Or: How creationism (its existence and persistence) tells us a lot about how people think, even when they're not being creationists, and how all this affects the way freethought secularism ought to approach the bigger world.
By James Downard
In a comment on an earlier post James Downard mentioned his talk to the Kennewick Freethought Society linked below. Watching the video, it struck me that James had hit on a possible cognitive mechanism that explains the phenomenon we call "compartmentalization," the ability of a person to apply different standards of evidence (and logic?) to propositions in different domains of inquiry. I asked James if we could publish a transcript of the talk, and he graciously provided it. It's below, with appropriate formatting inserted for the Thumb's requirements. ---RBH
An address by James Downard, presented to the Kennewick, Washington Freethought Society on October 25, 2009.
A friend of mine and fellow member of our local Inland Northwest Freethought Society, Jason, kindly recorded my talk and the various questions afterward from the audience. The main speech itself he
posted in three parts on Youtube and elsewhere (retitled for there as "The Absurdity of Religion: Tortucan Traps" to give it a bit more kick as a teaser title). I got into a pretty fast delivery speed for it, for which I apologize.
The main body of my lecture is below, as near as to verbatim as I can manage.
The "tortuca" part of this talk involves a new word I'll be defining shortly, but before I get to that we have to start with a very basic question: How do people believe things that aren't true.
I don't think any legitimate philosophical system can get away from that issue. People believe all sorts of things, and some of them are
wrong. Unless you're contending that all beliefs are in fact true, and I'm afraid that's a non-starter. It's that mutual contradiction issue (A != A in the math jargon). The earth can't be revolving and
not revolving around the sun. There's a decidable
science proposition for you: heliocentrism, yes---geocentrism, no.
Whether that Bill Shakespeare guy actually wrote all those plays and sonnets attributed to him is a less obviously decidable
historical proposition. If we move on to whether it's a sound idea to sacrifice human hearts to Quetzalcoatl to keep the sun rising, well that's a religious proposition but it's also utterly decidable. Heart sacrificing: wrong and stupid. But when we move to other doctrines, such as whether Jesus Christ was actually the incarnate son of a triune god of Abraham, we're dealing with issues that are
undecidable in a way the other three aren't. What that distinction means for the practical debating strategy of secular thinking I'll be getting back to.
So, how do people who believe things that aren't true do that? Are they just being stupid, or wicked---to borrow Richard Dawkins' rather smug characterization of antievolutionists. As it happens, Dawkins was just on comedian Bill Maher's
Real Time talk show on HBO (October 2009). With the popularity of creationism, Maher asked him how people could believe such things. Dawkins reminded Maher that evolution depends on variation, and apparently there was a spectrum of brain variation in human beings, with Sarah Palin at one end and Einstein at the other. Big laugh.
But is that actually telling us much? Is faulty belief merely the absence of
intelligence? Stupid people believe silly things, bright people don't. Indeed, Dawkins has tried to popularize the term "Brights" to apply to people (like himself of course) who have escaped falling into the quagmire of false belief.
As a marketing slogan for freethinking "Bright" is not only patronizing, I think it's
wrong. The ability to believe things that are not true has very little to do with intelligence. To see this, try plotting Isaac Newton on Dawkins' Palin-Einstein index. Where exactly does he fit? Newton is incontrovertibly one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. And simultaneously he could believe in all sorts of Bible prophecy claptrap, wacky enough to entertain even the most extreme wing of Sarah Palin's miracle mongering evangelical subculture.
Or take Phillip Johnson, the avatar of the modern Intelligent Design movement. He got into Harvard when he was sixteen---and yet he's been able to totally doubt the validity of natural evolution. How he manages to do that obviously has less to do with whatever intelligence is supposed to be, and more to do with what it means to believe things in the first place.
The first impulse is to notice how Johnson had got God, and came to the conclusion in his nice analytical lawyer way that natural Darwinian evolution (as characterized especially by scientists like Richard Dawkins) represented a threat to traditional religion and therefore had to go. So was all this simply a matter of religious fervor, blinding otherwise bright minds in the light?
Like a lot of critics of creationism I thought that was all that was going on. That is, until I bumped into Richard Milton. The editor of British Mensa magazine, Milton's 1997 book
Shattering the Myths of Darwinism argued not only that evolutionary theory was unfounded, but that the modern geological system was wrong too. Milton was swallowing, hook, line and sinker, a litany of Youth Earth Creationist arguments about geochronology---but without any religious motivation. The secular Brit had arrived in YEC-land without starting in Genesis.
Whatever was going on in
his head wasn't about religion. So what was? Well, when you looked close at how he constructed his arguments, Milton was assembling his views the same way Phillip Johnson was: only paying attention to the parts he wanted to pay attention to.
The same was true of everybody else in the antievolution biz, from Young Earth Creationist Duane Gish to Old Earth Creationist Hugh Ross to every one of the ID gang at the Discovery Institute: Michael Behe, William Dembski, Jonathan Wells, and so on.
The behavioral pattern of over-reliance on secondary scholarship (thinking that reading Smith telling them about Jones could substitute for actually reading Jones) turns out to be a common pathology for
everybody who holds positions that aren't true. People read or believe things that other people tell them are so, and then their brains stop. Don't take the next step of defining standards of evidence and casting the net as wide as possible, to better determine where the truth might lie.
Religion has nothing to do with this failure---it's the method that is their madness. And that is just as true of Erich von Däniken's Ancient Astronauts as it is of Ann Coulter. Just watch the recent National Geographic channel documentary on the 9/11 conspiracy theorists and you'll see yet another illustration of exactly what I mean.
None of these people had hit on some fantastically new way of thinking badly---they all use the
same system of bad thinking. All that separates them is what they are thinking badly about.
This realization only puts us where people like Michael Shermer already are: recognizing a commonality to faulty belief systems. What it doesn't do is finish the loop: tell us what might be going on inside the head of somebody when believing things that aren't true, and perhaps even relate it to broader cognitive processes in the human mind.
Which is why I kept being reminded of a scene from a movie. It was Spencer Tracy grilling Frederic March on the Bible in Stanley Kramer's 1960 film version of Inherit the Wind. (I asked then how many present had seen
Inherit the Wind and called for a show of hands.)
Well, for those who haven't, it is the fictionalized account of the famous 1925 Scopes antievolution "Monkey Trial" in Tennessee, over their law forbidding the teaching of evolution in public schools. The 1950s play was very much a parable of intolerance in the waning days of the McCarthy era. The Bible-spouting William Jennings Bryan became "Matthew Harrison Brady" (played by March in the movie) and his secularist opponent Clarence Darrow was "Henry Drummond" (Tracy's part).
After legal maneuvering prevented Darrow from introducing any scientific witnesses he pulled one of the great ploys in legal history by calling Bryan to the stand as an expert on the Bible. Unwilling to be pinned down on how long the days of creation were,
Brady harrumphed: "The Bible says it was a day."
Drummond persisted: "Well, was it a normal day, a literal day, a 24-hour day?"
Brady hemmed again: "I don't know."
Drummond leaned in close: "What do you think?"
A long pause followed. "I do not think about things I do not think about."
Whereupon Drummond fired back: "Do you ever think about things that you do think about?"
You could accuse the screenwriters of just setting up a good punch line here, except Bryan and Darrow had actually said those things. And it kept resonating in my head as something that was profoundly true. The Matthew Harrison Bradys of the world really
didn't think about things they didn't want to think about---and weren't very good either at thinking about the things they
did think about.
Isn't that precisely what is going on for all the people who believe things that aren't true? No matter how bright they may be in other ways, no matter how carefully educated they have been, such people are perfectly capable of simply not thinking about whatever it is they don't want to think about.
Such people suffer from Matthew Harrison Brady Syndrome---MHBS for short, which works really well as an acronym too: MH
BS.
But MHBS is only part of the story. It has to be applied somewhere, directed at some object of desire. And here is where all that religion and politics enter the picture. The religious belief is what a Phillip Johnson or a Duane Gish applies their MHBS aptitude to. For the nonreligious Richard Milton it is at scientific Mysteries with a Capital M.
People with similar motivations but less MHBS may fall on a different point of the spectrum. There is evidence that there may be a God Module (or more likely a variety of them) in the brain. If so, President Obama's new director of the NIH, Francis Collins, is a likely candidate. But however strong his spiritual epiphany beneath a waterfall may have been, he apparently isn't nearly high enough on the MHBS side of the graph to overcome what appears to be a quite careful scientific mind.
Without any motivational urges, and no MHBS to fuel them if there were, you end up at the rarity of people like Arthur C. Clarke or Richard Feynman, insatiably curious minds that strive only to figure out what's
actually true, and doing their best to work out precisely how to do that.
Which leaves us staring at the upper end of the chart, at those high incident MHBS minds that have some internal motivations or desires smoldering away. What do we call them? There's the problem: we don't actually have a word for them. That is, until now.
The image I had of such people were like turtles, hunkering down under their shell, feet tucked in, able to see only the tunnel vision reality visible out the hole, living beneath a carapace utterly impervious to all the contrary evidence or argument you might lob at them. It simply falls off the shell, no damage done. But I didn't want to call these folk "turtles"---if only because I might want to discuss turtles and didn't want to generate any confusion. But I didn't want to let go of the image either, so I cast about for a surrogate term, and as it happens the Latin for turtle is
tortuca.
Now I had a term that could be applied, imagery and all, without any excess conceptual baggage (except for people who speak Latin, but no matter). A
tortucan is a person possessed of a very strong MHBS, who manifests that trait in the defense of equally powerful belief systems. Their cognitive landscape is riddled with what might be called "tortucan ruts"---zones of thought that channel how they perceive and process information relating to the objects of their interest.
Not every aspect of their mind would be governed by such ruts, though---which means they could be as reasonable as all get out when dealing with things outside their boundaries. The tortucan model of the mind frees us from the obligation of seeing faulty belief as an all or nothing proposition. Rather than falling on some simplistic Palin-Einstein line of intelligence, any individual human mind can embody both tortucan and non-tortucan elements.
It was at this stage that a disconcerting realization came to me. In this concept of the tortucan mind I was building up, there was nothing in principle to preclude the possibility of a highly MHBS intellect mapping onto belief systems that were true. This meant that we had to look far more closely at the thought processes and methods on the opposite side of the fence---atheists versus religionists, secularists versus cultural warriors.
It occurred to me that when people have arrived at a correct position, we may be more than likely to overlook logical flaws in their reasoning because we can agree with the end result. But following the logic of mathematics it is not good enough to merely get the right answer---it is important to have arrived at it through a correct and appropriate line of reasoning. Only by making that methodological distinction can the larger role of the tortucan mind in the human community be detected and its possible extent measured.
So how often are we cutting our fellow secularists and freethinkers more slack than their method deserves? I had found examples over the years of scientists on the "right" side of an issue who nonetheless exhibited what may be tortucan ruts of their own. I've already noted the prickly case of Newton, but he was no secularist. Closer to home would be Carl Sagan, who had a variety of notions that were not all that well thought through. For example, he had a colossally naïve innocence when it came to how scientific progress related to economic processes. It's part of the reason why the Greeks and Romans never developed a genuine scientific method---they lacked the economic and cultural incentives that drive such things.
Another example of a tortucan in secular clothing would be
the late environmentalist Garrett Hardin. A socially liberal evolutionist, Hardin popularized the term "tragedy of the commons" in the 1960s---but it was reading one of his later books on the need to reform anti-abortion laws (
Mandatory Motherhood it was called) that brought Hardin under my methodological microscope. I was not unsympathetic to his overall argument (being to this day a pro-Choice guy in the abortion department) but I also couldn't help spotting something astonishing about how he went about supporting his case. At one point Hardin cited a Czechoslovakian study to show the deleterious fate awaiting unwanted children. Indeed, Hardin thought so much of this study that he reprinted the whole thing as an appendix. And that was his mistake, for it turned out that
none of the conclusions he had drawn from it were justified. The paper repeatedly hedged its findings as not statistically significant, and yet Hardin had gone ahead and treated them all as if they were.
Ever since then, I have termed the action of going out of your way to call attention to the very data that blows your own argument to smithereens as "doing a Garrett Hardin."
If MHBS is indeed real, and the tortucan mind is a genuine cognitive phenomenon, is it possible to characterize it scientifically? Test for it in the mind, isolate its neurological properties, and so on. I think so. A recent paper by Sam Harris and others in the
Annals of Neurology (February 2008; available online
here) showed one way when they conducted fMRI studies of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty. They asked volunteers a variety of questions to which they were to indicate whether they believed the statement to be true, not true, or were unsure about it. Most of these were innocuous questions like "California is larger than Rhode Island," or "Eagles are common pets." But slipped into the mix were some far more contentious items: "A Personal God exists, just as the Bible describes," or (for atheists), "There is probably no actual Creator God."
Now the Harris study researchers were expecting the brain to engage in some fireworks when those questions came up, but to their surprise the brain seems to be processing them all the same. Whether believing in a big California, disbelieving that people keep eagles as pets, or the existence or non-existence of God, the brain lit up, at a gross level, with the same intensity (or lack of it) for all of them. The important point was that
different sections of the brain were involved, one part kicking in when expression of positive belief applied, yet another area when the subject disbelieved it, and yet a third zone applying to things the person wasn't sure about.
Most interestingly, the disbelief side was in a brain section related to actual physical
distaste, so that the act of not believing something was using neural paths related to things like eating a rancid pear. The Harris study was not the only one to find such connections, which suggests that there is a big neurological difference between believing in things and disbelieving in them, and this may not depend on what it is that is being disbelieved in (evolution or God, for instance).
These findings shouldn't come as a shock from a tortucan model perspective, where there wouldn't necessarily be a difference in the cognitive architecture between tortucan religionists and tortucan atheists, versus non-tortucan religionists or atheists. As for detecting the difference between tortucans and non-tortucans, though, there is I think a sure-fire way to do it.
Tortucans should be able to perceive internal contradictions (those A != A problems again) without difficulty. We know, for example, that a Hank Hanegraaff (the Young Earth Creationist radio show "Bible Answer Man") is perfectly capable of laying out all the many internal inconsistencies in the Book of Mormon. And that's because Hank is not a Mormon. Put Bible contradictions in front of him, though, and he no longer sees them as problems. I would suggest those are falling within his tortucan ruts and consequently are governed by a different set of cognitive circuits.
Put Hank in the MRI during this and there should be a discernable difference in what the brain is doing. The normal suite of uncertainty detectors that would swing into play when reading the Book of Mormon might still start up, until the brain realized (possibly well before any conscious perception) that one of the tortucan ruts was being entered, in which case a new signal (say from the emotion gatekeeper, the amygdala) swamps the normal response, all without the conscious Bible Answer Man being any the wiser.
If such research is undertaken and MHBS is established as a real cognitive system, then there are some potentially interesting implications for how we deal with a natural population that includes tortucans.
My gut suspicion is that the tortucan phenomenon falls along a normal distribution bell curve, with very few people (the Feynmans of the world) populating the low end, far more people in the middle bump (the Carl Sagans and Francis Collinses and Garrett Hardins) and relatively few occupying the far MHBS fringe (which certainly includes all contemporary creationists, Holocaust and HIV/AIDS deniers, and Apollo moon landing hoax believers).
From an evolutionary perspective that distribution may have been well-honed by selection pressure, which would suggest that there are some darned good reasons why there are as many tortucans as there are.
If you think about a tortucan rut in a mild form, you can see that it is not necessarily a bad thing for a thinking species to have. The single-mindedness of it may well have contributed to our survival. It's the spirit of the soldier who fights on against all odds, or the scientist who perseveres in spite of public rebuke. As a culture we tend to admire those things (within limits): think Galileo (who had a knack for not knowing when to back off).
Unfortunately the tortucan rut is also the property of the religious or political zealot, from the Inquisition to the French Revolution's guillotine. Religions and politics may well be inherently tortucan-friendly pursuits.
Given our history then, there is every reason to think that human societies are perfectly capable of getting along quite nicely, thank you, with the tortucan mix they have. Of course when extreme tortucans get in charge, you run the risk of those societies spinning out of control, as the mid-range tortucans are all too able to follow the pull of the motivated leadership right off the cliff (from Quetzalcoatl human sacrificers to Nazi death camp engineers).
Which means the role of the secularist and freethinker is not to try to remake the human nature tortucan bell curve to make it more Richard Dawkinsish. Indeed, this may be intrinsically impossible. But rather our goal is far more social: to contribute to and encourage the institutional brakes that minimize the likelihood of any tortucan extreme from getting their mitts on the reins of power in the first place.
While you can't change a tortucan's mind, you can keep them from being a nuisance.
How do we do this? Not by disengagement. The recent book
The Secular Conscience by Austin Dacey stresses exactly these points: that liberal freethinkers have retired from the public debate all too long, unnecessarily hampered by a Privacy Fallacy that moral and social goods are merely private convictions, not something that civil secular societies must grapple with openly via reasoned argument.
This is where the decidable/undecidable dichotomy I mentioned before comes back into the picture. When Stephen Jay Gould sought to defuse the religion versus science debate by proposing his NOMA argument (that the two fields occupied "non-overlapping magisteria") he got a lot of criticism from both camps. Skeptical thinkers rightly noted how religions seem prone to overstepping the line (think Intelligent Design) while religious philosophers bristled at having their world circumscribed into a privatized moral and ethical limbo, where "science" took care of everything important.
In my view Gould had got the problem almost right. It is not an issue of science versus religion, though, but rather
decidable propositions (naturally the province of objective scientific investigation) versus
undecidable ones (where philosophy rightly governs).
Religions happen to be a peculiar form of philosophy whose purported revelations tended in their ignorance to venture factual or historical statements that blundered into the decidable realm. Just as sacrificing people to Quetzalcoatl to sustain terrestrial rotation is a refutable idea, so is the Book of Mormon's pre-Columbian pseudo-history, or the literal Flood of Ken Ham's "Answers in Genesis" Christianity, where herbivorous tyrannosaurs nap with Noah's children on the Ark. But if you venture downstream to the religious beliefs of a Francis Collins you are no longer in a position to pry Jesus off the field with a purely
scientific lever. Wrong he may well be (and I think he is) but not for decidable reasons, and the same caveat applies to any religious system whose doctrines avoid leaking over the boundary into decidable questions.
On the other side, we must also remember that science is not a natural way for people to think. The tortucan part of us is all too willing to only pay attention to the things that reinforce what we want to be true. The scientific method (with its focus on precision of thought, an open culture of peer review, and ultimate utilitarian tests of predictability and repeatability) has wonderfully minimized the self-medicating effects of our tortucan ruts. It has not flattened them out. The best of us may claim only to relatively shallow ones, not to being by nature rut free.
Since an idea worth having is one worth defending, the proper way to keep the tortucan hounds at bay is to expose them properly to the light of public reasoning, and we have quite an arsenal at our disposal to do it. On the scientific front evolution is an ideal litmus test to weed out a lot of tortucans up front. While Hank Hanegraaff pompously declares how in our "modern age of scientific enlightenment" it is impossible to believe in evolution, the plain fact is that exactly the opposite is true, and knowing which questions to ask of such people can cut to the chase very quickly in the tortucan-exposing department.
I've found the fossil intermediate issue handy, for antievolutionists are not merely bad at describing what they would accept as an ancestor for such-and-so an animal. They are literally
incapable of thinking about it.
Another good entry question would be: "What technical journals do you read on a regular basis?" The honest antievolutionist will likely answer "none"---which then leads to the follow-up: "Where are you getting your antievolution information then?" Odds are they are simply repeating the claims of others, and have never got within a hundred miles of reading any of the relevant technical citations themselves. You can show that by one more question: "Did you ever check up on your sources to see if they were right?"
Tortucans don't play this sort of game very well.
But it also means we do have to play it well. And that means carefully documenting whatever claims we make, grounding our arguments whenever possible on the solid foundation of primary resources. That is where working together can be so powerful. No individual can hope to have read everything, but it is amazing what a collective system can do. After all, that is exactly what has made the scientific culture so reliably productive.
How does this apply to the religion issues we secularists are so concerned with? If religion has one foot planted in the realm of undecidable propositions, how are we to play that game? By the same "spot the tortucan" approach: find and ask the right questions to put on display the very feature that the apologetic mind is usually so skilled at concealing. What is it they are not thinking about?
Religion is chock-a-block with them. "Don't you believe in God?" Einstein had a good response to that one: define "God" for me and I'll tell you whether I believe it. The lesson here: don't let religionists slip in their assumptions surreptitiously.
Another approach here uses mathematical logic. Though I came up with the idea on my own, unfortunately Bertrand Russell beat me to it: if you take all religions as doctrinal systems there are so many points of contradiction that there are only two alternatives to the question of which one of them could be true. Either one is, or none. Thus the Buddhist worldview cannot simultaneously be true if Jesus is also the incarnate Son of God the Father. Just as with Einstein's "define your terms" reply, forcing tortucans to explain why their version is the obviously superior one to be true will inevitably expose their propensity for double standards and selective use of evidence.
And should the tortucan apologist up the ante and demand, "If you don't believe in God, then what about morality?" Well, here again we have those dusty old philosophers treading the ground ahead of us. Plato pulled the rug out from under that one. The Platonic dilemma concerns from where God gets that morality. If "moral" means only what God tells you it is (and Plato was talking pre-Christian "God" here, so the issue is far more general than God of Abraham issues) then such a morality isn't necessarily "moral" at all. It's just divine command. In order for that morality to actually be moral it has to be so in terms of an
absolute standard. The savvy Christian apologist will probably be nodding in agreement.
At which point you drop the axe: if the morality that God is affirming is true in that way then the truth of that absolute morality has to exist independently of God, otherwise it's just a command morality again. Now Plato found an escape valve here, which Christians can use too: namely that somehow or other God is inherently good and can't help but affirm the right thing. A perfectly legitimate dodge philosophically (an undecidable issue)---but it also leaves the barn door wide open for secular moralists to take up the absolute morality high ground themselves. For secular moralists only require one undecidable assumption (that an absolute morality exists) where the Christian requires
three: that first one,
and the existence of their God,
and so defining its nature to end up on the good side.
This new brand of secular moralism is starting to gain some traction, incidentally, such as Dacey's
The Secular Conscience, with roots spreading back though John Stuart Mill to the incendiary "Atheist Jew" Spinoza.
Approaching such issues with the recognition that your opponent is likely a tortucan, though, channels the logic onto an even tighter track whereby the point is always to demonstrate to
others that the opponent is a tortucan.
Supposing your Christian apologist knows their game, they may be more than willing to pull a "Garrett Hardin" and impale themselves even farther by lunging in: "OK, smarty-pants, where are you getting your absolutely morality from? Isn't yours just the whim of man (sinful Fallen Man at that)?" Hardly. Both of us have lists of supposedly moral things. Mine is consciously reasoned out, and defended by conscience and consequence. Yours, by contrast, was one you nipped off ready made from a website---a really old one, pre-computer as it happens. Both of us ought to defend the morality of our lists, shouldn't we?
My secular morality list, grounded on concepts of universal reciprocity and fairness (the "do unto others" thing), has slavery as a bad idea. Your biblical one doesn't have a problem with slavery though. How is that? Is slavery not actually
wrong? Jump into Exodus chapter 21 to see what I mean. And then there's this witch-killing rule in Exodus 22:18? Oh yes, and those recurring acts of genocide, from Joshua 6:21 ("And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city, both man and woman, young and old, and ox, sheep, and ass, with the edge of the sword") to Numbers chapters 31 and 32 reporting how, after the defeat of the Midianites, Moses ordered all of their male children and non-virginal women killed (the 32,000 virgins were prudently retained as captives).
That's where it is handy not merely to have read the primary source, but having a Bible right there so you can consult the hardcover version of their pre-computer blog right on the spot, so that the tortucan side of their professed belief in an absolute morality can be explored at length.
Other religious traditions would need to be investigated with similar precision, which is why a collective enterprise of collating litmus test issues can be so productive. While tortucan hunting can be a strenuous contact sport, it is one I suggest not without its redeeming pleasures and larger social importance.
At this point the lecture concludes and I moved on to the question period, which focused on a variety of specific instances of applying the model. Quite a few questioners were uncertain about my defense of a secular absolute morality, probably because they have been unused to thinking that such a thing could be possible from a non-theocratic framework.
169 Comments
Rilke's granddaughter · 6 January 2010
Absolutely brilliant. Thanks!
Mike Elzinga · 6 January 2010
This is quite interesting; and it also appears to relate to other features of neurological development in both humans and other animals.
For very young children or other animals to survive, they must very quickly “obey” their parents. And this goes on for a period of years until the brain can develop enough to start absorbing and processing experience and adapting to reality quickly.
If such development is stunted – and I am inclined to believe that authoritarian religions do just that – individuals remain in a childish state in which “recipes for behavior and belief” are the only way they can function.
It is somewhat like those cats that automatically scratch everywhere around their litter boxes but never bury their droppings; but other cats seem to have made the connection and are very effective at burying their droppings.
People like Richard Feynman are often characterized as “irreverent” or “disrespectful” because they ask “forbidden” questions in order to get past standard belief and onto reality.
On the other hand, ID/creationists attempt to feign the appearance of asking “forbidden questions” when they claim to be questioning the “dogmas of the scientific establishment”. This is childish imitation; the “recipe for appearing inquisitive” while not being so.
So there appears to be a tug-of-war going on in the brains of individuals between following comfortable recipes for getting along in the world as opposed to striking out and exploring while adapting as one goes.
Robert Byers · 6 January 2010
This comment has been moved to The Bathroom Wall.
Hansen · 6 January 2010
Dave Luckett · 6 January 2010
rossum · 6 January 2010
An excellent piece. The idea has obvious links to Morton's Demon.
rossum
Joel · 6 January 2010
Bravo - an excellent article!
One thing I would point out, though, is that I'm neither gay nor sad.
Tupelo · 6 January 2010
This is nicely done and worth my thinking more about (though, frankly, classifying Feynman and Clarke as equals made my eyes bug out and jaw drop like I was "Joe" finding an unexpected Droopy before me.)
I'd add that another, perhaps more basic, influence is what Twain labelled as "Cone Pone Philosophy" - we believe, whatever the evidence before us, what we know (or assume) feeds us, or at least our pride.
Frank J · 6 January 2010
Rolf Aalberg · 6 January 2010
Ron Okimoto · 6 January 2010
Where does Dawkins rate on the MHBS meter compared to Francis Collins?
eric · 6 January 2010
Amadan · 6 January 2010
The evo/creo debate is a cultural and political one; legitimate scientific debate rarely features. Does MHBS extend beyond reasoning and cognition to to ethics and morality?
I have no doubt that some people on the 'evo' side of the argument have used questionable tactics etc at some time or another. But there is such an abundance of really egregious carry-on by the creo proponentsists that I have to wonder how some of them can look in the mirror. I would have thought (as a non-psychologist) that cognitive processes dealing with Right and Wrong would tend to invoke a more questioning attitude. Perhaps not.
Venus Mousetrap · 6 January 2010
This comment has been moved to The Bathroom Wall.
Venus Mousetrap · 6 January 2010
And hang on... Hollywood? Have you ever seen Hollywood get evolution right?
Stanton · 6 January 2010
This comment has been moved to The Bathroom Wall.
Stanton · 6 January 2010
Matt G · 6 January 2010
I've been trying to figure this out as well - how can really smart people be creationists? It seems like they can be perfectly rational and reasonable in some areas of their lives, but in certain others, a whole new thought process kicks in. It's like their ability to think logically can be turned on and off at will.
RBH · 6 January 2010
All Byers posts and responses to them will be tossed to the Bathroom Wall, with the exception of the two responses that point out how good the Byers' illustration of the main point of the OP is. DNFTT, please.
OgreMkV · 6 January 2010
This is really excellent. When you combine this with Kruger-Dunning, it becomes a fascinating concept.
I might perhaps add, that the tortucan is 'programmed' to have these type of responses. Most of the time, it appears to happen in early childhood. When parent's say, "don't question me" or the preacher has an instant response to any questions. People become distrustful when the answer 'I don't know' is given... especially when science gives it. "The pastor has the answer, why doesn't this genius scientist?"
Of course, you don't question the pastor, that's forbidden. No one stands up in church and says, "you're full of bull cookies". Ihave seen people shaking their head in church, but they never go to the pastor and say, "WTF are you on about?"
Richard Simons · 6 January 2010
Further to Eric's comments about play, I've noticed that on creationist/anti-evolution sites there is far less joking around and the jokes are more ponderous than on evolution-supporting sites (I don't think this is just due to my own perspective on the issue, and I wish I could contribute more to the humour).
I wonder if tortucan attitudes are related to the type of humour preferred. I suspect they would tend to favour slapstick and one-liner put-down humour and veer away from humour involving the unexpected and bizarre.
jerrym · 6 January 2010
I can't tell if I am a tortucan or not. I practice the skill of consiously holding contradictry beliefs simultaniously, without conflict. The skill amounts to knowing when to apply each.
Rational science is increadibly valuable in explaining and manipulating nature, the physical world. And yet by opening ones self to the irrational, direct experience of the world around us, an understanding can be achieved not possible through rational thought.
Which is "true"? I think both.
Rolf Aalberg · 6 January 2010
Matt G · 6 January 2010
Matt G · 6 January 2010
freelunch · 6 January 2010
Matt G · 6 January 2010
Matt G · 6 January 2010
James Downard · 6 January 2010
Lots of excellent comments and questions.
Ron Okimooto on Dawkins on MHBS meter ... he has a bit of an axe to grind against Catholics (perhaps due to his upbringing) and in evolution has been slow to absorb the implications of exaptation/spandrels coming from his rival Gould et al. on this side of the Atlantic. But apart from that I'd have to peg him lower on the index than say Carl Sagan. Needless to say all taxonomizing in that way is purely speculative unless and until MHBS is identified as a real cognitive system, measurable in the old fMRI.
On Amadan's question whether the tortucan mind applies beyond reasoning and cognition, to ethics and morality ... this is an "oh duh, yes!" matter. Recall my point about decidable/undecidable issues. The tortucan system spills across both boundaries, often with startling ease. It is necessary though to keep the d/u issue clear on our side to keep the debate clearly focused as to evidence and logic.
Re Richard Simons, I haven't seen any clearly differentiated humor types between say creationists and atheists. The only area where it might play a role is in the notion that deep humor requires a mind naturally critical, able to detect irony and pomposity, and it may well be that this is not so easily done by ideallogically focused tortucans.
Btw I would use a lower case tortucanm to refer to the overall bell curve population, and the captital Tortucan specifically to refer to those on the far end of the curve.
As for jerrym consciously holding contradictory beliefs, could you give an example of that? It's always good to home in on the specific case to clarify the generality.
I mentioned some additional technical papers regarding possibly tortucan-related brain systems in some comments I posted under the Freshwater hearing thread (anterior cingulate gyrus and so on). It would be interesting to see whether people's brains do actually illicit a trademark system when the MHBS kicks in.
eric · 6 January 2010
On a completely different tack from my previous post, some books on chimp studies I've read say that their ability to solve complex problems degrades depending on the reward. Put one banana at the end of several pullys, levers, etc, and the chimp is fine. Put a bunch there, and they can't do the problem. The rational problem-solving part of their brain just shuts down when there's so much at stake. And like the human fMRI studies, when they looked at brain activity they found that different parts of the brain were activated in each case.
Could this be related? Maybe when someone says something about a belief we don't hold deeply, we find it easy to engage in rational analysis, but when they start making comments about our momma (or our religion, or our politics), the rational side of us just shuts down. We then find it very difficult to analyze their arguments rationally.
This doesn't mean Creationists are less rational, it means they have different core beliefs which trigger the less ratinoal brain mechanism.
eric · 6 January 2010
Dave · 6 January 2010
Frank J · 6 January 2010
jerrym · 6 January 2010
harold · 6 January 2010
Rilke's Granddaughter · 6 January 2010
harold · 6 January 2010
jerrym -
Could you be specific as to what you are talking about?
Marion Delgado · 6 January 2010
I think it's hubristic to condemn compartmentalization out of hand, and this does nothing for me. Not even interesting.
Kermit · 6 January 2010
Quidam · 6 January 2010
Les Lane · 6 January 2010
It's worth noting that tortucan behavior has a social component. Both religious and political beliefs are generally shared with social peers. It's easy to be part of a social group that shares absolute beliefs on undecidable issues.
We tend to consider those on the "other side" nutjobs. Remember that there's a distribution of reasonableness on all sides. It's worth occasional discussion with the more reasonable on the opposite side. Also consider whether you're among the more reasonable on your side.
jerrym · 6 January 2010
John Harshman · 6 January 2010
Matt G · 6 January 2010
Dan · 6 January 2010
PaulC · 6 January 2010
I'm skeptical of all the specific points in this essay, but I agree it would be interesting to look at what parts of the the brain kick in when asserting various beliefs. I've long given up on expecting anyone to be rational, least of all myself.
"From an evolutionary perspective that distribution may have been well-honed by selection pressure, which would suggest that there are some darned good reasons why there are as many tortucans as there are."
This is probably true, and what's more there is not much immediate benefit to holding beliefs + logical justification + empirical evidence as opposed to holding beliefs that merely happen to correlate with reality enough to be useful. This includes incorrect generalizations like "heavy objects fall faster", which is often true even though gravitational acceleration in a vacuum is independent of mass. It also includes folk wisdom such as herbal remedies that may encapsulate thousands of years of trial and error (or may amount to pure superstition). Applying the scientific method has clear advantages such as a better understanding of cases in which the intuitive beliefs fail, rejecting the ones that are actually harmful, and even an ability to develop superior but counterintuitive methods. But these advantages presuppose a level of technology that was absent for most of human evolution. So an individual who happens to be right most of the time about many useful things will be more successful than one who is right and fully justified in their belief about just a few things, but stubbornly undecided about everything else.
It's also impossible to justify every possible belief formally, and even some decidable propositions must exceed the grasp of the human intellect, which is far from unlimited. What I have thought for years is that as individuals, we're not really well suited for knowing the "truth" and being justified in our belief. It's more reasonable to think of each person as testing a set of hypotheses and using it to guide their decisions. If we wind up collecting more information in favor than against, that's understandable. Hopefully someone else out there is testing a different hypothesis. (Granted, this fails if the faulty hypotheses are being broadcast from a central authority.) I don't advocate being totally willy-nilly about beliefs, and I do think it is possible and worthwhile to develop a rational understanding of many general scientific principles. I just think that it's possible to get very discouraged by the inability to justify everything that you want to believe (a disorder that hits the skeptically inclined in adolescence or young adulthood), and it should be acceptable to entertain a broader set of working hypotheses than you can justify, which is what everyone (including Feynman) does anyway.
Rilke's Granddaughter · 6 January 2010
Mike Elzinga · 6 January 2010
RBH · 6 January 2010
eric · 6 January 2010
harold · 6 January 2010
RBH -
Yes, maybe "heuristics" would be a better term.
I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about in a rather straightforward context.
The tendency for humans to make bad financial decisions because of people all doing the same thing at the same time is well known.
In certain types of financial decision making, in certain contexts, doing what everyone else does is often the worst thing to do.
However, in many, many contexts, even in our complex society, and even more so in settings encountered by our evolutionary ancestors, this is a great heuristic for a social animal. If you don't have all the information, your best bet is to do what the greatest number of your group members are doing. If all the monkeys in your band suddenly start fleeing from the clearing into the trees, it's a wise idea to follow that example.
Hence the tendency to follow the lead of others in such situations has probably been selected for, and is a strong urge.
It didn't work for the people who were the last buyers of Florida condominiums in late 2006. We can argue that doing that was an "irrational" decision.
But at another level, it may partially arise from an ancient, unconscious tendency that produces "rational" results in many contexts.
Nick (Matzke) · 6 January 2010
Donn · 6 January 2010
Great article. I have often pondered on the same lines, but I like the 'tortucan' word -- it helps in thinking about the subject.
I drew a flowchart on the subject (before I read this article), if it helps anyone please steal it:
http://otherwise.relics.co.za/wiki/Reason/FlowchartingFaith/
\d
harold · 6 January 2010
Reed A. Cartwright · 6 January 2010
jerrym · 6 January 2010
Frank J · 6 January 2010
Alex H · 6 January 2010
jerrym, how do you know your assertions that you aren't your body or thoughts are true?
Reed A. Cartwright · 6 January 2010
To follow up on my previous post, the anti-vaccine crowd tends to fall on the Democrat side of partisan politics. This also happens to be the one of the issues where the consumer are not on the side of science, agreeing with my consumer/corporation axis above.
Cecil Chua · 6 January 2010
From a more management/sociology perspective, Karl Weick has a concept called mindfulness. Mindfulness is a state where you consciously challenge your fundamental assumptions. One of the things the mindfulness literature points out is that it is expensive to be mindful. Mindlessness works in the vast majority of your life. After all, you don't consciously challenge the rituals you take when you wake up and go to the bathroom every day.
I would suspect that the vast majority of believer of false statement here> behave in a mindless way, because correcting the false statement is not material to their lives. You CAN get a high powered job even if you are a believer of false statement>.
In both the mindlessness literature and the lecture on tortuca, one of the key factors is search- the tortuca/mindless individual doesn't search for possible alternatives.
However, consider individuals who actively promote statement> as to why they remain mindless. They have clearly been exposed to the alternative true statements. For them, the search cost is zero. Other people go out of their way to present the alternatives to them. The question then is why these individuals continue to believe what they believe.
I suspect the reason is not a cultural or cognitive one as proposed by the tortuca lecture. I suspect it is a socioeconomic one. People who believe a false statement set up a cultural scaffolding that supports that false statement. Were that social group to accept the true statement, they would bear huge costs to restructure their society. As an example, acceptance of evolution would cause the entire social system of the biblical literalists to fall apart. To be fair, a rejection of evolution would cause much of modern biology to fall apart too. A culture is better off rewarding mouthpieces for attempting to cast doubt on the true statement.
If this is the case, debating with mouthpieces won't work, because they will continue their behavior regardless of what they really believe. The way to address mouthpieces is to eliminate their source of socioeconomic reward.
In conclusion:
1. Tortuca behavior can be construed as rational if we accept that non-tortuca behavior has costs.
2. Mouthpiece behavior cannot be explained by tortuca. I posit a socioeconomic explanation.
3. If the hypothesis from 2 is true, then practically, addressing 2 requires a strategy that differs from debate.
jerrym · 6 January 2010
Rilke's granddaughter · 6 January 2010
Actually, Jerrym, improving technology isn't something scientists do at all - except incidentally. Technology is the province of engineers.
And the kind of inner exploration you describe certainly isn't off-limits or unreachable by science - we're just not very good at it yet.
And it certainly can't be described as "true" - though, being a good Zen Buddhist myself, I have an understanding of what you're talking about.
Stephen Early · 6 January 2010
As a Christian (Eastern Orthodox -- just to plug a minority faith in the US) I really appreciated this well reasoned, short, and non-strident article! The similar tone and reasonableness of the Talk Origins Archive helped me shake off any last shreds of sympathy I had with ID some years ago in a way that the writings of Richard Dawkins never would have.
"For secular moralists only require one undecidable assumption (that an absolute morality exists) where the Christian requires three: that first one, and the existence of their God, and so defining its nature to end up on the good side."
It took me many years of occasional debate with secularists and much thinking to be able to finally agree with the first part of this sentence. I only wish I could have expressed it this succinctly. As to the latter part -- what the Christian requires -- "low Tortucan" Christians might possibly be able to narrow the "undecidable assmptions" down further, possibly to two: first, they would realize that their belief in "their" God hinges solely from the possibly proveable -- if not easily or probably proveable -- physical death and resurrection of the man Jesus. Secondly, and this might apply to non-Christian theists as well, they might believe that the moral absolute is somehow sentient: not that "God" follows the "rules," or makes the "rules," but that in some way "God" "is" the "rules." Anyway, just the thoughts of an amateur contemplator.
Lion IRC · 6 January 2010
There's something arrogant about one human telling another - "thats not really science".
5000 years from now people will look at a Hadron collider and call it primitive psuedo-science.
Pharaohs' priests would have regarded mummification as science.
I say thanks to all the really great scientists 5,000 to 15,000 years ago on whose shoulders other people stand today.
The wheel, writing, metalurgy, astronomy, agricultural science, physics - yes...levers, inclined planes, friction.
Scientists who used hypothesis and method and tested for repeatability.
Lion (IRC)
Hansen · 6 January 2010
RBH · 6 January 2010
Stanton · 6 January 2010
Dan · 6 January 2010
jerrym · 6 January 2010
Jim Foley · 6 January 2010
An insightful analysis. I've tried bringing evidence for evolution to the attention of creationists (http://talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/debates.html), and it's like trying to push the north poles of two strong magnets together. For most creationists, you *cannot* get a straight answer - their brain just repels any contrary evidence, like the "crimestop" technique from George Orwell's 1984. One of those people, interestingly, was Richard Milton (mentioned in your article), undoubtedly the most spectactularly dishonest person I have ever encountered - whether it was deliberate dishonesty or whether his tortuca syndrome is at superhuman levels I was never quite sure.
jerrym · 6 January 2010
Necandum · 6 January 2010
Dave Luckett · 6 January 2010
Nick (Matzke) · 6 January 2010
Dan · 6 January 2010
James Downard · 7 January 2010
Lots more comments afoot.
Harold: I hoped to use the Harris study to suggest the differential ways the brain processes belief information. I don't think it proves the existence of MHBS, which is why I proposed a way that I think would identify it, the A=!A questions. For example, a geneology problem (Sam the son of Harry etc) will illicit a normal contradiction detection system in a fundamentalist Christian, whereas the same problem presented as the Matthew-Luke Joseph genealogy should be sliding into a tortucan rut mode. Like astronomical occultation experiments where one detects the difference by flashing from one shot to the next, such questions should produce a discernable variation if MHBS is a real effect.
Re Nick Matzke, if I gave the impression that there needed to be some tortucan gene then I apologize. I suspect that the tortucan structure is based on the quite normal architecture of the mind. What we're seeing in the extreme examples is just that, a mind largely covered by tortucan swaths rather than isolated tracks. The Kulturkampf Christian subculture appeals to the total mindset here (much as ideological Marxism would for Stalinists).
In any case the proof of MHBS would be in teh fMRI pudding so to speak, and I hope someday studies can be undertaken to settle the matter.
Frank J.: from my interactions with Behe and Dembski over the years, as well as Johnson and Berlinski, these are people unparalleled for their ability not to think about things they don't want to think about. That's why Behe can simulatenously think he accepts "common descent" and yet never actually apply it anywhere, least of all to his own ID perspective.
Which brings up Richard Milton and Jim Foley. Jim's valiant effort to inform the sublimely obtuse Milton on the niceities of human evolution is a classic. And yes, Jim, I would contend he is very very high on the MHBS index, vying with David Berlinski for top dog here.
In fact I first began to get traction on the methodological side of the MHBS thing by investigating just how inept Milton was in his various books, siphoning (selectively) material he did not investigate and showing no skill at connecting even the dots he had himself supposedly read.
But the mixes of minds in tortucan-land is varied. I should note to Kermit that my Baptist creationist nephew (in-law) is a devout Star Trek and Dr. Who fan. Though I think he jumped off the bus when it came to the gay Captain Jack in the Torchwood spinoff, going where no man has gone before, so to speak.
DiscoveredJoys · 7 January 2010
Fascinating article and comments. I think there may be a way of mapping tortucan thought to the type of brain process which support it although I'm not aware of any direct proof.
There has been a great deal of research over the last 30 years into the possibility of there being two types of processes in the brain. System 1 is 'The Autonomous Set of Systems' (TASS) and System 2 is 'The Analytic System'. Now there is a great deal of debate into the difference between the two, but I'll oversimplify and call them the unconscious and conscious systems. The unconscious system does the bulk of the work keeping our bodies going in the environment we find ourselves. The conscious system is where our rational thought takes place and is a later evolutionary development, and is a slow second-guess method of refining the quicker *automatic* responses of the unconscious system.
The key issue is that the TASS is primed to react very quickly to stimulus, driven by emotions, is often trained by experience, is ballistic (i.e. can't be changed during it's operation), and is almost impenetrable by rational thought. So, once you have learned something and made it habitual (like riding a bike, or 'deciding' what political stance you like) you don't have to expend costly rational thought on them.
Now if you are predisposed by key emotional motivations (such as fear of the troop leader, disgust, conformity, desire for certainty, xenophobia) you are likely to believe things 'wholeheartedly' and your TASS will unconsciously filter out any contrary evidence because it would make you unconsciously unhappy - and your rational conscious never gets chance to ascribe any value to the contrary evidence. Its not that it doesn't exist - its just that it is not relevant, it has no importance. Contrary evidence *cannot* be true because you would need to change your very way of being who you are... I believe these people have a 'tortucan' mindset. It includes unswerving (unshakeable and non-rational) belief in a particular religion, or politics, or social group, or sports team. Ardent Creationists (or of course ardent Atheists) may be extreme examples of this type of thinking. The absolute certainty of their worldview (motivated by enormously strong unconscious emotions) cannot permit contrary evidence - otherwise their entire basis of being is compromised.
Of course other people are motivated by different unconscious motivations, or weaker ones, hence the variation in 'strength of faith'.
I recommend 'The Robot's Rebellion' by Keith E Stanovich, or 'Strangers to Ourselves' by Timothy D Wilson as tasters for these ideas and a wealth of references to scientific papers and articles.
Ravilyn Sanders · 7 January 2010
DS · 7 January 2010
Nick,
The Seventh Day Adventist thread has been infested with trolls for months now. Please close the thread and ban the troll addresses if you have that capability.
Thanks.
Stanton · 7 January 2010
J W Mitchell · 7 January 2010
This is the best analysis of creationist thought that I've read in many years of reading on the subject (and a now-abandoned book project on this very subject). It's not just stupidity (though stupidity can certainly facilitate the adoption of faulty ideas), and the treatment of creationism as lack of thought - rather than as a pathology of thought - denies us the opportunity to recognize similar pathologies in other areas. I'm overjoyed the author recognizes this and put a name to it.
I did notice one minor issue:
"Odds are they are simply repeating the claims of others, and have never got within a hundred miles of reading any of the relevant technical citations themselves."
While this is certainly true of the "garden variety" creationist, it is much less true with regard to "top tier" creationists. Duane Gish, for example (who was kind enough to let me attend a "debate workshop", even knowing I was not a creationist) would carry around a briefcase full of original articles, which he could fetch and quote from in the course of the debate. This is a very important point, and fully supports the "tortucan" model: a technically trained creationist can read original literature and process it in such a way to support their own views. This processing is a matter of pattern recognition - an eye for internal and external inconsistencies and the criticism of other works and authors. While it is intellectually sophisticated, this mental algorithm falls flat compared with the scientific approach, which attempts to do a "best fit" over the widest appropriate range of data and models, rather than a narrowly selected and filtered (and therefore biased) set of information. I've sometimes entertained myself by reading journals "like a creationist would" in order to identify the flags that would allow them to criticize the work or use it to criticize other work. It's easier than you'd think, and it gives some interesting insight into a mental pitfall one can step into if one isn't careful in his or her thought process.
I hope that the author continues to mine this particular vein - it is very rich and I think very relevant to the philosophy and psychology of science. I would enjoy reading much more by this author - a book comes to mind.
Matt G · 7 January 2010
Hansen · 7 January 2010
harold · 7 January 2010
Matt G · 7 January 2010
Paul Burnett · 7 January 2010
Just in case nobody's referenced this yet:
http://xkcd.com/258/
James Downard · 7 January 2010
J. W. Mitchell raises a lot of points that I couldn't get into in a tightly packed talk. I agree totally that Gish (and his doppleganger at the DI Jonathan Wells) operate very differently in their position at the top of the antievolution food chain. Both are "detail fiddlers": scavenging and presenting surgically selected blips of quotes or technical claims. This behavior puts them in a far more dangerous category, as some (a lot, most?) of their work is so carefully crafted to avoid contrary material under the noses that either their minds are almost completely carpeted with tortucan ruts, or their is a genuine element of mendacity here.
By comparison, Casey Luskin is far more prone to merely obtuse repetition of other's arguments, muddled by how own limited understanding of the technical issues (as quite a few posters here at Panda's Thumb have deliciously documented).
I also read technical papers with an eye to spotting potential quote mining targets (one I spotted on whales actually did end up almost used by Phillip Johnson on the old Firing Line debate, fed to him by Michael Behe who got the source wrong). In an ideal world all scientists should be advised to think how their presentation could be mined by antievolutionists, and phrase things accordingly, but the fact is that most scientists are far too busy with their own work to bother at all how it is to be misused by others.
As for: "I hope that the author continues to mine this particular vein - it is very rich and I think very relevant to the philosophy and psychology of science. I would enjoy reading much more by this author - a book comes to mind."
Actually I have been doing just that. It's called "Troubles in Paradise: The Methodology of Creationism and the Dynamics of Misbelief." Its a very long one, which not a few of my technical reviewers over the years (like Michael Antolin) have stressed, rendering it probably too big to publish in conventional book form.
I'm currently revamping the material to accommodate the newer wrinkles in the antievolution matter, as well as incorporating the insights of the tortucan model framework which emerged after I began writing.
The seven (increasingly large) introduction and chapters I finished before the retooling to the newer version are available as Word doc files for anybody game enough to plow through it. Just email me at RJDownard@aol.com and I'll be happy to zip them to you.
David Berlinski has the Introduction and first three chapters btw (there's a long and hilarious story about how that came about) so any reader of those chapters can see stuff that Berlinski had read but had a lot of trouble wrapping his own tortucan mind around.
I cover a lot of the paleontological evidence for evolution (as well as the evasions of creationists like Gish) in the first chapters and the amazing vacuum of Intelligent Design in one on "Creationism Lite." Human evolution (and the issues of the origin of mind and language) are in chapter 5, and 6 tackles the thorny subject of the religious underpinings of conventional creationism.
Tim Helble · 7 January 2010
Interesting stuff. I wonder if Hoppe's essay could be adapted for one of the psychology journals, and how the essay's ideas would be accepted by the professional psychology community.
One fairly significant error - strictly speaking, Hank Hanegraaff can't be thought of as a young earth creationist - he as spoken against the literal six-day interpretation of Genesis 1 more than once. That's enough to put him on Ken Ham's "compromiser" list. For example, he did so on the May 27, 2009 Bible Answer Man radio show (http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/Bible_Answer_Man/). Labeling Hanegraaff as a young earth creationist may reflect Hoppe's bias (does he have tortucan too?). I would agree Hanegraaff's arguments against evolution are extremely weak and come from second- or third-hand sources, which is probably why Hoppe labeled him as a young earth creationist.
Hoppe's discussion about putting Hanegraaff in a MRI machine and asking him about the Book of Mormon and Bible contradictions may also have some problems. While the Bible does have some contradictions which which I haven't seen explained very well if at all, some of the "contradictions" atheists present at best seem to be splitting hairs.
Dan · 7 January 2010
IanW · 7 January 2010
Is it still possible to crew a pirate ship in Tortuca?
RBH · 7 January 2010
James Downard · 7 January 2010
Re Tim, Helbe: Hanagraaff is a young earth creationist for the age of the earth. He is uncertain whether he is a young universe creationist too (possibly because the anthropic arguments so popular today among IDers relies on conventional cosmology, evolution of stars over billions of years, etc).
Thanks Hoppe for noticing how the tactical issue has been lost. My model suggests that trying to de-tortucan the human population is doomed to failure. But we know from history that societies have good and bad periods when it comes to limiting the ill effects of the naturally occurring tortucan mix.
As for sailing to tortuca, it is a place one goes only at one's peril, but if you have the mind for it you'll never realize that you're there!
Per Eric from a bit back, the chimpanzee overload issue does sound relevant. Do you have some technical refs for that? I'd like to investigate that. I have noticed the other primate experiments on numeracy where they have trouble overriding their instinct: in a game where they are presented with two bowls of a favored candy, where the first bowl grabbed goes to their fellow test subject. If they see physical candies they instinctively go for the larger number. But if presented with bowls with symbols for the content quantity they are able to bypass the normal connections and select the smaller number first, thus getting the bigger number for themselves.
eric · 7 January 2010
eric · 7 January 2010
Mike Elzinga · 7 January 2010
jerrym · 7 January 2010
DiscoveredJoys · 7 January 2010
eric · 7 January 2010
harold · 7 January 2010
Rilke's Granddaughter · 7 January 2010
Greg Esres · 7 January 2010
Who exactly is James Downard? I don't see much when Googling the name, except for this essay and one on TalkReason.
Reed A. Cartwright · 7 January 2010
Keyser Söze?
phantomreader42 · 7 January 2010
phantomreader42 · 7 January 2010
Matt G · 7 January 2010
Steve P. · 7 January 2010
Stanton · 7 January 2010
So, Steve, do you believe that a woman who has a miscarriage is guilty of murder?
James Downard · 7 January 2010
Regarding my credentials, I have a BA in history from Eastern Washington University (it was a state college in those days). I work at a factory and have on the side maintained a far from casual interest in the creation/evolution debate. I have several papers at Talk Reason, and as noted above have been working on a book.
In the off from left field department: methinks Steve P. has a bit of a hobbyhorse to ride, but apparently doesn't require any more detailed statement of mine on abortion for him to decide on what basis I have reached my view. While cellular replication begins at conception, the consciousness of that entity is quite another matter. Lest this thread by derailed completely, the point at issue was Hardin's analytical method, not whether life originates at conception.
Stanton · 7 January 2010
Or, rather, would you deny a pregnant 9 year old rape victim an abortion, even if you knew that even if she stood very little chance of surviving the pregnancy?
Kaushik · 8 January 2010
@Steve P
"Anyone who is pro-choice pins their view on the fundamental assumption that life begins at some point during gestation, whether when the first heart beat is detected, or the fetus begins to look like a person, or when the fetus is deemed viable, or life begins once the gestation period is concluded with the birth of the child."
The pro-choice argument does not depend on pointing out a stage where life begins...
"The point being, there is no logical, rational basis for such a position. There are no separate, distinct events, as suggested by the labels zygote,blastocyst, embryo, fetus. They are all in actuality different phases of a single, seemless event. Therefore, the only logical conclusion that can be made is that life starts from conception."
a zygote,blastocyst or embryo does not have a central nervous system and can not think feel or suffer, so I wouldn't consider it to be murder.
To ilustrate my point, consider a hypothetical situation:
There is a fire in a fertility clinic. Ten frozen embryos and a dog are trapped inside. If you could only save the embryos OR the dog, which one would you save?
I would save the dog because it can suffer and I empathise whith it. The same reasoning applies for abortion. Having an unwanted child makes both parent and child suffer while a zygote,blastocyst or embryo can't.
I think my ethics (and, I suspect, the ethics of most of the pro-choice people) are based on empathy rather than rules like:'Do not kill anything that can be classifed as human life'.
You may disagree with the reasoning but you can't claim the argument is a result of selectivly ignoring data that contradicts it(i.e. a tortucan shell). Especially as the OP criticizes a pro-choicer, Hardin, for engaging in such behaviour. Maybe your tortucan shell prevented you form seeing it.
Steve P. · 8 January 2010
Mr. Downard,
It is not my intention to derail this thread by getting bogged down in an abortion debate.
However, Stanton's and Kaushik's comments reinforce my point. Their rebuttals delve into exploring the consequences of the rational observation that life must begin at conception rather than some arbitrary point along the gestation timeline.
I think you would agree that the potentially unpleasant side effects of a rational decision are not an argument against it.
SWT · 8 January 2010
Steve P., I think you have almost completely missed the point of the original post.
The pro-choice people who have posted in this thread have demonstrated that they are aware of the basis for their position. I suspect that they could articulate fairly and accurately the arguments against their position (unlike anti-evolution activists, who never seem to be able to articulate evolutionary principles and the related evidence accurately). I'm not sure there is any scientific data against their position, but the original poster himself noted that Hardin's data -- which was purported to support an arguement with which the original poster agreed -- did not in fact support Hardin's position. Stanton appears to me to be data-driven, and if his posting here is any indication, would be willing to modify an opinion or belief based on new data.
By way of contrast, I remember this other guy (an ID advocate, IIRC) who had a lot of questions about endosymbiosis, but disappeared from the thread shortly after he was provided with links to a number of references that would have directly addressed his doubts about endosymbiosis as a feasible evolutionary mechanism.
MattB · 8 January 2010
Steve P - isn't it equally possible to just disregard 'life' as a bogus category for this purpose? I don't care what 'life' is or when it starts, the key issue is around whether certain arrangements of matter have the ability to experience suffering. Indeed, the fetishisation of 'life' as some sort of meaningful additional property that has to come from somewhere is one of the key creationist sticking points
Robin · 8 January 2010
DS · 8 January 2010
SWT wrote:
"By way of contrast, I remember this other guy (an ID advocate, IIRC) who had a lot of questions about endosymbiosis, but disappeared from the thread shortly after he was provided with links to a number of references that would have directly addressed his doubts about endosymbiosis as a feasible evolutionary mechanism."
That same fool obstinately refuses to admit that he was completely wrong about competition in lions as well, even though he was also provided with references for that. Seems to be a pattern with this particular individual.
That's right Steve, I'm not going to let you get away with spouting even moire nonsense until you confess to your past transgressions. People here have very long memories, if you destroy your credibility they will remember. If you refuse to look at evidence, they will remember. You know nothing, but more tellingly you refuse to learn anything. Why don't you just go away?
DS · 8 January 2010
Steve wrote:
"I think you would agree that the potentially unpleasant side effects of a rational decision are not an argument against it."
Thus saith the man who lives in a fairy world where all creatures cooperate to help each other survive forever and there is no competition, ever. Way to go Steve. Guys like you usually end up as candidates for a Darwin Award.
phantomreader42 · 8 January 2010
Robin · 8 January 2010
Stanton · 8 January 2010
Robin · 8 January 2010
Stanton · 8 January 2010
Dan · 8 January 2010
eric · 8 January 2010
fnxtr · 8 January 2010
harold · 8 January 2010
RBH · 8 January 2010
OK, folks, the abortion derail has gone far enough. While I'm busy today, when I have time I'll toss any further remarks on it unless they can be tied directly to the topic of the OP.
Greg Esres · 8 January 2010
jerrym · 8 January 2010
James Downard · 8 January 2010
Having watched the temporary derailment that Steve P. did not want to initiate, I'll try to open up a track back onto my particular argument.
The moral questions that get raised in the abortion debate (a) directly and inevitably relate to the consequences of choices made. In this sense I am very much a William James style pragmatist, looking at the results of following through on the logic of positions.
Moral frameworks (especially "absolute" ones) inevitably bump into conflict territory, which moral philsophers have been grappling with busily ever since people started to reason about such things. The reason I contend why those debates are so contentious is that people are forgetting that moral and ethical questions are occuring across the divide in the undecidable category. It isn't that the reasoned propositions there aren't either true or false, but that reason alone cannot resolve them. The only thing you can do is take a stand pro or con on the proposition and then carefully work through the consequences fo that choice. Again this is an issue I could have elaborated at MUCH more length but I was trying to keep my Kennewick talk within a manageable under half hour presentation length.
So back to the issue of testing for MHBS. Here I invite anyone with expertise in the psychological testing heuristics to put their two or more cents in. The Harris study, for instance, embedded their religion questions in a much larger framework of general statements, hoping to catch the fireworks of religious contention in the fMRI along the way).
Because religious propositions regularly (maybe even inevitably) straddle the decidable/undecidable divide, they expose the double-standard character of the MHBS component: the ability to use one set of standards in one area, but not in another. Several of the posters here have noted the "I showed them sources for their questions and then they vamoosed" phenomenon. That propensity for asking for "evidence" from the opposite camp but not applying the same standard to their own is, I contend, one of the methodological diagnosts if the tortucan side of our nature. Michael Behe would be a typical example here, where he has repeatedly castigated evolutionists for failing to supposedly prove their scenarios at the point mutation level, but never thinks he needs to even present an ID scenario, let along achieve such detail himself.
So "scholarly fairness" issues would, I think, be one of the guiding principles in trying to work out a test protocol to isolate the A=!A cognitive flipping feature that I propose could open the gateway to seeing whether MHBS is real and to what extent it relates to basic cognitive attributes.
For instance, I started out practicing parasitical scholarship when I was young (and cringe to see what claptrap I could believe when I was 18). No one taught me how to do that, it came quite naturally, but I was ultimately taught how not to do it, in thehistorical methods training I went through in college.
I definitely think the tortucan mind is very active in politics, especially on the radical ends of left and right, but one of the difficulties of teasing that side out experimentally is that too much of the debates turn on differing philosophical assumptions that are willing to tolerate contrary evidence in a way the sciences do not. For example, how many individual lives get disrupted due to immigration policies (expelled illegal immigrants or home grown unemployment).
One of the problems I had evaluating Ann Coulter for instance stemmed from this limitation when treading into political discourse. I could observe her making some basic scholarly mistakes (misreading sources, jumping to conclusions) but her position on any cognitive scale didn't clarify for me until she started venturing views on evolution. Since I had a full background data set here to evaluate where her claims were coming from and how disconnected she was from actual sources, I could conclude more precisely how boldly superficial and lazy a thinker she is.
The key here is that evolution matters are decidable questions in a way a lot of political questions aren't,and can allow asking scholarly questions about sources and standards of evidence that can expose in theory a differential cognitive toolkit by the very precision of the issues being evaulated.
eric · 8 January 2010
Robin · 8 January 2010
Mike Elzinga · 8 January 2010
eric · 8 January 2010
jerrym · 8 January 2010
Rilke's Granddaughter · 8 January 2010
jerrym · 8 January 2010
jerrym · 8 January 2010
Stuart Weinstein · 9 January 2010
jerrym · 9 January 2010
Frank J · 10 January 2010
James Downard · 10 January 2010
Frank J.: 'Not sure if this adds anything to your evaluation, but just after publication of “Godless,” and after essentially admitting that the chapters on evolution were written by DI people, not her (she may have added some words to puff it up), she said clearly in a talk radio interview that she was an “idiot” about science. I can’t think of any other subject in the US where one can get away with admitting being an “idiot” and still claim that ~99.9% of the experts in the field are wrong.'
Coulter may have been taking a stab at self-deprecation, or smarmy comparison (she may be an "idiot", but she's still way smarter than those godless evolutionists). Alas she cannot defend herself solely by saying the DI made her do it. Though she relied heavily on Dembski and company for talking points she actually tried doing her own thinking on occasion. For example, fellow lawyer Philip Johnson had conceded the reptile-mammal jaw transition as a point for Darwinists, while trying to minimize its significance. Coulter evidently didn't like even that concession dangling around so put on her wee thinking cap and "reasoned" that the jaw shift Johnson had tactically conceded was actually a problem for evolution, for how did those little old jaw bones know where to migrate to? Well of course, design!
The irony here was that she was relying on (a) her own lack of knowledge and (b) Johnson's suppression of evidence. For Johnson had explicitly cited an article on the reptile-mammal transition by the noted mammal evolution expert Hopson in which he had noted how the mammal embryo literally recapitulates the fossil transition sequence. So there has never been a time when the jaw bones had a chance to be wandering anywhere. They were being rammed and tugged without any leeway gradually into the positions they occupy today.
To further clinch the daisy chain of nobody telling anybody anything that mattered, one of her advisors was David Berlinski, who only just before had read chapter two of my unpublished book as well as the "Three Macroevolutionary Episodes" book I wrote urged by Berlinski's spark of interest in getting my important argument to a wider audience.
In those works I had explicitly explained Johnson's knowledge of and failure to mention the embryological matter. At the time Berlinski emailed to me that I had proven that Johnson did "pseudoscience" (no kidding, his word!). Anyway it was obvious that none of this filtered back to Coulter, nor had Berlinski ever made available to her any of my chapters or the 3ME book (which I had explicitly authorirized him to do).
Coulter beautifully illustrates all the pitfalls and limitations of teh current design movement. The DI end simply doesn't pay enough attention to the details (including their own) to operate at any deeper than a primary school apologetic level. The doctrinal YEC crowd actually are prone to supplying more technically minded arguments (John Woodmorappe on the reptile-mammal transition in Answers in Genesis' "Technical Journal" for instance, which Philip Johnson read and then recommended to Berlinski, who imprudently repeated it in print as a legitimate argument, which is how I tangled with Berlinski and ended up doing that 3ME book that Coulter was never told about).
Tactically then the folks to watch out about are still the core doctrinal YEC activists, as the DI is increasingly playing the part of the Trotskyites of creationism. The Coulters of the world are merely vocal flotsame floating along a tide about which they know very little and care even less to understand.
Acitta · 10 January 2010
There are a couple of people at the University of Toronto who are doing work on the neurological nature of religion. Dr. John Vervaeke gave a talk at CFI Ontario entitled "Is a Secular Spirituality Possible?". He suggests that if you separate the actual beliefs "credo" from the mental processes involved in belief "religio", then you find that there are real cognitive processes that religious practices are attempting to enhance. These processes can be enhanced through non-religious "psycho-technologies" just as well as religious ones.
The other person whose work I find interesting, is Dr. Jordon B. Peterson who, in his book and TV series "Maps of Meaning", proposes that there is a common structure to many ancient myths that are cross cultural and which he suggests relate to neurological processes. It involves how we map the world neurologically and deal with the known and the unknown. The unknown represented mythologically by a dragon or the Great Mother, is potentially dangerous. Culture, represented by the Great Father is our map of the known and protects us from the unknown by having rules of behaviour and explanation for everything. However, the known is finite while the unknown is infinite and will always impinge on us and undermine our maps of the known. This causes fear and discomfort because we do not know how to behave in the face of the unknown. The Great Son is the "Hero" who risks his life to face the unknown and defeat the "dragon". In this way the unknown is converted to the known and culture is renewed. Anyhow, he relates all of this at great length to neurological processes.
Frank J · 11 January 2010
jerrym · 11 January 2010
eric · 11 January 2010
eric · 11 January 2010
Robin · 11 January 2010
James Downard · 11 January 2010
Thanks Acitta for the pointers on Verjaeke and Peterson, I'll see what I can find there.
ReFrank J on Trotsyites ... Trotsky was one of Stalin's rivals in the early days of the old Soviet Union. He thought to appeal to the party masses to fight Stalin's increasingly dictatorial style, clueless to the fact that there were no "party masses" to appeal to. He fled the country eventually and one of Stalin's assassins caught up with him in Mexico in 1940 and exit Trotsky.
The ID movement is performing the role of the Trotskyites for creationism: a small group of elitists who think they are somehow leading the larger group when they are only being used tactically by the rest. Creationists today easily coopt Discovery Institute sources when convenient, even tagging themselves as Intelligent Designers, but without changing their core beliefs or behavior any more than Stalinists were really listening to the Trotskyites back in the 1930s.
jerrym · 13 January 2010
Lotharsson · 14 January 2010
Very interesting post (and comments)!
I imagine there are some links here to the work by Bob Altemeyer on authoritarianism, particularly with regard to "right wing authoritarian followers". (This is not a political classification; here "right wing" refers to those who doggedly support existing authorities rather than foment revolution to install new ones.) RWA followers tend to have a chosen set of authority figures/sources and to derive their positions (and thinking) on any number of issues from those authorities. I'm guessing there's a lot of tortuca thinking involved ;-)
Coulter is a "transmitter" in the lexicon of Dave Neiwert. These people function as broadcasters of memes carefully produced by other people, usually (at least lately in the US) in the service of right wing political ideology. Accordingly it doesn't matter if she calls herself an idiot on science, or violates voting laws herself after complaining that ACORN is stealing the vote or something, or says the moon is *really* made of rainbow-coloured Stilton - as long as her transmissions are successful, which they clearly are. FWIW I tend to think the "science idiot" meme was a clever transmission tactic, not a blatant admission of incompetence. As was implied above, her audience *love* to be pandered to as being smarter than the "so-called experts" - also a staple tactic of Fox News, I believe.
Neiwert is a journalist and author who studies authoritarian and militia movements in the US. His blog, Orcinus, is an excellent resource. It also contains two series of posts by his blog colleague Sara Robinson. These are entitled "Cracks In The Wall" and "Tunnels and Bridges" and are about how - if you have the time and patience and skill set - you can help nurture conditions that may encourage authoritarian followers to ... er, emerge from their shell a little bit, and perhaps ultimately start to think for themselves.
FWIW, I saw the drink scenario in the first person.
phantomreader42 · 14 January 2010
jerrymq · 14 January 2010
jerrym · 14 January 2010
jerrymq?? I forgot who I was.
fnxtr · 14 January 2010
No, it isn't. The point is that pondering how you think of things, and why you think about them, is not proof any mystical, out-of-body external existence.
Or anything else.
You picture a recursive self-image. Yay for you. It's still your neurons manufacturing the image, no matter how many iterations you layer on.
Imagining yourself watching is not the same as actually watching yourself. My bet is you can't do it.
Try it.
Have someone blindfold you, put randomly-coloured pots of paint in front of you, and hand you a paint brush. Can you correctly envision which colours you paint with?
Or, okay, say you're colour blind. Same experiment, but a deck of cards instead of paint. You can't see the cards you pick up.
phantomreader42 · 14 January 2010
Stanton · 14 January 2010
fnxtr · 14 January 2010
Yeah, this reminds me of her, too.
jerrym · 14 January 2010
Altair IV · 15 January 2010
eric · 15 January 2010
Robin · 15 January 2010
phantomreader42 · 15 January 2010
jerrym · 15 January 2010
Dean · 16 January 2010
An important part of the disconnect between tortucans and scientists is the claim on the origin of true statements. Paraphrasing that great philosopher Ed Meese, tortucans believe that truth comes from following a god who says "watch what I say", via for example a holy writ such as the Bible or words implanted in their brain by a pink beam of light originating from a Vast Active Living Intelligence System, while scientists follow a god who says "watch what I do", via the evidence of the natural world.
Tortucan reasoning, which has been called elsewhere "objective-oriented reasoning", has the adaptive value of allowing them to survive in the face of a world that doesn't always cooperate with their preconceived conclusions.
James Downard · 17 January 2010
Although obviously I think there is a real cognitive property in MHBS and that the tortucan distribution curve fairly describes the range of thinking in our species, for me the real fun will come once the idea is properly tested by psychologists and brain scanning to crack open the neurological underpinings.
My suspicion, as I alluded to in the speech, is that the tortucan system is not restricted to people who believe things that aren't true, and is probably merely an extreme case of what is otherwise a quite common and probably positively adaptive way of processing the barrage of information a mind has to deal with.
If that is so, and if the tortucan system is isolated neurologically, at that stage it would be possible to infer other areas of our behavior that may be piggybacking on the same neural architecture. The tortucan ruts of our mind may be but the spandrels of cognition.
Also, if the brain really does have a predilection for accepting some memes over others, for instance, to what extent is that differential related to the propensity for certain ruts to be common and deeper than others?
It would be interesting if some evolutionary psychology people could jump in here to see if any of these issues can be explored within their venue also.
eric · 17 January 2010
fnxtr · 18 January 2010
James, I just started wondering if tortucanism(?) is related to pattern recognition, in that patterns, real or not, are recognized initially, and then so deeply ingrained that all future data
isare interpreted to fit said patterns.Maybe you mentioned this and I missed it, if so, sorry.
James Downard · 19 January 2010
fnxtr mentioned pattern recognition, and there is some technical work on the sort of preprocessing that the brain does which channels what we perceive. It wouldn't surprise me at all that elements of that play a role in the MHBS architecture, but until experimental work is done to pin it down as a real cognitive effect I'll leave the door open to a lot of options.
My suspicion is that MHBS is a much more generalized system, one which can map onto lots of things. The relative impunity of MHBS to subsequent education is attested in the creationism example by the fact that doctrinal creationists seldom wise up and change their minds (one thinks of Glenn Morton for instance, and even Martin Gardner could be classed as once a creationist until he hit college). But none of the major lights of creationism ever jumped ship, which in my model would be related to the extensive scale of their mental map being taken up by impervious tortucan ruts.
Henry J · 20 January 2010
Turtle power!!!111!!!