On Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:33:52 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:

>>> And, all of them would have a century ago. This doesn't mean much.
>> 
>> I don't understand what you're trying to say here.
>> 
> Just that argument ad populum is all you are talking about when
> discussing how "some people believe in blah". It doesn't make the belief
> valid, or supportable. Yet, its too often presented as, "Some of group X
> believe the absurd, and nearly all of group Y, so we should treat it as
> a valid view point."

Um, no, I'm not presenting it as "we should treat it as a valid view 
point", but in trying to understand how someone could come to a different 
conclusion, it's important to shift one's point of view to match that of 
the person you're trying to understand - assuming that understanding is 
what you're trying to achieve.

>> That's only true if one holds the point of view you hold.  In order to
>> understand it, you have to step out of your own frame of reference and
>> look at it from a different perspective.  That can be very difficult to
>> do, admittedly, but it's not impossible.
>> 
> No, its true from the evidence. Viewpoints are **opinion** not fact.
> Facts rise or fall based on what works, and is feasible. Opinions rise
> and fall based **solely** one how many people hold them.

But how people view and experience the world is the thing that matters to 
a lot of people.  I don't dispute that facts are important, but opinions 
are important as well, because the way one sees the world shapes how one 
interacts with it.  Even someone with your point of view interacts with 
the world based on the opinions you have formed from the facts you've 
determined are true.  Arguably, someone who holds your particular set of 
beliefs (for lack of a better word) is more likely to adjust based on new 
evidence than someone who has a very strong faith-based view of the 
world.  But who's to say that that faith-based view of the world is 
invalid for someone for whom it works for?

>>>> I'm not saying I agree with any of these things, but there are ways
>>>> to interpret things that do not make these two ideas incompatible.
>>>>
>>> True, but again, they are almost totally pointless interpretations,
>> 
>> See my above comment about stepping out of your own frame of reference.
>> 
> No, I can see how they come to those conclusions, I just can't agree
> with them. 

Agreement isn't required.  Understanding isn't either, for that matter, 
but I have found that understanding how someone with an alternative 
viewpoint arrived at that conclusion leads to an understanding of how to 
interact with that person in a constructive way.  I've found this to be 
an incredibly valuable skill to use given that many of the people I work 
with professionally have strong personal religious faith.  Even for those 
whom I don't discuss religion with (which is most of them), knowing the 
common set of experiences that they go through every week when they go to 
church (for example) helps me understand how to motivate them and get 
what I need from them.

>>> And, such people, when they find their ideas being sidelined, get
>>> really pissy about it,
>> 
>> That happens even with rationalists, too.  The "punishment" tends to be
>> ridicule rather than more the extreme punishments you outline for the
>> "modern fundies", but the reaction is quite similar.
>> 
> That is because, quite frankly, discussion has been *tried*, and its
> either been undermined, often with the complicity of the people
> supposedly providing the forum of discussion, usually against hard
> liners from the other side, who are "impervious" to factual information,
> and moderates, of the sort that "might" be swayed either a) refuse to
> see how ridiculous the people they defend make **them** look, or b)
> don't think the issues matter enough to do anything about them.

Sometimes yes, people who have strong religious faith react badly when 
they're told that they're not being rational.  How do you react when 
someone tells you you're talking nonsense when you're talking about 
something that you have a strong personal investment in it?  What I find 
is that the presentation coming from someone with a point of view often 
is not handled very tactfully.  Understand that for people of strong 
religious faith, when you start trying to prove that their view is wrong, 
that is often perceived as an attack on the foundations of everything 
they have built their life upon.

No matter how you slice it or what you believe, having the foundations of 
everything you believe in attacked by someone you hardly know (or even 
someone you know really well, though the latter is generally received 
better) is hard to perceive as anything but an attack on their character 
- even if it's not intended that way.

But I'd also point out that "discussion has been tried" doesn't equate to 
"discussion has been tried with all of them" - some people it's futile to 
discuss with, others are more receptive.  Each situation is unique.

> In other words, in the last half century we have gone from trusting, or
> at least semi-respecting the first person in the following linked comic,
> and now would rather hand the last one in it a TV show, like Oprah, and
> peddle tin foil hats, because opinion is king, feel good gibberish is
> better than statistics, and you can trust a multi-billion dollar
> business called "the church", or "homeopathy", more than an underpaid
> scientist trying to work out how the brain really works, or the FDA's
> vetting of real drugs.
> 
> http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive/phd051809s.gif

I like the comic; it explains something I've been saying for a long time 
for a very long time.  What's considered "reputable news sources" (ie, 
broadcast news media, newspapers, etc) tend to try to do the thinking for 
us.  I prefer my news unfiltered, because I'm an intelligent human being 
capable of forming my own opinions based on the facts.

That said, I don't think the problem is not failing to trust the first 
person in the cycle.  The problem is the mutations to what the first 
person in the cycle discovers by all the intermediate steps.  It's like 
the telephone game all over again.  Somehow in the US (and I might go so 
far to say "in western society"), we've shifted to believing the loudest 
voice, and the loudest voice tends to be the one with the most coverage 
(based on distribution, Nielsen ratings, etc).

But this is a bit of a shift in the discussion we're having as well, 
because it doesn't really tie into religious faith - it's more closely 
related to generic belief.  Not that the two are entirely dissimilar, 
mind.

>>>> And yet it seems that many who don't believe in a deity point to
>>>> Christianity and the related religions and say "one thing in this is
>>>> ridiculous/provable to be incorrect, therefore the whole thing is" -
>>>> and then go on to ridicule those who believe any of it.
>>>
>>> Umm. Hardly.
>> 
>> I've seen it time and again in various religious discussions, so
>> please, don't tell me it doesn't happen.  It does.  Maybe not every
>> time, but I'm not outlining something that happens in every discussion,
>> just something that in my experience happens a lot of the time in the
>> discussions I participate in.
>> 
> Well, if/when it happens, its probably someone fed up with the need to
> point out all 50,000 things that fall into that category. At the least,
> some places won't let you post more than one of them.

The counter to that "individual things" often ends up being "you have to 
take the whole thing".  Part of the reason for that is that you're trying 
to change the opinion of someone who doesn't want their opinion to be 
changed.  They're just as frustrated as you - again, it comes back to 
that point about "attacking" the foundation of the something they've 
built their entire life around.  That's not something that should be seen 
to be being treated lightly or with ridicule - you might as well be 
calling them "stupid" or worse - and we all know where that leads.

>>> Hmm. Yeah. Met some of the extremists on my side the other day. I
>>> think they laughed at someone, then bought a copy of Skeptical
>>> Enquirer. It was horrifying! lol Seriously though, this isn't entirely
>>> accurate. The problem here is delusional thinking, not specifically
>>> religion, and the "extremists" on the side against religion tend to
>>> trade belief different gibberish for what "would have been" religion.
>> 
>> Again, I've seen extreme positions taken on both sides of the debate,
>> from the self-proclaimed rationalist side, this tends to take the form
>> of extreme ridicule rather than the proclamation of something like a
>> fatwah.  But it does happen, and again, I've seen it over and over in
>> discussions I've participated in over the years.
>> 
>> 
> Again, there is a reason for using ridicule. Its the last resort when
> dealing with people you realize will **never** play fair, in the hopes
> that embarrassing them enough will get them to rethink their position.

That never, in my experience works.  The last resort when dealing with 
people who won't play fair is to walk away.  Logically, upon being 
ridiculed, the vast majority of deeply religious people aren't going to 
suddenly say "gee, you're right, I've been stupid".  They're going to dig 
in their defenses.  At the point at which they become defensive, they 
have stopped listening to what you're saying, and you're just wasting 
your time trying to change their view.

> Mind, this is hardly needed, since all you have to do is look at
> interviews by people like Casey Luskin to realize that they embarrass
> themselves more than we ever could. 

Sure.  Why do you think I walked away from two recent discussions here 
after one response to the initiator of the thread? ;-)  It's the same 
principle.  I'm not going to change that individuals mind, and ultimately 
it's my opinion that that person does more damage to themselves than I 
could ever do by continuing to respond in kind.  Add to that that I 
honestly don't care if he makes a fool of himself or not, what exactly is 
my motivation to *try* to make him look foolish again?  He's already 
doing a far better job than I ever could do.

(And apologies to Chris if the above paragraph is perceived a personal 
attack against another member here; that's not my intent, but rather it's 
my intent to use a recent example that's a common experience between 
myself and Patrick as a point of illustration in this conversation.)

> The problem though is, from the
> perspective of most of the people "inside" such groups, wearing a red
> nose and floppy shoes **isn't** ridiculous, though they know, on some
> level, that other people think its silly, and we keep having to point
> out to people that, 

well, no, there is no need to point it out.  It's why I get tired of 
hearing the jokes about Mormon "magic underwear".  That's really been 
overdone, and even as someone who doesn't believe that set of beliefs, it 
gets old fast to be associated with it because I happen to live in Utah.  
It's really an unnecessary cheap shot that says more about the character 
of the person making it than it does about the people who *actually* 
believe it, which in my experience, isn't many.

> We are dealing with people that want to be seen as a) legitimate, b)
> scientific, c) fact based, and d) defenders of the faith, 

A vast number of them don't care if you (generic "you" here, not you 
personally) think they're legitimate.  Speaking about the ones I live 
around, they're secure enough in their beliefs that what you or I think 
about them isn't important.  There of course always will be those who do 
care; personally, I think that speaks a lot about their own insecurities 
in their faith, and maybe they need to examine their faith more closely.  
But that's gotta come from within.

It's similar to the view I hold about gay marriage.  Those who say that 
marriage should "be between a man and a woman" and that they're 
"defending marriage", in my opinion, need to look at their own 
relationship and see why it is that they believe the idea of two members 
of the same sex getting married would fundamentally change their own 
relationship.  I'm not going to get "gay married", but if two men or two 
women want to get married, I'm not going to love my wife any less than I 
do now.

> but are a)
> paid shills, b) don't even understand the science, c) dogma based, and
> d) make their own religion look even more absurd than it does without
> them. 

That's their choice to make, though.

> And, most of the US population a) think religion "is" a legitimate
> answer to almost any problem, b) think that science means "make a guess,
> then if it seems to work, call it science, even if you can't reproduce
> the result, c) think that anecdotes and personal experiences are
> evidence and d) are Christians, so... pretty much by definition, presume
> that someone, someplace, is "supposed to be" persecuting them.

You can't control how other people react to the world around them.  If it 
works for them, then it works for them.  A personal example:  my mom went 
through some horrible, horrible abuse when she was a child - and add to 
that a constant attack on her character as a person, constantly being 
told she was dumb and would never amount to anything.  It took her nearly 
65 years to even be able to talk about it.  She turned to her pastor, and 
the discussions they had helped her learn - after over 60 years - to cope 
with what she went through and begin to deal with it.

She believes that the church helped her and helped her get past a 
terribly painful part of her life.  She came out of that counseling a new 
person, much more confident in her abilities, more more willing to speak 
up when something wasn't right, and much better able to cope with life 
after my father passed away a few years ago.

So who am I to tell her that her religion is based on a lie and that 
organized religious entities are a cancer on society (or whatever 
euphemism you want to use)?  I personally think that organized religion 
is a crock, but my perspective was formed from working "backstage" during 
religious services for years as a teen and young adult and seeing the 
politics of the leaders in the church - the same church my mom still is a 
member of - I grew up in.  To me, it's all just a big show.  To my mom, 
it's the foundation of her life.  She knows it isn't all true, but she 
doesn't care much about that; it helped her and for that she (and I for 
that matter, even as an ex-member) will always be grateful.

> How would you suggest dealing with the radicals who, over the last 50
> years, have grown in size, influence and power, while the rationalists
> opted to use discussion, science publishing, and catering to the
> "moderate allies", to fight back? The old way lost us ground. 

That's a harder question to answer.  When it comes to religious beliefs 
in politics, ultimately it comes down to money.  Religious organizations 
have an immense power to pull in money.  The LDS Church more or less 
demands a 10% tithe every year, or you fall out of the good graces of the 
church.  TIME Magazine did an analysis a few years ago of the LDS 
Church's holdings, and it was quite incredible.

> And the
> key reason is that the middle grounders may, this week, insist that
> there isn't anything wrong with evolution, but there **is** some huge
> problem with cosmology. Next week, as soon as we imagine that is cleared
> up, some other moderate we get as an ally turns out to be a firm
> defender of astrophysics, but thinks Intelligent Design is a plausible
> replacement for Evolution. Such "allies" have, in the past, done nothing
> so much as stick a foot out to trip the scientific world, 

Logically, if the scientific principles are sound, then it shouldn't trip 
the scientific world up too badly.  Either that or the premise has a flaw 
in it, no?

> So, if the guy in the clown suit screams, "Heh, stop taking about how
> silly my shoes are!", every time you point out that squirt flowers don't
> explain plate tectonics.. What is the point of not just saying, "OK,
> have it your way. Not only are you wrong about your squirt flower
> theory, but those shoes make you look like an idiot!"

More to the point, what is the point of saying it?  It accomplishes 
nothing - those who think the clown looks ridiculous will still think the 
clown looks ridiculous, those who think the clown is sane will continue 
to think the clown looks sane, and both groups are likely to think that 
you're a mean-spirited person who couldn't remain civil.  The clown wins 
(by being able to count on sympathy), the believers win (because their 
belief that the rest of the world is a messed up place is reinforced), 
the non-believers win (arguably because you've pointed out the emperor 
has no clothes, but to them that was bloody obvious already so you 
haven't shown them anything new), and you've lost by tarnishing your own 
reputation by behaving in an uncivilized manner.

That's why often walking away is the best option.  As someone wise once 
said, "it's sometimes better to be silent and be thought a fool than to 
open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Jim

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