Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee is enjoying a late surge in the polls for the Republican nomination, especially in the crucial early caucus state of Iowa. Part of his appeal is a sense of humor, as evidenced by this clever appropriation of the Chuck Norris Facts meme:
Chuck Norris, in addition to his considerable thespian credentials, is a proud creationist who wants the Bible taught in public schools. So it is not surprising to find Mike Huckabee denying the reality of evolution during a televised debate.
But this video, while also quite funny, is pretty scary. Via Cynical-C, it’s a 2004 speech to the Republican Governors’ Association.
A phone call from God! Quite the thigh-slapper. Huckabee artfully includes an assurance that God doesn’t take side during elections — although we all know his preferences, apparently.
I understand that it’s a joke. But there are moments of solemnity during the “phone call,” when Huckabee is being perfectly serious. One of those is at the 2:00 mark, where we are reminded that the President talks to God. And then we receive a list of instructions, including “protecting marriage.” (It needs to be protected from The Gays, for those who don’t have your decoder rings.) George W. Bush himself has occasionally mentioned talking to God, although usually in private meetings where it’s difficult to get objective verification, and admittedly his theology is somewhat unsystematic.
A lot of people who don’t really believe in the old-fashioned supernatural nevertheless think it’s a good idea to appropriate spiritual terminology for their own uses — re-defining “faith” as “any hypothesis that has not yet been proven,” or “God” as “the warm feeling I get when contemplating the universe,” or “religion” as “a nice kind of social club that brings people together to reinforce each other’s goodness.” It’s not a good idea. These are words, and they have meanings when you say them — people think they know what you have in mind. When you say “God,” most people think of the dictionary definition — “the one Supreme Being, the creator and ruler of the universe.” They’re not thinking of “the laws of nature.” And they honestly believe in this dictionary-definition God. And they let that belief affect, or at least justify, how they govern the country. Shouldn’t every non-religious person be deeply alarmed about this state of affairs?
At the Beyond Belief II conference, Stuart Kauffman gave an interesting (although flawed, I thought) talk about complexity and reductionism, and then ruined the whole thing by suggesting at the end that we should re-define “the sacred” as something arising from the radical contingency of the empirical path of biological evolution. Or something like that, it was a bit vague. What an abysmally bad idea. If you want to choose a word that refers to something other than the traditional religious conception of supreme beings and all that, then don’t use religious language. Because there are other people out there — far vaster in number than you — that are using those same words to mean exactly what they straightforwardly denote: a supernatural power with a vested interest in smiting the wicked, especially boys and girls who fall in love with boys and girls, respectively. And they’re running this country at the moment, and their beliefs are enacted into policy.
Of course, arguing with Mike Huckabee and his friends runs the risk that Chuck Norris will come along and kick your ass. That’s just the chance we have to take.
Yeah, Huckabee is cute, but I wouldn’t want him President either. I do want to support honest science, and am well aware of what happened in for example The Republican War Against Science. But there’s “religion”, there’s “science”, and watching over it all is “philosophy” about which I have things to say.
Sean, there is not one simple “dictionary definition” of “God.” If you consider the history of philosophical theology, you appreciate the wide range of views of the ultimate being/ground of being/foundational given reality etc or whatever else to call it, all with their own connotations and implied characterizations. Why should the rabble or one social institution own a concept? There are some crude ideas about ultimate reality and some very advanced ideas about that, from banal grumpy mega people like Zeuss, to more upscale Jehovah, to Hegel’s Absolute, to “The Plenum” (which is sort of an “opposite of nothingness”, to a field which creates but is more general than the “vacuum” which embodies only our specific particles, all with varying degrees of semblance to persons. There are ideas of something with a mind going through specific thoughts at specific times, but ideas of “Mind” which just holds all thought in Platonic majesty, etc. Sure, hard to concieve, but so is the Omega of infinite set theory which holds everything and every set there is in math (i.e., there is nothing which does not belong or is not subsumed) and yet It cannot be analyzed or describe any more than this AFAIK. Also, the various traits ascribed to “God” are mostly separately selectable, like “create” (or serves as necessary ground or pattern for existing), omniscient, omnipotent, etc.
The most subtle but cogent argument is, that there’s no reason for one possible world to “exist” and not others, since “exist” is either not a real distinction (modal realism) or it is the ultimate abstract non-predicate, and therefore cannot perferentially attach logically to a given type of world (like ours – sorry, but your innocent, child-like lament “mabye this is just the way things are” is just not on the ball in the world of deep ontological thought.) I have provided an argument in other threads, that for us to find ourselves in an orderly world (since disorderly but life containing ones would far outnumber ones like ours) supports the idea (there is never “proof” one way or the other in this business, OK!)that some “Orderer” is at work. Well, that may or may not lead to “God,” but either you don’t even ask such questions, or you realize that it’s a game question with no simple put down of the “yes” option.
Furthermore, I am quite bothered by what I see as hypocrisy regarding “woo-woo” issues. Here’s what I said to Iblis about the wooly “many worlds” interpretation of quantum mechanics:
Iblis, you shouldn’t say “The wavefunction of the multiverse is actually static” as if anyone actually knew that – it’s just how those who believe in this conceit think that it should be described. And, it still doesn’t really derive or explain there being any “hits” at all – whether the wave is “static” (in the silly sense of misinterpreting the ultimate significance of the Minkowski diagram, just because time was simply *graphed* with space all in one piece, as if that actually made time go away?) or “dynamic.”
Glib talk of our most fundamental experiences (in the classic shared scientific sense too, not the highly individual/subjective sense) as being “illusions” is presumptous and so antithetical to the orginal spirit of empiricism – I see no reason to surrender the empirical given to a bunch of affectedly too-clever-by-half, post-modern pseudoscientists. If you or I decide to do an experiment, you or I will get such and such result. Denying that is crank science of another sort. Why don’t all the neo-atheists who gripe about “woo-woo-ism” whenever it might support “purpose” in the universe, jump on this flaky indulgence? For the same reason political partisans ignore anything wrong their own party does, etc.
Last: Folks, please don’t frame this business as ultimately being the conflict between “science and religion.” Sure, that’s out there if “religion” is defined as a *tradition* of thoughts and practices about God issues, as it properly should be. But free-wheeling independent arguments about necessary and contingent existence, anthropic coincidences, modal realism, etc, are *not* “religion.” (BTW I am a Unitarian Universalist!) Talking about these questions, *pro or con*, is “philosophy” and that’s what posters here have been doing about these questions, whether they realize or admist it or not. Even talking about what science is or does or makes sense in it is “philosophy” and not the direct practice of science itself.
In one of those not uncommon coincidences, before reading this I was forwarded a link to:
10 Reasons Why Johnny Cash Owns Chuck Norris
http://www.shoutwire.com/comments/full/27579/10_Reason_Why_Johnny_Cash_Owns_Chuck_Norris
Reason 7.
Chuck is a republican. Johnny was close with every president except for GWB. It was said he just didn’t trust that son of a bitch. When Johnny didn’t trust someone, you just knew something foul was going on.
Reason 8.
Johnny was invited to play the at White House in 1972 for Richard Nixon. He was given a list of politically correct songs to sing. He instead metaphorically threw up his middle finger at the establishment, in true ShoutWire fashion, and sang a set full of left leaning, politically charged tunes. Chuck Norris has never told the president to fuck off in his own house.
It should be noted that Chuck is deeply invested in education in Texas, owning a large share of a company that stands to make a great deal of money from providing curricula materials for the “new science standards” that are to be unveiled next year. He has contributed large funds to the campaigns of politicians to influence the Texas education board. His handiwork is in evidence today with this latest story out of that big state.
Well we certainly would want our state school boards to remain “neutral” when it comes to whether ID/creationism is science i suppose, because, heaven forbid some court might rule that it clearly is not. Oh wait, a Federal judge did issue a ruling that said the teaching of ID is religious and therefore not constitutional. Maybe Texas has a different understanding of the US Constitution, one more closely aligned with the Chuck Norris school of faith and ass-kicking.
Neil B, you say about the word God, “Why should the rabble or one social institution own a concept?” But you can say the same about the swastika (or the star of david, for that matter). Common meaning is common meaning and needs to be respected if we want to be properly understood.
off-topic: dear cosmicvariance bloggers, any thoughts on Mattsson’s paper saying dark energy is a mirage due to selective optical observations http://arxiv.org/abs/0711.4264 Looks very sensible to me but I’m a non-specialist…
It’s hard to get alarmed about a state of affairs that’s been the status quo for, oh, the last ten thousand years or so.
The list of things that have been status-quo for the last ten thousand years and yet I find extremely alarming is too long to fit on this blog.
I am deeply, religiously agnostic. I was raised in a liberal christian tradition. I am not appropriating the language; it was given to me. In many cases, the language is more properly described as having been hijacked by fundamentalism, which is, we should remember, a modern ideology.
Religious liberalism is too, of course, I’m not trying to claim otherwise. But I think it’s disingenuous to insist that only the conservatives have a valid claim on the religious tradition, or that I should give it up because they have a greater public mindshare.
My biggest problem is their use of ‘faith’, which you’ve accepted here as the only valid one. Look at the secular uses of faith: I have faith that my friends will not abandon me at difficult times, for instance. Is this a statement of proud irrationality, that I will reject all other evidence, etc.? Of course not. It’s not even properly a statement of belief, which is something that I think needs to be carefully divorced from the notion of faith. What it, rather, is a statement of hopefulness, of optimism, and of trust. It is also reciprocal; one must also act in good faith.
I am not a believer, but I am of the faithful.
I also, however, believe in using the appropriate terminology. I will cheerfully describe myself as an atheist when the situation, and clarity merits it. It is also a statement of fact, and in no way impinges on my exploration and use of religious language. I have no need at all to get into fine points of my particular liberal theology with the vast majority of people. It’s pointless, and not worth doing in the slightest.
However, in private, and with like-minded people, I’m going to speak appropriately to that situation. Sometimes that means talking about god. Sometimes, for me, that means talking about Eris. Sometimes it means professing agnosticism, or atheism, and sometimes, like now, it means a more careful explanation. They’re all true, and my usage is careful to reflect how my audience is going to understand it and how I want it to be understood at the time. It’s not going to work perfectly, of course, but that’s alright by me.
From today’s “What’s New” by Bob Park, making much the same point as Sean does
“1. FAITH: THE WAR BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION.
It’s time we had a little talk. The New York Times on Saturday published
an op-ed by Paul Davies that addresses the question: “Is embracing the
laws of nature so different from religious belief?” Davies concludes
that, “until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the
universe its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.” Davies has
confused two meanings of the word “faith.” The Oxford Concise English
Dictionary on my desk gives the two distinct meanings for faith as: “1)
complete trust or confidence, and 2) strong belief in a religion based on
spiritual conviction rather than proof.” A scientist’s “faith” is built
on experimental proof. The two meanings of the word “faith,” therefore,
are not only different, they are exact opposites. Davies, who won the
1995 Templeton Prize is not the only physicist to make that
mistake. “Many people don’t realize that science basically involves
faith” Charles Townes said in his 2005 Templeton statement. On laser
physics I would happily defer to Townes, but this is a matter of the
English language. Here we defer to the dictionaries.”
If you want to choose a word that refers to something other than the traditional religious conception of supreme beings and all that, then don’t use religious language. Because there are other people out there — far vaster in number than you — that are using those same words to mean exactly what they straightforwardly denote: a supernatural power with a vested interest in smiting the wicked, especially boys and girls who fall in love with boys and girls, respectively.
Sean, while I wouldn’t necessarily endorse it, I think an argument can be made that it’s precisely because the other side invokes Mr. G. so much that “our” side has to do it too. I.e., given that religious terminology is not going anywhere, at least put forward an alternative vision for what that terminology can be taken to denote. Adopting your opponent’s language while subverting its meaning is a classic debate tactic… 🙂
Scott, I know where you’re coming from, and I wish I had time to be less superficial about this point, but I think in this case it’s a terrible tactic. It’s not subversive appropriation, it’s surrendering (I would argue) to a wrong way of conceptualizing the world. And it’s powerfully enabling to a bunch of fuzzy-minded nonsense, from blue laws to horoscopes in daily newspapers. (Here I am being careful enough to refer not simply to the effects of religion, but to the corroding effects of the acceptance of religious language — if the world is a spiritual place, all sorts of crazy things follow.)
bob (and Sean, and Scott), there is a world of difference between stock symbols closely associated with a given institution (and “common usage” too) versus a wide-ranging concept like “God. ” If we are talking about something in philosophical discourse, we can certainly frame it in a way suitable for that purpose regardless of what average people think, *as long as we say that when we start* – that’s what matters to being understood in any discussion. Otherwise, we couldn’t talk about special meanings of “spin” in physics etc. that weren’t the same sort of thing that common people meant! Indeed, most scientific/philosophical discussion is very much about such specially defined or contexed terms and ideas.
BTW, the thread in which I quoted myself, comment #38 , was in http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/11/27/things-happen-not-always-for-a-reason/.
Before Darwin, how else does the human race come to exist? It would have been easy to believe in deities.
Now we know the natural cause maybe almost all the way back. No deities.
I’m hoping we turn out to be programs. That we are parallel computations of a single I. Who, of course, in the end, turns out to be me.
Jennifer, I’m not sure Davies did the best job of having his say, but: at least one sort of “faith” he was referring to is the faith that scientific method and forms of thought can give us all the answers we want about the universe (or even the universes!) That strikes me as being like the simplistic faith of ultraconservatives in “the free market” to solve all problems (you know, we don’t even need public schools etc.) That is indeed faith, because it’s a good record so far but trends don’t always continue. Actually, I don’t even think it has succeeded that well so far if we are going to be honest about it. We have the collapse problem and the origins of true acausal randomness (genuine mathematical processes are deterministic and can’t even produce true randomness as I explained, and see my digs at many worlds and decoherence in recent threads), the infinities (and many of the best admit that renormalization is rather phony in respects, which I take their word since being more philosophy-trained, I don’t get the details), problems integrating gravity with QM etc.
PS, to give proper credit to Sean about this ill-phrased “science versus religion” tiff, since I keep griping about “simplistic” framings etc (but how unfortunate that the “better” quality lines of debate are indeed so under the radar in most intellectual life):
Comment #23 in http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2007/07/11/consolations-of-materialist-philosophy/#comments
Sean: I think that complaints of a false dichotomy, or that I should have included a different-colored pill for every possible nuanced philosophical stance one could imagine taking, are missing the point a bit here. I wasn’t talking about which such stance is right or wrong, or what would be the best of all possible worlds in which to live. I was just imagining a choice between my own world view (which is shared by many atheists) and that of a typical, traditional religious believer, and suggesting that I am “fortunate enough” that the one I believe in is also the one I would prefer to have be true. Nothing that I said implies that those are the only possible views.
Well put, even though I don’t agree with that particular world view (or that of traditional religious believers either.)
PS: If anyone is going to complain about using “God” in other than the ostensible “traditional” or “common” sense (even though every Medieval university student heard very high-quality abstract musings about prime movers, necessary and contingent existence, could even God make the angles of a triangle add to other than 180 degrees; heh, etc.): Just consider the original, common, logical meaning of “universe”! Hel-oo-oo: umm, “uni” you know … means “one”, get it? Like, it was “by definition” the whole shebang, “all that existed” (whatever that means) or at least the one material world that God made or etc. Now we see all these meta-physicists blithely throwing about talk of “multiple universes”, “are there other universes?” etc. (Well at least “the multiverse” is an appropriate new name, but not always used.)
Sure, I know (I guess) what that means: a contiguous space-time (or at least, space) continuum and why must there only be one (but what are they all “sitting in”?) Yet consider the object lesson of how well meta-physicists were allowed to get away with that, not just semantically but also breezing with little fraternal complaint right past old empirical and positivist standards (now that maybe there was an unlicensed something that could be useful to atheism instead of to mysticism, etc.)
Sean,
I realize you must be a very smart person, but your political instincts seem rudimentary. If there is one thing the conservative mindset needs, it is a clear opponent. Just as Bush needs bin Ladin and vice versa, conservative religion (the version that insists on the paternal deity) needs equally strong minded atheism. Their worst enemies are not those who directly oppose them, but the ones who do breach the walls of religious terminology with meanings that confuse the tribal function of us vs. them.
Maybe, if you were to look within, there might also be some sense of tribal identification motivating your rejection of all religious content and context.
I think that from a purely logical perspective, the most rational refutation of monotheism is to point out that the absolute is conceptual basis, rather than apex, so if there is a spiritual absolute, it would be the essence out of which we rise, not an ideal form from which we fell. I admit I don’t get a lot of response when I bring that point up, so maybe it isn’t as obvious as it seems to me.
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It would be a wonderful thing to be at a point in one’s life where they could say as Sean did in Things Happen, Not Always for a Reason, “Of course, sometimes things do happen for a reason. And sometimes they don’t. That’s life here at the edge of chaos, and I for one enjoy the ride.” However, in this universe a relatively few number of people achieve this stoic perspective. For many non-scientific folks, the fuzzy-minded nonsense of their religious beliefs provides them with a level of subjective security that is unobtainable through cosmology or particle physics. I imagine that neither cosmology nor particle physics, nor science in general will ever provide this comfort and therefore the fuzzy-minded nonsense is here to stay as it has been for ten thousand years. The founders of our nation understood this fact and appreciated the human need for a balanced approach between spiritual and rational thought. As long as people continue to populate this universe, even if it is one of many and the worst of any, and as long as the concept of death completely negates the concept of life, the concept of a transcending god who is both creator and lawgiver will endure. As a nation, we would be smart to recognize our human condition and seek to balance it with both faith and reason.
John Merryman said;
Possibly because it sounds like gibberish.
We like to dither on the possibility of ‘free will’ and ‘freedom to choose’
but ultimately who gets to choose whether they get cancer or not?
who gets to choose from a myriad of ‘inherited’ or ‘acquired’ diseases.
And who gets to choose death. Doesn’t Our mortality deny any real ‘free will’
A military state or empire will always conjure up some higher if not divine authority. And the US whether you like it or not is a military state run by the Pentagon, with the US President as the C in C. Just think how much news coverage there has been about Son of Bush’s foreign policy and war in Iraq – (threats to Iran & North Korea …) compared to the home front whether floods in New Orleans, or raging fires in California.
I’m sure the 100,000 plus troops in Iraq could have been better used at home to defend from the ravages of ‘nature’. But I guess MACHO men and teenagers who play shoot me ups, then want to go to Iraq and shoot rag heads for real. Of course unlike x-box and computer games where you play without getting hurt (and you can even have unlimited lives or inmortality or omnipotence) in the real world, the other side sometimes gets to kill some of your mates, and invites you to share in their ‘pain’.
I would say that what drives US foreign policy is not so much a god talking from a burning bush to the president, but the military tactic: hit them before they get too powerful (Gulf War I) and kick them again while they are down (Gulf War II).
Not so much survival of the fittest, as survival of the technologically advanced. But then technological advances also threaten Armageddon and extinction, and some medical advances keep the likes of Dick Cheney ticking – like a bomb.
Philip,
Personally, I don’t like to flaunt my own ignorance, so when someone says something I don’t understand, I ask questions before making declarations as to its validity, but I realize that not everyone is equally curious.
Here is an idea; Why don’t you google Plato’s concept of ‘Ideal Forms’ and see if you do or don’t think the particular paradigm of God espoused by monotheistic religions isn’t essentially an ideal form of personhood, specifically adult male personhood. Of which we are therefore imperfect copies of and so seek to return to that model of perfection.
Another thought to consider; Do you think Pat Robertson, who just endorsed Guliani, is more concerned with ‘godless liberal academics,’ whom he has made untold millions railing against, or by liberal theologians cutting into the younger generations of his flock/tribe?
Nature has seen fit to create people who define their sense of identity in religious terms, so if scientists are as objective as they claim, they should be more accommodating of the religious issue then religions will be of scientific enquiry. Just as democracies need to be more accommodating of diversity then dictatorships are.
Politics is being able to see the entire board, not just the next move.
In our present era, it is possible for people to win fortune and fame in practicing cosmology just as it was in our past for people to win fortune and fame by practicing astrology. Both invoke an ingenious blend of determinism and randomness in developing their worldviews. While cosmologists insist, their efforts uncover truth instead of falsehood, what difference does either of these disciplines make to the human condition? Unless faith can give fullness to our reasoning, both disciplines have less value to human beings than any one of the world’s faith-based religions.
Sean for President!
There is a sudden burst of hope and optimism in me from this spontaneous thought, that there actually are people in the U.S.A. whom I would be proud to have as President (despite many election cycles of contrary evidence in my lifetime). Perhaps some day a majority of us will realize how much better we could do, and rise up and draft such a person. Or not. (The feeling is draining away as I write.)
Thomas,
What is “the human condition” and why does it need to be changed ?
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