Perhaps Barack Obama really wants to make sure I won’t vote for him. At least, that’s how I’m interpreting his attempts to couple environmentalism and religion.
Meeting the threat of global climate change will take hard work and faith, Obama said.
“Not a blind faith, not a faith of mere words, not a faith that ignores science, but an active searching faith,” said Obama, a member of the United Church of Christ. “It’s a faith that does not look at the hardship and pain and suffering in the world and use it all as an excuse for inaction or cynicism, but one that accepts the fact that although we are not going to solve every problem here on earth, we can make a difference.”
I don’t even know what the hell he means. Meeting the threat of global climate change will take hard work, but faith? What does faith contribute to it? And then the rest is just noise. You don’t need a searching faith, since there’s nothing to search, and no criterion for deciding when you’ve found something — just make it all up. Tossing in irrelevant nonsense about using faith in an endeavor that requires real-world solutions is just an annoyance, and makes me suspect he’s going to waste a lot of effort if he gets into office. We do not need faith-based science.
Then there’s another issue: linking himself with evangelical Christianity means he’s automatically going to be allying himself with anti-gay bigotry. He has since rejected the position, but face it — he’s going to be hauling a lot of baggage along with him on this issue.
Here’s the only stance I’d like to see from any of the candidates: they can say they’re devout, that they believe in god and all that stuff, but that it’s a personal issue that they keep in the home and in their church, and off the campaign trail, and in particular, out of their political office. Can we please get at least one candidate stating that they are running for a secular political office and all that matters is their natural, material qualifications and plans? I can’t vote for a candidate who’s running on the platform that ghosts are on his side.
If I say I’m a man/woman of faith, it contributes lots of votes. It solves no problems, except for consoling those who don’t want to face an indifferent universe.
Many problems can solved or alleviated with hard work, hard decisions and hard science. Bugger all are solved with faith.
The quoted statement sounds as though he’s coating a sensible position with the language of faith to make it easier for the terminally deluded to swallow. I’m not as familiar with his record on this point as I probably should be, though..
I’m with #2. There’s a good indication of his views in this interview, where he says “And the way to do it, though, is to understand that, No. 1, people who are religious don’t have a monopoly on morality, so they’ve got to be careful about being sanctimonious. No. 2 is that whatever values may be religiously motivated, if you’re in the public square, if you’re involved in politics, I think you have to translate those moral precepts into something universal that people of different faiths or no faith at all can debate and argue and hopefully at some point come to a consensus. I think the mistake that’s been made with respect to the religious right is a literalism that is so rigid that it does not allow for the possibility of somebody of a different faith or nonbeliever to engage in a dialogue.”
To even acknowledge atheism or the possibility of sanctimoniousness in the religious is as good as it’s going to get.
“I can’t vote for a candidate who’s running on the platform that ghosts are on his side.”
As a matter of practical politics, the important thing is not whether the ghosts exist but whether you agree with them.
It’s sad, but the state of the country is such that you can choose either the candidate who says Klingons want him to stop global warming or the one who claims that the spirits of ancient Atlantis think children have too much health care.
Either way you get someone crazy, and all you can do make sure the one who wins isn’t the cannibal.
“As a matter of practical politics, the important thing is not whether the ghosts exist but whether you agree with them.”
It’s pretty hard to decide whether or not one agrees with those “ghosts” when what those “ghosts” hold to be true changes from moment to moment due to political expediency, profitability, or the random whim of religious leaders.
The problem is a candidate can’t get elected without at least convincing much of the mass of religious voters that said candidate is for their views (or the candidate convincing them that they share the candidates views). Voters don’t want a smart, focused candidate that will try to do the right thing, even if it may disagree with their personal views, voters want someone they think will do what they want. The sad truth is any candidate that wants to get elected almost out of necessity has to lose integrity and engage in this kind of manipulation to get anything done. The democratic process doesn’t favor the rational candidate, it favors the one with the best marketing. Until rationality catches on with society overall, politicians are going to have to dress up in these little roles to sneak a rational approach past the irrational. I don’t like it, either, but it’s acceptable for the time being. We just gotta keep pushing for a more rational society in the meantime until we achieve it, and the games don’t have to be played anymore.
It also wouldn’t hurt matters if we stopped getting stuck with the false dichotomy of two parties of the same coin. Some real choice might encourage a higher turnout. But, it seems unlikely to me that the politicians would actually do such a thing, as the current system benefits them far too much to expect them to give it up, but I’m hopeful that Unity ’08 or some similar effort will be successful enough to force such a change.
PZ, I think on this one you got it wrong :
“Faith” as I understand it here means “belief that God wants man to be intelligent enough to solve what is probably going to be its biggest problem ever, consuming resources adequately”.
Now, if you don’t believe in God, this doesn’t appeal to you, but anyway you are probably knowledgeable enough to understand why Global warming is the most important issue ever to be solved by mankind.
For the rest, (more than 90% of the world’s population), it is definitely a strong statement to be made and if it can help to convince them to really do something about it, I don’t see why it should not be made.
My view, reamains the same, I am an atheist, but I am lucky. I have had the education and the will to be a freethinker, but that luck is not given to all 6.5 billion people on this planet. When religion says stupid things, like creationism, anti abortion, anti gay, sacrifice of one’s life for his god, etc… I denounce religion.
If there can be an alliance between science and religion on this issue of global warming, and we are going to need all the convincing required on that one, why be against it? Why be more purist than required ?
Do I believe that within 100 years religion will still be a powerful force in the world, not clear, maybe not, but for now they do manage to convince quite a number of people around the globe based on “faith” arguments.
I don’t see ghosts anywhere, but i see a lot of people that don’t have a clue.
Man, where did your country go? I used to read marvel comix growing up and remember always hearing about this land of the free and the brave and all that and thought it sounded fantastic. Now of course we all hear a lot about all the freedoms you have but nobody buys it with wiretapping, and suspension of habeus corpus, and rendition, and blackwater, and all the cronyism, and pork, Halliburton, and all the bending over to keep the Falwells happy and fat. Someone on slashdot recently mentioned that watching the news out of the US is like an episode of 24. It’s all lies and subterfuge, and dirty dealing, and double crossing. Maybe it was always like that. But when everyone agrees that in order to get elected you absolutely must at least appear to pander to the infantile fundie mentality you’re in trouble. I could be wrong, but I can’t imagine any political candidate in any of the many countries I’ve lived in over the years deliberately making such a fool of themselves in public, let along it being a necessary part of the whole charade.
Im currently rereading Obama’s “”The Audacity of Hope”, and while I haven’t gotten to the chapter on faith yet, my impression from the first read through is that he is (or was) an agnostic at heart, he understood the role church could play in creating a community, regardless if someone bought the cathiesm or not. I have also heard that Obama’s christianity was obtained relatively recently in life.
Realisticly, though, in a country thats 94% theistic, a candidate that did not talk about God is unelectable. An open atheist, agnostic, buddist. muslem or new ager is unelectable. Considering Mitt Romney, his biggest difficulty is that many religious republicans do not consider mormons “true christians”.
As an atheist, I can read Obama’s words on faith and see the difference between relgions liberals and conservatives. Liberals can take faith as a inspiration for finding the right thing to do; conservatives (evangelicals in particular) seem to me to prance about being members of Jesus fan club more than thinking about what Jesus stood for.
Face it, he has to say that crap to get elected. Whether this state of affairs is right or wrong (and it is very, very wrong IMO) that fact remains. And since it is a matter of urgency for the future of the planet that he is elected, shouldn’t we let him off the hook for the time being? Perhaps when elected he would begin to show some support for the rationalist world-view. Hell, I bet he secretly already does.
You Americans are not the only one’s stuck with this sort of problem.
By pure coincidence I’d just posted about a similar problem in my blog before reading yours.
Here in Australia we are also on the brink of an election and have to choose between the lesser of two evils.
The Liberal’s John Howard or Labour’s Kevin Rudd, both who are quite happy to declare their Christianity, both who are opposed to gay marriages and both who like hanging out with evangelical churches.
What do you do?
I didn’t think Obama’s statements were very well thought out, too. Hard work and problem solving is kind of the antithesis of faith. Faith implies that, with little effort, some higher power will step in and “fix things”. Like when Christians say, “I have faith that things will all work out.” ??? It’s a stupid response to a problem.
Maybe he’s just going to church and bragging about it so he can get right-wing voters? Then again, maybe not.
I don’t care for him anyway; his mentions of environmental policies are weak.
I just heard John Edwards denounce nuclear energy on Bill Maher’s podcast. That got me tweaked.
When put on the spot, not one of these guys won’t give lip service to “faith”. Better the mushy blather than specifics about, say, the role of Jesus in his decision-making.
negentropyeater,
I’m with you on this.
World Population aprox. 6 billion plus.
Google hits for Climate Change aprox 80 million
Google hits for Peak Oil aprox. 3.5 million
We are facing a perfect storm of converging problems the likes of which modern civilizations have not yet seen.
Sounds like the Yak Dung is about to impinge dramatically upon the ventilator.
This post really starts to cut to the chase:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3118#more
The directory page of all the presentations:
http://www.aspousa.org/proceedings/houston/presentations/
It would be nice if the voters of the USA were ready for real solutions proposed by realists and rationalists, unfortunately that is obviously not currently the case. While I know that on this blog it is an unpopular view to hold that we should reach out to the deluded, I’m slowly coming around to the realization that to effect real and necessary change, we may indeed have to swallow our pride and hold our noses by doing just that.
Either that or we may have to nominate PZ for prezident.
Stick a fork in Barak’s campaign.
It’s done.
We’ve already had our first black President:
Bill Clinton.
And blacks are leaving Barak in droves. They see him pandering. In Hillary, they see an honest “sistah.”
http://www.eurweb.com/story/eur37873.cfm
I think you’re wrong about this quote, PZ. Check it out:
Not a blind faith, not a faith of mere words, not a faith that ignores science, but an active searching faith…
Obama’s cleverly redefined faith as, “hope that we can change things by using our brains.” As far as convincing the stupids that he’s religious, it’s an absolutely brilliant move. I’m an atheist and I share Obama’s “faith.” The stupids hear the word “faith” and think, “he’s one of us.” Absolutely brilliant. I can’t think of a better practical solution to the necessity of having to talk about faith in national politics — just redefine it to mean “science”!
Of course, since attacking someone faith is strictly verboten, nobody can complain. It’s like a trojan horse for science.
He’s just fr*ming optimism in a way appropriate for voters who want a “man of faith”. Looks harmless to me.
His last sentence looks very similar to the random quote that has popped up on this page:
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Or rather whether they agree with you…
He’s just fr*ming optimism in a way appropriate for voters who want a “man of faith”. Looks harmless to me.
His last sentence looks very similar to the random quote that has popped up on this page:
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Or rather whether they agree with you…
And blacks are leaving Barak in droves. They see him pandering. In Hillary, they see an honest “sistah.”
I just threw up a little in my mouth.
I’m sorry to all the Obama defenders – I want to like him too, but he really is a social conservative. Just take a look at how buddy-buddy he is with this McClurkin nutjob. You know, the fundie singer who wants a “war” on homosexuality.
Obama was supposed to be the candidate who showed that religion doesn’t have to be conservative and stifling. All he’s shown is that even Democrats can be fundie f*cknozzles.
And sure, it is impossible to be elected in this country without at least claiming to have some superstitions. But that does NOT mean that you have to start speaking in tongues or hanging with the cure-teh-gay set.
I think Obama, like most moderate religionists, is trading in on the different meanings for the word “faith.” In a secular context, faith means hope, trust, confidence, resolve, and/or optimism. When used this way it’s perfectly consistent with science, evidence and reason. Why wouldn’t it be?
“Meeting the threat of global climate change will take hard work and hope,” Obama said. Hard work and encouragement. Hard work and trust. Hard work and determination. Fine.
The trick of course is that the religious meaning — “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” — is being implied without being explicitly stated. There’s a form of equivocation going on, and, politics aside, it’s harmful to atheists to the extent that it manages to fool the equivocators themselves. The religious meanings of words are blurred into the secular meanings, and the secular meaning is suddenly made exclusively “religious.” I think Obama is committed to a separation of church and state, but people are sloppy thinkers, and this sort of thing, though understandable, doesn’t help.
If having “faith” is the same thing as “being optimistic,” then that means that atheists, who have no faith, aren’t really enthusiastic about anything. If being “spiritual” means appreciating love and beauty, then atheists, who lack spiritual beliefs, can’t really feel things very deeply. If “prayer” is a centering and calming of the self, a thoughtful way to reflect on problems and concerns, then atheists, who don’t pray, don’t really consider things in depth. We see what’s going on here right off the bat — they’re sliding from one meaning to another.
But many of the people doing that don’t see it. That’s why statements like Obama’s vex me, too. Read correctly, I don’t disagree with him. But the “correct” meaning isn’t spelled out. It’s like wink wink nudge nudge we get the secret code, but society simply has the trite assumption that “religious faith is necessary” reinforced, and the distinction between different meanings of “faith” is once again conveniently fuzzed up for the religious.
Yes, I know we can read Obama’s remarks more charitably, as redefining faith to be hard work, and that he’s doing it to woo faith-heads to vote for him.
It’s still wrong.
A candidate does not have to bash faith to win me over; I know I’m going to have to vote for some theist next November. But I want them to at least move the other way, and emphasize that we are voting for a secular position in a secular government. Obama is weakening the separation of church and state, reinforcing the de facto popular opinion that these are candidates for high priest of the executive branch.
Faith doesn’t always refer to religion. Sounds like he’s just asking people to trust that the hard work of cleaning up the environment is going to be worth it. We all have faith in many things: our loved ones, the scientific method, our communities, etc. “Interfaith” conferences are just that – no one particular religious faith is represented. The people who go are trying to make connections with other (typically religious) communities so they can work together to solve social problems and injustices. Some people there are probably atheists as well as theists, but to them that doesn’t matter. I also didn’t see anything in the article that would lead me to believe that Obama is weakening the separation of church and state.
…darth
I can’t vote for a candidate who’s running on the platform that ghosts are on his side.
One deviation from your pet obsession and any candidate is off the table for you? How nice for you and your political purity.
You voted for Nader, didn’t you?
Oh, he lost me a while ago, and not just with the “faith” bullshit (and the associated dalliance with gay-bashers). I kept waiting for some actual substance to appear amidst the soothing pablum in his speeches, but I’ve finally concluded that there’s simply no there there.
At the moment, Chris Dodd would get my vote.
#15, what about an Obama/PZ ticket ? one theist, one atheist, a lawyer and a scientist, one without a beard and one with… great combination.
Jokes apart, Obama is like most other politicians, he listens to his political strategists. As Dennett said, there are no good reasons to believe in God, but there are good reasons to proclame that you do.
Yes, the contradiction, the neverending lie, but what the heck, if religion does good things for ounce and raises the consciousness of humans to this inevitable fact, we are the only species on this planet that knows that we can become extinct…
I am getting really tired with the appropriation of perfectly respectable English words by religious types, for their exclusive use.
“Faith”, at it’s root, means little more than “trust”. Similarly, “spirit”, which basically boils down to “life” is doubly appropriated by both traditional religions, and by new-agey woo-ey types.
In this modern age, the religious are happy to use the word “faith” not only as a shorthand for “faith in God”, but actually as if it had no other meaning. This to me is a beautiful word: rich and evocative, with a simple meaning capable of use in many, many situations. I have faith in my capacity to do my job, and in my co-worker’s ability to support me by doing theirs; at the grander end of the scale, I have faith in mankind, that for all our weakness, venality and every-day self interest, enough of us are capable of rising to the challenges set before us, to try to make this a better world.
That some would seek to limit the use of this word to it’s tawdry religious context, is truly saddening. And PZ, for all that I admire him, is doing exactly the same thing by jumping up and down at the very mention of the word.
To be fair, I don’t think PZ is entirely wrong – I think Obama is possibly equivocating a little bit, using buzz-words that will rouse the religious types, while not explicitly proclaiming a religious viewpoint… but I’ve read that statement a few times, and I think that I can happily, even as an atheist, get behind the sentiment.
Anyhoo – I think it’s long past time we had a campaign to rescue these rich old words from their slavery under the religious.
I have faith we can do it.
Obama has no other option if he wants to get elected (I don’t like it either, but it appears to be true). In less than 100 years – maybe less than 50 we will be on the Climate Rides of our lives – At least all women will wear bikini’s (unless burka’s take over!).
Every inductive argument has a suppressed premise for which we have no evidence. It can be stated: “the future will be like the past”.
We take it as true on faith.
James wrote:
I don’t. At least, I doubt it.
It’s not a bad idea, and as a strategy it could work in theory. I’ve seen the same kind of argument used for taking back “spirituality,” “religion,” and “God,” too. Refine and confine all these terms into reasonable secular meanings. That way we keep the warm fuzzies and positive connotations, but eliminate the superstitious, dogmatic elements. Supernaturalism will thusly slip away from our culture by comfortable degrees, naturally and gently, as humanism becomes a more sophisticated understanding of religion (“how we live by whatever we care about deeply”) and philosophy transforms into a more profound understanding of God (“what we see in Nature that we care deeply about”). We all have religion, and we all believe in God — and on our terms! Not theirs! Everybody wins!
Well, it hasn’t worked so far — and there have been some pretty good efforts made over the past century or so. They can’t talk us into believing in God by telling us God is another word for Love, so He must exist — and we can’t talk them out of believing in God by telling them Love is another word for God, so it can’t be a Person who is a He. They just end up stealing the superficial semantic tricks and throwing them back in our faces, because believing in the supernatural comes more naturally — and thus appeals to the superficial — more than the rigors of thinking yourself out of it.
The ‘conventional wisdom’ on the topic is that no candidate who did that could be elected in the US, and since all of the candidates make their (expressed) views confirm to what they think will get them elected, no one who believes they have a chance to win will do this.
Whether it’s actually the case that no one could campaign like that and be elected is another question, but this is politics – it’s not about reality, it’s about the perception of reality.
“And blacks are leaving Barak in droves. They see him pandering.”
There was an interesting piece on NPR the other day about the growing belief in the black community that if Obama were to be elected president, he would be assasinated. So, even as much as they would like to see him president, they won’t support him in order to protect him.
But back to his use of “faith”. I too read it to mean “trust” and “optimism”, that our actions really can make a difference. He specifically rejects the “faith” that means “unquestioning belief”. I agree that in some ways he is correct to use faith in the sense of “belief without evidence”. Work to “correct” man’s influence on climate will require belief with little or no immediate evidence that the work is effective. For a society that needs to see “results” every quarter or less (“lose 20 lbs in 2 weeks!”) it will take a kind of faith to work on climate change. I think that’s what he means by a “searching faith”; belief that the search will find its target, that while there might not be evidence right now of success, that it will eventually be forthcoming.
There’s no more a Christian way of protecting the environment than there is a Christian way of eating a cookie. Christians have priorities though and for more than a few, environmentalism is not high on the priority list, especially when misguided folk like the late Falwell denounce environmentalism as sidetracking from saving souls.
Perhaps Obama gets it right. For those Christians who ascribe to “this world is not my home,” his faith-based reminder is a call to Christians to reflect on the saving our home for future generations. Sounds like he is talking to the choir.
Bob Lane wrote:
No, there is no such premise; it’s just something that follows from Occam’s razor.
“Every inductive argument has a suppressed premise for which we have no evidence. It can be stated: “the future will be like the past”.
We take it as true on faith. ”
While that’s an interesting, intelligent, and provocative statement (Is that from Quine’s “Two Dogams of Empiricism?” I can’t remember), I’m not buying it. At least not in mathematical induction. It isn’t ‘faith’ when I state that adding two positive integers will produce a larger, positive integer. It’s inherent in the definition.
The “suppressed premise” in Lane’s own argument is the fact that if we get to the future and it isn’t like the past, we shrug our shoulders and adapt. If theories fail because we discover a faulty premise, we revise and come up with new theories.
I want Bill Nye to run for President.
What does “faith” mean? It’s a weasel word. It can either mean an unsupported and absolute belief in a magical reality, or it can mean confidence and solidarity. We can gloss the former as “Christian” and the latter as “Buddhist”.
The “Christian” form is a worship of delusion. Is that Obama? The “Buddhist” form is agnostic: it is a simple recognition of the fact that action can not depend on knowing in some absolute sense the efficacy of our action – we should act with the confidence of efficacy, with our full strength, with the presupposition of success even though we can not be assured intellectually of it. That’s just practical politics in a good sense. Is that Obama?
The latter is no different from the orientation to the world that gets practical people up in the morning to attack life. The reality of our being tiny, helpless bugs in a practically infinite universe with forces at scales beyond of our control is put away to handle the scale of life we do have an effect on. The rest is “faith” in that sense.
Both forms of “faith” handle the same problem: a group of relatively helpless primates attempting to avoid despair in the face of our reality. The “Christian” form is dismiss reality and pretend that we are at the center of the universe and Big Brother will give us magical strength. The “Buddhist” form on the other hand is to focus on our end of problems, and assume that the rest of the world will cooperate as a practical matter.
Yes, it’s bad that the same word is being used for both ideas; and it’s bad to use the ambiguity for short-term political gain. But we go to war with the words we have and not the words we want.
And it is a war.
Come on people. Your choice for president will be between a Xian and another Xian. 90% of the US self identifies as Xian.
There will never be anyone to vote for. It is always the lesser of evils. Who is least likely to wreck the country?
It could be worse. If the fundies ever managed to get and consolidate their theocracy, there wouldn’t be any real elections.
Mine, too, and not just because he’s my senator. But, barring an miracle, Dodd will not be the nominee, and I’ll be pleased to vote for Obama if he is. I actually do think he’s committed to secular government, whatever his personal thoughts about faith might be (see the interview quoted @ #3). In fact, even though (IIRC) they all profess some degree of Christian faith, I’m confident that all the Democratic candidates are committed to reversing the last 8 years of faith-based invasion of our secular principles.
My liberal/radical friends — whose principles and ultimate goals I absolutely share — frustrate me by insisting the candidates they support be radicals themselves ([cough]Nader). Short of actual revolution, radical outcomes are not achieved by direct radical change, but by gradually moving the sociopolitical center of gravity. The wingers know this: They’ve been slowly but steadily pushing the country to the right (including on the issue of faith) ever since Ronald Reagan (who, you’ll remember, had to significantly de-radicalize his personal politics in order to get elected), and look how far they’ve managed to move us. We’re not going to magically teleport American society even to pre-Reagan values, never mind to the secular paradise we’re hoping for, in one short step. Instead, we have to apply steady pressure to stop and reverse the rightward movement. IMHO, we should be looking for candidates who share our fundamental goals, but who are also politically pragmatic enough to not only get elected but be effective in the face of our largely moderate electorate. I think all of the Democrats in the race — with the exceptions of Crazy Mike Gravel and Bill Richardson (who always strikes me as too ill-at-ease and inarticulate to be an effective leader) — fit that bill.
BTW, I’m cognizant of the incredible urgency of dealing wiht global climate change. But sometimes you don’t reach your goals faster by rushing: Approaches to climate changes that actually get implemented will de facto be superior to “perfect” approaches that never make it past the speechmaking stage.
Don’t worry, PZ, he doesn’t really mean he’s going to employ faith to fix the problem. He’s just pandering…
The obvious best candidate is Dennis Kucinich. Democrats almost always failing to mention him are submitting to the agenda of the wingnut MSM.
Eeep you make my head hurt. So he wants to reclaim the word “faith” and acompanying rhetoric emphasis for a use that focuses on *trust in reason and humanity* and you reject it?
If you want to kvetch about word use and rhetorical effect over substance, that’s fine. But Obama comes closer to meaning what he says (judging from voting records, and actions) than any politician in my memory.
Personally, after living with some hard-core militant vegan Nader-is-a-wimp type environmentalists, and seeing their cynicism in both politics and humanity, I think meeting enviornmental challenges *could* be aided by a little faith- in a reasonable humanity.
I don’t think that Obama is electable at all. Hillary will probably be the Democratic nomination unless there’s suddenly a big turn-around in the polls. The Republican field is still wide open. My guess is that it will be either Giuliani or Huckabee. Giulani is a neo-con backed, pro-war advocate and Huckabee thinks abortion is a holocost and also supports continuing the war against “Isalmofascism.” I think you just have to decide which of these gives you the fewest chills then cast your vote.
Why do we care?
At the moment (with the possible exception of Ron Paul) all the candidates are pandering to the wingnuts of their respective parties. Wait until after the primaries in which they will fall over themselves running to the center. After all – their positions on everything will change.
(I also saw Edwards comment on nuclear energy the other night – reason number 4523 not to vote for him)
Anyone interested in the “problem of induction” can find ample information online from David Hume to Bertrand Russell. I am afraid that even PZ cannot simply wave his hand and eliminate the problem! Paul Edwards tries valiantly with his notion of “past-futures” and “future-futures” etc. But that premise is still lurking in every inductive (not deductive) argument.
Ooops…. I’m obviously searching for closure… tag closure, that is; sorry.
“Faith” like “theory” is a vague term. My more general point in this exchange is just that. PZ, e.g., writes in #37 as if arguments, explanations, and theories are equivalent. They are not.
RE: I can’t vote for a candidate who’s running on the platform that ghosts are on his side.
John Edwards has said openly that he doesn’t believe prayer works. It’s the closest I’ve ever seen a close-to-front-runner candidate come to disavowing religion.
I watched a UTube video of Richard Dawkins answering a question from a Christian who was in the audience during one of his lectures. It was something to the effect of “First off, do you agree that there is such a thing as “a reasonable faith?” Dawkins got up, walked over to the mike, and said “No.” Then he walked back and sat down — and the guy didn’t know where to go from there. Flummoxed. Dawkins knew damn well what sort of equivocation was in the works, and headed him off at the pass. Very funny — made me laugh.
I think the “problem of induction” loses its strength if induction is seen as a working theory instead of a First Principle.
It’s not “faith” if I think my car is in the garage even when I can’t see it. Not if I’m sitting at my computer it’s not — not the way they want to use it. It’s “faith” if I go to the garage, open the door, don’t see the car, but know that it’s still there, really, in some way that I can’t fully understand, because I am only human and who’s to say I know everything?
PZ, you don’t get this political stuff at all. The politicians will always try to tell voters exactly what they think we want to hear. Don’t blame candidates like Obama because America is a nation dominated by fundamentalist religious fanatics. It sucks, but it is.
WE need to create the social change we want. Yes, electing politicians that reflect that change is part of it, but we need to help them along. If those of us who want a secular government become a powerful, organized block then the politicians will go out of their way to suck up to us.
And thank you, because you are contributing a lot to create the change that we need.
I know how you guys think religion and faith are responsible for so much evil and hate in the world, which is partly correct, but you can’t conclude that someone who has faith or uses faith in their arguments is going to cause harm.
Think of religion like alcohol. It’s legal, and people should use it responisbly, however there’s always gonna be some jerk who drinks too much and gets destructive, picking fights and making sweeping generalizations, just like your religious fundies.
On the other hand, if you want to have a drink or two to relax, enjoy dinner, forget about work, etc, and you’re not hurting anyone, what’s the problem? If someone wants to invoke faith for their own comfort or to get a point across to some of the more dense individuals among us, where is the harm in that?
Unfortunately, many of the faithful in this country happen to be binge drinkers.
Oddly, very oddly, one of the few candidates with a stance on religion I can respect is Mitt Romney.
“If I’m president of the United States and put my hand on the Bible, I do what the Constitution tells me, what the rule of law tells me,” Romney said. “I certainly don’t do what leader of my church or any other tells me to do.”
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/21/ftn/main3389270.shtml
But I sure wouldn’t vote for him. Religion is an important issue, but its far from the only issue. And realistically he is just trying to put a little distance between himself and Mormonism. If he had thought to become a born-again a few years ago I’m sure he’d be as devout as they come. Either way I’m voting for Kucinich, then when he loses I’ll be stuck voting for Hillary or some green party person, not that it matters I live in NY my vote goes to who ever wins the Dem Primary, stupid electoral college.
The entirety of Obama’s “qualifications” are: 1) he’s not GWB, and 2) he’s not Hillary. Once you get past that, he’s just a more-of-the-same politician, with a couple of asinine ideas like bombing Pakistan thrown in for attention.
Nothing to see there.
-jcr
In France, our beloved President Sarkozy just divorced, and nobody cares. Our beloved President Mitterand had a mistress and even a child with her, nobody cared. The Mayor of Paris is gay, and nobody cares.
In America, you almost impeached one of your best presidents ever for a blowjob, but are leaving a mental retard and a wormonger in office.
What is going on with you guys ?
Yoshi,
Haven’t the last 8 years taught you that only the “wingnuts” matter? Moderation is just a rhetorical device to temporarily sway the uninterested – it’s a marketing trick. People who care, people who have influence, people who matter individually and not just as components of the herd, have opinions. If you have more than one or two, you quickly descend into “wingnuttery”, because moderation in general is not a consistent position, but a careful blending of inconsistent positions to be appealing (or at least not disgusting) to any position.
When they talk to their wingnut base, you’re getting a more accurate view of a politicians real opinions than when they’re “running to the middle”. Of course, a bit of whiskey is best, for accuracy if not precision.
For once, I’m kind of glad I can’t vote in your elections. (The stuff the US does to people who can’t vote in its elections — that is, people living outside its borders — makes a fair few of us want to, incidentally.)
I’m just not seeing anything tremendously inspirational going on on the Democratic side, and it’d be a cold day in a nonexistent Hell before I’d vote for a Republican. Sorry to sound like a total purist, but hanging around with virulent homophobes is, in fact, a deal-breaker for me. (I protested my local MP when he came out against same-sex marriage. It’s the law; buck it up, ya bigot.) Ditto being pro-forced-birth. Sorry, unless we all have the same rights, nobody really has any.
Jon — (The guy who said, ungrammatically, “At least all women will wear bikini’s [sic] (unless burka’s take over!).”) Spoken like a true misogynist, who probably hasn’t thought about it, but actually thinks he’s entitled to treat women like objets d’art among other sorts of objets, and, by extension, is objectively pro-skin cancer. Given my pale complexion, if the UV levels get much worse, I’m going to make those women in those Afghan burkhas look like they are wearing bikinis. As far as I know, they don’t make hypoallergenic 50,000SPF sunscreen.
For what it’s worth, since we’re on the subject of ignorance, a “burkha” is a three-piece set of headgear consisting of a head and neck veil, a face veil (that often ties over the nose), and an eye screen. Those total-body garments with the integral headgear are more correctly called “Afghan burkhas,” since Afghanistan is the only place they really crop up. The women in other places that you see wearing similar garments are actually wearing (real) burkhas with a sort of loose, voluminous cloak-like garment called a chador.
negentropyeater:
Did you mean war-monger or whore-monger? Because it’s his brother Neil who’s the whore-monger, albeit unaware. During his divorce proceedings it came out that during business trips he used to have women show up at his door and have sex with him – he claimed that he didn’t know they were prostitutes hired by vendors! He thought it was perfectly normal behavior for a little troll to be getting unsolicited random sex from beautiful women.
Which is worse? The stupidity the Bush family claims to have, or the stupidity they believe we have? Either way, the world is full of stupid people – and not just us Americans. Europeans have pretty much rolled over for this stupidity as well, with a sneering disdain but little active resistance. Or is it that Americans are stupid, and Europeans are cowards?
this guy hits the nail on the head:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/obama-got-it-right-and-wr_b_69494.html
PZ:
I actually think that Obama is one of the candidates doing the least to weaken the separation of church and state. The poster in comment #3 posted this quote from an interview:
This is similar to what he’s said in the past and I think is indicative of his views on the matter, which seem to me to actually reinforce the separation of church and state by asking the religious to give secular rationale for their desires in terms of policy rather than rationale specific to their religion, something that goes on far too much today.
As for traipsing around with a homophobic gospel singer, Obama has released a statement clarifying that traveling with McClurkin is not an endorsement of his views on that particular issue:
Now, on both issues, are his views as unequivocally agreeable as I would like? No. But that is a problem when you live in a country of multiple very different viewpoints and it is perhaps one of the downsides of Obama’s “politics of inclusion”.
As for the benefit to campaigning, I think that it is useful for him to have some rhetoric that appeals to faith (while not actually giving it the free hand to tinker with government) here in small-town Iowa, where faith is part of community to many people, and perhaps even more so with the African American community, which has a strong religious tradition, which explains why he is touring with McClurkin. It is not because he endorses all of McClurkin’s views, but because the black community is one of the constituencies that Obama has to win.
Of course, the whole thing is a tremendous balancing act which is quite difficult to maintain, so if Obama does slip on it, I may have to reconsider him as a candidate, but so far he has not.
But, you see, we don’t make inductive arguments in science.
Instead, we make up hypotheses — by induction, by dreaming, whatever –, deduce predictions from them, and then test these predictions. “Hypothetico-deductive”, says Popper.
And, mind you, people — he belongs to the conservative party. (Unlike Mitterrand and Delanoë.)
But, you see, we don’t make inductive arguments in science.
Instead, we make up hypotheses — by induction, by dreaming, whatever –, deduce predictions from them, and then test these predictions. “Hypothetico-deductive”, says Popper.
And, mind you, people — he belongs to the conservative party. (Unlike Mitterrand and Delanoë.)
And how do you know that the results of those tests will be the same tomorrow as today? By induction. How do you know the instruments you are using to test will operate the same today as yesterday? By induction. How do you know the prior finding and theories on which you base your tests will still be as valid tomorrow as today? By induction.
Popper was a clever fellow, but he didn’t solve the problem of induction.
As for the benefit to campaigning, I think that it is useful for him to have some rhetoric that appeals to faith (while not actually giving it the free hand to tinker with government) here in small-town Iowa, where faith is part of community to many people, and perhaps even more so with the African American community, which has a strong religious tradition, which explains why he is touring with McClurkin.
I understand why he’s doing it, but that doesn’t make it right. We need to cultivate the attitude that it is disreputable for politicians to discuss their religious beliefs, and to appeal to the religious beliefs of other people, in their campaigns and duties in public office.
If Obama really believes, as he says, that our laws and public policies must rest on principles that can be shared by people of all religions and no religion, then religion is simply irrelevant to politics and should be treated as such.
PZ, you should read the chapter on religion in Obama’s book, which you can find online at Time.com. He grew up atheist, or at least agnostic. He conveys very clearly how well he understands those positions. He only converted after working as an organizer in poor Chicago neighborhoods where the churches provided a very helpful social structure to communities in ruins. (I still think overall the negative outweighs that kind of positive when it comes to religion, of course, but you can see how somebody submersed in that environment would come to view the churches favorably.)
I find it hard to swallow the idea that he actually believes in a supernatural god. His explanation of the reasons for converting had everything to do with the emotional and social benefits, which lead me to think maybe he doesn’t really believe god is an actual supernatural being. It seems likely he’s one of those people who sees god as a beneficial psychological construct, kind of a personification of the conscience, which provides comfort and a framework for communicating certain ideas especially well to some people. Of course if he actually SAID this, it would be political suicide, but because of his background and intellect I think Obama’s more likely to hold this sort of complex viewpoint than most of his competitors who were raised as Christians from the start and never thought twice about it.
If you look at how Obama uses religion on the campaign trail, it’s never as a justification for his policies. He’s been very clear in stating that every action requires a reasoned, secular justification. Obama uses religion as an organizational tool and a source of motivational language, not as a policy guide.
Obama’s mastery of the language of religion is a strong tool to help him take down Hillary, and for that I say more power to him.
Jason:
That would be nice if religion didn’t already play such a huge role in politics and policy-making at the moment. But as long as we have megachurches blasting out religiously-tingeed policy platforms, ignoring religion is going to be counterproductive. We can’t just act like we’re dealing with a straight path to utopia without paying attention to our surroundings.
If religion and religious rationale were already stripped from the political process, I would agree with you. However, we live in an era where religion plays a big role and by not mentioning religion, liberals are letting conservatives dictate what that means. Because religion is such a big issue in our policies currently, that issue needs to be brought up.
Otherwise, we cannot effect change upon the mindset that religion should be a guiding principle in making policy because ignoring a problem does not make it go away. If a leader who appeals to the religious points out that “hey, we can’t just state our religious precepts as grounds for policy; we live in a secular state with secular laws and are a nation that harbors people of a great multitude of beliefs, so we cannot simply impress our own religious views upon others…we have to base our policy decisions on secular principles”, then we might actually get somewhere.
Politics is a tricky game and doesn’t move in a straight line. To clear an issue from the table, we must first address it.
I still read too slow to read all the comments I have to get some work done.
When I think about global warming I think of other times and places where man made ecological disaster happened like the Maya and the collapse of Angkor Wat. The advent of industrialization with the increase productivity has multiplied the resulting destruction to truly astounding levels.
as far as trying to convince the religious community that it will also take faith at least on their part to even hope to make any progress at all in averting the inevitable collapse of global civilization go for it.
when in the darkness of WWII we sent aid the Stalin to help fight the agression of Hitler we did so with the knowledge the Stalin was not on our side because he agreed with us on all issues and was not turning on his own country. No we did so because we had no other choice at the time nor when the war was over did we not continue to resist his totalitarianism.
We could support the republican who is a baptist minister or the policeman, maybe the guy who says that terrorism is the most pressing issue, maybe the lobbiest-actor or any other of the wonderful choices being offered the republicans.
Any of the major dems would do a better job than them.
we need truth, reason, courage, and does not want to divide and conquer but try to lead us out of this mess and maybe avert the coming catastrophe
I know that I am not going to be targeted in any political campaign with “buzz words” like faith so I have to chose who I think will do an honest job with all of their ability this year it is rather difficult I like all the democrats none of them are “good ol’ boys” all are educated and articulate makes it hard.
If god does not exist than I say “god bless Bush!”
I still read too slow to read all the comments I have to get some work done.
When I think about global warming I think of other times and places where man made ecological disaster happened like the Maya and the collapse of Angkor Wat. The advent of industrialization with the increase productivity has multiplied the resulting destruction to truly astounding levels.
as far as trying to convince the religious community that it will also take faith at least on their part to even hope to make any progress at all in averting the inevitable collapse of global civilization go for it.
when in the darkness of WWII we sent aid the Stalin to help fight the agression of Hitler we did so with the knowledge the Stalin was not on our side because he agreed with us on all issues and was not turning on his own country. No we did so because we had no other choice at the time nor when the war was over did we not continue to resist his totalitarianism.
We could support the republican who is a baptist minister or the policeman, maybe the guy who says that terrorism is the most pressing issue, maybe the lobbiest-actor or any other of the wonderful choices being offered the republicans.
Any of the major dems would do a better job than them.
we need truth, reason, courage, and does not want to divide and conquer but try to lead us out of this mess and maybe avert the coming catastrophe
I know that I am not going to be targeted in any political campaign with “buzz words” like faith so I have to chose who I think will do an honest job with all of their ability this year it is rather difficult I like all the democrats none of them are “good ol’ boys” all are educated and articulate makes it hard.
If god does not exist than I say “god bless Bush!”
Meng,
Yes, I know religion is still very popular in America and still plays a big role in its politics. That’s why I said we should cultivate the attitude that mixing politics and religion is disreputable. I don’t believe church and state can ever be truly separate as long as religion remains influential in the country. But they can certainly be more separate than they are now. Obama is hurting that cause, not helping it, by mixing religion and politics in his campaigning.
FWIW, Obama’s religion of preference, the UCC, is also the ones that made headlines by getting their pro-inclusiveness ads kicked off of CBS (because they might anger fundamentalists, no less. F#$% CBS for that forever.) and also the ones who came out saying they’d welcome Spongebob into their church after Falwell or Robertson or whoever’s ridiculous spasming about gay cartoon characters and/or puppets.
Yeah, it’d be great to live in an America where politicians didn’t feel like they had to espouse some religion just to get elected President (or better, one where we could get a vocal atheist in the Oval Office — *maybe* Jesse Ventura could pull it off. Nobody else could). Inasmuch as we’re forced to compromise, a UCC or Unitarian is about as close to rational religion as we’re going to get.
Then again, Nixon was a Quaker, and Carter & Clinton were Baptists, so I guess the moral is that religious affiliation signifies precisely zero. Why even worry about this?
I sympathize with the aim here, which is to push the dialogue (back) to the point where someday a candidate will be OK with frankly stating their lack of belief, or at least feel safe pointing out that the office of President is a secular one. But when it comes time to vote, I’ll have no qualms voting for Obama if that’s the best choice I’ve got. There’s no point shooting down the people who may actually be closest to your own point of view, where secular concerns are, uh, concerned, just because of their inconsequential views on an imaginary entity.
I guess nobody told him that it’s unconstitutional for anyone to place their hand on a Bible in any official capacity, huh?
He’s either ignorant of the content of the document in question, or he’s wily enough to try to avoid the “religious wacko” label. I’d respect his stance, too, if I thought for even a second it was the slightest bit sincere.
I don’t. I wait for tomorrow and look what the results will be.
I don’t. I apply the principle of parsimony.
Methodological naturalism.
Which is itself testable by waiting for tomorrow and looking what happens.
That’s not a problem to be solved, it’s one to be eliminated, and eliminated it has been. There is no problem of induction because there is no induction in science; it’s just good enough for generating hypotheses, but it has nothing to do with testing them.
Induction is in fact invalid, and we don’t need to care about that at all. :-)
Religions? Making ads? On TV?
What a goofy country. Excuse me, but… there are things that are objectively bizarre.
:-o
I don’t. I wait for tomorrow and look what the results will be.
I don’t. I apply the principle of parsimony.
Methodological naturalism.
Which is itself testable by waiting for tomorrow and looking what happens.
That’s not a problem to be solved, it’s one to be eliminated, and eliminated it has been. There is no problem of induction because there is no induction in science; it’s just good enough for generating hypotheses, but it has nothing to do with testing them.
Induction is in fact invalid, and we don’t need to care about that at all. :-)
Religions? Making ads? On TV?
What a goofy country. Excuse me, but… there are things that are objectively bizarre.
:-o
It bugs me that candidates have to say stuff like this too, but face it, all of them spout this hollowly pious clap-trap because if they’re honest about their disbelief, they won’t hold office. At least he has the decency and shame to be bad at it, unlike the rest of the bunch(he is a Unitarian afterall, and most death cultists class them in with us anyway :p). Maybe a Kucinich could be honest about being an atheist in this country these days, but we’re (sadly) still a couple of decades away from a big-name presidential candidate being openly irreligious.
The best an honest atheist can do, imo, is to take the 17th-18th century tact and run as an extreme reformed protestant. That way, you get to continually attack all the institutions and idiocies of organized religion, avoid all the annoying church going, and still be invincible on the faith question because its all couched in acceptable, hardcore rhetoric. If Disraeli could be Anglican enough to be Prime Minister, one of us should be able to be Anabaptist enough to be President (in fact, I’m rather sure a few have already).
Though yeah, I agree with you it’d be a better idea if he’d avoided the use of faith in regards to this issue all together. Perhaps he’s feeling especially vulnerable on the issue, or listening to his political advisers more so than in the past.
Jason:
I very much disagree that Obama’s stances are hurting the separation of church and state, as that is the position he very much advocates. I will agree with you that his campaign isn’t doing much that will directly help to secularize the nation’s worldview, but I also think that there are more important battles to fight and the Senator’s ability to use religious terminology to support secular ideals lends him the ears of religious voters that would otherwise never consider a Democrat.
Now, does this mean that he and the other Democratic candidates pandering to religious voters at the expense of the separation of church and state? No. As Robert points out in comment #66, Barack never uses religious language to justify policy positions but rather to discuss motivations and values, which areas that allow religious voters to shed their distrust of him as a Democrat.
Now, this leads to an area of Barack’s history that is troubling to me intellectually. I have not read Dreams of My Father, but in The Audacity of Hope, Obama never uses truth as rationale for his conversion. In fact, from the language, it sounds very much as if he converted to allow himself to work within the communities he was organizing with greater efficacy, no longer being an outsider. As one who values truth, such a conversion is rather troubling
However, the fact of the matter is that politics is about people, not about truth and in order to get things done, people have to trust you, which means that they have to be able to relate to you and given the abnormally high level of religious sentiment in this country, a politician that religious voters can identify with that does not crouch policy decisions in terms of religion is actually a major opportunity for us who want to maintain a strong separation between church and state, and that is what I think Barack brings to the table.
Meng,
I very much disagree that Obama’s stances are hurting the separation of church and state, as that is the position he very much advocates.
No, he makes the occasional pro forma declaration of support for the separation principle, buried in the middle of a speech in which he goes on and on and on about the importance of religion and faith in his life as a public official. The take-home message is that religion and faith are a legitimate part of American politics. That is precisely the wrong message.
As Robert points out in comment #66, Barack never uses religious language to justify policy positions but rather to discuss motivations and values, which areas that allow religious voters to shed their distrust of him as a Democrat.
Sorry, but this “motivations and values” business doesn’t make any sense. Either his religion makes a difference to his actions as a public official, or it does not. If his religion does not make a difference, then religious “motivations and values” are irrelevant. If his religion does make a difference–if it causes him to vote one way on a bill rather than another, if it causes him to instroduce a bill that he would not otherwise have introduced, if it causes him to campaign against a law that he would not otherwise have opposed, and so on–then he is imposing his religion on us through his powers as a government official. That’s wrong.
PZ,
if i catch your drift, you want to dismiss Obama because he is willing to appeal to religious people to care about the earth?
weird
He has to say these things PZ. In all honestly I don’t think he gives a fig for religion. But .. since there is an overwhelming population of ‘people of faith’ he needs to include the notion in some sytematic way of reaching into Christian homes. He’s a politician. What else can he do, really, in a country full of people who put Bush in office not once, but twice? I love your idealism, but the reality out there is pretty scary.