global warming, there also seems to be a tendency to embrace certain pseudoscience among the progressive left.  Perhaps it is the rejection of The Establishment and The Man that has been historically foundational in the progressive movement.

It also brought home to me the point that Sam Harris has been making about critical thinking and reason really being the central ideology and that atheism is then just a subset of that.  I also think any political ideology should first and foremost emphasize critical thinking. Reason can be the guardian against the excesses and limitations of both conservatism and liberalism.

This is a known problem. As a case example: The Huffington Post. Along side good articles on politics and current affairs, they also has shit about the woo of the day topics like you mention above. There are idiots on all sides of the political spectrum.

dfs—

You’re in my “media market” so you probably also listen to the AM channel that has Stephanie Miller, Thom Hartmann etc on during the week.  On the weekend their airwaves are sold to whack jobs selling vitamin supplements.  I agree that it is bullshit, but I guess these guys have to pay the rent.  Now, KPFA is non-profit, so they seem to be just acting as if anything that is “alternative” is worth talking about.  I agree that it is somewhat insulting to Chomsky and Zinn and Amy Goodman, who present an alternative to multinational corporate explanations of the world, to equate them with snake oil salesmen presenting an alternative to scientific understanding of health, but what are you going to do?

It’s not as if they couldn’t use the time talking about the perversion of science by the medical/industrial complex in the name of profit.

Edit:  No, you’re not in my “media market,” I’m in the KPFA market—they are in Berkeley; you’re in LA.  But, you get the idea.

Mmm, fringe superstitions certainly dont inspire confidence but I’m not that worried about them either. They might discredit particular individuals but they don’t have any political momentum of their own. No one is carving them into courthouses.

Brick Bungalow - 14 September 2009 12:49 PM

Mmm, fringe superstitions certainly dont inspire confidence but I’m not that worried about them either. They might discredit particular individuals but they don’t have any political momentum of their own. No one is carving them into courthouses.

Bullshit is bullshit, and should be called out whenever and wherever it is encountered. I could be persuaded that those proclivities have their source in the hippie origins of alternative politics, but that would remain speculation. Mostly it’s money talking.

It has gone so far that Princess Märtha Louise of the proud Norwegian Royal Family has started an angel academy (I kid you not), and is using the Royal Castle in Oslo for its mailing address. The horror.

An email to the station doesn’t hurt. It’s annoying nonsense.

Pseudoscience and nonsense know not any ideological boundary.

Prayer is a good example. I don’t know how many republicans vs democrats actually hit their knees, but they both talk about it constantly.

God bless America!!!!

Yeah right.

All mythology is equal useful. Not all mythology is equally dangerous.

Thats all I’m sayin.

Nice Brick. You sound like Joseph Campbell there a bit. 

Kind of like his…..‘All religions are valid, none are true.’ .....idea.

dfs - 11 September 2009 08:37 PM

It also brought home to me the point that Sam Harris has been making about critical thinking and reason really being the central ideology and that atheism is then just a subset of that.  I also think any political ideology should first and foremost emphasize critical thinking. Reason can be the guardian against the excesses and limitations of both conservatism and liberalism.

Hi

Let’s reason our way through this the same way that I’ve seen Sam Harris do. Instead of talking about the “unknown” existence of god, let’s talk about the “unknown” number of stars in the universe (exact number, not estimated number, including decimal representations of stars in development).

Question: How many stars are in the universe?

Group A: That’s an open question. We have an educated guess.

Group B: There are exactly 5 billion stars. We counted them.

Group C: There are no stars. We don’t care what your experience is when you look at the sky.

Group D: We have a proof that this number is undecidable. The best result we can get for now is the educated guess supplied by group A.

How do you fel about these responses? Does it seem to you that some of these responses are more reasonable than others? Watch how your reactions change when we change the question:

Question: Does god, and more generally does the pantheon of gods, exist outside of literature and literary fiction?

Group A: That’s an open question. We have an educated guess.

Group B: Yes. These gods are real and those gods are not real. We checked.

Group C: There are no gods. We don’t care what your experience is when an electrical current runs across your temporal lobe.

Group D: We have a proof that the gods’ existence undecidable. The best result we can get for now is the educated guess supplied by group A.

Sadly, nobody has as yet proven the undecidability of the question. It is a proof that would silence the debate. There are people who can write that proof, so we have to ask ourselves why it hasn’t been written.

Does anyone want to take the time out of his or her life while working several jobs and advocating clean fuel, affordable health care, reforms in education, reforms in economic theory, reforms in international trade agreements, raising kids, living with family, cooking and cleaning at home… to prove the undecidability of the existence of the pantheon of gods (monotheism included as a subset) in exchange for no money, no reward, no recognition, no credit and no incentive of any form? Of course not. And anyone who self-sacrificed that way would be lucky to get only no money and no reward of any kind for what is predictable is probable persecution in exchange for such a tremendous contribution ot humanity. So that’s why logicians and mathematicians who have the skills to prove truth, falsehood, existence and undecidability have by and large let the world run itself into the ground: we’ve been excessively underpaid for too long, so naturally we stuck with our own kind and were otherwise more or less on strike.

It’s becoming clearer to more and more people why logicians and mathematicians who are highly skilled at these sorts of proofs have been absent from this sort of conversation for decades (centuries actually, keeping in mind what happened to Galileo, Turing, Ramanujan… ).

Regarding upholding critical thinking and reason ~ that’s a great place to start. However, atheism is not a subset of clear thinking. Atheism is an educated guess to an open question, with insufficient logic backing it up. When it comes to the actual experiences of the human mind, we are in an area about which we know very little. We still understand mind science, including neuroscience, less than any other science. Until Group D is no longer the empty set, i.e.: somebody proves the undecidability or the non-existence (existence is highly improbable) of the pantheon of gods, we who are logical have to acknowledge that the question is open. This proof will get written after logicians and mathematicians are adequately rewarded for their contribution to society. Our absence from debates is a market failure.

All the best,
Jennifer

...Regarding upholding critical thinking and reason ~ that’s a great place to start. However, atheism is not a subset of clear thinking. Atheism is an educated guess to an open question, with insufficient logic backing it up. When it comes to the actual experiences of the human mind, we are in an area about which we know very little. We still understand mind science, including neuroscience, less than any other science. Until Group D is no longer the empty set, i.e.: somebody proves the undecidability or the non-existence (existence is highly improbable) of the pantheon of gods, we who are logical have to acknowledge that the question is open. This proof will get written after logicians and mathematicians are adequately rewarded for their contribution to society…

...I wholeheartedly agree.  To be fair then this definition also applies to the question of whether the Tooth Fairy exists; that is that Tooth Fairyism is an educated guess to an open question, with insufficient logic backing it up.

Jeff

This line of thinking sets up the idea that we should assume the possibility that one or several gods exist.

There is no reason whatsoever to assume that possibility. All we know is that we have large numbers of people believing such things. The correct line of inquiry is: “Large numbers of people believe in supernatural creatures. What are the causes for these beliefs, as there is no evidence for such supernatural beings?”

Anyone who affirms the openness of the question is an atheist/agnostic themselves. Agnosticism is barely a position, atheism is not a position at all.

Moderates and apologists for religion have a bad habit of rounding up in this fashion. Because two propositions are both unprovable in the absolute does not make them equal.

Ex: How many modern medical remedies can trace their progress back to the theory of evolution by natural selection? Um…. all of them.

Now, how many such remedies were developed with the aid of creationism or intelligent design?

Absolute proof is a red herring. Virtual certainty based on utility is all we have and its quite enough to justify the choice to call out religious dogma for being: inaccurate, immoral and man-made

Hi Jeff (jdrnd),

I enjoy the humor of your suggested Tooth Fairyism. Let’s check out if the four responses work the same way.

Question: Does a Tooth Fairy exist?
Group A: That’s an open question. We have an educated guess and we have counter-examples: confirmation from the people who put money under our pillows that they were pretending to be the Tooth Fairy.
Group B: There is a Tooth Fairy. We saw her.
Group C: There is no Tooth Fairy. We did sufficient research to be clear that it is a hoax as is consistent with the confessions provided by Group A. 
Group D: We don’t need to get involved in this one since Groups A & C handled it.

Humor is welcome. All the best,

Jennifer

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi SFTor,

“This line of thinking sets up the idea that we should assume the possibility that one or several gods exist.” I fail to see your reasoning. My line of thinking runs highly contrary to any notion of the existence of any deity being possible, nevertheless I don’t allow table-thumpers to sway logic. I absolutely agree with your statement, “There is no reason whatsoever to assume that possibility.” My understanding of your suggested line of inquiry is highly compatible with the exact line of inquiry I’ve had in mind all these years – that the answers we seek are far more likely to be found in human neuroscience than in metaphysical stuff out there.

All the best,
Jennifer

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Brick Bungalow,

Probably nothing is unprovable. Conjectures, given sufficient time and money, wind up in one of four states: open (ie: not yet proven), proven to be true, proven to be false (ie: a counter-example was supplied), or proven to be undecidable.

Somebody Else’s Conjecture: There is a thingamajig out there in some metaphysical sense that could be understood by humans to be a god of some ilk, and it would be very convenient if it were unknowable, undefinable, unnamed, has no known attributes of any sort, because then if we met it we wouldn’t know because we wouldn’t be able to recognize it, so those humans not well versed in proof theory could go on wasting their lives debating its existence forever.

Whichever person in our distant past invented that conjecture deserves whatever the additive inverse of a Nobel Prize for literature would be, if the additive inverse of a Nobel Prize were to exist, and if we could award it posthumously in a way that would have any positive effect.

Absolute proof is available, but not for free, and not in exchange for slavery and other forms of negative feedback (gosh, refusal to contribute in exchange for punishment and theft, imagine that ). Conjectures of this sort do not stay open when the market wants them closed, and the global free market does want this one closed due to the time, money and lives it wastes. The global free market also wants this conjecture closed because the debate is really very boring.

Limiting one’s awareness of the global conversation of religion, gods and faith to America’s creationism or intelligent design debate is a lot like limiting our conversation about satellites to the moon. While it is true that the moon is a satellite, it isn’t the only one. America has a valid debate about creationism & intelligent design, howsoever many people of other nationalities wonder why on earth any ten Americans would ever bother to debate this, but let’s start by recognizing that creationism & intelligent design are not the only religious concepts invented in the world. Sure, it’s clear to anybody that religious dogma is by definition inaccurate, immoral and man-made. America has about 3/68ths of the world’s population ~ not quite representative. What about the rest of the world’s other religious perspectives, some of which have no dogma?

All the best,
Jennifer

Religious belief has its own utility to be sure. I would suggest that its utility scales inversely to available knowledge but thats another debate.

As for other religions: I try very hard not to generalize but some patterns are too obvious to ignore. The concern I have for any particular tradition is directly related to its apparent threat to my person. If an unquantifiable and unscrutinized belief in something is relatively benign I’m generally content to let it be. I find astrology to be hogwash but I don’t see its proponents suppressing human rights or blowing up airliners.

In principle, however, I’m opposed to any proposition that minimizes the value of (quality of) life. As far as I can tell, this includes all major religions.

Hi Brick Bungalow,

I think ambiguity of the word Religion is misleading. Consider a set A whose elements are A, extremist-A, B and C. Then talking about A would be confusing because we wouldn’t know if we were talking about the set or the element.

We have religions in the world. Some of these are organized religion. Some of these are extremist minorities within the collection of organized religions. And then there’s other related topics too, including spirituality, other beliefs, and science’s contribution to questions like “Where do we come from and what are we?”

I believe that you’re discussing the minority extremist interpretation of religion. That the minority extremist position’s utility scales inversely to available scientific knowledge is trivially clear. 

Thank you for being willing to tolerate and co-habitate with unexamined benign beliefs. I think the silent majority out there joins me in stating that we are grateful for this level of acceptance. Harm nobody, do as we will.

” I find astrology to be hogwash but I don’t see its proponents suppressing human rights or blowing up airliners. ”

“In principle, however, I’m opposed to any proposition that minimizes the value of (quality of) life.” Me, too, wholeheartedly.

“As far as I can tell, this includes all major religions.” I beg to differ, and this is a bit unusual because we agree much more than we disagree. Personally, I dislike blind faith, randomly disconnected thoughts and table-thumpers, and recognize that there are times when we have to take a leap of faith, and I think that the major religions do still provide guidelines for living life… some guidelines of which are worthwhile and some of which really are worth tossing out.

We’re both against extremists who go nuts and kill in the name of the deity du jour. But that isn’t what religion (set, not element) is mostly about. For most of the silent majority out there, faith is their expression of their experience and it is congruent with human and animal rights, and it includes space and freedom for faith in atheism and faith in pseudoscience. That faith and tolerance, which are not entirely irrational but which have irrational elements in them, are a considerable step toward peaceful co-habitation and they are congruent with the principle ‘Harm nobody, do as we will.’

All the best,
Jennifer

Jennifer,

Well, I suppose an explanation of my own extrapolation (and not only my own) is in order. Tolerating benign beliefs is a matter of practical necessity rather than philosophy for me because I’m honestly not sure there is any such thing.

I am mainly describing the top half-dozen religious traditions in the world ranked by estimated members. Although I acknowledge that many shades of gray exist I don’t take any to be direct exceptions without specific example—- should you be inclined to provide any.

We could speculate with some margin for error that the majority memberships of the major faiths are, indeed, benign individuals who work hard and strive to live a moral life. Most of my neighbors and family would fit such a description.

The trouble is that they are still (in my view) perpetuating, distilling and sheltering the toxic element of their professed religion. I live in the US which is by many accounts a theocracy. It is practically impossible to run for high office here without professing the christian faith and the double standards in favor of church and clergy run deep through the both the courts and tax codes. I have to conclude that this potent political capital comes from somewhere and the unfortunate case seems to be that it does, indeed, start with those industrious, benign believers. Take the analogy on a world tour and it seems to hold true everywhere religion still holds sway.

I feel that true morality necessitates a pro-active defiance of immoral behavior and immoral ideas. If I honestly conclude that an organized set of beliefs is fundamentally immoral I am compelled to state as much even if some of its believers are not. This does not preclude toleration of individuals and individual belief but it does sometimes mean that argument is inevitable.

I have some familiarity with a number of religions and a fairly fluent understanding of denominational protestant faiths (both from the inside and outside) and it my personal opinion that the immoral ideas presented in the bible do indeed have a causative link the immoral actions we see done in its name. This is perhaps even more so in the case of certain sects of islam.

One trouble with the defense on the basis of ambiguity is the fact that believers claim belief in documents we can actually read. When a sacred scroll commands a zealot to kill a heretic and he does so it becomes very difficult to sever a direct connection between religious conviction and murder. Conversely, I give credit to the authors and adherents of traditions that really do endorse non violence but I don’t know of many.

Of course everyone is soley responsible for themselves and and indictment of the one is not an indictment of the other.

Hopefully that makes sense.