Apparently, Sam Harris is “feared by the pious” and “adored by secularists.” Ooooo. As a former pious individual, I’m so, so scared. I occasionally defend the pious in spite of my current lack of faith. I can’t ever imagine that I’ll defend Mr. Harris.
Mr. Harris is a scientist. Guess what? So am I. What is science, after all? It is knowledge. Anyone who possesses knowledge is a scientist. You can’t live on this earth successfully unless you are a scientist. Therefore, a toddler is a scientist. He has five senses (hopefully), and with those, he ambles from one part of the room to the other in order to pick up a book. He hefts it, learning. He turns the pages, learning. He looks at the colorful pictures, learning. He looks at the strange, black symbols at the bottom of each picture, learning. He knows there is a connection between these characters and the sounds his mommy makes with her mouth. He’s learning. He’s a scientist.
Primitive man observes animals, learning. He figures out that a sharp rock tethered to the end of a straight stick, if shot by a bow he has fashioned, will insert itself in the animal and cause it to die. He’s a primitive scientist.
But Mr. Harris is a special kind of scientist. He wins applause. He’s suave. I think he’s cute. He’s well spoken. When he was a toddler, he ambled across the room to heft books. He was a scientist long before he won accolades from whatever universities he attended. But he’s the only one who gets to call himself a scientist. And much later in the video to which I linked above, he goes totally off the cliff, and tries to prove scientifically that all you straight men reading my column are nothing but a bunch of womanizing sleazebags. Mr. Harris is a scientific misandrist.
He starts off with a complete falsehood, from any scientific standpoint:
“Values are a certain kind of fact.”
He never proves this statement. That’s not the reason it is fallacious, but that is telling. Since he assumes this, everything else he says to his adoring audience is bunk. Watch the video until he shows everybody an “appalling” magazine cover (roughly halfway through). Do you see the fallacy? Are you watching the video?
If not, then I’ll elaborate. (Maybe you have a piss-poor computer. Too bad for you.) Harris shows a picture of women trapped somewhere in the Middle East, where women are subjected to forced behavior, requiring them to cover themselves from head to toe in cloth, obscuring their faces and bodies. This is the essence of religious fundamentalism. It is the height of misogyny. It is the nadir of modern feminist failure that they have done very little about it. But even this is not “immoral,” because no one as of yet has proven the existence of morality outside the human mind. Even so, Harris doesn’t stop here. The next picture he shows is of a gaggle of gorgeous babes, each posing and puckering for the camera. He draws a parallel. The audience responds agreeably. I myself was left dumbfounded. That Harris doesn’t understand the immense differences between these two pictures is beyond telling. It reveals his whole game, and the central problems with modern science.
By using a single example of alleged misogyny, Harris argues: Now that religion is dead, its myths exposed, science can and should tell people what to do and how to think. This “take charge” attitude apparently is intended to warn you straight boys exactly how much ogling is scientifically acceptable. Good luck, Sam. And don’t touch any of those muscle mags!
If science is good for anything, it ought to reveal that religion never should have taken on the mantle of coercing others to do anything. Now, I do not reject all religious views outright. There is non-coercive love in many religious teachings. I have seen a lot of evidence of individuals turning to the greater love within us all as a result of religious conversion. I see the myths and our mistaken attempts to clutch at the remnants of them as temporary solutions, something that can help some individuals scrape through this world a little easier, like carving a god out of wood and putting him in your hut. I have seen religion give people a sense of purpose, and to be honest, I miss a little of that myself. Reject religion if you want, but refusing to study and understand its impact on your life is a serious mistake.
Now that freedom is my purpose, I am reminded of the harshness of scientific truth, and the necessity to embrace not only the idea that truth-seeking can be arduous and saddening, but also the fact that morality is not existent, and therefore, science cannot be in charge of that which exists only in the subjective mind of the individual. How’s that for harsh scientific truth?
I don’t write for an MRA website because I think men are being treated “wrongly” or “immorally.” Those are subjective labels that I feel, but I can’t assert as facts. I write for an MRA website because I see individuals whose volition is violated, which is indeed factual. I see modern-day feminism as being anti-individual, coercive, and death-oriented (all factual), which means it is “bad” for life-oriented men and women. Harris, in showing “despicable” images of scantily-clad supermodels, is kowtowing to the establishment that embraced the “man as machine” idea more than one hundred years ago, according to John Taylor Gatto. Anybody who currently clutches at The Ring, including feminists, has to embrace this ideal, because it is entrenched in the establishment. It did not die out after the sinking of the Titanic (where men gave their lives to save more women) or the advent of World War I (where men were encouraged by their women to stay in the trenches until they coughed up their lungs). Harris still believes that the machinery that makes up a complex, wondrous individual can be made to operate differently with a tweak here and there. He is dangerously wrong.
The very idea that science can teach us how to treat women, who comprise half the population of a planet inhabited by billions, is laughable. How you treat a woman depends on the woman; how you treat a man depends on the man. If you take the anarchist principle of non-aggression as an axiom, it gets a little easier, but to really relate involves circling individual boundaries until they are volitionally broken down by both parties. When will Mr. Harris and his cracker-jack team of researchers ever be able to figure that one out?
There is an entirely different way, a way that probably never even crossed Harris’s mind, of looking at the two images of two groups of women. The first image shows total oppression of an entire sex. It is the physical embodiment of misogyny. It is the fear men have of their own sexuality, and scapegoating the object of desire into subjection.
The second image shows the total liberation of an entire sex. It is the physical embodiment of complete freedom. It is a celebration of both men’s and women’s sexuality, and the setting of the object of desire on a level that can only exist in fantasy, that of a goddess. I fear that Harris, like fanatical Muslim men, possesses a fear of his own sexuality that drives him to feel guilty for it. (I’m assuming, much to my own dismay, that the man is straight.) He shouldn’t want to look at women, the way they move their hips, the way their breasts heave when they breathe, to smell the scent they’ve sprayed on their bodies, to observe how tightly their pants cling to their rumps. The feminized Mr. Harris cries, “Exploitation!”, links it to despicable acts of cultural cowardice and the religious intolerance of an entire sex, and receives the approval of a fawning, feminized audience.
Let me tell you something about the “exploited” women on those magazine covers. Every single one of them read countless such magazines as girls. They played supermodel in their rooms with their girlfriends. They hung out with the pretty girls in school. They reveled in the attention from the most attractive boys. They eventually thought to themselves, “Hey. I could make money with this body. I could get lots of attention and approval. I don’t have to play supermodel, I can be supermodel!” I know. I used to hang out with girls when I was a kid. Lots of them.
But then it gets ugly and difficult. These girls grow up. If they want to be models, they have to face rejection after rejection. They need agents. They have to monitor what they eat. They have to obsess about their bodies. They have to wear the right labels. They have to show up early for screenings and auditions. They have to work, and work hard. They have to be dismissive of too many fawning admirers, and focus on the shoot ahead. They have to deal with temperamental and demanding photographers. Through it all, they have more than one opportunity to walk away from it all. It is easy to do so. The demanding world of modeling cannot afford to coerce eager young women. They stay, not because they are starving, or because they have no other choice, but because they are hoping against all hope that the shot where they’ve grabbed their tits and thrust them forward will make it on the cover, and next week they’ll be in the supermarket, seeing that coveted picture in the checkout isle. Where Harris and like-minded, machine-oriented, feminist-indoctrinated individuals see exploitation, there is none to be scientifically found.
The first image is coercion. It is death. That much is scientifically proven fact. (Read my STR article “Coercion Is Death” if you don’t understand how.) The second image is freedom. It is life. That is also scientifically proven. It makes pretty girls rich and gets them noticed. A head-to-toe burqa makes pretty girls invisible and ensures that the rest of their lives will be spent in squalor. So try and dream up a scientific strategy to dig women out of that, my friend. You can start by showing Muslim men that Allah does not exist, and that coercion leads directly and immediately to death — two facts.
Gentlemen, let me clue you in on what I’ve learned about “science” — not the science you use every day to stand up, walk, communicate, fix the car, earn a paycheck, type an article, masturbate to a provocative magazine cover, or wash the windows. The “science” embraced by Sam Harris and a host of others, many in high positions of authority unfortunately, is a religion. This is why Mr. Harris talks about moving in where religion is waning. He doesn’t want to replace religion; he wants to win converts. Step One is regulating sexuality, most importantly male sexuality, something with which virtually every religion has concerned itself since time began. In days gone past (and in the current world of fundamentalist Islam), it meant placing blame and heaping rules upon women, to deflect attention away from men’s embarrassing erections. These days, it is directed by “science,” along with its allies in coercive feminism, at the erection itself. The end result, however, is the same. It is a condemnation of female sexuality, male sexuality, and men in general, who have always been more expendable than women since all a man does is squirt for a few seconds and leave the woman to go through a troublesome and life-changing nine months. Since it takes so long to make another human, you protect those who make them. And when you believe that God is disgusted with virtually every little thing you do wrong, then your constant erections, a sure sign of your animal instincts, must be ungodly. Furthermore, when the hurt and pain evident in errant behavior of children makes itself apparent, and the immediate need for family and nurturance becomes unavoidably obvious, the idea of a man spreading his sperm this way and that becomes more troublesome. Society can’t survive with wild, out-of-control, unloved, and unfathered children. That’s a lot of responsibility heaped upon a man for something that feels so central to manhood, so why not blame the woman and force her to cover her beautiful eyes, nose, and lips, especially since she’s physically weaker?
Take God out of the equation, uncover the scapegoated female, make it easier to raise kids, and what do you have left? Erections, spilled semen, and a whole lot of self-inflicted guilt, now reveled in by a celebrity culture that dishes out autobiographical confessions. Mr. Harris is unknowingly indulging in the same hatred of women as fanatical Muslims and many more men of ancient times, only now it is augmented by hatred of self, or men in general. He may claim he’s replacing religion with science, but all he has succeeded in doing is incorporating the guilt trips of religion’s bible into his supposedly scientific mind. Virtually everything he has to say in his presentation is entirely subjective and unscientific.
“Science” now wants us to feel guilty if we ignore our “depression,” create “greenhouse gases,” cause “extinction” of animals, bury plastic in the soil, fall behind other nations’ governmental schools, not measure up to the “IQ test,” depend too much on oil, carry around too much body fat, and now forbids looking at pretty girls. If there is truly a human need for guilt, then I suppose science will have to step in, now that less and less people believe in Jesus. It’s a pity that science can only give us Sam Harris and his kind as a replacement. Open up the Four Gospels sometime, and you’ll see why I consider myself a “Post-Christian” as opposed to an “ex-Christian.” I’ll take that rhetoric any day over false cries of “Exploitation!” Spare me.
Tags: B.R. Merrick, Culture, Education, Family, Feminism, Masculinity, Media, Media Bias, Men's Issues, Men's Rights, Miscellaneous, Psychology, Sex, Women
37 Posts in Total 
donations either one-time or on a monthly subscription basis.If you don't have paypal, check out the other options. If you want to get some merchandise and sponsor us at the same time, consider the AVfM store. 
Roderick1268:
db917:
FarmCat:
blueface:
Mr. Merrick,
Allow me to be the first to say it.
Well done.
while i wouldnt go so far to attack science its easy to tell harris is full of shit, any second rate history/sociology/anthropology student can tell you that culture is not universal so there is not a universal family unit, not a universal definition of what is “male” and “female” behavior (after a certain few things war, metalworking, parenting) and while i agree the way the middle east does things is wrong a scientific approach cannot be taken because the world is simply not homogeneous
“tries to prove scientifically that all you straight men reading my column are nothing but a bunch of womanizing sleazebags.”
When did he do that? He’s stretching the credibility of science to explain morality.
Otherwise, I’m a secularist humanist, a scientist and Sam Harris is boring and a waste of 23 minutes. Religion has many good values but western religion reinforces traditional chauvenism.
Great article on Coercion is Death.
Denis, he doesn’t come right out and call straight men “sleazebags,” he implies it. He shows sexually provocative magazine covers, and considers it a problem, or something to do with the exploitation of women, which he considers “evil.” He fails to scientifically point out that exploitation, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. He attempts to make straight men feel guilty for wanting to screw those women, as if indulging in a little fantasy is “wrong.” Sleazebagitude is implied in his argument.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with a man enjoying his sexual arousal, unless it involves breaking a sexual commitment to another individual, or unless the sex act involves a child. I’d have a much easier time linking those sorts of sex acts with death orientation, although I’d have a much harder time proving immorality.
Good, challenging comments, though, guys.
The way I understand Sam Harris is that he tries to provide a rational basis on which grounds we approach moral questions, so we are not left just with moral relativism (the postmodern attitude “we are not allowed to judge anything because there are no objective criteria for what’s right or wrong”) or some religious doctrines (these are the laws of god) as the the two only alternatives.
I think Sam Harris is actually doing a great job in exposing the problem of these two approaches. He may have a blind spot in regard to portraying the girls on these covers as victims, but to me nowhere he implies there is anything wrong with men enjoying our sexual arousal.
I see no reason to discredit the man as a whole in the way it’s done in this article, just because he is not pushing the same agenda.
Sam Harris is paving the way to allow rational arguments in the arena of moral questions, and that’s *exactly* the same what we need in the whole discourse with the feminists.
Exploitation is not always in the eye of the beholder. We need to take into account the conditions and the context. That makes these topics complex and demanding. And I think we need a voice like Sam Harris.
To shoot him down as a scientific misandrist, based on assumptions and speculation, without any attempt to even engage him with rational arguments on that level is not really serving a healthy debate.
Science is not a moral force. Science is a-moral. Truth is a-moral. The universe, reality, truth, all these things are a-moral. Ultimately I believe science and truth will lead us to a more moral universe, but that is a side affect of their ability to give us powerful tools that allow us spread morality, and not the goal. It is morality using science and truth to spread more morality, not science and truth using morality to spread more science and truth. It doesn’t work that way. This guy is an idiot. Let me prove it scientifically. To claim something is scientifically true without subjecting it to the scientific method and peer review, it is not science. Merrick, I understand your analysis that science is used everyday by individuals, but that is not quite true in my perspective. Logic is used everyday by individuals. Logic is important, necessary really, for science to move at sufficient pace to be useful. However, what science is actually, is just a system of rules that use logic to verify truths. Science is basically a rule set for validating the realities that logic leads us to. In this way, science acts separately from science. Science can disprove something that seems logical, or prove something that seems illogical. Science is the closest thing we have to an unbiased judge of reality, but due to relativity, quantum uncertainty, and incomplete awareness, even it struggles at its job. Because morality cannot be defined, as it must take into account future possibilities, possibilities impossible to predict due to them being in the future, it is at best a set of shorthand rules that attempts to err towards good. Justice can be immoral, and evil can be a force of justice. Is it moral to kill a serial killer if he one day he is likely to save the world. Is it moral to allow a saint to live if he one day will lose his faith and rape and abuse young children. Is it moral to reinforce a bums behavior by giving him money, or moral to let him continue to suffer, or moral to sacrifice energy and resources you could be providing for your own children by helping the bum get on his feet. These are things we cannot answer, not even science, and for science to be able to claim that it can predict the future is a lie. My religious belief is based on Evolution. To me Evolution is divine and good. At the same time Evolution is brutal, heartless, random, and unstoppable. It is not moral. Like truth, it is a-moral. Science should stay a-moral to. Morality must always evolve with the evolution of reality, as their is no perfect morality, only a learning and relative morality that errs on the side of the statistically likely, statistics that are always in flux.
“science acts separately from science”
should say
“science acts separately from logic”
Man, what I said is all pretty convoluted. Let me restate more concisely.
In summary, Science can only try to be moral, and Morality can only try to be scientific, but both are inherently separate from each and incapable of working in perfect tandem. They have different goals. One is to increase truth, the other is to decrease suffering. These goals are at odds with each other.
They can’t all be rhetorical homeruns.
You argument concerning Mr. Harris might have appealed to me if put in different terms. However, I cannot agree because your basic premise is wrong. You have entirely mis-defined science. A toddler is not a scientist. We are not all scientists. Science is about knowlege and learning, but it is more than that. Science is the search for knowlege following a systematic approach, the scientific method. We can all learn, but we do not all use a systematized approach to learning.
To say we are all scientists waters down the meaning of the word to the point where it becomes meaningless. It is akin to “all men are rapists” or “all sex is rape.” In such a context, the word rape becomes meaningless and rape becomes a normal, natural behavior instead of a crime.
Further, science never actually proves anything. At some point, every “proof” is based on an unproven hypothesis. Science was based on the theory that the earth was flat, until it was proven to be round. Light traveled in a straight line until relativity demonstrated otherwise. Then relativity was questioned. There are always new questions to be asked and answered and sometimes those questions change what was once proven “fact.” Such is the nature of science.
Science cannot “prove” morality. Morality is the subjective assignment of value to behavior. What is considered moral and proper in one culture may not be moral or proper in another. This does not make one culture right or the other wrong. It simply makes them different. Recently, on my own blog I discussed Truth. Parts of that discussion may have relevence here. See: http://thedamnedoldeman.com/?p=1312.
TDOM
“However, what science is actually, is just a system of rules that use logic to verify truths.” I agree with this, and also this: “Science is the search for knowlege following a systematic approach, the scientific method. We can all learn, but we do not all use a systematized approach to learning.” Science is repetition and observation of the results. It is also the application of variants into the process and further observation, something which a toddler can do. Perhaps he doesn’t always do so, but it’s possible. I do not intend to “water down” the meaning of science, but to encourage learning and the augmentation of science, by refusing to go along with the belief that we should only listen to “important” people like Sam Harris, and swallow everything they say.
I think it is a mistake to separate “scientists” from the rest of the populace in such a fashion. Indeed, when something’s wrong with my body, I’m going to go to a doctor, but the label “doctor” is simply a useful label for a particular sort of scientist, who applies a systematized process of learning in a particular field of knowledge. If, however, that doctor feels that he’s done with learning what he needs to know and finished with applying the scientific method, he’s probably not the best doctor to see.
And even if I did “water down” the definition (which I don’t think I did), there is no possible way this equates to chauvinistic conclusions like “all men are rapists.” Rape is a sexually coercive act. Consensual sex is not. One cannot be watered down into the other.
We are all indeed scientists, in that we have all used systems of repetition and observation to determine how to make our way in this world. Some of us are much, much better at it, with far quicker minds. I do believe in relying on their expertise when needed, and bestowing on them useful labels (doctor, plumber, mechanic, electrician). But they are not the only scientists.
You haven’t been in my mother’s kitchen and tasted her food. I kid you not, you give the woman a pound of butter, two cups of flour, and one beef bullion cube, and she will come up with a three course meal. Call that something other than science if you want. The woman’s brain for the science of cooking is virtually unmatched.
“Rape is a sexually coercive act. Consensual sex is not. One cannot be watered down into the other.”
The Brownmillers, McKinnons, and Dworkins et al of second wave feminists have attempted to do just that. They claim that all men use sex as a weapon to control all women and since women are oppressed by men, they are incapable of giving consent for sex to their oppressors due to the power imbalance, therefore no sex is consentual. Thus all sex is rape. By defining consent in this manner, they have watered down the meaning of rape , turning the normal act of human reproduction into rape and rendering the term meaningless.
By the same token, stating that everyone who uses science or scientific knowlege is a scientist, you render the term meaningless. Scientists seek out new knowlege and the use rigorous methods to do so. Doctors, plumbers, mechanics, and electricians may apply the knowlege generated by scientists, but they do not necessarily produce new knowlege, therefore they are not necessarily scientists (although some may be). Your mother sounds like she has the ability to utilize scientific knowlege to produce works of gastronomic art (being a chef I can appreciate this), but that makes her an artist, not a scientist. Perhaps we’ll just have to disagree.
TDOM
“I do not intend to “water down” the meaning of science, but to encourage learning and the augmentation of science, by refusing to go along with the belief that we should only listen to “important” people like Sam Harris, and swallow everything they say…I think it is a mistake to separate “scientists” from the rest of the populace in such a fashion.”
By its very definition, science should always be questioned and no one should simply “swallow everything they say” no matter how important the scientist. This is what seperates science from religion. Science is based on a rigorous method of discovery in which all of its basic tenets are open to question. Religion is based on faith and none of its basic tenets may be questioned. Every scientist should encourage his findings to be questioned. If not, I would question the integrety of the scientist in question.
TDOM
TDOM, I think you make an excellent argument, but I’m still not convinced that I’m watering down the definition. (But if anyone could persuade me, it would perhaps be you.) The curious toddler and the curious adult who heads off to medical school are both volitionally applying natural processes of learning which become increasingly systematized as they become more curious. Certainly, childhood curiosity doesn’t compare to the formalities and high level of learning at medical school, but given the fact that children are natural learners and that they are capable of applying systems that they create or that have been created for them in order to learn, I am not yet willing to dismiss all childhood learning as unscientific.
Furthermore, although some radical feminists have attempted to water down all sex into rape, and have had some success with fooling some of the people all of the time, the two concepts are alien to one another; the only thing they have in common is the connection of sex organs and male sexual arousal. Curiosity and volitional learning, using various systems to accomplish the process, is quite similar among children, adults, and those who take on the more formal meaning of science.
And congratulations on being a chef! I say you are a scientist as well as an artist. (There is scientific knowledge applied to all the arts, you know. I’m a musician. Ever heard of “harmonics”? Fascinating scientific stuff.)
Application of science or experimentation does not make a person a scientist.
Putting your campfire out doesn’t make a person a firefighter. Building a shed doesn’t make a person a carpenter. I could go on, the difference is professionalism. There are even varying degrees of professionalism among scientists (psychology, sociology).
“The curious toddler and the curious adult who heads off to medical school are both volitionally applying natural processes of learning which become increasingly systematized as they become more curious.”
Learning and acquiring knowlege do not necessarily equate to being a scientist, even when done is a systematized way. Early I stated that science was a “search for knowlege.” I should have qualified this staement. It is a search for “new” knowlege or at the very least, an attempt to verify existing knowlege (both are research), or to use existing knowlege in new ways or to find new solutions to problems (invention). going to school, reading books, listening to lectures, etc., are each methods of learning, but do not qualify as science.
Certainly, as a chef, I have studied food science to some degree. I have even used that knowlege to create some rather tasty dishes by combining ingredients in unique ways. That does not make me a scientist, although it might blur the lines slightly. It is more like the artist who uses his knowlege of paints and colors to combine them in different ways to create paintings, or as in your case, the musician who uses knowlege of harmonics to write a new song. The scientist might use that knowlege to create a new kind of food or to improve nutritional value, a new paint, or a new musical instrument. Each of these would be examples of applied science (invention). A researcher might discover a new nutrient in a food and inquire as to its nutritional value in our diet. Although they may use existing knowlege in unique ways as part of their art, most chefs, painters, and musicians are not scientists.
TDOM
“Although they may use existing knowlege in unique ways as part of their art, most chefs, painters, and musicians are not scientists.” I’m sorry, TDOM, but most of what you said above that sentence in the same paragraph seems to contradict that statement.
And although “[p]utting your campfire out doesn’t make a person a firefighter,” Denis, questioning, observing, repeating, and retaining knowledge of what you’re doing is the genesis of what science is all about.
Gentlemen, I appreciate the comments very much, and at this point, I will leave it to individual readers to make of our observations and conclusions what they may, as I feel that focusing on this one point is dragging away from the main point of the article. Thank you for your insights, and they are taken under consideration.
“values are a certain kind of fact”,
statistics would be value added. (feminism taught us this one)
consensus the justification. (for those who have a voice,)
ethical algorithm would govern subordination and approximate a destination.
(the end justify the means)
link to the Nobel prize winner George Bernard Shaw
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQvsf2MUKRQ&feature=related
Science is the new god ……waiting to empower the chosen ones.
scary stuff
“I’m sorry, TDOM, but most of what you said above that sentence in the same paragraph seems to contradict that statement.”
I realize that. It’s a fine line, but I think that while art and science may overlap, they are two distinct fields. I’m not sure I can adequately explain it. A few months ago, I watched a movie about the guy who invented the intermittant wiper. The attorney for Ford (the company that stole his invention) argued that the man had not invented anything, he had merely rearranged things that already existed. He successfuly argued that he had in fact created something new. He did this by using a Dickens novel as an example. He said that every word in the novel could already be found in the dictionary. Dickens had not created any new words. But that he had simiply rearranged words already in existence to create something new. Of course Dickens would be an artist, while the inventor would have been a scientist. Perhaps the distinction is in the way the final prodict is used. A novel serves very little purpose, but an intermittent wiper solves a problem. That’s about as good as I think I can do at explaining the difference.
I will say that I have enjoyed our discussion. This is the main reason I blog and comment on the blogs of others. It helps me to clarify my own ideas and to think things through in a logical and reasonable manner and to construct better arguments. I will differ with you one last time. I do not think it takes away from your main point. In fact, I think I am better able to see your point even if I disagree with the analogy.
TDOM
I particularly enjoy the flighty nuance of who engages science and who would qualify the content. Even the comments protract the question. Proselytizing values and morals to another culture as a certain kind of fact is a scary proposal while pointing crucible missiles at them. Followed by statements like
“who are we not to judge”. Wow scary stuff.
an amusing link 9 minutes
That is why I don’t follow organized religion and just stick to theism on it’s own.
I don’t need to go to a Church to be with God. I am with God every minute.
If he didn’t want us to know about this, he wouldn’t have created human beings to become scientists and give us this information.
TDOM, as they say in Australia, good on ya, mate! I very much appreciate having respectful, manly disagreement. That’s part of how we all learn and grow.
One word: AMAZING
Just saw this article, quite interesting. Couldn’t stomach watching that guy’s video, the cretin doesn’t seem to understand which questions / facts are ‘scientific’ and which ones are ‘value judgements’.
On the discussion of the toddler being scientific vs. the trained scientist, I would argue that the toddler is actually using the core essentials of the scientific method in an intuitive way.
My reasoning is thus:
Science is essentially a methodology applied to ‘experience’ to provide more robustness for us to place our trust in what we learn from experience. Basically, all experiences are subjective. Philosophically this leads to all sorts of possibilities for what kind of reality could support such experiences, but the one that science goes for is the idea of universality. Essentially, scientific truth is regarded as a shared truth i.e. one where we can say that no matter who the ‘experiencer’ is, they will always have the same experience provided the defined process is followed.
Now, the key reason why the science the toddler uses and the one the professional scientist uses is the same is that there are no counterintuitive leaps in going from one to the other. All the professional scientist’s training really adds is an understanding of how to put a framework around experience to give it robustness for purposes of peer review.
To give a specific example of counterintuitive leaps, consider mathematics instead of science. Mathematics is founded on axioms, some of which are intuitive and seem obvious but others which may be taken are neither intuitive or obvious. The 5th geometrical axiom is one such example (parallel lines never meet), whilst an even better one is the axiom of choice (its always possible to create a well-formed set by picking one element from each set in any collection of sets). Professional mathematics can be a weird and wonderful place, and it may look significantly different from our intuition.
The glaring counterexample to my definitions above seems to arise with quantum mechanics. This is regarded as being completely unintuitive, but is a bedrock of professional science. To this I would say a few things:
i. methodologically, the empirical method still holds even for QM
ii. even experts in QM don’t like it because it seems at odds with experience
iii. very very few scientists understand QM (even those who specialise in physics, never mind chemists/biologists/whatever), and most branches of science that are talked about don’t require QM in any direct sense – basically any experiement that operates at macro scales is not reliant on QM
iv. the actual non-intuitive part of QM relates basically to i. causality and ii. independence of the observer and the observed. For the causality question (which technically is beyond scope of QM), there are interpretations that would preserve causality. Additionally, causality itself may be an approximation that we use because its useful. On the second question, it becomes trickier because taken at face value, we may actually be discrediting the notion of universality.
However, the issues with QM are not really issues with the scientific method for the majority of professional scientists. In that sense, there is very little (if any) qualitative difference between a toddler’s ‘science’ and the professional scientist’s ‘science’.
As an aside, one very weird and wonderful consequence of QM is that it may actually add credence to the idea of mystical enquiry. This link is not by any means commonly accepted, but its interesting that QM appears to require some property of an observer to collapse a wave-function. If this property is labelled ‘consciousness’, we actually get to a very similar formulation to mystical truth. For both QM and mystical truth, it appears that we don’t have any basis to assign ‘objective’ truth to the cosmos.