Another credulous skeptic?
by: Dave Belden on December 2nd, 2009 | 8 Comments »
A friend sent me an article by Michael Shermer: Theism v. Atheism: I’m A Realist, Not An “Accommodationist.” Shermer is the publisher of Skeptic magazine.
In the piece Shermer answers his atheist critics who say he is too accommodating to religious people. When he talks about how to make common cause with religious believers he sounds good:
… we need as many people as we can get on board with a common goal, whatever it may be (starvation in Africa, disease in India, poverty in South America, global warming everywhere … pick your battle). If you insist that people of faith renounce every last ounce of their beliefs before they are allowed to join the common fight against these scourges of humanity, you have just alienated the vast majority of the world’s population from your project.
But here are the lines leading up to that quote. Shermer has been laying out his credentials as the equal of any Dawkins-type atheist and goes on:
Christopher Hitchens’s recent body slam he and Stephen Fry gave the Catholic Church for its stance on women’s rights, birth control, and Third World poverty would have brought tears to my eyes had I not been cheering so fervently.
On the other hand, if it is our goal to educate everyone on earth to the power and wonders of science (as it is [at] the Skeptics Society and www.skeptic.com) and to employ science to solve social, political, economic, medical and environmental problems (as it is my personal goal), then we need as many people as we can get on board with a common goal… [quote continues as above].
I have to say that I find it entirely odd that such a self-styled skeptic is still such a true believer in using rationalism to solve the world’s problems, without giving us even a hint that there is a huge problem with the way this has been done to date.
I’m entirely for being as rational as I can be, but let’s be rational enough to understand that what has happened so far is that emotionally-driven humans have used rationalist advances to empower their irrational selves to the point where human civilization is in danger. At least the brutal, “irrational,” tribal godmongerers of old were in no danger of driving the world into another great extinction. No, it took some powerful doses of irrationally wielded rationalism to do that. And he gives not the slightest indication he is aware of this problem!
But this is generally the case with those who in our time have made a religion out of science and rationality. The wise rationalist knows it will take a lot more than science and rationalism to solve the problems of humanity, especially those exacerbated by our currently adolescent level of rationalism and science. Maybe Shermer says this elsewhere — I haven’t read much by him — but if so he could at least hint at the limits when spelling out his rationalist fervor in a piece like this.
I agree, Dave, though, having read a number of articles by Shermer and having listened to a few radio interviews with him, I’m happy to report that he generally seems willing to work alongside those who don’t feel that we need choose between rational and irrational…even if he doesn’t often agree with them.
Yes, that was definitely what he was saying in that article and that’s what I thought sounded good. On another day that might have been what struck me most strongly. Perhaps I should not have criticized at all, because I am so grateful when any vocal and published atheist wants to work for common goals with people not of his or her faith. But today what really struck me was how in spite of that openness, he seemed to have no sense of rationalism’s limits and dangers.
Dave,
This discussion of the limits of rationality reminds me of a quote I saw in the recent copy of Newsweek:
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” – Maya Angelou.
Actually, I think this quote sheds a great deal of light on the Sarah Palin phenomena, but that’s another topic.
There’s something that always seemed strange to me about a rational discussion that acknowledges the importance of emotions and therefore claims “limits to rationality”. Such a discussion seems to be a highly rational approach to discussing how to best craft arguments to influence people, which is different from saying rationality has limits beyond which it is not useful. I guess I just have a highly emotional attachment to the concept of rationality as a guide to approaching all of our problems that I can’t get fully over :-)
Rationality’s limits have to do mainly with values. In a letter to a science magazine recently a reader explained why he was doing nothing about global warming himself, because he would be dead before the negative aspects affected him, and he didn’t frankly care about future generations. That was entirely rational of him. You can argue til you’re blue in the face that it is rational for me to care for my (as yet nonexistent) grandchildren, or for other people’s if I don’t end up having any, but if I care more about my current comfort than their future comfort, there really isn’t anything a purely rational argument has to say to me. Don’t you agree about that?
That means a rational humanism has to start by espousing some values a priori and deciding to be guided by them, to put our rationality in service of them. These can be “rationally” derived from what it means to be a living being that wants life to continue, and there are issues of weighing the value of human life vs. other species and so on that reasonable people discuss, but in the end wanting life to continue and seeing other species as equally deserving as us is a choice of the heart. Just as deciding that all human beings are equally deserving of full rights and life is a choice of the heart.
But rationality’s limits in our time also have to do with the fact that rationality has not gone nearly far enough: it has proven much easier to understand enough physics, chemistry and biology to create industrial society and industrial agriculture, than it has been to understand human emotions, drives and society. So our ability to pursue what turn out to be toxic desires for mastery over nature and each other has vastly outstripped our ability to moderate them.
In time I trust we will learn enough about both the science of the human mind and emotions, and develop enough social technology, as it were, to enable us to live peaceably with each other and within ecological limits — through rational means. But that depends on whether we really want to do it, whether our hearts embrace the sacredness of every person and all life. I used the “s” word. But what’s the rationalist equivalent? It would be rational for nonbelievers to develop a vocabulary that acknowledges that values are chosen from the heart and the emotions, so that secular equivalents of words like “sacred” come into common use. In fact the Unitarian Universalist seven principles do do that already quite effectively. I have yet to see any secular humanist group truly acknowledge these limits to rationality. Maybe you know of some?
Very interesting discussion, Dave. Thanks.
Benjamin Franklin’s astute observation comes to mind. After rationalizing why he needn’t continue to be a vegetarian – he was tempted by the smell of cooking fish while onboard a ship offshore the American coast – he remarked, “So convienent a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.”
Therein lies a serious danger with a strictly rational approach, and a good cause for your requisite “sacredness.” I don’t doubt that secular humanism can develop such a set of principals, but they are yet vague.
Well, I am no expert on humanism and no philosopher. I am just another partially educated person trying to make sense of things. I presume this issue of the a priori nature of values has had many huge tomes written about it from a rationalist point of view. But it does appear to me from reading science writing for lay people and from reading and talking with humanists that there is very little of the intellectual humility one would expect if these limits of rationalism were well understood. I’m interested to know if others agree with you that the humanist principals are yet vague.
Dave,
This “limits of rationality” discussion caused me to think about this topic again in some more detail, including pondering the basis and rationality of our values. Is it possible for a person to live a perfectly happy and content life if everyone around him is living in misery, especially if they could reduce that misery and chose not to? I would argue the answer is “no”, unless that person is a psychopath (lacking any empathy, remorse, or guilt). It has been demonstrated that people often have a poor understanding of what will make them happy, so even if a (non-psychopathic) person claims they could be perfectly happy and content in such a situation, they are likely to be mistaken. It has also been repeatedly shown that one of the single most important factors affecting our happiness is a set of close caring relationships, which cannot occur in the above situation.
Now let’s consider the case Dave mentioned about the person who had no interest in global warming because “he didn’t frankly care about future generations”. I think this is equivalent to claiming that he doesn’t care about what happens after he dies. Can a person really achieve optimal happiness (which I assume is a goal of rational behavior) if they adopt such a value? I suspect not, based on an argument that has parallels to the one above. Without trying to outline it in detail, let me just ask the following question: Does that person in question have a life insurance policy, or even a will? If so, that is inconsistent with a claim that he really doesn’t care about what happens after he dies. I suspect he really does care, and his current happiness is effected in part by what he believes will happen when he’s gone. Perhaps he is either fooling himself with his global warming argument, or has other ulterior motives.
Mike, it seems to me that you have made an a priori moral judgment here, which is that optimal happiness is what this man and the rest of us should be aiming for. That’s even before thinking it’s possible to come to a rational answer as to how to achieve that happiness. Maybe he has decided that he is going to go for limited happiness, as defined by himself. Maybe that was rational of him, in his circumstances.
But what about goals other than our own optimal happiness as humans? There are already people out there who think the human species itself is a cancer on the planet and that the optimal happiness of the biosphere will be served by getting rid of us, or knocking us back to the stone age via some invented plague: if I didn’t have more immediate things to be worried about this might worry me a lot. Is it irrational of them because it is against human interests? If so, then why is it our sectional interests as humans that is the goal that we should pursue rationally? If we can base morality on rational pursuit of our own species interests, not those of the whole, then why not base it on the interests of a section of humanity, like my race or country or family, or just myself? There are surely rational arguments on each side of these issues.
If it comes down to the issue of what human nature really is and what truly creates optimal happiness for humans, then we are into an apparently never-ending scientific debate about whether we have selfish genes or genial genes and so on. It’s delightful to me when I see that debate shifting towards the “humans are naturally cooperative” end of the spectrum (viz my review of The Genial Gene at http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/sept_oct_09_darwin), but I can’t wait to base my morality on the outcome of that debate. If it’s proven that human happiness is served by a mix of selfish and cooperative behavior, does that then determine that my moral goals should be a similar mix?
I don’t really know if a goal of universal compassion (which is of course impossible to achieve but which we nonetheless would need every scrap of rationality we have to pursue fully if it is our goal to do so) is the best way to happiness. It seems a much harder road than that. I don’t in fact follow it: I have so far chosen a much more comfortable mix of selfish and cooperative goals, and I use my rational mind to make excuses for my selfish choices.
I would love to think that love is the basic law of the universe and compassion for all life the true purpose and fulfillment of human consciousness. But I can’t actually get to that belief by rational processes alone, so it remains more a wish than a belief. But it is something that I nonetheless embrace with my heart and my longing. I am drawn to those who believe it so strongly that they create rituals, congregations, practices, and programs that care for people in practical ways, based on it. I find the Unitarian Universalist (UU) principles the most congenial expression of it for myself, but I see many other religious people acting on it (with theologies I don’t accept) in ways that are amazing to me, in terms of their practice of love for others.
Our rationality has to be involved at every point in trying to work out what to believe and how to act, but ultimately it seems to me a movement of the heart, of longing, of reaching beyond what is rationally proven, that is necessary to embrace a compassionate approach to life: not just to believe in a theistic God, for example, but equally for nontheists like you and me to believe, in the terms of one of the UU Principles, in “The inherent worth and dignity of every person.”