Locke, Podcasts, and Skeptics
Today I received an invitation to attend a demonstration at work conducted by John Locke. Just imagine what kind of bizarre thought process that little E-mail initiated…
Anyway, since this is a slow week, and I finished my review for X-Files 5.20: “The End”. It’s probably not a shock for me to say that the review for “X-Files: Fight the Future” will take a bit longer, especially since this is a sweeps period. Then again, if the Olympics get in the way of the typical programming schedule, I might have more time.
***
I wanted to discuss, for a moment, the results of that little poll that I set up a week or two ago. It was the question of whether or not there’s interest in expanding the reviews and what not into the podcasting arena. The preference seemed to be a mixture of media formats, which is where I was leaning anyway. Funny how that works out…
Going into the 2006-2007 season (if one can even describe it in such terms anymore), I was only planning on continuing the long-form reviews for “Lost” and “24”. Everything else would be the shorter, first-person “capsule reviews”. I am currently spending some of my free time adjusting the website so that each show with more than one season gets a page regardless of the depth of the reviews. By March or so, I will have a front page for nearly everything.
The idea is that returning shows will have a main page. New shows will show up on the generic “capsule reviews” page, which will also serve as a storage space for reviews related to shows that don’t make the cut season to season. The idea is to keep things fresh and move into a more flexible format. It has worked out very well this season, and as time moves on, it will keep things from being too static.
So that’s the change in the kind of content on the website. But I also plan (as a visit to my front page will demonstrate) a podcast to begin, at latest, in July 2006. The idea is to finish out the current season in May while making preparations and finishing the website revamp, take June to finalize the podcasting arrangements, and then be ready to jump into the fray with the summer season.
I’m still trying to work out what I want to do for the podcast, so expect another poll soon with some general options. The more feedback I get, the better. I’m not completely interested in rehashing what I’m already writing in the reviews, so I might focus on a certain idea or concept after a basic overview, rant about certain things that bug me, etc. But I’m also open to other suggestions, including something more collaborative.
***
Now for the main topic…Part III of my ongoing philosophical musings.
In the first “essay”, I talked about my personal reasons for questioning a literal interpretation of scripture, based on my history with a fundamentalist Christian church during my childhood. The second segment was a discussion on how my desire for a rational, empirical universe was not contradictory with my spiritual yearnings. Some of the comments I received after the second “essay” were close to the mark: I can most easily be termed an “agnostic”, in the classical sense that I believe we cannot know, based on the evidence, whether or not a higher power exists, and thus no definitive conclusions can be made either way.
That definition most obviously places me in opposition to those with a specific religious philosophy. After all, religion takes a collective set of individual beliefs and develops dogma and doctrine for the masses; it’s about finding a common ground to worship as a community. This has a tendency, as I’ve mentioned before, to transform from a collective search for answers to questions of spirit and meaning into a rigid adherence to a version of history and philosophy that doesn’t always reflect the beliefs that exist at the core of the shared purpose.
Religion, therefore, will often frame events and draw conclusions based on something other than empirical evidence or primary documentation sources. That’s where much of the skepticism about religion comes into play. For those with a more empirical perspective on the world, some of those holy books outline events that cannot be objectively supported. That is a topic that bears more detailed commentary, but for now, I have a very different issue in mind.
It’s the rise of Skepticism as a Religion.
It’s healthy to have a skeptical view of new information, or claims that don’t seem to match one’s understanding of the universe. But there’s a certain line that modern Skeptics leap over with particular zest. It all comes down to an interpretation of a famous saying by Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”
Sagan himself fell into the trap of the modern Skeptic. It’s one thing to listen to a claim or a belief and then question its validity. That is the role of skepticism (small “s”) as a whole: to set new information that conflicts against the prevailing scientific wisdom to a standard of proof. When a person claims that time travel is possible through sheer force of will, skepticism kicks in because it flies in the face of basic physics.
However, that is not what Skepticism (big “s”) supports. It’s not about questioning the logic of a claim or seeking more scientific evidence. Skepticism is all about denying the very possibility of a claim simply on the basis that it doesn’t fit within conventional scientific wisdom. The stance of many Skeptics is absolute judgment, the proclamation that a claim cannot possibly have sufficient evidence to be supported by any rationally thinking individual. What Sagan required was a body of evidence that would be sufficient to contradict existing evidence that supports the current prevailing wisdom; instead, Skeptics effectively believe that no level of evidence would be enough to support a claim that contradicts their version of science.
Sagan was describing a situation not unlike the fall of Newtonian physics and the rise of Quantum Mechanics. Einstein himself fell into the Skeptics’ trap when he outright denied the possibility that QM could be correct, because it didn’t fit into his understanding of physics. Yet the body of evidence to support QM (not to mention the technology that relies completely upon our understanding of it) has become so overwhelming that it addresses each and every concern that Einstein outlined. Now it is an accepted and vital aspect of conventional scientific wisdom; it met the demand of “extraordinary evidence”.
However, the modern Skeptic would have dismissed QM as a flight of fancy, a construct of wishful thinking that betrays the ignorance of the misbegotten theorist. And that is the danger of the Skeptical Movement. It’s no longer about questioning alternative theories or auditing the research and evidence to pose critical questions about the validity of those theories. It’s about mocking those with alternative theories as fools, or worse, “lost souls”.
And that is why I characterize Skepticism as a religion. Skeptics love to rip into religiously-based theories simply on the basis that they originated through collective faith. It is not far from the kind of faith-bashing that all scientists are accused of perpetuating. Many Skeptics don’t even bother to determine whether or not the claims have a scientific rationale. (This is, by the way, not the same as what I think about “intelligent design”; it doesn’t take much research to expose clear concerns about the scientific underpinning of that theory.)
Such fervent and unilateral judgment of alternative theories is no different than the outright dismissal of scientific theory based on articles of dogma and doctrine. When skepticism turns into Skepticism, it is no longer a question of determining who has the better theory; it becomes another expression of unquestioning belief. It means subscribing to conventional scientific wisdom completely, with no acknowledgment of assumptions that may be disputed or limitations that may require further theorizing.
The point is this: if religious teachings and adherents can be criticized for denying the possibility that dogma and doctrine are open to debate, then Skeptics are equally worthy of criticism for their elevation of theory to dogmatic adherence. If the ideal is to apply the Scientific Method to support a new hypothesis, then the philosophy behind the Scientific Method should also be applied. That means accepting possibilities until they are logically and rationally proven false on their own merits.
Of course, that doesn’t mean accepting possibilities as if they were already proven theories. That remains a very clear and meaningful distinction. When anyone tries to elevate a hypothesis with little established credibility to the same acceptance level as a theory with documented and verifiable support, based on any dogma or doctrine (religious, secular, or conspiratorial), it’s a gross misuse of terminology and scientific discourse.
Which, as it happens, leads into what will be the next topic for commentary: what counts as documented and verifiable support? And why is that a vital difference between “truth as fact” and “truth as belief”? It’s a tricky subject, but one that strikes at the very heart of the overall subject of science and religion.
More later!!
Anyway, since this is a slow week, and I finished my review for X-Files 5.20: “The End”. It’s probably not a shock for me to say that the review for “X-Files: Fight the Future” will take a bit longer, especially since this is a sweeps period. Then again, if the Olympics get in the way of the typical programming schedule, I might have more time.
***
I wanted to discuss, for a moment, the results of that little poll that I set up a week or two ago. It was the question of whether or not there’s interest in expanding the reviews and what not into the podcasting arena. The preference seemed to be a mixture of media formats, which is where I was leaning anyway. Funny how that works out…
Going into the 2006-2007 season (if one can even describe it in such terms anymore), I was only planning on continuing the long-form reviews for “Lost” and “24”. Everything else would be the shorter, first-person “capsule reviews”. I am currently spending some of my free time adjusting the website so that each show with more than one season gets a page regardless of the depth of the reviews. By March or so, I will have a front page for nearly everything.
The idea is that returning shows will have a main page. New shows will show up on the generic “capsule reviews” page, which will also serve as a storage space for reviews related to shows that don’t make the cut season to season. The idea is to keep things fresh and move into a more flexible format. It has worked out very well this season, and as time moves on, it will keep things from being too static.
So that’s the change in the kind of content on the website. But I also plan (as a visit to my front page will demonstrate) a podcast to begin, at latest, in July 2006. The idea is to finish out the current season in May while making preparations and finishing the website revamp, take June to finalize the podcasting arrangements, and then be ready to jump into the fray with the summer season.
I’m still trying to work out what I want to do for the podcast, so expect another poll soon with some general options. The more feedback I get, the better. I’m not completely interested in rehashing what I’m already writing in the reviews, so I might focus on a certain idea or concept after a basic overview, rant about certain things that bug me, etc. But I’m also open to other suggestions, including something more collaborative.
***
Now for the main topic…Part III of my ongoing philosophical musings.
In the first “essay”, I talked about my personal reasons for questioning a literal interpretation of scripture, based on my history with a fundamentalist Christian church during my childhood. The second segment was a discussion on how my desire for a rational, empirical universe was not contradictory with my spiritual yearnings. Some of the comments I received after the second “essay” were close to the mark: I can most easily be termed an “agnostic”, in the classical sense that I believe we cannot know, based on the evidence, whether or not a higher power exists, and thus no definitive conclusions can be made either way.
That definition most obviously places me in opposition to those with a specific religious philosophy. After all, religion takes a collective set of individual beliefs and develops dogma and doctrine for the masses; it’s about finding a common ground to worship as a community. This has a tendency, as I’ve mentioned before, to transform from a collective search for answers to questions of spirit and meaning into a rigid adherence to a version of history and philosophy that doesn’t always reflect the beliefs that exist at the core of the shared purpose.
Religion, therefore, will often frame events and draw conclusions based on something other than empirical evidence or primary documentation sources. That’s where much of the skepticism about religion comes into play. For those with a more empirical perspective on the world, some of those holy books outline events that cannot be objectively supported. That is a topic that bears more detailed commentary, but for now, I have a very different issue in mind.
It’s the rise of Skepticism as a Religion.
It’s healthy to have a skeptical view of new information, or claims that don’t seem to match one’s understanding of the universe. But there’s a certain line that modern Skeptics leap over with particular zest. It all comes down to an interpretation of a famous saying by Carl Sagan: “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.”
Sagan himself fell into the trap of the modern Skeptic. It’s one thing to listen to a claim or a belief and then question its validity. That is the role of skepticism (small “s”) as a whole: to set new information that conflicts against the prevailing scientific wisdom to a standard of proof. When a person claims that time travel is possible through sheer force of will, skepticism kicks in because it flies in the face of basic physics.
However, that is not what Skepticism (big “s”) supports. It’s not about questioning the logic of a claim or seeking more scientific evidence. Skepticism is all about denying the very possibility of a claim simply on the basis that it doesn’t fit within conventional scientific wisdom. The stance of many Skeptics is absolute judgment, the proclamation that a claim cannot possibly have sufficient evidence to be supported by any rationally thinking individual. What Sagan required was a body of evidence that would be sufficient to contradict existing evidence that supports the current prevailing wisdom; instead, Skeptics effectively believe that no level of evidence would be enough to support a claim that contradicts their version of science.
Sagan was describing a situation not unlike the fall of Newtonian physics and the rise of Quantum Mechanics. Einstein himself fell into the Skeptics’ trap when he outright denied the possibility that QM could be correct, because it didn’t fit into his understanding of physics. Yet the body of evidence to support QM (not to mention the technology that relies completely upon our understanding of it) has become so overwhelming that it addresses each and every concern that Einstein outlined. Now it is an accepted and vital aspect of conventional scientific wisdom; it met the demand of “extraordinary evidence”.
However, the modern Skeptic would have dismissed QM as a flight of fancy, a construct of wishful thinking that betrays the ignorance of the misbegotten theorist. And that is the danger of the Skeptical Movement. It’s no longer about questioning alternative theories or auditing the research and evidence to pose critical questions about the validity of those theories. It’s about mocking those with alternative theories as fools, or worse, “lost souls”.
And that is why I characterize Skepticism as a religion. Skeptics love to rip into religiously-based theories simply on the basis that they originated through collective faith. It is not far from the kind of faith-bashing that all scientists are accused of perpetuating. Many Skeptics don’t even bother to determine whether or not the claims have a scientific rationale. (This is, by the way, not the same as what I think about “intelligent design”; it doesn’t take much research to expose clear concerns about the scientific underpinning of that theory.)
Such fervent and unilateral judgment of alternative theories is no different than the outright dismissal of scientific theory based on articles of dogma and doctrine. When skepticism turns into Skepticism, it is no longer a question of determining who has the better theory; it becomes another expression of unquestioning belief. It means subscribing to conventional scientific wisdom completely, with no acknowledgment of assumptions that may be disputed or limitations that may require further theorizing.
The point is this: if religious teachings and adherents can be criticized for denying the possibility that dogma and doctrine are open to debate, then Skeptics are equally worthy of criticism for their elevation of theory to dogmatic adherence. If the ideal is to apply the Scientific Method to support a new hypothesis, then the philosophy behind the Scientific Method should also be applied. That means accepting possibilities until they are logically and rationally proven false on their own merits.
Of course, that doesn’t mean accepting possibilities as if they were already proven theories. That remains a very clear and meaningful distinction. When anyone tries to elevate a hypothesis with little established credibility to the same acceptance level as a theory with documented and verifiable support, based on any dogma or doctrine (religious, secular, or conspiratorial), it’s a gross misuse of terminology and scientific discourse.
Which, as it happens, leads into what will be the next topic for commentary: what counts as documented and verifiable support? And why is that a vital difference between “truth as fact” and “truth as belief”? It’s a tricky subject, but one that strikes at the very heart of the overall subject of science and religion.
More later!!
posted by John Keegan | 16:55
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