Devilnaut

I haven't really seen much of this sort of thing at all really on these boards, except from certain theists.

Maybe I don't read the political forums enough?


I agree with you that dogmatic adherence is always a bad thing. But, i'm not so sure radical and weird beliefs without much evidence is always a bad thing, especially if these beliefs don't hurt anyone. In fact I think it is rather necessary that these sorts of beliefs exist. I think it's important even for scientific progress that these beliefs exist, because every once in awhile one of them turns out to be right!

Arrowman

I won't engage in this one because I have little at this stage to add to The Lone Ranger's thoughts.

(My emphasis)

What do you mean by "claim not to be theists"? Are you making an equation between atheism and critical thinking, or between atheism and freethought, or even between atheism and rational thought? I do not believe any of these equations are legitimate - for reasons I will explain below.

I think we have a mixture of apples, oranges and pears here. An atheist is not by definition a purely logical, rational, skeptical, or even open-minded person. An atheist is simply a person who - well, you know as well as I do.

It seems to me that, not to oversimplify, atheists come from one of two broad backgrounds:
1. Was never a believer (atheist by default), has reinforced that in later life with reading etc to understand their own beliefs (I would characterise myself that way).
2. Was heavily immersed in Christian religion, either liberal or fundamentalist, from an early age. Came out of it by either (a) independent critical examination, at which point the cracks in the edifice appeared or (b) simple rebellion against an abusive situation, followed by further reading etc to understand their own [new] beliefs.

In none of these cases is it necessary for the person in question to be entirely a "critical thinker not prone to dogmatism". In particular, the Christian-turned-atheist has been required through force of circumstances to apply critical thought to one particular aspect of their life. By the same token, a person might (a) believe in astrology but at the same time (b) having been burned by a scam "investment", apply heavy critical thought to any financial offerings in future. People can be selective about where they apply critical thought. I'm not saying that's a good thing, of course - but really, I don't think people's attitude to religion is necessarily any different from other parts of life. People are for the most part selective in their skepticism. And in their dogmas.

Well I think that's a pretty overdone and an unfair generalisation when applied to the denizens of this board - but yes, what you are saying is not entirely unfair when applied to the human race as a whole. The only difference between most people is where and how much they apply their prediliction for dogmatism.

I think it is fair to say that and atheist is more likely to be a critical thinker / Skeptic than a Christian, I do not think you can generalise to the point of expressing surprise if/when an atheist turns out to demonstrate less skepticism in non-religious areas than you might expect.

Now, most of the above is about critical thinking and not dogmatic thinking - which, although they are related, are not necessarily the same thing. I will say one quick thing about dogmatic thinking and what you see on this board:

People tend to be selective about which subjects they address and discuss on this board. And we tend to gravitate towards those subjects about which we feel the most passionate. And if we have a tendency to be dogmatic (which we all do, being human) on some subjects, this will show up in those subjects we choose to participate in. In other words, you're looking at a self-selecting sample. You might see poster A being "dogmatic" in one thread, whereas if they were involved in another thread on a different subject, they'd be all calm and reason. But you don't see them on the other thread because they don't feel as passionate about it.

I've seen people surprise me by being "dogmatic and ignoring the evidence" on some threads. I've also seen people surprise me by giving undue credence to woo-woo new-agey beliefs. It is rarely the same person more than once. Because we all have our weaknesses.

It shouldn't surprise us to see atheists / freethinkers being dogmatic from time to time. When the subject is not religion.

echidna

Galiel, I would suggest that a large part of the reason why people choose irrationality, it that at the end of the day it usually matters little.

Look around, New Agers are happy, communists are happy, fundies are happy. We seek a way of life which makes us happy (happy in a broad sense, contented, at ease, etc). Most here at II seek rationalism and logic and feel at ease with that, but that’s not to automatically say that that suits everyone.

Others seek comfort in more aesthetic worldviews, some more spiritual, some more autocratic. But whatever worldview we end up with it becomes our comfort-zone, our home so to speak. I think it’s almost part of human nature to need a sense of belonging & as such it’s hardly surprising that true scientific agnosticism holds relatively low popularity.

For instance many of my friends don’t place logic as high a priority as myself even (who doesn’t always prize logic as the Holy Grail for instance), but I see that the world they’ve built for themselves gives them every bit of satisfaction as mine does for me. They live well inside it, maybe even better than I live inside mine. So why break it apart for them ?

echidna

Further, no matter how irrational one’s worldview might be, one can never underestimate the flexibility & resourcefulness of the human character. More often than not one’s worldview becomes intertwined with even our raison d’etre, one’s reason-to-be. With such a high placement in our priorities, it’s not surprising that we can learn to deal with whatever unusual consequences that our worldview might lead us to.

Amen-Moses

Thjat is the first OP I've seen where someone is talking to themselves about themselves, spooky!

Amen-Moses

Seeker196

"collaborative process of acquiring knowledge that is the halmark of science and modern rational thought"

It's only a misunderstanding if you assume the reader believes this process is valid, aquires real knowledge on a secure foundation, and is not irrevocably contaminated by the participants gender, socio-cultural, etc conditioning.

To what extent is the 'collaborative process' you esteem objective? It certainly prizes objectivity and critical thinking, but forgets that, as a human activity, it can never rise above what all human mental activities are, namely irrevocably contaminated cultural 'constructs'.

To what extent is the scientific process the Older, White, Male, Upper Income, Conventional 'Western' background consensus?

Why is this consensus better than another consensus formed by a non-scientific group, like New Agers or Marxist-Feminists or what have you?

Do you admit the possibility of multiple truths, or do you adhere to a strict, Law of Excluded Middle, dialectical A OR B thinking Galiel?

galiel

Yup.

galiel

It (or more correctly, those who practice it) try never to forget this. They follow a common method to minimize these effects - first, by insisting on the presentation of openly available evidence to back up a proposed hypothesis, second, by actively soliciting feedback from varying points of view, and, third, by being rigorous about following the evidence. This is reinforced by training and experience.

To a lesser degree than you prejudicially claim, and to a decreasing degree as our understanding of human nature deepens and as modern communication technologies expose ideas for review by greater and greater numbers of people with diverse agendas and diverse points of view.

If you speak of the scientific process, (I assume you mean method), the whole beauty of it is that it is based on reproducible, available empirical experimentation, analysis and calculation, and does not depend on a point of view. 2+2=4 whether you are a white, male middle class atheist truck driver or a black, female, wealthy evangelist doctor or a red-skinned, poor animist hemaphrodite.

Of course, the applicability of strict empiricism depends on the specific discipline you examine. I would say that in the realm of the hard sciences, such as mathematics, sociological bias exists not at all. In chemistry, not so that you'd notice. In physics, hardly.

In soft sciences such as biology, such biases impact critical theories less and less each day--because of the mechanisms for self-correction and peer-review built in to the system, which take into account the carefully documented work of predecessors.

In less rigorous or "scientific" disciplines like psychology, history, anthropology or sociology, it has an impact to varying degrees--although there is at least as strong a tendency, particularly in the social sciences, to publish anti-white-male-european history and claim that the principle of balance justifies abandoning any pretense at objectivity. In fact, there are probably more modern publications opposing a Eurocentric white male POV on the shelves today, at least here in the US, than the other way around, but that is neither here nor there.

When one enters the realm of interactive human group affairs, or "politics", things are even less absolute, history is subject to radical interpretation, passion distorts vision, and we have as yet no electronic gauge for individual hidden motivations. That does not mean we should not try to be as rigorous and thoughtful as we can when attempting to understand the world. There are, after all, certain physical facts that one can agree one even if one differs in their interpretation. For example, one needn't deny the existence nor quarrel about the actual wording of the Constitution, even while one can interpret it in dramatically different ways--which is more a function of the lack of rigor in its construction, rather than the vagaries of current thinking.

Similarly, there is more than sufficient evidence about the Holocaust--partially because of the Nazi obsession with meticulous record keeping. One can argue about the significance or underlying causes of the Holocaust, but anyone denying it occured at all is clearly not a critical thinker and one is not being biased or narrow-minded by dismissing their claims at this point.

The point is not that a rational approach is perfect. The point is that critical thinking is a tool to minimize subjective biases, practiced by people who believe that objective reality exists and who are committed to overcoming, or at least averaging out, their individual biases through a collaroative process of discovery.

For example, one of the implications of skepticism is a responsibility to expose oneself to a wide variety of views. One of the characteristics of a dogmatic approach, in contrast, is only to read opinions that bolster one's own.

As well, one of the intents of logical or rational thinking is to apply Hume and Occam's principles to the reviewing of theoretical assertions. Thus, a conspiracy theory that lacks any tangible evidence, that relies on an improbably large number of diverse people, including elected officials, appointed bureaucrats, a free press, military officers, military enlisted personnel in a volunteer army, civilian witnesses, etc., all in a society with legally guaranteed rights of free speech which are evident in the very ability of conspiracy theorists to publish their theories, is less likely than a simpler, more mundane explanation that does not require such an unprecedented and unusual deviance from past historical experience.

And one of the practical implications of empiricism is that physical evidence, reported by credible, multiple sources, exposed via different media, trumps theories that stem from a fixed a priori view of reality and provide no evidence save reports from a circular, self-referential group of like-minded conpiracists.

Does this means that conspiracies never happen? Of course not, although they are generally not widely and publicly reported on, or they are not really conspiracies, which rely on secrecy. It does mean, however, that the more open a society, the more people are exposed to diverse information from many different points of view, and the more educated people are in critically examining information, the less likely conspiracies are to occur, or to prevail.

Results. Explanatory power. Consistency. Persuasiveness. Universality. Applicability. Results. Why didn't you include "Creationists" or "Fundamentalists" in your list? They share with "non-scientific" dogmas a path diametrically opposed to critical thinking, of starting with a prejudicial presumption and being closed to contradictory evidence, rather than the path of critical thinking, which examines empirical evidence, values consistency and pregmatism, and exposes theories to critical review before accepting them.

"Revealed truth", which inherently divides the world along binary fault lines, may serve as a palliative for simple, superstitious minds, but empirical evidence does not rely on faith, and thus can serve as the basis for universal consensus.

<strong> Critical thinking is not about truths. Critical thinking is an attempt to apply standardized means to examine, as objectively as possible, the available evidence, to apply standardized tools designed to minimize personal bias and to retain at all times a skepticism and, indeed, suspicion, of simplistic, abolutist solutions.

Finally, despite all attempts to turn this into a personal referendum, that is not the intent of this thread nor the content of my question. Please do not attribute to me characteristics that fit your favorite bogeyman. Ironically, that kind of simplistic labeling is precisely an example of the kind of binary thinking of which you accuse me of practicing.

[ October 21, 2002: Message edited by: galiel ]</p>

galiel

Assuming this is not just a gratuitously snide ad hominem, what do you mean?

galiel

duplicate post because UBB sucks.

[ October 21, 2002: Message edited by: galiel ]</p>