#SamHarris: benavioralist

John Horgan just nailed it. And just "nailed" Sam Harris. He's the modern day version of B.F. Skinner in his ardent, even strident, denials of the existence of free will:

He is a throwback to the old behaviorists, who pretended that subjective, mental phenomena—because they are more difficult to observe and measure than planets and protons—don’t exist. 

And, if that's not enough, Horgan fires both barrels, again, with perfect accuracy:

Dwelling on Harris depresses me. All that brainpower and training dedicated to promulgating such bad ideas!  He reminds me of one of the brightest students I’ve ever had, who was possessed by an adamant, unshakable belief in young-earth creationism. I did my best to change his mind, but I never succeeded. I probably won’t change the minds of Sam Harris and other hard-core determinists either, but it’s worth a shot.

Now, not all Gnu Atheists reject free will, but it's getting to be an ever-more-common stance. And, Horgan's first comment, at least, is applicable to them, too.


That said, Harris is also, per Horgan, a kind of voyeuristic thrill to watch digging ever deeper into the same holes. I'll probably engage in more of it, tho not to the point of spending money on a 96-page "book."


My own thoughts on how free will VERSUS determinism is a totally false dichotomy are here.

I think Chris Mooney has had some good research on statistical information about psychological differences, on average, between liberal and conservative thought processes, etc. But, I'd agree with both Massimo Pigliucci and even Jerry Coyne that, basically, Mooney is making a couple of mistakes as he goes further down this road.


The first is that he's committing Science Error 101: Conflating statistical and causal correlation.


The second is that he's leaning too hard on the "nature" side of nature vs. nurture, including not noting that, to the degree some of these psychological differences evolved, they did long, long before Aristotle said man was an animal of society, let alone one who formed political parties and alliances.

Lesser critiques are that he's relying on thin reeds of single studies, and that he presents stuff, then won't defend it, claiming he just threw it out there. Another thicker reed is that Mooney may be getting too wrapped up in the agenda of a liberal think tank -- in other words, he's "pulling a Chris Mooney," engaged in the same time of motivated reasoning he's pointed out in other individuals and groups; stay tuned on this one.



But, that's nothing compared to Mooney saying this:

I’ve been in vigorous debates with the “New Atheists” in the past; but frankly, researching The Republican Brain pushed me a lot further towards their camp than I had been before. They’re upset with religion; I’m highly critical of psychological conservatism; and there turn out to be big overlaps between the two. Indeed, conservative religiosity also appears to have a genetic component to it. Liberal religiosity strikes me as also being psychologically liberal, and therefore quite a different beast; but conservative or authoritarian religion reflects much of the rigidity (and denial of reality) of psychological conservatism.

In other words, I’d be surprised if the New Atheists–especially folks like Sam Harris, who have tried to figure out the neuroscience of the religious mind–weren’t in agreement on this one. More soon.

 Good fucking doorknob.


Fiorst, Harris' "research" has largely pushed the envelope of "scientism," as Massimo, for one, and me for another, both well know.


Second, many Gnus don't regularly distinguish between more liberal and more conservative versions of religion. (Example A: P.Z. Myers' twisting poll results to claim atheist were more sexually liberated from guilt than anybody, when Unitarians and Reform Jews actually topped them.)


Third, Gnus in general have never cracked a page of a book on psychology or sociology of religion. Ergo ...


Fourth, re religion and genetic influences, they make the same types of mistakes as Chris appears to be making on Point No. 2 above the pull quote.


Nice company, Chris.

#ChrisHedges: The good, the bad, the ugly

All three attributes of much of Hedges' recent writing are encapsulated in his Truthout post about the Norway terror attacks, entitled, "Fundamentalism Kills."

The "good"? Yes, fundamentalism kills.

The "bad"? Claiming that most scientists practice "scientism."

The really, really "ugly"? A short sidebar screed against urbanization.

On the "bad," as in his anti-atheism book, Hedges simply fails to distinguish between a few scientists, or a few skeptics on the edge of science, just as he failed to distinguish between a few "Gnu Atheists" and the great many.

The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as they are by atheists such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Our religious and secular fundamentalists all peddle the same racist filth and intolerance that infected Breivik.

Those two don't totally represent all Gnu Atheists, let alone all atheists in general.

Beyond that? Science isn't a second fundamentalism. "Scientism" may be, but science isn't. Ditto that "Gnu Atheism" may be a fundamentalism, but atheism in general isn't.

That said, the "bad" doesn't come out of nowhere. When a third "Gnu," P.Z. Myers, claims Hitch and Harris aren't conservatives, he refuses to face that Gnu Atheism has a messaging problem, fails to admit that this affects all atheism, and propagates both of those problems.

So, while Hedges is (once again) guilty of shoddy, shoddy thinking, I can understand his passion.

Beyond that, though, the bad leads into the ugly.

Here's Hedges on urbanism:

The Industrial Age has provided feats of engineering and technology, yet it has also destroyed community, spread the plague of urbanization, uprooted us all, turned human beings into cogs and made possible the total war and wholesale industrial killing that has marked the last century.

The problem of the evil side of urbanization, whether overstated or not, is mankind, not 'urbanization."

Otherwise, the invention of agriculture "uprooted' us from nomadism. And it turned humans into cogs more than 10,000 years ago.

It's also the only way the planet supports more than a few hundred million people, not more than 6 billion.

And that's why people like Hedges are more than a touch hypocritical. Does Hedges want to take a raft, kayak or Kon-Tiki to all his war journalism reporting? And, does he want to stop writing on the Internet? Stop taking his prescription medications, etc..

And, if we need to reduce world population by 90 percent as part of getting rid of "urbanization," is he volunteering to be part of that 90 percent?

Even if we concentrate on the last 100 years, urbanization has brought economies of scale, a flowering of the arts, etc. if Hedges doesn't like 'urbanization," he can move to North Dakota of his own free will. If he doesn't like that, he can join the "90 percent" that need to leave this planet.

More proof Sam Harris is a #neocon - and irrational

I've blogged before about how famous "Gnu Atheist" Sam Harris, with the intensity of his Islamophobia, how that seeped into his book "The (IM)Moral Landscape," including authors in his bibliography and more, are clear signs he's some sort of neoconservative. (His stance on other aspects of moral issues, outside of Islamophobia, kind of gives tangential credence to that, too.) I blogged about P.Z. Myers trying to claim Harris isn't a religious conservative, which Zed continues to refuse to accept.

More circumstantial proof is now in. Harris tries to defend Norwegian bomb/shooting suspect against claims he's a Christian fundamentalist.

Here's an extract from Breivik's 1,500-page manifesto that seems to be pretty clear evidence he's a fundamentalist.

When I initiate (providing I haven’t been apprehended before then), there is a 70% chance that I will complete the first objective, 40% for the second, 20% for the third and less than 5% chance that I will be able to complete the bonus mission. It is likely that I will pray to God for strength at one point during that operation, as I think most people in that situation would….If praying will act as an additional mental boost/soothing it is the pragmatical thing to do. I guess I will find out… If there is a God I will be allowed to enter heaven as all other martyrs for the Church in the past. (p. 1344)

If a Muslim bomber/shooter said that, Harris would be mad-dog foaming at the mouth.

Instead?

Here's Harris trying to explain this all away:

(T)he above passages would seem to undermine any claim that Breivik is a Christian fundamentalist in the usual sense. What cannot be doubted, however, is that Breivik’s explicit goal was to punish European liberals for their timidity in the face of Islam.

Harris then goes on to show how he and Breivik have further neocon backgrounds.
I have written a fair amount about the threat that Islam poses to open societies, but I am happy to say that Breivik appears never to have heard of me. He has, however, digested the opinions of many writers who share my general concerns—Theodore Dalrymple, Robert D. Kaplan, Lee Harris, Ibn Warraq, Bernard Lewis, Andrew Bostom, Robert Spencer, Walid Shoebat, Daniel Pipes, Bat Ye’or, Mark Steyn, Samuel Huntington, et al.
The last four are clear neocons, sometimes virulent. So is Lewis. Kaplan's on the fence. Warraq? Has other issues at times. I've not read too much of the others.

Sam Harris, you have now fallen into an even lower circle of any Dantean secular hell consignments that could exist.

The opposite of "scientism" is???

I have had no problem labeling the thought processes of people like P.Z. Myers and Sam Harris with the tag of "scientism" at times when it was clear they were trying to address nonscientific issues from a scientific point of view. Especially with Harris, allegedly a philosopher because he has a degree in the subject, it's frustrating, off-putting, undercuts the "cause" of secularism and more.

Philosopher Massimo Pigliucci also has no problem pegging people like that.

So, it's a bit disconcerting when he says social science research into people's moral judgment thinking not only is not philosophy, but that it can't even lead to philosophy, in his perspective.

And, so, I ask, the opposite of scientism, in this case, is ...

"Philosophism"?

His argument, in a nutshell, is in a comment of his near the end of the comment thread:

Similarly, we evolved the ability to make moral judgment, but that doesn't begin to equip us for professional-level moral reasoning ...

I saw "professional-level moral reasoning," which I inadvertently shortened to "professional moral reasoning" (though I don't think that significantly changed anything) and ... well, I cringed.

It's like Massimo wants to do data-free, research-free philosophy. And, even if (I'm not going to say "even though") he may not have meant it in an elitist way, it sure comes off that way, which is the main reason I cringed.

Sam Harris' Immoral Landscape

Sam Harris' "The Moral Landscape," much lauded by many reflexive, relatively unthinking New Atheists who have made him into a rock star of the movement, falls far short of its hype. In fact, I one-starred it on Amazon.

What's wrong? Harris is a Platonic idealist in drag. He also engages in scientism. Related to both of these, despite his having an undergraduate degree in philosophy, he really appears not to understand a lot of philosophical issues relevant to this book's subject. Or else, he doesn't care to.

Beyond that, his Islamophobia in the early part of this book seems to largely come straight from the neoconservative playbook. Possibly related to that, he creates straw men out of liberals all allegedly being moral relativists.

Sam Harris tries to draw a hard-and-fast dichotomy between science-based morals and ethics and religious-based morals and ethics in this book.

However, this is the real world, not a Platonic idea (Harris comes off as quasi-Platonic in more than one way in parts of this book), and so, it's not totally amenable to Harris' bifurcation.

Take abortion. Many religious people support at least some right to abortion, but noted atheist Nat Hentoff is 100 percent prolife. Ditto on end of life issues. And, if I looked a little bit, I could surely find atheists and agnostics with less enlightened views on gay rights than many religious people.

Now, as to the science part ... the idea that we can have a science-based morality? Harris offers little in the way of actual neuroscience studies on the brain processing moral issues.

We may well get oodles more such studies in the future, but that's not today. Harris also doesn't address the issues of what MRIs measure, how well this correlates with thought output, etc.

Likewise, he discusses little in the field of well-done evolutionary psychology (to distinguish it from Pop Evolutionary Psychology).

Beyond that, he simply ignores that the study of the human mind, whether from the POV of cognitive neuroscience or evolutionary psychology, is at best in the Early Bronze Age and is arguably, at least on the matter of morality and ethics, still in the Neolithic.

So, while science may at some point (far?) in the future offer us significant oversight on specific moral issues, it doesn't today because it can't. And, per the specific moral issues I listed above, it may never be able to.

Indeed, with reference to that, Harris' approach to science and morality smacks of a fair degree of scientism. And, I write this as an irreligious, skeptical naturalist.

That said, there's several other problems with this book. Read on at the jump for the details! I'm going to address several overview issues first, before making any page-by-page critique of the book.

First is the matter of Harris' Islamophobia. Since Islam is in general cited regularly for examples of immoral behavior and beliefs, we need to examine this.

First of all, it seems much of Harris' Islamophobia comes from the neoconservative political playbook. He favorably references an off-the-wall neocon writer, Bat Ye'Or, whose book on Islam's alleged takeover of Europe was one-starred by me.

Secondly, he's confusing a static historic snapshot of history with a moving picture. If we went by snapshots, 900 years ago, Christian Crusaders would have been the poster boys for immoral behavior. 750 years ago it would have been pagan/animist Mongols. 600 years ago, polytheistic Aztecs.

Finally, if we confine ourselves to today, the Hindu Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka killed 30,000 in their civil war, far more than al-Qaeda has killed.

Second, whence comes Harris' moral stance, ultimately? I believe he is not just a moral objectivist, albeit a consequentialist (a stance more often associated with moral relativism but compatible with objectivism too), but a moral absolutist -- specifically a Platonic Idealist moral absolutist. There's irony there in spades, since the early and middle Platonic dialogues were devoted to Socrates, deconstruction of other people's definitions of moral issues such as justice. (Of course, Socrates usually doesn't offer his own idealist definition back; such things arise only in later dialogues.)

Third, what of Harris' claims to be examining morality and its foundations from a scientific perspective?
First of all, he's not the first to do so. He didn't invent sociobiology or evolutionary psychology. (Let me be clear here -- much of what passes for science in alleged evolutionary psychology is actuallly the pseudoscience of Pop Evolutionary Psychology. However, unlike a P.Z. Myers, there is legitimate work being done in this field, albeit little and far between.) So, Harris isn't new in his effort and he's certainly not new in his hope.

That said, for someone who wants to be scientific, he seems often lacking. (No shock here; I saw the same problem way back in "The End of Faith." First, from an evolutionary standpoint, Harris doesn't address issues of individual vs. group selection. Now, I'm not as bullish on group selection as, say, David Sloan Wilson, but I do think it deserves more consideration than many evolutionary biologists give it. Second, Harris doesn't devote any scientific examination to cultural evolution. Admittedly, there's not a lot to really nail down ant this intersection of biology and sociology, but Harris doesn't even get into what is out there.

Beyond what I mention above, for someone with a graduate degree in neuroscience, he spends about ZERO time referencing actual neurological study of the brain. No V.S. Ramachandran here, folks! Not even close.

Fourth, Harris and philosophy, not just the "is-ought" issue, but certainly including that.

First of all, for people who have read previous works of his, and not embraced him as a bundle of light, his arrogance in dealing with the philosophical background should be of no surprise. But, it still needs quoting.

Page 197, footnote 1: "Many of my critics fault me for not engaging with the academic literature on moral philosophy. ... First ... I did not arrive at my position ... by reading the work of moral philosophers; I came to it by considering the logical implications of our making continual progress in the sciences of the mind. Second, I am convinced that every appearance of (academic terminology) directly increases the amount of boredom in the universe. ... (T)he professional philosophers I've consulted seem to understand and support what I'm doing"
Let's unpack what's wrong with this quote.

1. Harris might actually have learned something by engaging with other moral philosophers either of today or the past. That would include wrestling more with Hume's is-ought; that would certainly include a provocative AND nontechnical book like Walter Kaufmann's "Beyond Guilt and Justice."
2. Is Harris saying he's either too dumb or too lazy to "translate" language of academia to a general audience? Or a too-arrogant mix of both? One of the best classical philosophers on moral issues was Hume, precisely because he wrote in a way for the general public (of a certain educational level) to understand.
3. Neuroscience is a "hard" science with plenty of its own technical language. That doesn't stop Harris from wanting to focus on advances in scientific discovery, albeit while, rather than discussing them in a nontechnical level, not discussing them at all. I smell a HUGE steaming pile of hypocrisy here.
4. In light of what I noted above about Socratic dialogues, Harris never discusses what happens when two big moral issues, like "fairness" and "compassion," collide. This is one of the brilliancies of Kaufmann's book mentioned above.

In light of all that, let's look at Hume's famous is-ought issues.

Hume discusses the problem in book III, part I, section I of his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739):

In every system of morality, which I have hitherto met with, I have always remark'd, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary ways of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when all of a sudden I am surpriz'd to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, 'tis necessary that it shou'd be observ'd and explain'd; and at the same time that a reason should be given; for what seems altogether inconceivable, how this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different from it.

Hume calls for caution against such inferences in the absence of any explanation of how the ought-statements follow from the is-statements. But how exactly can an "ought" be derived from an "is"? The question, prompted by Hume's small paragraph, has become one of the central questions of ethical theory, and Hume is usually assigned the position that such a derivation is impossible. This complete severing of "is" from "ought" has been given the graphic designation of Hume's Guillotine.

See Wikipedia for more on the "is-ought" issue.

Several issues here:
1. "Ought" is multivalent. Sometimes, most notably in ethics, it has an explicitly moral tone. Other times, far from that. For instance, in late 19th-century physics, scientists said the ether, the luminiferous ether, "ought" to weigh a certain amount, even though experiment rebelled against that.
2. In the case of ethics, to worry about "is-ought" is to approach the issue the wrong way. Rather, staying within Hume, one can ask what ethics can be naturalistically devised and supported. In this case (contra what Harris seems to say) we turn to evolutionary psychology **properly done** (and not Pop Ev Psych), as well as evolutionary biology of non-hominids. We can, through cultural anthropology, partially reinforce hominid ev psych findings. That then said, we would note that often, there is not one "right" ethical answer to some issues of ethics. We also should note, per someone like Walter Kaufmann, sometimes there is no right answer at all, or that a "right" answer may be culturally determined, or that a "right" answer for an individual may be the "wrong" answer for society. In this last case, no science gives us "the answer" as to whether individual needs or societal needs should prevail. And, for that matter, different religions may give us different answers, or the same religion may give us different answers at different times, as they do on other issues such as collective guilt.

Re a critic of my Amazon review, who invited me to look at a Harris post on Huffington Post.

Harris' "refutation" of his critics actually confirms much of what they say about him on the Islamophobia. Ditto on his .... gullibility, for want of other words, on the credibility of the psi folks.

As for his stance on Buddhism, it seems clear he's trying to have his cake and eat it, too, by purporting to be on a search for "the authentic Buddha," in essence. Shades of Albert Schweitzer!

That said, the review by John Horgan, which Harris loathes? I think Horgan goes too far in taking science to the moral woodshed, but, in a general way, he's right. To this day, Western scientists still have few problems with exploiting indigenous peoples, for example. One might fault Horgan for failing to distinguish science from individual scientists, but this is part of connecting Harris' stance to scientism, I think.

On the good side, though, he does some great petard-hoisting on Harris:

Some will complain that it is unfair to hold science accountable for the misdeeds of a minority. It is not only fair, it is essential, especially when scientists as prominent as Harris are talking about creating a universal, scientifically validated morality. Moreover, Harris blames Islam and Catholicism for the actions of suicide bombers and pedophilic priests, so why should science be exempt from this same treatment?

And more:

Harris asserts in Moral Landscape that ignorance and humility are inversely proportional to each other; whereas religious know-nothings are often arrogant, scientists tend to be humble, because they know enough to know their limitations. "Arrogance is about as common at a scientific conference as nudity," Harris states. Yet he is anything but humble in his opus. He castigates not only religious believers but even nonbelieving scientists and philosophers who don't share his hostility toward religion.

Finally, Horgan raises the same concerns about neuroscience I do:

Harris further shows his arrogance when he claims that neuroscience, his own field, is best positioned to help us achieve a universal morality. "The more we understand ourselves at the level of the brain, the more we will see that there are right and wrong answers to questions of human values." Neuroscience can't even tell me how I can know the big, black, hairy thing on my couch is my dog Merlin. And we're going to trust neuroscience to tell us how we should resolve debates over the morality of abortion, euthanasia and armed intervention in other nations' affairs?

Indeed. But, that, too, is part of Harris' scientism. That said, P.Z. Myers and Vic Stenger, on their claims to have proved the nonexistence of god, show that Harris isn't alone among New Atheists in falling into the pit of scientism.

Buddhism IS a religion and IS metaphysical

Unfortunately, it's not just Sam Harris who is wrong about that. A friend/acquaintance of mine on an e-mail discussion group claims that Buddhism has little to do with metaphysics and that karma is non-metaphysical, but just a physical-type law of cause and effect. (Update: And just how is this "physical-type law" enforced? At that point, we usually enter the land of handwaving to avoid metaphysics.)

I first said that the Dalai Lama himself, despite his self-purportation to being open to the findings of science, said he would never surrender a belief in either karma or reincarnation. I noted the linking of the two beliefs as further attestation that Buddhism in general, and also karma in specific, was about metaphysics.

He claimed karma was a physical law specifically encompassing things like cutting a neighbor's lawn, and the grass is shorter as a result.

I then said Hinduism back in the Gita, the Hinduism from which Buddhism evolved, already believed in karma as metaphysical and linked to reincarnation.

I then posted a Wiki link specifically to karma in Buddhism, including a reference to how this doctrine, in metaphysical understanding, goes back to the reported teachings of the Buddha himself:

The Buddha most often spoke of karma as the determining factor of the realm of one's subsequent rebirth--for this reason karma is often explained in tandem with rebirth and cosmology. The Cūlakammavibhanga Sutta ("The Shorter Exposition of Action," Majjhima Nikaya 3.203) is devoted to describing the various rebirths that various kinds of actions produce; negative actions such as killing lead to rebirths in the lower realms such as hell, and virtuous action such as gracious behavior under duress leads to rebirth in the human or other higher realms.

At that point he said, in a semi-direct quote, "I've actually studied Buddhism; you're just posting a Wiki link." (He ignored that three-four e-mail chains prior, he had posted a Wiki link himself.)

Of course, that said, Buddhism has the combination of illogic and moral offensiveness to believe in reincarnation without the existence of a "metaphysical self." In fact, it's this pernicious combination that leads me to label Buddhism as more offensive, in some ways, than fundamentalist Christianity. (That said, the Buddha didn't deny that that whatever was reincarnated in the new life had some connection with the "personhood" of the old life.)

On the illogic side, if you try to wrestle more fully with what Buddhism, and allegedly the Buddha, meant by "not-self," you see just how logically full of crap he and his religion were and are.

On the morals side, the belief that an impersonal non-"metaphysical" self is not reincarnated, that a quasi-impersonal life force is all that goes to a new person, but that that new person is punished for deeds of a past life to which he/she is not connected, and about which he/she has no memory, is more morally offensive in some ways than a Christian fundamentalism belief in eternal hell for people who haven't heard of Christianity.

And, it only gets worse. Some schools of Buddhism even go so far as to, along the lines of collective guilt, to believe in "collective karma."

Unfortunately, not only do the Sam Harrises of New (and Old) Atheism distort and deny what Buddhism actually means, they peddle a bill of goods about what it is that's about as bad as New Agers' own bill of goods about Buddhism.

As to more specifically how Sam Harris is wrong?

The following is excerpted from my Amazon review of his "The End of Faith":

Harris, in his last chapter, claims that mediation and “spiritual” practices **as taught under the aegis of Eastern religion** (one can meditate using the Western scientific tool of biofeedback also, etc.) is “not a statement of metaphysics.” (I have in the past, through self-hypnosis, gone “deep” enough to see the mandala-like spirals that come right before the tunnel of white light, showing that one can meditate deeply without any “spiritual” program whatsoever.) Harris also ignores here the fact that “mystical” traditions in the West, through the vehicle of Gnosticism, had far more social penetrating power than he will admit.

In short, his final chapter is about setting Buddhist and other spirituality on a pedestal, undermining the title of his book,

Sam, if you claim that meditation has to really come from an Eastern “spiritual” discipline, instead of biofeedback, self-hypnosis or other non-“spiritual” tools, that’s a faith statement. Pure and simple.

Note this quote on page 221: “Mysticism is a rational enterprise.” Would that include “sky-clad” Jains who deliberately starve themselves to death rather than risk swallowing even a microbe? ...

And that was without Harris’ incredible credulity on the existence of psychic phenomena and even reincarnation.

I refer to footnote 18, page 45. Here, Harris credits Rupert Sheldrake and Dean Radin as being credible writers on the subject of psi phenomena. Any credible skeptic knows that ain’t so.

He then goes on to say, “There may even be some credible evidence for reincarnation.”

So, how does Harris try to get away with claiming that, ultimately, Buddhism is just a psychology?

In "Killing the Buddha" (PDF), he cheats. He claims that Buddhist meditiation (which he, wrongly, considers the core of Buddhism) should be separated from Buddhist religion.

Now, is meditation de facto religious? Of course not. But, Buddhist meditation is ultimately meditation on Buddhist religious concepts. It's religious, indeed.

For more "problematic" quotes of Harris', see Wiki.

For more on his problematic beliefs, go to Skeptic's Dictionary. (I'm the complaining reader, and, yes, technically Harris is an atheist; I made a category confusion mistake on that. A skeptic, though, he is not.)

For more on his uncritical belief in Buddhism, go here, near the bottom of the webpage, about 3/4 the way down.

So, you skeptics and New Atheists who "heart" Sam Harris? Get a clue.

(Sidebar update: Buddhism IS a religion.

Religion is about:

Metaphysical matters of ultimate concern, within a social group setting; and 

How one orients oneself within that group to a better relationship to these metaphysical matters of ultimate concern.)

 

Religion may just be irrational

AND linked with a continuum of other irrational beliefs, per a new study in Finland.

It sounds like a very interesting article. Now (and not to oversell MRIs) it would be interesting to take this to the next level. Are their brains functioning differently in some specific ways?

And, if at least "opennmindedness" to religious belief does pair with the other beliefs, who will tell New Atheist "guru" (not in MY book he ain't) Sam Harris, already on the record as accepting the possibility of psi phenomena?

Scott Atran does a disservice to “new atheism”

Anthropologist Scott Atran, an atheist himself and author, most notably of In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, but a strong critic of the so-called “New Atheists,” even to the point of approaching talking about the “ineffability” of religious belief, was recently in an extended conversation with Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris about their critics of the degree of harm religion causes.

The discussion also included side points on the validity, and degree of validity, of ideas of evolutionary group selection vs. individual selection.

Here’s my take on the whole thing, which is well worth a read.

The “new atheists” are right, in my opinion and empirical observation, that religion is harmful from the standpoint of groups, whether that be individual religious groups, faiths, sects, etc. other social groups, or the largest group of all, Homo sapiens. However, that then said, Atran is right that religion can be very valuable for the groups holding on to it.

That said, religion may well still have value for individuals. The psychological value of greater control that religion appears to give, greater control through its apparent, even if now known to not be real, explanatory value is still strong. But, its value minus its detriments is fading, especially in countries scientifically advanced not named the United States.

That said, the cohesiveness value of religion for groups still appears to offset those detriments in this country. But, as the United States exhausts its natural resources, faith-based stances from a fair amount of more literalist Christians on environmental issues, blank-check defense of Israel, and other items, will certainly grow more costly, especially to individuals within religious groups as individuals.

And, that said, while not dismissing David Sloan Wilson’s ideas on group selection, as many of the Dawkinses of the world do appear to do, and while noting that Darwin himself discussed group selection, ultimately, individual selection trumps group selection. Genes are passed on at the individual level.

So, Atran is somewhat right in an oblique way. Until individuals feel for their own selves the costs of religious belief, especially of a literalist or semi-literalist fashion, at the individual level, individuals won’t break out from the group benefits they get.

But, contra Atran, since at the group level, we have a conflict between in-group value and out-group cost for religion, Dawkins, Hitchens, etc., are absolutely right to expose the cost that religion imposes on outgroups.

In the U.S., the amount of tax deductions for religion would be one example. From President Bush on down to school superintendents, the increasing preference given to “faith-based” social organizations to perform government services, the cost religious groups impose on other groups, as well as individuals, across metagroup swaths of society is a big issue.

In other words, not as individuals within a particular group, but religious groups as “individuals” within metagroups, there is a huge, highly legitimate “free rider” issue.

In other words, let David Sloan Wilson talk about group selection with religion. He’s hoisting himself by his own petard.