A Cerberus of Templeton-prize type ideas

This is a moderately expanded Goodreads review, that may get expanded more economically and posted on my main blog as well. The nature of the header will be clear soon enough in the review.

The Blind Spot: Why Science Cannot Ignore Human Experience by Adam Frank
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I interested by the title and the subject matter when I saw it at my library.

Was also apprehensive seeing one of the co-authors. The dust jacket reminded me of what I already had read years ago: Marcelo Gleiser, a second of the three heads of Cerberus on this book, won the 2019 Templeton Prize.

Decided to take it home. First, I researched all three authors. And, if not directly and avowedly so, first and foremost, re this book, all three buy the idea of Gould’s NOMA, or non-overlapping magisteria. I do not. Neither do many other scientists who do NOT practice scientism (which is real, but I knew that long before this book) and who are NOT Gnu Atheists.

On Frank, the NOMA seems very true, but, per more critical reviews of other books of his, this is based on a narrow definition of religion. And, of course, if you define "religion" as "old mythology," it's easy to go down the NOMA road. With Gleiser, when a previous book of his is titled “The Dawn of the Mindful Universe,” enough said. Thompson’s “Why I am not a Buddhist” actually looks decent as far as it goes, but he needs to push harder on the reality of both ancient Buddhism and modern New Agey distillates of it being, yes, religions. Shut up, Bob Wright and fanbois.

OK, so decks cleared.

The key is in the first chapter, where the trio lay six principles that cause “The Blind Spot.”

And, even before I got through, a trio of words came to mind. They are: Stereotyping, handwaving and whataboutism.

Before we dive in on each of the six, two other things:

Titling the first section, after a rhetorical question, as “A Guide to the Perplexed” kind of lets the cat out of the bag for those who know the reference. I assume it’s primarily to E.F. Schumacher’s book. (It has “A” and Maimonides has “The”) with its references to things like “smallism.” When he talks about things like the “evolutionist doctrine” (sic) he sounds exactly like our authors. Although the trio don’t mention things like the “great chain of being,” ideas behind it are behind them, too. Above all is the idea that Homo sapiens needs to be “recentered” in the universe.

The idea that someone like Steven Weinberg might be right, and that we’d be better served philosophically dealing with that reality never crosses their lips or fingers.

If that isn’t enough, before we get to the principles, the authorial trio show themselves to have a big old boner for Husserl. He’s discussed, I think, more than all other 20th-century philosophers combined. In other weirdness there, Chalmers gets more mention than Dennett and the alleged “hard problem of consciousness” gets more discussion than any idea of Dennett. So does Galen Strawson’s version of panpsychism. (Citing Whitehead early on might be a clue as to the trio’s angle.)

Why Husserl? Although the word “bracketing” is not used, “epoché” in his sense is used quite liberally. And, in a much more smooth sense than that of the old joke, “and then, god,” the pause of the epoché, or the “step outside” of bracketing, leave that entirely open.

Now, the six items and my thoughts on: Sterotyping, handwaving and whataboutism.

1. Bifurcation of nature. “Color is only an illusion” stereotypes serious modern philosophy of mind discussion about whether qualia exist, and for that matter, the foundation of traditional empiricism (wrong as it may be for various reasons).
2. Reductionism. Not all reductionism is bad, only greedy reductionism, per greedy reductionist Dan Dennett.
3. Objectivism (not the Ayn Rand version). Like reductionism, there are greedy and non-greedy versions of this.
4. Physicalism: See the trio lapping up on the “hard problem of consciousness” above. Note that elsewhere in the book, they’re careful to avoid the claim that, on issues of mind, they’re not epiphenomenalists. What then, are you? Some “tertium quid,” per John Randolph?
5. Reification of mathematical entities. Mathematical Platonism, as the idea is more commonly known, may well be wrong. But, just the fact that it is wrong, if it is, doesn’t push humans back to a pre-Copernican center of the universe. This may not be exactly what they mean by reification of mathematical entities, but I think they’re wrong otherwise.
6. Experience is epiphenomenal. (Here, not using it in the mental dualist version of epiphenomenal, to which I referred above.) Again, total ignorance, or willful kicking, or a bit of both, just as in item 1, of serious modern discussion on philosophy of mind. Thompson is himself a professor of philosophy; his signing off on points 1 and 6 right here guarantees the book is no more than 2 star.

At that point, it’s checking the index time and grokking. While climate change is mentioned on 10 pages, it really doesn’t get that much discussion. The word “ecology’ is not in the index. Nor is Schumacher! (There is no bibliography, as a side note.)

They do talk about the Gaia hypothesis, and both James Lovelock and Lynn Marguils. She? A 9/11 truther (and false flagger). An AIDS denialist, at least on HIV causing it, and that’s of relevance given the authors’ use of COVID to bash that “good old time fundamentalist science.” And, a rejector of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Symbiosis comes off as something she was looking for precisely because she saw it as a rejection of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, and then moved on from it when it was incorporated.

While I’m here? Their info about greenhouse gas science’s start is incorrect. An American woman scientist first postulated the idea 50 years before Arrhenius.

Barry Commoner is referenced briefly. Murray Bookchin not at all. No Wendell Berry, etc etc.

Had the book actually had a chapter on modern ecology, with some in-depth discussion on “recentering humans” and how this would actually avert a sixth mass extinction and a climate crisis (the real problem is overly-human centered neoliberal capitalism), I would forgive its philosophical tendentiousness enough for two stars. If it did a lot more than that, I’d give it three.

The real issue isn't "human centering" or lack thereof. It's capitalism, especially modern neoliberal versions. And, that has humans VERY centered, and, that's the whole problem. Various recent popes have issued pleas for economic social justice and called out the worst of capitalism. Protestants? Fundagelicals have done no such thing. Jews? Probably some sort of splittage.

Anyway, with that, the last jig is up. The trio doesn't want to recenter Homo sapiens, they want to recenter Homo religiousus and some form of religiosity, spirituality, and ultimate metaphysical ground.

As is, this is not a whole lot more than a stylized, intellectually-veneered version of holding one’s breath, Templeton style, especially with the presumption in the subtitle that science is ignoring human experience. It isn't, and neither are philosophers. And, at an average rating at the time of my post of 4.10 stars, it’s overrated anyway. But, it's not worth reading through for a crushing review like I gave Sapolsky. 

Speaking of Sapolsky, one last look at where the trio is wrong on criticizing philosophers.

I've been thinking recently about how memories come up "from the vasty deep," to use the whole poetic phrase.

Who summons them?

If the trio wants to claim it's some conscious "I," I'm giving them a cyber-kick in the nads right now.

The reality is that no such thing happens. Memories pop to the surface of our individual consciousnesses — I can't say of their own free will, because that implies a free will behind them, and "of their own accord" even seems to imply a willer behind that. Per Dennett's "subselves," while rejecting his multiple drafts, as that implies a draftsman as I see it, an impersonal "sea" casts up memories upon the shore of whatever our consciousness is at the time like so much flotsam and jetsam.

And, with that, I turn to the first six of Susan Blackmore's ten meditative questions.

1. Am I conscious now? 2. What was I conscious of a moment ago? 3. Who is asking the question? 4. Where is this? 5. How does thought arise? 6. There is no time. What is memory?

View all my reviews

Top blogging of 2021

 Not all posts are from the past year, but these were the most popular by readership in the past year.

No. 1? Remains my calling out of Anthony Fauci for telling Platonic noble lies about mask-wearing or not, back in 2020. (He'd later tell other lies, first semi-noble, then totally mundane ones.

No. 2? My decade-ago calling out of the likes of Brian Dunning and Michael Shermer for engaging in libertarian pseudoscience pseudoskepticism.

No. 3? It's interesting it's trended this high, but it's a blog post of mine from last year about an Atlantic Monthly contributor, and (former?) regular Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter, for the weirdness, if you will, of his story about when he stopped (for a while) being an "ambulance chaser" because his own wreck made him an ambulance needer. My piece covered "PTSD, journalism, accidents, existentialism." The first three were involved; the fourth was my angle of entry.

No. 4? Veering to critical religion — not critical exegesis of texts, but criticism of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and all the hypocritical dirtiness in its closure of Concordia University-Portland (with the denouement still ahead in the snarls of multiple lawsuits).

No. 5? My untangling of the "Young Hume" vs "Old Hume" on Pyrrhonism and more. Part of a serious of extended posts inspired by David Harris' critically acclaimed, yet actually somewhat spotty, recent biography.

No. 6? In which I told Jesus mythicists that Nazareth is real, and more to the point, was real 1st Century CE.

No. 7? The later semi-noble lies of Fauci got examined, in a psychological take on him and a sociological one on tribalist Democrats.

No. 8? A relatively recent one, showing how Harvey Whitehouse's ideas on the evolution of religion, by not being grounded in good philosophy of religion, jumped the shark. Sadly, it appears that the likes of a Scott Atran, by heading down a similar ev psych-based road, may also be "jumping."

No. 9? I pretty thoroughly deconstructed David Graeber's posthumously coauthored new book. (I even more thoroughly deconstructed its political angles at my main blog.)

No. 10? A philosophy and philosophy of science question is wrestled with: How do we define "life"?

Is "just asking questions" a religion?

Vox claims that the rise of the Net, specifically social media, and most specifically, newer social media like TikTok, when mixed with the rise of the "Nones," is creating a new religion of "just asking questions."

First? The "rise of the Nones" is on pause right now, possibly in part COVID related, though the crest hit before then.

Second, by my version of defining religion, which relies on sociology of religion and philosophy of religion, it is not a region.

My definition, which I think I've uttered here before, is something like this.

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.

One, note that "metaphysical" shows we're clearly into philosophy. It means something that "transcendence" does not.

Two, note that "of ultimate concern" shows we're not talking about footy fandom. UK fans who would believe that they can conduct magic rituals to revive the career of a current player, let alone actually revive a dead star of the past, would be considered mentally ill by psychologists, and ministers, and presumably by Whitehouse.

Three, note that I did NOT say "god," or "deity/-ies" or "divinity/-ies." 

This means that Theravada Buddhists who do not believe in a personal deity are still part of a religion. They ARE, Stephen Batchelor, Robert Wright, and Buddhism flirter John Horgan. I also did NOT say "soul." Western monotheisms, and generally Hinduism, believe in some sort of personal soul, as in "your immortal soul," in the Western tradition, but Theravada claims to believe only in a "life force."

And, "karma."

And, that leads us to point the second, of the two main parts of my definition.

Karma is itself a metaphysical entity throughout Hindu and Buddhist belief, and basically similar among Jains, from what I know. Given that these religions claim one can be reincarnated as a piece of shit, or more literally, a dung beetle eating that shit, without knowing what one did wrong in a past life, or, per Theravada, even having a personal soul from a past life that COULD remember, is why I've said that karma is more offensive than original sin, following on an earlier post. But I digress.

The "just asking questions" may be a form of spirituality. Subsets of "just asking questions" may be part of religions, if their "just asking questions" is religiously based, but not be a religion itself.

And, if things like this:

(T)he renewed interest in holistic medicine, or the girlboss optimism of multilevel marketing companies

Are part of the basis of the piece, Rebecca Jennings needs to toss that Word doc in the trash. Those flunk my test easily. Not all holistic medicine is metaphysical, and ditto on the specific example of new MLM companies. 

Of course, with a Twitter bio like this:

senior correspondent at Vox covering internet culture with a minor in tiktok and feelings

None of the above is surprising.

And, with that, the story flunks my test, too.

History of religion has shown that new religions are organized and developed. Maybe Jesus wasn't starting a new religion, but Paul was. Maybe Muhammad didn't actually start a new religion, but the Umayyads did. Ditto for the Buddha vs followers of him.

I have said before that conspiracy theories are a new form of Gnosticism. Here, I caveat that parallel to note that while conspiracy theories offer claims to esoteric knowledge, AND, are "organized," as in an elite vs initiates, they're NOT focused on metaphysical issues or how to get oneself rightly oriented to them.

Top blogging of July-September

Data is of early October. Not all posts were written in the past three months.

First was my hard-hitting modern religion piece on the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and its multiple ethical failures and looming massive legal problems over the closure of Concordia University-Portland.

Second was my long-ago, but still relevant, libertarian pseudoskepticism pseudoscience piece about Brian Dunning and Michael Shermer.

Third was my not nearly so long ago, but even more still relevant, piece about Saint Anthony of Fauci and his telling of Platonic noble lie(s). (It eventually became plural, then Not.Even.Platonic.Or.Noble, to riff on Wolfgang Pauli.)

Fourth is from about 15 months ago, but getting new eyeballs when I retweeted it about the dreck that is this year's Dallas Symphony Orchestra schedule. I said the DSO had stepped backward in hiring Fabio Luisi as music director.

Fifth? Almost as old as my Dunning-Shermer piece, but also about classical music: Stravinsky vs. Prokofiev and what constitutes neoclassicism.

Sixth, a recent piece, about how Harvey Whitehouse seemed promising on new studies on the origin of religion, until he went way wrong on both that and a definition of what religion is.

Seventh? My burning take on the often laughable, usually conceited Mark Carrier thinking early Christians believed Jesus was a space alien.

Eighth, and also recent, my philosophical take on an ambulance-chasing journalist's experience with PTSD after his own car crash, and a psychologist discussing the issue with bad takes on free will and control.

Ninth and also nearly a decade old, like No. 2 and No. 5? My take on reviews of books by Dan Dennett and Douglas Hofstadter.

Tenth and trending probably due to a tweet by my to blogging friend Tales of Whoa? My poem about the death of friend Leo Lincourt, "Sitting Shtetl for the Living."

Harvey Whitehouse: Right on defining what religion is, until he went way wrong

Via Pocket, I saw this Nautilus piece, written by Steve Paulson, that at first looked very interesting.

British anthropologist Whitehouse, who has been to hunter-gatherer or mixed subsistence cultures in places like New Guinea, talked about how the power of rituals, especially initiation rituals, and their creation of social bonds, are a key item to the development of religion.

Sounded interesting. That's definitely the case as he further discussed the sociological aspects of this.

Until ... he went wrong.

He first went wrong with the word "transcendence," which he seemed to use even more loosely than Rudolf Otto's "numinous," and which, like the word "ineffable," comes off in his account as "anything that seems unexplainable." So, at that point, we've moved kind of New Agey. (Hold on to that thought.)

That was bad enough, until he went really wrong.

He claimed that footy (football, in the UK) fandom was itself a religion. Oh, wrong, wrong, Not.Even.Wrong. And, not just about footy, but US football or any other sport.

And, I suppose we're at the point of needing to offer my definition of religion.

First, I agree that religion is a group, sociological and social psychology function.

Second, rituals in general and initiation rituals in particular, may be part of religion's coherence. (Etymologists still debate whether or not the word comes from the Latin "religere," which means "to tie together.")

But, that's where we part company.

My definition of religious starts in the world of philosophy, where he seems not to visit, per the story:

Whitehouse directs the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University. For years he’s been collaborating with scholars around the world to build a massive body of data that grounds the study of religion in science. Whitehouse draws on an array of disciplines—archeology, ethnography, history, evolutionary psychology, cognitive science—to construct a profile of religious practices.

And, that means that right there, he's going to be lacking, IMO. (I also wonder if, or fear that, "evolutionary anthropology" could wind up coming off like some of the current worst of "evolutionary psychology," but that will be a blog post or three for another time, if necessary. OTOH, it may be something like Scott Atran, who Wiki says, on its Whitehouse page, helped found another institute at Oxford with him. I digress.)

My definition, which I think I've uttered here before, is something like this.

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.

First, note that "metaphysical" shows we're clearly into philosophy. It means something that "transcendence" does not.

Second, note that "of ultimate concern" shows we're not talking about footy fandom. UK fans who would believe that they can conduct magic rituals to revive the career of a current player, let alone actually revive a dead star of the past, would be considered mentally ill by psychologists, and ministers, and presumably by Whitehouse.

Third, note that I did NOT say "god," or "deity/-ies" or "divinity/-ies." 

This means that Theravada Buddhists who do not believe in a personal deity are still part of a religion. They ARE, Stephen Batchelor, Robert Wright, and Buddhism flirter John Horgan. I also did NOT say "soul." Western monotheisms, and generally Hinduism, believe in some sort of personal soul, as in "your immortal soul," in the Western tradition, but Theravada claims to believe only in a "life force."

And, "karma."

To put it another way, Tottenham fans have not devised a god called "Spurs," have not devised a karma about relegation, have not recruited a community to believe this, and have not developed a cultus of worship, prayers, etc.

Rabid fandom is an "-ism," like Nazism or Communism. Neither of those is a religion, either.

And, that leads us to point the second, of the two main parts of my definition.

Karma is itself a metaphysical entity throughout Hindu and Buddhist belief, and basically similar among Jains, from what I know. Given that these religions claim one can be reincarnated as a piece of shit, or more literally, a dung beetle eating that shit, without knowing what one did wrong in a past life, or, per Theravada, even having a personal soul from a past life that COULD remember, is why I've said that karma is more offensive than original sin, following on an earlier post. But I digress.

Anyway, ethical actions, and beliefs and doctrines, are, as defined by the religious-sociological group (that's how religion is not individual) are how one "orients oneself to a better relationship" with these metaphysical entities, whatever they are in that religion. (Buddhism and Judaism have doctrines as well as ethical practice, as I said before, let's not pretend otherwise, it's called "orthodoxy" vs "orthopraxis" in philosophy of religion and critical religion, and refusal to accept that is stereotyping.) Speaking of that, Whitehouse himself, per this "modes of religiosity" Wiki page, differentiates between what he calls "imagistic" vs "doctrinal" systems. Frankly, seeing that he's also missing scholars of religion and philosophers of religion from that institute, I think this is poor language usage. It's also not good division, per a follow-up to my "as I said before"; for many a Catholic, the ringing of the transubstantiation bell is NOT Pavlov's dog, which IS what it reminds me of, nor just doctrinal, but is "imagistic," aural division. The elevation of the host certainly is imagistic. I could also mention Catholic Penitentes, Protestant "holy rollers" and "speaking in tongues," Shi'ite flagellators and more. 

Wiki then mentions a "cognitive science of religion," which has Whitehouse and another, like Atran, long-ago read, Pascal Boyer, mentioned. Cognitive science has in the past offered some insight for philosophy and probably can for religion, but its devotees often overrate it, too. That's especially true if, per Wiki, these ideas originate in ev psych. And, thus, my original worries about Whitehouse's evolutionary anthropology gain more foothold.

Yes, human psychology evolved; as a scientific and philosophical naturalist, I totally accept that. But, modern ev psych as a discipline, with its pseudoscience, sexist ideas and more? I reject.

And, with that, I'm more than done with Whitehouse.

Final sidebar note. If you claim to be "spiritual but not religious," but still follow religious leaders on social media, though not going to a church or temple, you're religious. If you claim to be "spiritual but not religious," but attend a Wiccan coven or a neo-Druid gathering? You're religious.

Actually, second sidebar note: Whitehouse reminds me a lot of James Harrod and his claim that chimps are religious, debunked by me here.

==

Update, May 10, 2024: Per a piece by Ed Buckner on Substack, where I posted a link to this, no, I do not at all think secular humanism is religious. Nor atheism in general. 

That said, certain types of Gnu Atheism that approach Camus' "antitheism" of "The Rebel"? They're close, to be honest. It's an "antibelief," or belief against, but it is a belief against metaphysical entities of ultimate concern, generally with all the communal aspects etc also listed above.

No, chimps aren't religious

I've seen shorter versions of this claim made before by James Harrod, but with a longer paper on Academia, wanted to take a few minutes to refute it.

First, my rough-and-ready definition of religion is:

"A communal focus on engagement with believed metaphysical personages or entities involving communal rituals and actions to align the community with believed personages or entities."

I've rephrased that elsewhere as

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.

First, note that "metaphysical" shows we're clearly into philosophy. It means something that "transcendence" does not.

First of all, this definition is written to include something like Theravada Buddhism, by noting "entities," not just "personages." Theravada believes in an incarnation of a metaphysical life force, even if it doesn't believe in a personal soul, let alone a personal deity. And it believes that laws of karma govern that reincarnation. I have discussed in detail before the fact that Buddhism is a religion, and had a follow-up. I have also noted karma is as offensive as original sin, and maybe worse in Theravada with its rejection of an individual soul. I've also noted how reincarnation and karma has other problems, mainly based in a "progress" mindset that's as wrong there as in misframings of evolutionary theory. OK, so with all that about Buddhism, we move on.

Second, religion is communal, and part of that alignment includes addressing things like "sin." In many religions, the focus is first on sins against a god or gods, but still includes communal sins as well. And, even sins against a god are only visible within the light of a community.

Third, the "rituals and actions" notes that all religions have elements of orthopraxis. They all also have elements of orthodoxy. I've covered this recently.

Now, let's dig in.

Do chimpanzees have compassion? Yes. And even, perhaps, something like compassion for the memory of dead fellow chimps? Yes, I think. So do elephants, cetaceans and a few other non-human animals.

Do chimps have metaphysics? Highly, highly unlikely. In other words, chimps, IMO, don't believe in chimp souls, chimp karma, or a chimp god. Nor do gorillas, neither in the 1970s nor this past decade:



Sorry, James.

And, unlike Caesar/Andy Serkis, chimpanzees, and other primates don't have the speech to organize a community to focus on abstract ideas. And, contra Harrod, who is letting other scholars and thinkers be his mouthpiece, it's tempting to overread what communication chimps have. Well, tempting to him and them, but not to me.

Cetaceans might. But, if they do, they don't have hands with opposable thumbs and can't really engage in metaphysically related actions.

A rich emotion life and symbolic play also prove nothing about chimpanzees possibly conceiving metaphysical concepts. Nor does it at all address the difficulty of communicating such concepts without language. The fact that chimps have neural substrate systems similar to something like Broca's in humans only proves that evolutionary biology is real and is a conservative workman.

And, a first-order theory of mind? Given the complexity of judging human actions that might be called sins against a community, that's not enough. But, let’s get to Harrod’s nutgrafs — his transspecific definition of religion. Here goes:
• Reverence (showing devotion, intense love, deep respect), which may involve a hush;
• Careful observance, which may involve a calling-out announcement or remark;
• Experiencing or expressing emotion of dread (awe in its terror or astonishment aspect) before that which overwhelms the subject by its magnitude, grandeur, beneficence, or lethality; mysterium tremendum
• Experiencing or expressing emotion of wonder (awe in its fascination, curiosity, or desire-to-know-more aspect) with respect to a phenomenon (especially a movement) which is surprising, non-ordinary, extraordinary, special, or ‘miraculous’; mysterium fascinans
• Binding individuals together or back together in empathic intimacy or communion with respect to experiences of aliveness and animacy, including other living beings or things that appear to be alive, which may secondarily involve the witnessing of this by a collective social group.

OK, first observation? He's clearly smoking some Rudolf Otto high-grade drugs. And the "mysterium tremendum" as a key to "religious experience" is by no means widely accepted. As the likes of Susan Blackmore note, psychadelic drugs or deep meditative experiences can induce this "mysterium" in the non-religious. Ditto for near-death experiences.

Harrod goes on to make clear that he is indeed adapting an Ottonian framework to animals.

He ignores entirely ideas of sin, guilt, and metaphysical entities.

As for his five actual points?
• I can love either a girlfriend or a bottle of whisky. I don't worship either one, even if I shout "oh my god" during sex.
• Careful observance? Chimps, like us, evolved to stay safe from snakes and predators, as well as to identify a variety of ripe foods. Careful observance is part of not being dead. It's also, in we humans, what's behind overuse of agency imputation and pattern detection in non-savannah civilized live.
• Mysterium tremendum? Since chimps don't have abstract language, no way I see for them to communicate that, let alone for us to see that they're trying to do so.
• Wonder? Many scientists still have great degrees of wonder for the facts of evolutionary biology, cosmology and many things in between, and they're not religious. Indeed, Aeon has a new piece about the role of awe in scientific work.
• Empathy for life? I have that, too, and again, I'm not religious.

What Harrod is missing is that, in reality, at some point in human CULTURAL evolution, some point AFTER the evolution of some degree of language in all likelihood, these five points were adapted for what developed into religion. Some of the adaptation, per my notes on point 2 above, may well have been non-conscious.

Should chimpanzees have an evolutionary twig that offshoots into a new species, that follows a similar bath, Harrod can contact me back in a couple of million years.

And with that, I've wasted enough time on him.

Stephen T. Asma fellates religion

In a post of several years ago, I saluted Asma for saying universal disinterested love was impossible. He was focused on secular philosophers like Peter Singer, but I said his reasoning extended to Buddhism (and didn't think that it extended to Christianity's call to sanctified humans, too.)

Well, maybe there's a reason he didn't extend that to religions.

That's because he's an idiot about religion as a class. And, there's a whole book of his idiocy, with a puff review here by a theist and a piece by him.

His idiocy?

Asma, who claims to be an agnostic himself, says that religion has therapeutic value in emotional regulation. Reality?

It only does that as an occasional or sometime spandrel of what it really does.

The history of religion bloody red in tooth and claw, to riff on Matthew Arnold, is that religion often stimulates, even excites, emotions. The long legacy of crusades, jihads, other conversions at swordpoint by even the allegedly non-evangelist Jews, heresy trials, witch hunts, the persecution of Muslims in Burma by allegedly peaceful Buddhists and more all show that emotional stimulation, excitement or worse is what religion usually does. Emotion-laden visionary trances, speaking in tongues and more are other examples.

Also contra the puff reviewer, Asma's arguments for believing in religion are wholly utilitarian. And, since the evidentiary warrants for the argument are false, the argument is as fallacious of a utilitarian argument for religious belief as Pascal's Wager.

I'm not a Gnu Atheist, so contra Dawkins and others, I don't believe religion poisons everything it touches. But, since it is an "-ism," like other "-isms," it can damage a fair amount of what it contacts.

Finally, I reject No True Scotsman arguments for what constitutes "true religion," whether from Judeo-Christian scriptures or elsewhere.

Anyway, Asma sure doesn't seem like an agnostic. Massimo said that his peers have commented on this. Massimo also says he's touted pseudoscience before.

This shows that being a philosopher doesnt' guarantee intellectual acuity, despite the word's etymology.

#Buddhism is still a religion, folks

I've written a little bit about this before here. Specifically, I've talked about its metaphysical aspects and their religious overtones, in a way that shows what I think is a comfortable Western non-Buddhist's familiarity with it. I've discussed briefly the paradox involved at the core of making claims about ineffability. Related to that, I've written about how some of the Buddha's own observations lead to logical snares.

But, with a new post by Massimo Pigliucci bringing out all the first-generation converts who claim "Buddhism is just a philosophy" or even "Buddhism is just a psychology," I thought I'd jump into this in a bit more depth here. (Many of the same types of apparent first-generation converts to "secular Buddhism" as made statements on those blog posts above.)

First, for those trying to claim otherwise, or hold up Stephen Batchelor or the likes of him as having a direct illuminative pipeline back to 2,500 years ago? Wrong!

The idea of "Buddhism is just a philosophy" (along with similar claims about Hinduism) was cooked up by Victorian-era Europeans and Americans, in some degree of cahoots with "Westernizing" Indians.

The reality is that Buddhism deals with two matters of "ultimate concern," even "ultimate metaphysical concern," namely karma and reincarnation.

Second, a sociology of religion observation, and a snarky one, too.

I think that most of the "just a philosophy" claimants come from one of two previous backgrounds. They're either old Reform Jews who like being able to paste meditation and Zen-type inscrutable phrases that sound like updated, Easternized versions of comments by medieval rabbis, all from folks in saffron robes with a hipster angle, on top of their denatured Reform Judaism, or else they're liberal Unitarian Christians or post-Unitarian New Agers who wish they had been born as Reform Jews, etc.

And, yes, that's a snarky comment. But, isn't snark itself an updated word for the psychology in which Zen masters often presented their observations?

Yes.

And therefore, it's the best style of answer available to give to the "just a philosophy" folks. 

Third, in line with Massimo and contra his Buddhist friend who inspired his post, even if you trot out modal logic, multivalent logic or similar post-Aristotelean thought, Buddhism, if you try to sell it as a philosophy, is more illogical than anything that's come out of the West.

If you don't like that? Mu!

Yes, I know what the word means. I've used it here to "unask the question" or "unask the issue" of "free will versus determinism" to many people, including Massimo. That comes from my primary blog, where I've written with a bit more depth.

Today, though, I use it in Zen-snark mode to "unanswer the protests" by first-generation Buddhist converts. And, per one commenter on Massimo's post, and my observations above, that's exactly who you are. Aaron Shure observes:

The joke from the late ’60’s about the old Jewish lady who travels to the Buddhist monastery asking to speak the the Lama: after a long journey on donkey, finally talking her way into the inner sanctuary, she approaches the Lama, smacks him with her purse, and says, “Sheldon, come home.” Graham needs to Kimmen heim.

I don’t think it’s an accident that there are so many first generation Buddhists in America claiming it’s a philosophy and not a religion. Only if your parents aren’t Buddhists can you claim that Buddhism will do, unlike other religions, all that it promises. The first gen acolytes do all sorts of backbends to get around the obvious malarky of the dogma. Whether it’s the three card monty move of saying “there are many Buddhisms” so that any BS version of the doctrine you point out can be quickly pushed onto the wrong sect, or whether it’s the annoying “ineffable” dodge, or whether it’s the putting off until other lives the need for any sort of freaking evidence. 

Owan Flannagan did his best to come up with a naturalized Buddhism, and I find it unsatisfactory. Nagarjuna is no more a logician than Democritus and Leucippus were Physicists, which, with Massimo’s blessing, they were not. Still I’m going to read the book for the history of logic.

I agree with the joke. I also agree that Flanagan (correct) does a better job than Batchelor, at least in some ways, in trying to intellectually craft the idea of secular Buddhism, Buddhism is just a philosophy, etc. At least Flanagan, in the subtitle of his latest book, by saying "Buddhism Naturalized," seems to admit this is a conscious effort on his part. However, whether that's due to combatting what he sees as misinterpretations, or whether he's rewriting what he sees as the normal, historically-rooted understanding of Buddhism, I don't know.

And, also, I found this quote from him:

What they make of the hocus pocus about karma and rebirth is another matter.

In light of that quote, how many Buddhist arhats, etc., would accept him as a legitimate expostulator of Buddhism? I know it's primarily directed at Americans (many of them commenting on Massimo's blog?) who largely equate meditation with Buddhism, and putting thoughts into their heads, but what does he think of Buddhism's core doctrines — yes, doctrines — himself?

Anyway, folks, per Aaron and myself, I can make the same claim about Judaism. If I make the right readings of scriptures I choose versus ones I neglect and other things, hell, I can make the same claim about Christianity.

Which, after all, is what many Unitarians essentially do.

And, "back in the day"? First-generation Christian apologist Justin Martyr tried to sell Roman emperor Antoninus Pius and members of the Senate on the idea that Christianity was just a philosophy, after all!

So, to the degree anyone claims Buddhism is "just a philosophy," it's true, but not unique, and it is essentially trivial.

Back to the philosophy angle. If, as did someone on Massimo's blog, you make claims that because David Hume came up with observations about human psychology that parallel those of the Buddha, this is "proof" that either  Buddhism is just a philosophy, or worse, that metaphysical doctrines and all, Buddhism is still just a philosophy, you just kneecapped yourself in my court.

And, if prose for philosophical statements doesn't totally float your boat, well, this short poem of mine, and this other one, point out some of Buddhism's conundrums in verse.

How and why I became an atheist, Part 6

In part 1 of this series, I look at my conservative Lutheran childhood, above all my conservative Lutheran minister father's influences.

Part 2 gets into my high school and college years.

And Part 3 gets to my trying to follow in dad's footsteps at a Lutheran seminary, or divinity school.

In Part 4, I look at my "conversion" or transition period of my last year of school there and the first year after

In Part 5, I look at further personal, philosophical, unreligious and antimetaphysical development in my life during three years of living with my dad.

It's now 1997 and I'm on my own, editing a weekly paper. Working 60-70 hours a week, moving it from the red and into the black. Getting burned out. Drinking on the job.

At the same time, I'm now exploring more in things like cognitive science/philosophy, recognizing the origins in human brain dysfunctions of visions and hallucinations, etc. In short, I'm becoming more and more of not just an atheist, but an antimetaphysician in general.

I was eventually fired, for whatever reason. I listened to someone, and some inner part of myself, and quit drinking. And looked for support.

Well, the only game I knew of at the time for that was the religious-based sobriety support program of Alcoholics Anonymous. (And, that's what it is; don't believe the canard that "it's a spiritual program.")

Well, I was in such a post-alcohol mental fog, I didn't totally recognize that at the time. And, when I did, I was in a group, surprising for a small town in Texas, with many New Agey types and little in the way of people even approaching orthodox Christians. Well, I'd had enough happen in the last few months that I actually tried some Matthew Fox reading, even A Course in Miracles.

And, some degree of New Agey "power"-ness, but not a personal deity, "stuck" for a year or so.

That said, as noted on the previous part of this installment atheists (usually the P.Z. Myers type of "Gnu Atheists" who talk about religion as a psychological crutch don't get the time of day from me. I understand the desire for its comforts, still today. I don't find that necessary for myself today, but I'm not going to mock the people who have, not for 2,000, or even 5,000, but going by things like French cave paintings and some burials, but who have for 20,000 years sought out some sort of metaphysical support to help face the vicissitudes of life.

Anyway, I eventually moved on in many ways. I found a "secular sobriety" support group; I found a great group therapy counselor, and group, for some "childhood issues," after I moved to Dallas.

And, I moved beyond "just atheism." I could call it "positive atheism," or I could use the good old phrase "secular humanism."

I continued reading in philosophy of mind, cognitive science/philosophy and related subjects.

I saw more and more of how many of the allegedly metaphysical "artifacts" of religious belief, such as various visual and auditory "visions," deja-vu type events and more, were all parts of the wonder — and the humility — of the evolutionary cobbling together of the human brain and the eventual rise of what we could call an epiphenomenon, almost — human consciousness.

I saw that that, as well as Yosemite National Park and its falls, Grand Canyon and its vistas, Beethoven and the C sharp minor quartet and more, could all be approached with wonder, even with gratitude without having to be grateful to anybody, divinities included.

As I said in an op-ed column, riffing on Shylock in Merchant of Venice: "I am an atheist. Prick us; do we not bleed?"

But, as I said, at this point in my life, whether the term I use is "atheist," "secular humanist," "philosophical naturalist," "skeptic" or something else, I feel reasonably comfortable about where I am.

How and why I became an atheist, Part 5

In part 1 of this series, I look at my conservative Lutheran childhood, above all my conservative Lutheran minister father's influences.

Part 2 gets into my high school and college years.

And Part 3 gets to my trying to follow in dad's footsteps at a Lutheran seminary, or divinity school.

In Part 4, I look at my "conversion" or transition period of my last year of school there, my first year of mixed part-time work after graduation, my moving to somewhere between Uniterianism and agnosticism, and an invitation from my dad to move back in with him.

So, it's up to Flint, Michigan.

Dad suggested that I might be able to get an adjunct teaching position at Baker College, which had an entire division called "Corporate Services," largely devoted to helping UAW workers using education benefits to get their degrees before the next automaker layoff.

He also said that that wouldn't pay a lot of money and might not offer a lot of hours. He said one of his members was the manager of a 7-Eleven and I could probably pick up a few hours there.

Well, between feeling depressed at "failing dad," feeling depressed at "having" to move back home, feeling depressed at having "fallen" to the level of 7-Eleven work, etc., I was depressed indeed. Add in the fact of feeling hypocritical by going to dad's church every Sunday and going through the motions, and that's serious depression.

So, I tried to kill myself. And nearly succeeded. I took half a bottle of over-the-counter sleeping pills while getting drunk, maybe more. And, was going to put a bag over my head to try to suffocate myself while sleeping, in the process.

Well, I didn't get the bag on tight enough. And the self-preservation powers of human physiology kicked in a few hours later, and I violently threw up the undigested portion of the sleeping pills.

As it was, I had double vision or worse 24 hours later, with very rubbery legs.

But, I'm here today.

Next?

I taught for a year, before the college said that, due to North Central Association accreditation changes, I could only teach religion classes, of which they had none open at the time. They also said that someone had filed a sexual harassment claim (unfounded) against me. And, three months after that, a 20-year-old, or so, held me up at the 7-Eleven with a 9mm automatic.

Dad was ready to get out of Michigan, so I moved with him to small-town Texas, fortunately not too far from Dallas. Meanwhile, I was becoming an ever-more-serious drinker, out of life-frustration, boredom, and PTSD (and trigger of past PTSD symptoms) over having a 9mm waved a foot in front of my nose.

All of the emotional reasons for questioning not just the existence of god, but the support value (other than purely human group support) of any metaphysically-based organization, were increasing ever more.

On the intellectual side, I had done further critical study of biblical texts plus more and more reading in comparative religion.

And, on the personal development side, probably more unconsciously than consciously, some growth was happening there.

I don't want to stereotype agnosticism, but, for many, I think it's more a halfway house than a permanent stop; a seminary acquaintance actually pushed me back then to "declare myself" as an atheist and stop hiding out in agnosticism world. For those for whom "positive agnosticism" is a valid stance, though, my hat is indeed off to you. That said, I was also reading my first books on philosophical atheism before leaving Michigan. I knew I was at least at the farther edge of agnosticism.

And, as this part and part 4 of my journey have shown, atheists (usually the P.Z. Myers type of "Gnu Atheists" who talk about religion as a psychological crutch don't get the time of day from me. I understand the desire for its comforts, still today.

Two years of living with my dad in Texas got me a start in newspaper journalism, with a boss who was (himself) an alcoholic drinker, I believe. But, I got out of there, got a job as editor of a weekly newspaper and ...

I'll tackle more in Part 6.

How and why I became an atheist, part 4

In part 1 of this series, I look at my conservative Lutheran childhood, above all my conservative Lutheran minister father's influences.

Part 2 gets into my high school and college years.

And Part 3 gets to my trying to follow in dad's footsteps at a Lutheran seminary, or divinity school, up to the point of realizing that psychologically, I didn't want to be a minister and that, at the same time, intellectually and emotionally, I had problems with what I had been raised to believe.

So, here I am after two years of classes and a year of internship similar to a medical residency (we ought to make would-be lawyers do one of those, too), back for a final, wrap-up year of classes and realizing that this is NOT where I wanted to be going. I had enough money from scholarships and part-time work at a Lutheran publishing house that I didn't have to borrow much money to finish getting the degree while trying to figure out what I did want to do. (I've not totally figured that, 19 years later.)

On the academic side, I started doing "intellectual judo" on what I had been taught to believe. We'd been taught the bare bones of historical-critical theology with the idea that, as one professor put it, when Time or U.S. News comes out with its usual Christmas or Easter story, we could explain to church parisioners in a semi-fundamentalist denomination what was wrong with the story.

Well, being near the top of my class academically, and interested in the study of the texts and their exegesis, I took to this like a duck to water. Soon enough, before the year was out, I realized the more liberal wing of Lutheranism, just like liberal mainline Protestantism in general, wasn't a viable stopping point or landing point for my spiritual development. I was going to be some type of Unitarian, or beyond.

Related to that, I was reading more about psychology of religion and related issues. With my dad a minister, my oldest brother in the same graduating class as me, my sister having married a minister from the class ahead of me and getting her own master of arts in religion degree, my dad's sister being a Lutheran parochial school teacher, there were these larger issues.

I was losing, or cutting myself away from, some existential moorings. So I had emotional and psychological issues to face.

At the same time, I was bringing emotions, and philosophy, to bear on other religious issues, religious problems not just Christian in nature.

Big-ticket problems like the "problem of evil."

And, though I knew the basics about Buddhism, already then I was realizing that it wasn't necessarily just Western religions that have problems with this issue.

(The problem of evil is this, for the three Western monotheistic religions: How can an all-powerful god also claim to be all-loving while there's still evil in the world? For theologians who blame human sin, the quickest "counter" is with "natural evil" like hurricanes, etc.

Eastern religions? With more and more years of thought, karma, as an all-powerful law of reincarnation, becomes as evil, in a sense, as an all-powerful god for this failure. And, in some sense, the Buddhism that holds to karma is to me more perverse than the Christianity/Islam/Judaism that at least attributes this to a personal deity. But, I digress.)

On the academic side, tender young mid-20s Lutheran minds of mush were apparently too sensitive to stand up to such ideas. The dean of students eventually told me, after he'd been approached by several other students, that the only way he'd let me stay in school and graduate was if I observed a gag order. No, seriously.

So, I felt more isolated. And, as a divinity school has just one objective for its graduates (and my Lutheran undergraduate college had declined due to lack of enrollment), I had other angst on my hands, increasing - employment issues and lack of support.

Well, I graduated, continued to work part time at the Lutheran publishing house for a year after that while doing other PT work, and working on figuring out whether I was a Unitarian, an agnostic or an atheist.

A year after graduation, I realized I was at least quasi-agnostic. I knew then that Unitarianism the denomination was broad enough to accept agnostics, but ... was halfway ready to abandon religion as an organization.

Anyway, this wasn't an overnight process. My apartment complex where I lived the year after graduation was next to a small suburban St. Louis city park. I would pace out there late at night, praying/talking, or "praying"/talking to Jesus, Buddha, Yahweh, Allah, the Tao and more, venting my psyche, running through emotions and more.

This is part of why atheists (usually the P.Z. Myers type of "Gnu Atheists" who talk about religion as a psychological crutch don't get the time of day from me. I understand the desire for its comforts, still today. Ditto for those who treat "conversion" to atheism as a relatively pristine, highly intellectual process.

Then, my dad offered to let me move back home ... with the hope of me teaching on an adjunct basis at a college there. Well, it was better than what I was doing ....

And, that will continue in Part 5.

Blackmore shows ignorance of both memes and religion

Susan Blackmore admits that religion isn’t a “virus of the mind.”

Are religions viruses of the mind? I would have replied with an unequivocal "yes" until a few days ago when some shocking data suggested I am wrong.

Why?
From a conference on “Explaining religion,” she cites the following reasons.

1. Religious activity correlates with more children.

And, no others.

Yep, that’s it.

First, despite her noting her previous mea culpa over believing in the reality of paranormal phenomena, it shows Blackmore might still lack intellectual rigor in some areas.

This is a prime example. She didn’t even look for additional information, like average lifespan of children from religious vs. nonreligious families.

Nor did she take a look at a single datum of cultural evolution that might be connected.

Nor did she acknowledge this might be an issue of cultural evolution trumping genetic evolution.

Shoddy, shoddy.

Beyond that, she didn’t even ask the most pertinent question:

Shouldn’t this put another nail in the coffin of “strong” theories of memes, at least?

Answer? Yes.

Meanwhile, I can't wait for the Christian version of a Pop Ev Psycher to actually cite this column.

Human brain not built for theistic evolution

Boy, this Live Science post just jumped out at me.

Using an fMRI to measure brain responses, and using either “gOd” or “science” as a priming word for subjects who first read information about the Big Bang, at the cosmology level, or “primal soup” at the Earth level, psychologist Jesse Preston of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and her colleague Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago found statistical signs that people who know the basics of both cannot hold on to both the naturalistic focus of science and the transcendent metaphysic of theism at the same time:

“We can only believe in one explanation at a time,” Preston told LiveScience. “So although people can report explicitly, ‘Look, I’ve been a Christian all my life, and yes, I also believe in science and I am a practicing chemist,’ the question is, are these people really reconciling belief in God and science, or are they just believing in one thing at a time?”

But, the researcher’s thesis is being questioned.

In shades of Steven Jay Gould, Hampshire College science historian Salman Hameed says the conclusions depend on the “conflict” view of science and religion, vs. Gould’s non-oppositional magisteria or similar.

But, what Hameed overlooks is that among PhD scientists, especially top-tier post-doc PhDs, Gould’s two-domains theory is ignored even more than it is dismissed. Ditto among modern philosophers of science and non-science philosophers who aren’t explicit theists.

Some further thoughts on defining religion

Based on my own readings in existentialism, and psychology of religion, I offer the following psychological definition of religion:

“Religion is an attempt to escape from the condition of being human in life. It is based on two facts. One is that there is something psychologically wrong with being human. The other point is philosophical — a belief that humans can be something besides being human.”

The only condition in which the second is true is with a .45 slug to the brain. Camus knew that when he said suicide was the ultimate question of philosophy. (He probably would have called existentialism, at least with the way he answered that question, as a psychology, not a philosophy.)

Psycho-philosophical escapism does sound a good way to define a religion, especially when he connect it with the sociology of religion observation that religions consist of certain defined rites, rituals, etc., such as prayer, worship, liturgy, etc. And, the psych-philosophical definition, of escapism, gets at the heart of what motivates religious people without even talking about whether a personal deity or not.

In other words, to riff on Paul Tillich, for the religious, escape from the human condition is the matter of ultimate concern.