Remember the wishy washy religious reply I got to my column on atheism yesterday? Well, after much persuasion from a friend, I decided to play Good Cop. I had a horrendously hard time writing that letter, since…well, I’m not good at being the diplomat. Like my friend said, I’m a firebrand who wrote a diplomatic column and is stuck playing diplomat for a while.
Him: All I’m saying is that you need to use judo instead of boxing
Me: But I like using flamethrowers!
But since I’m temporarily representing all atheists at Purdue, I probably shouldn’t come off as a jackass. Here’s the short reply sent in, with the goal of getting across “O hai thare, you’re kind of a pompous jerk, and you’re not worth my time for a longer letter. kthxbai“
Great science comes from theists and non-theists
Josiah Maas (“Claims already have extraordinary proof,” Monday), I agree, the universe is full of extraordinary evidence – evidence that natural processes shape everything from the formation of stars to the diversity of life on earth. Religious people can certainly be great scientists. Don’t insinuate that atheists can’t.
Jennifer McCreight
Senior in the College of Science
But needless to worry. Many other students decided not to play defense:
Don’t assume the weird stuff is God’s work
This letter is in response to Josiah Mass’ letter printed on Monday, “Claims already have extraordinary proof.”
As a fellow science major, I applaud your awe of the universe, but deride your methods. You say there is extraordinary evidence all around us, but if you insist that these claims are proven, you are failing in your task as a scientist. The purpose of science is to discover and learn about the unknown. To take a phenomenon that is presently unexplainable and throw your hands up in defeat and invoke “God” as the answer, you have simply admitted defeat.
Mark Webster
Senior in the College of ScienceHow is the universe proof of God but not others?
Josiah Maas (letter to the editor, “Claims already have extraordinary proof,” Monday), could you be a little bit more specific about exactly what the evidence for God is? Also, could you explain how it is evidence for God, but not for Zeus, the Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Invisible Pink Unicorn?
Alex Strinka
Senior in the College of ScienceSubjectivity is the essence of understanding
In response to Josiah Maas’s letter, I would, at the outset, like to point out that proof and evidence are not the same thing. Furthermore, the qualifier “extraordinary” is subjective. What evidence you find compelling, someone else might not.
That it makes for an entertaining debate, that much I will agree. But alas! Your letter does in no way contribute to it. The only specific fact you give is what your opinion is regarding certain unmentioned evidence. In a place where ideas are exchanged (like this “Letters” section) specific facts an enriching discussion make, just stating your opinion belongs to opinion polls. And “look around the world” can never be substitute specific facts – it is too vague from the start. Try using that sentence for the next term paper in your science class, and sit back to enjoy the grades.
I read Ms. McCreight’s column. She was not debating whether any religion serves any purpose, or whether God of any kind exists. Her position is certainly implied in the article, but it was not about that. The article was talking about the motivation for a particular society, the kinds of programs they do, etc., a list of specific facts of some sort. The article also gave facts that were not related to the Society of Non-Theists in particular, but were relevant to the topic in general.
Now whether you found these facts interesting or not is subjective, but they certainly brought to the table much to discuss about.
What is there to discuss about your opinion? And what purpose will it serve to exclaim: OMG! You are a sophomore in the College of Science, Josiah.
Pinaki Bhattacharya
Graduate student
Ah, fulfilling to know that my last couple weeks at Purdue will likely be filled with an atheism flame war in the Exponent. Hey, the theist started it!
Ms. McCreight,Your quoted claim that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” is not logically sound. If I told you that I could levitate in the air, you would probably say that is an extraordinary claim. What kind of evidence would you accept for that claim? Probably an observation of me doing it, which is a quite ordinary form of evidence. And now you would tell people I can levitate and they would ask for your extraordinary evidence. Your demands for extraordinary evidence are simply your way of distrusting the testamonial evidence of the person supplying the extraordinary claim. You might ask what scientific proof do I have of the existence of God, but that is just a request for ordinary evidence, unless you take science to be extraordinary. So when you ask for extraordinary evidence, you can’t merely make the request and presume it will go unanswered, you need to supply criteria for this extraordinary evidence. Perhaps if you spent a day with an exorcist and saw possessed people levitate, or little old ladies throw heavy chairs across the room you might accept something extraordinary. But while these are extraordinary events, your oberservation is an ordinary means of gathering evidence. You would now have testamonial evidence, the very type you reject from others. If the letter limit in the exponent has not been reached, perhaps supply all the theists out there with some criteria for the extraordinary evidence you require.
You do realize that the mere fact that you let it be known that you are an atheist is offensive to many theists right? I’m not sure why, but just the fact that we exist is offensive somehow.In other words, you started it.
I disagree. If you claimed that you could levitate your body I would require more proof than simply seeing you do it. That is an extraordinary claim and I might require that you do it in a place that I choose, with cameras at several angles and two or three other people present to insure that it was not simply some well done magic trick. As for the proof that theists might need to provide as evidence for a supernatural deity, I am prone to say…any, other than testimonial or what is written in a self-proving book.
Human eyes and the way our brain processes our vision are hardly infallible. Simply observing something with your eyes is not gathering extraordinary evidence. It’s a cursory look to see whether the phenomena merits a deeper look. And even then just proving you can do it isn’t enough; to make it truly extraordinary evidence, a mechanism for how you do it is necessary.
To be fair, the fact she’s a woman is also offensive to many theists.Much less a woman that wears low-cut tops.
So you personally observing it is not sufficient, you would like some additional devices/people to help you observe it. Again, very ordinary forms of evidence. One might make the same requests of someone saying they will jump over school busses on his motorcycle. As for “any” evidence of God, I again ask what kind would you accept?
I find magnetic resonance imaging to be extraordinary. To say I can put a person in a tube, turn on the magnet and see their insides is just fascinating. Even if you watched me put a person in there and produce an image, your doubt as to whether it worked as I said it did might not be satisfied. But then I could explain to you how the magnets align the protons in the water molecules and the radio frequency pulses excite the protons and the de-excitation emits more radio frequency pulses that can then be measured, you would be more prone to accept the whole idea. But there is nothing extraordinary about that. A mechanism is the most ordinary of things.
Then I suppose your levitation act is only extraordinary when there’s the likelihood it is a fraud due to lack of evidence.
So if you were in an otherwise empty room observing an exorcist and a possessed old lady who started levitating, and you were free to do whatever you wished to verify it, and you found no spurious mechanisms, what conclusion would you draw?
Assuming it was a repeatable phenomenon, better yet had its own set of triggers that could be discovered and catalogued, and could be confirmed empirically through more than one experiment, I would conclude it was possible for an old lady to levitate. Whether she is possessed by an extraplanar demonic entity or not is an entirely different question and much harder to experiment on, but I believe the levitation there is enough. The exorcist is irrelevant unless he can show methods that actually control or alleviate the levitation.I’d also like to note you’re approaching this from the wrong angle. I can’t speak for *all* skeptics, but I imagine Jenn would agree with me; it’s not that we don’t *want* there to be levitation, ESP, ghosts, etc. We’d *love* to see them be real. But there’s no evidence that they are. Hence our stances.
It is not necessarily the type of evidence that will be extraordinary but the amount. If I claim to have bought a new bike then most people will require very little evidence before believing me. They will probably take my word for it or if they are still skeptical they might want to go see the bike or see a picture of me riding the bike. If someone says they can levitate you would need a barrage of testing to make sure it was not a magic trick of some kind since a trick is far more likely than actual levitation.
Good. But I would point out that something doesn’t need to be discovered or catalogued in order to be real. The eating habits of the finches of the Galapagos Islands were very much real prior to Darwin’s arrival. Nor, experimented upon, such things are only for our understanding (and perhaps acceptance).As for the exorcist, suppose he does some thing that “calls out the deamon” or otherwise induces the extraordinary behavior. That could be the hypothesis. He does not need to control or alleviate it once it begins. Though a second hypothesis could be that his relgious practices have some effect on it.My angle is not to convince you of levitation or ghosts, but as stated above, to dismiss the notion of extraordinary claims requiring extraordinary evidence.
Right, and my argument is that it is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary evidence, both of which become ordinary once they have been paired together. Regardless of how ordinary the ways of measuring levitation could be, the fact levitation exists requires either an entirely new branch of physics, or a major shake up of our current models of physics. That is extraordinary. That requires a lot of evidence, which is what mechanisms and models show. Your example of MRI has a problem; Nuclear Magnetic Resonance was pioneered in the 1930s. Machines capable of taking advantage of the phenomenon had been built and used since then. MRI was developed with the advent of computers powerful enough to take the data from a NMR machine, and build it into a 3d image. We knew MRI was possible in theory for 40 years before the first machine was built. If the first MRI was built a year after the concept of NMR was discovered, *then* it would be extraordinary.
You don’t even have to try to Start a flame war in the exponent, it just kind of happens.
Levitation existing would not require any kind of new science. It might require new science to explain. But as I state above, our ability to explain something has no bearing on whether it exists. Just because you couldn’t explain the new physics doesn’t mean the lady isn’t levitating.MRI is not extraordinary to someone who is familiar with it, that’s true. But for someone to whom the concept is new, it’s very extraordinary. Much like demonically possessed levitators.Here’s an account from an equally skeptical journalist in Spain: http://www.speroforum.com/a/16… (it was originally published in Spain’s second largest daily, it appears here in English translation on a different website)
A barrage of testing you say? What if I let you find the hoop of your choice and the room of your choice, and when the old lady levitated in that room, you could pass your hoop around her every which way?
Like I always say, if you gotta go leave a smoldering crater in your wake.
I don’t think you understand what science is. Or rather, what science deals with when it comes to studying a phenomenon. When you find something you want to study, your ultimately goal is to figure out a mechanism and build a model representing it. All physical effects from electromagnetism to strong nuclear force to gravity are simply described by our models. So far no repeatable, viewable phenomenon we have ever found has defied having a model of it built. Why would levitation do that? You could test the force exerted by levitation, whether the levitation resists outside action by other forces, whether it is anti-gravity, or a form of propulsion, and all sorts of other stuff. If it exists and we can study it, we can explain it. If it exists only scarcely there is little proof, and at best we can look for more examples *to* study. You’ll notice demonic possessions don’t happen in the presence of a fully staffed hospital, or in a position where the person could be studied by credible experts that include psychologists, or in the case of levitation physicists. That “skeptical journalist” hits the same problem; this doesn’t happen on camera in a well lit clean room. It happens in a *darkened chapel*. Hell, the “skeptical journalist” doesn’t even see the girl levitate. He hears about it from the mother who appears to have been previously freaked by her daughter’s psychotic episodes.I’ve always wonder if levitation of possessed people comes simply from them arching their backs and lifting their midsections up off the bed. Similar to their “superhuman strength” (which is, their mind has removed the normal limits we put on our muscles to avoid hurting outrselves), they’re able to do it for inordinate lengths of time, giving the impression they are floating by some ghostly force.So, in summary, you’re right that it doesn’t change whether a phenomenon exists if we have not yet studied it. But if a phenomenon exists, we can study it. So I don’t get your purpose of saying that in the first place.
I guess I’m not making myself clear. The extraordinary evidence for an extraordinary claim, e.g. levitation, God, perpetual motion machine, etc., is not necessarily different in kind from the ordinary evidence for a less spectacular claim, it’s different in degree. You say you can levitate, o.k., do it, let’s verify it’s not a trick, come up with a hypothesis as to how it is you can do it, and repeat it, repeat it repeat it. You claim there’s a God, o.k., give me ANY evidence of any kind that’s not about your feelings or what is written in a book that itself claims, or others claim, without a shred of evidence, to be divinely inspired. Any evidence we can test will do.
Where is the test to show that empirical evidence is the only valid type of evidence? You fall victim to the discredited notion of Logical Positivism. It doesn’t stand up to its own criteria.
By your definition of science, biology, psychology, sociology, some chemistry, and many other things are not science.It would be very easy to control for all those additional factors you suggest.Demonic possession does happen in fully staffed hospitals. Take a walk down the psychiatric ward with an exorcist.This story isn’t the only account of levitation. The specific example of the old lady occured while she was seated in a chair. The exorcist casually reached over and pushed her back in the seat.As for knowledge of science, perhaps you should look into muscle physiology. We do not have absurd amounts of strength that our brains just prevent us from using. Muscles can only do so much and a little old lady picking up a heavy chair in one arm and throwing it across the room is beyond such limits.I’m not here to convince you of demonic possession. You clearly do not accept testimonial evidence, I understand that. But you also struggle to understand evidence in general. I could just as easily apply your definitions to evolution and conclude that it doesn’t exist. The Big Bang only happened once, so we can’t repeatedly test that, yet we accept it without the types of evidence you demand.Here’s a book you might find engaging: http://irrationalatheist.com/f…
I would have to say that the claim of a human being’s ability for self levitation in the context of a debate over the existence of an omnipotent benevolent creator and caretaker of humanity would fall into the realm of an unusual claim requiring unusual evidence.To me, the extraordinary claim of an omnipotent god would have to be demonstrated with an ageless proof of its existence. Something along the lines of the ability to violate at will the laws of nature without effort or a time limit. Even then, it would have to be a demonstration that would have no natural explanation for as long as the universe exists.When you think you have that kind of proof, call me.
The column for this thread is getting ridiculously thin. I’m addressing your last comment with a reply to my original comment. Meet me there.
What? How does my definition of science rule out any of those as science? All of those fields are heavily based on the use of models. Let’s look at chemistry, as that’s the one I’m most acquainted with; Bohr Atom, VSEPR Theory, Angular Overlap Model, Hard-Soft Acid-Base Theory, Arrhenius Acids, Lewis Acids/Bases, etc, etc. All of these I listed are *models* used to describe systems at a molecular level. You’re going to find equivalent models in all of those other fields.If you take a walk down to a psychiatric ward, the exorcist is probably going to be put off by the fact a shot of thorazine can banish demons he’d need to fight with for hours upon end.As for the “superhuman strength,” make no mistake, I don’t mean lifting a car. The concept has been studied, and demonstrated, as well as more clear percentages for the increase in strength being calculated. It’s not going to let you lift a car, but it’s entirely feasible it would allow an aged woman to lift a chair and throw it, even one handed, as that’s barely outside of the realm of plausibility in the first place if she were still in decent shape and not withered, and the chair were not exceptionally heavy. http://bit.ly/8gsvg1I don’t accept testimonial evidence because a testimony is an anecdote. Anecdotes at no point because data until you can use some sort of test such as a survey to get an average and use that as a *starting* point for an empirical study.If you applied my definition of science to evolution, you’d…find that evolution is exactly as textbooks say it is. It is a *model*.And while the Big Bang only happened once, it quite literally scattered evidence of itself to the four corners of the universe. That we use to build a model. That’s the difference between the Big Bang and a demonic possession causing levitation being plausible; the Big Bang left evidence everywhere, levitation leaves no evidence.And I’m mildly insulted you both linked me to a book written by Vox Day, and apparently are trying to draw a comparison between me, Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins. I have a great deal of respect for Hitchens, Dawkins, and Harris, but their views do not entirely reflect my own.
“When you find something you want to study, your ultimately goal is to figure out a mechanism and build a model representing it. All physical effects from electromagnetism to strong nuclear force to gravity are simply described by our models. “You can easily come up with a model to describe anything. The model is not science. Mechanisms are different and not present in most of my examples. The Big Bang is a model of the creation of the Universe, meaning, we can describe historical events. What is the mechanism of the Big Bang? The evidence scattered about the Universe does not support any mechanism. But, I will briefly point out that you said the evidence for this extraordinary event that created the Universe is all around us, which is the very claim from the initial response to the Exponent column that got all the attention. We can build models until the cows come home, but those are a posteriori and are only descriptions of events. We supply mechanisms to connect our models to our understanding of physical reality. The Bohr atom was a model used to describe a result. When the same model was applied to a different scenario is was found to be wrong. VSEPR is a model to describe the shapes of molecules based on our understanding of the mechanism of electronic interaction. These are all based on mechanisms from physics. To say that because physicists build models that give very accurate prediction means other sciences do the same thing is illogical. You would find that evolution is a model, but the mechanism remains to be tested, so by your definition, it’s not quite science.Perhaps the book will change your opinions of the the Three and cause you to strengthen your own. Hitchens is a journalist, Dawkins is a science propogandist, and Harris is prepetually working on his Ph.D. They lack the credentials for their topic and this book will show that they have not established any through their body of work. It’s short, you could probably read it in two days.
How about you go intern in the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, and everytime a miracle comes in, you prove them wrong. They would welcome you as a devil’s advocate.
The model is the result of the science. The model is what your experiments let you build. You perform an experiment, you get results, you take those results and figure out how they can be reapplied to theorize related effects. If you want to define ‘mechanism,’ it’s a functional part of a model, we’ll say. What mechanisms does our model of the Big Bang offer? For one, how matter arises out of the early epochs where there was only energy, then a quark soup, etc. It also explains the spread of galaxies, how they form, how the heavier elements formed, etc. We can’t build a mechanism without a model to base it on. Without a model, there is no mechanism. We know plenty of mechanisms in evolution, that’s what molecular biology does. And I’ll finish this reply when I’m done with my class in an hour.
You’re only going half way. Model are the impetus to mechanism discovery, but models do not support mechanisms. Mechanisms support models. And make predictions beyond the models. The Big Bang is an event, not a mechanism for galaxy separation. There were mechanisms that acted during the Big Bang that explain galaxy sepration and the rest of your list. But none of these mechanisms nor the Big Bang model itself explains the origin of the Universe. They are a “what”, not a “how”. Whether the initial Universe was a ball of energy or a hyperactive cow does not explain how the Universe came about, just what happened when it did.Molecular biology has mechanisms for gene exchange, mutations, etc. but they do not have a mechanism that supports macroscale speciation.With that, I’m out. Pax.
Damn, he would leave on the note of “hurr hurr, microevolution works, but macroevolution doesn’t.”
I didn’t say that empirical evidence is the only type of evidence. I only pointed out that you misunderstand Sagan’s “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence” statement. Again give me ANY evidence of ANY kind for the existence of God.
The fact that it allows us to produce microwaves and sending people to the moon seems to be a pretty good indication that empirical evidence and the scientific method are pretty good ways of learning about the world. There may be other ways of learning about the world but you should be able to argue for why you think that method is reasonable. The scientific method provides detailed, consistent, predictable, testable and insanely useful information. If there is another way of knowing about the world that would give you information confirming the existence of God, what is this way of knowing? Why do we trust it any more than we would trust guessing or hunches? Does this way of knowing give us a way to tell if someone’s idea of God is faulty? If you don’t think empirical evidence is useful for some things, what exactly are you preposing to use in its place?
Josiah, I’ll try to summarize your thoughts:GODDIDIT.Is that it?Is that science, Josiah?
“Probably an observation of me doing it, which is a quite ordinary form of evidence”No. David Copperfield flies as well, and he could fool any of us any time he wanted, just like Uri Geller used to do with his spoons before being eviscerated by Randi. An observation is not evidence.An observation of granny trowing a chair across the room isn’t evidence for possesion either.
@ep – Before we can progress, we will require an exact and delimited definition of what you mean when you say ‘God’. Without this it is impossible to set criteria for establishing if this ‘God’, of which you keep speaking, exists.
Jen,When I saw your first post about your letter to the editor and the sophmoric reply, I considered advising you to ignore it. You see, I’m an old fart. I learned LONG ago that these exchanges are rarely useful or intellectually fulfilling. Sometimes, in the total scheme of things, it is best to just walk away. Ignore it.Back in the day, I used Matthew 7:6 to rationalize not engaging with idiots. It goes, “Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.”Now I’m more inclined to remind myself, “Never try to teach a pig to sing. It wastes your time and annoys the pig.”Also, never engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed person.Of course, from the looks of the comments above, even my posting this is a waste of time.Love reading your blog.
I think you’ve misused the term Devil’s Advocate here which does not mean merely to dissent but rather to represent an unpopular view entirely for the purpose of it being dismantled by one’s peers.
In all fairness, Psychology and a number of other ‘soft’ sciences are only questionably sciences as a result of prevailing factors inherent in their pursuit.
I seem to recall a female rep standing on the House floor and saying something to the tune of “That you even exist is too much of a threat to our children.”
I think you were right to keep your response short & simple. I used to love religious debates so much that I would look for & find a debate every single day without fail. After a while, I realized that it’s like bashing my head against a brick wall.There’s two things that I still feel the need to debate with theists – civil rights & morality. Maybe someday an atheist will have a remote chance at a high political office
http://www.blaghag.com/2010/04…Um, no. According to you, you started it.Why the sudden change of heart? Is dishonesty often used in your intellectual debates?
إخع شقث شصثسخةثو شىي لأهرثس لأخخي ُةشهم شىي ÷ صهمم لاث حشقفهؤهحشفهىلز
I am so sorry! I was trying to leave a quick comment while getting children out the door, and didn’t realize till I posted that my son’s computer is still set to Arabic font. So, that last comment above is not a fatwa, it is me trying to use the intarwebz too early in the morning. I am Gives Good Email’s fiance, and I love what you are doing!
What a disingenuous little twerp you are.So atheists stating their opinion is starting a fight?Do you really want to go there, brainless one?