A few days ago the world witnessed a rare and precious event: a dispute on the Internet. In this case, it was brought about by a Bloggingheads episode of Science Saturday featuring historian of science Ronald Numbers and philosopher Paul Nelson. The controversy stemmed from the fact that Nelson is a Young-Earth Creationist — someone who believes that the Earth was created by God a few thousand years ago. You can read opinions about the dialogue from PZ Myers, Jerry Coyne, or for a different point of view Nelson himself.
I was one of the people who found the dialogue extremely inappropriate (especially for “Science Saturday”), and as someone who is a fan of Bloggingheads I sent a few emails back and forth with the powers that be, who are generally very reasonable people. I think they understand why scientists would not be happy with such a dialogue, and I suspect it’s not going to happen again.
But it’s worth laying out the precise source of my own unhappiness — I’ll let other scientists speak for themselves. One potential source of discomfort is the natural reluctance to give credibility to creationists, and I think that’s a legitimate concern. There is a long-running conversation within the scientific community about whether it’s better to publicly debate people who are skeptical about evolution and crush them with superior logic and evidence, or to try to cut off their oxygen by refusing to meet them on neutral ground. I don’t have strong opinions about which is the better strategy, although I suspect the answer depends on the precise circumstances being contemplated.
Rather, my concern was not for the credibility of Paul Nelson, but for the credibility of Bloggingheads TV. I’m fairly sure that no one within the BH.tv hierarchy is a secret creationist, trying to score some public respect for one of their own. The idea, instead, was to engage in a dialogue with someone who held radically non-mainstream views, in order to get a better understanding of how they think.
That sounds like a noble goal, but I think that in this case it’s misguided. Engaging with radically different views is, all else being equal, a good thing. But sometimes all else isn’t equal. In particular, I think it’s important to distinguish between different views that are somehow respectable, and different views that are simply crazy. My problem with the BH.tv dialogue was not that they were lending their credibility to someone who didn’t deserve it; it was that they were damaging their own credibility by featuring a discussant who nobody should be taking seriously. There is plenty of room for debate between basically sensible people who can argue in good faith, yet hold extremely different views on contentious subjects. There is no need to pollute the waters by engaging with people who simply shouldn’t be taken seriously at all. Paul Nelson may be a very nice person, but his views about evolution and cosmology are simply crackpot, and don’t belong in any Science Saturday discussion.
This thought has led me to introduce what I hope is a helpful graphical device, which I call the Grid of Disputation. It’s just a reminder that, when it comes to other people’s views on controversial issues, they should be classified within a two-dimensional parameter space, not just on a single line of “agree/disagree.” The other dimension is the all-important “sensible/crazy” axis.
There’s no question that there is a place for mockery in the world of discourse; sometimes we want to engage with crackpots just to make fun of them, or to boggle at their wrongness. But for me, that should be a small component of one’s overall rhetorical portfolio. If you want to play a constructive role in an ongoing cultural conversation, the sizable majority of your disputational effort should be spent engaging with the best people out there with whom you disagree — confronting the strongest possible arguments against your own view, and doing so with a respectful and sincere attitude.
This strategy is not universally accepted. One of the least pleasant aspects of the atheist/skeptical community is the widespread delight in picking out the very stupidest examples of what they disagree with, holding them up for sustained ridicule, and then patting themselves on the back for how rational they all are. It’s not the only thing that happens, but it happens an awful lot, and the joy that people get out of it can become a bit tiresome.
So I disagree a bit with Richard Dawkins, when he makes this suggestion:
I have from time to time expressed sympathy for the accommodationist tendency so ably criticized here by Jerry Coyne. I have occasionally worried that – just maybe – Eugenie Scott and the appeasers might have a point, a purely political point but one, nevertheless, that we should carefully consider. I have lately found myself moving away from that sympathy.
I suspect that most of our regular readers here would agree that ridicule, of a humorous nature, is likely to be more effective than the sort of snuggling-up and head-patting that Jerry is attacking. I lately started to think that we need to go further: go beyond humorous ridicule, sharpen our barbs to a point where they really hurt.
Michael Shermer, Michael Ruse, Eugenie Scott and others are probably right that contemptuous ridicule is not an expedient way to change the minds of those who are deeply religious. But I think we should probably abandon the irremediably religious precisely because that is what they are – irremediable. I am more interested in the fence-sitters who haven’t really considered the question very long or very carefully. And I think that they are likely to be swayed by a display of naked contempt. Nobody likes to be laughed at. Nobody wants to be the butt of contempt…
I emphatically don’t mean we should use foul-mouthed rants. Nor should we raise our voices and shout at them: let’s have no D’Souzereignty here. Instead, what we need is sarcastic, cutting wit. A good model might be Peter Medawar, who would never dream of shouting, but instead quietly wielded the rapier. …
Maybe I’m wrong. I’m only thinking aloud, among friends. Is it gloves off time? Or should we continue to go along with the appeasers and be all nice and cuddly, like Eugenie and the National Academy?
Let me first note how … reasonable Dawkins is being here. He’s saying “well, I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe we should do X rather than Y — what do you folks think?” Not quite consistent with the militant fire-breathing one might expect from hearing other people talk about Dawkins, rather than listening to Dawkins himself.
Nevertheless, I don’t agree with the suggestion. There is an empirical question, of course: if the goal is actually to change people’s minds, is that accomplished more effectively by sweetly reasoning with them, or by ridiculing their incorrect beliefs? I don’t think the answer is especially clear, but very few people actually offer empirical evidence one way or the other. Instead, they loudly proclaim that the mode to which they are personally temperamentally suited — calm discussion vs. derisive mockery — is the one that is clearly the best. So I will just go along with that fine tradition.
My own goal is not really changing people’s minds; it’s understanding the world, getting things right, and having productive conversations. My real concern in the engagement/mockery debate is that people who should be academic/scholarly/intellectual are letting themselves be seduced by the cheap thrills of making fun of people. Sure, there is a place for well-placed barbs and lampooning of fatuousness — but there are also people who are good at that. I’d rather leave the majority of that work to George Carlin and Ricky Gervais and Penn & Teller, and have the people with Ph.D.’s concentrate on honest debate with the very best that the other side has to offer. I want to be disagreeing with Ken Miller or Garry Wills and St. Augustine, not with Paul Nelson and Ann Coulter and Hugh Ross.
Dawkins and friends have done the world an enormous service — they’ve made atheism part of the accepted cultural landscape, as a reasonable perspective whose supporters must be acknowledged. Now it’s time to take a step beyond “We’re here, we’re godless, get used to it” and start making the positive case for atheists as sensible, friendly, happy people. And that case isn’t made most effectively by zooming in on the lower left corner of the Grid of Disputation; it’s made by engaging with the lower right corner, and having the better arguments.
It is possible to be both a theist and support modern evolutionary theory. Remember Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori’s Ph.D. is in a field of marine biology that is essentially evolutionary biology. We children of the Enlightenment should assess who our allies are. I guess in Sean’s terms this it the sensible-crazy axis.
I think in a sense the question of defining the sensible and crazy ends of the axis are epistemological. Those that accept that evidence based scientific methodology gives us real knowledge about the material world and is primary define the sensible end. The crazies however regard faith and revelation as being the primary source of knowledge overall.
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PZ Meyers points out this morning that unfortunately, regarding evolution, there simply isn’t anybody in the green quadrant to talk with. (http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/08/the_dilemma_of_the_anti-creati.php)
You can ignore the nut-jobs, but as a social force they are loud and strong. There is a price to be paid by having our heads in the sand. The real choice does seem to be between ridicule or respectful conversations with crackpots. To my mind, ridicule is more appropriate.
We have a completely different method to deal with PZ/Dawkins and their blind deluded followers:
—————————————–
ANNIHILATION
——————————————
VISIT
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=264
OK, nice guys – davidmabus @ # 54 has set you a challenge.
Let’s see a civil, rational, edifying response to ANNIHILATION!
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But Sean, what if the “best” the opposition has to offer is still really, really lousy? Have you read Ken Miller’s arguments for the existence of God? They’re ridiculous.
Why should we treat ridiculous arguments and beliefs as if they’re not? Sure, it might make us look more friendly (and condescending), but it will also give the false impression that we think these arguments and beliefs aren’t ridiculous. And if thorough rationalists like ourselves give that impression, what do you expect religious believers to conclude?
I’m not so certain that there isn’t a sizeable niche in our political discourse for scornful derision of people with crazy views.
Crackpot ideas tend to get their traction from a public perception that a matter is not settled, that really anything COULD be true, and that popular prejudices ought to push you towards believing the crackpot. So creationists argue that evolution can’t be completely proven, that scientists don’t know anything, and that if you want to believe the bible you have to disbelieve evolution. Global warming deniers argue that science doesn’t know everything about global warming, temperatures vary all the time, and if you don’t want to spend all kinds of money on something that might be a boondoggle you shouldn’t buy into global warming. This is the crackpot strategem, and you can see it applied to almost every crackpot idea about history or science there is- homeopathy, holocaust denialism, vaccine alarmism, etc, etc, etc.
In the context of opponents who operate under this paradigm, scornful derision has its place. It extinguishes that aura of uncertainty that the crackpot idea inhabits.
Look at something like the birthers. If you don’t address them, then the establishment is ignoring them and they just rally in their alternative media networks. You can’t deny them light and heat by ignoring them because they already have light and heat of their own. If you address them calmly and rationally disprove their position, they’ll just rely on sheer stupidity to dumb their way through. They’ll argue that a certificat of live birth isn’t a birth certificate, or whatever else they need to argue to keep the issue uncertain, allowing their prejudice to decide the matter for them. But if you make it clear that the birther point of view is incredibly stupid, and anyone who believes it is a stupid, stupid, gullible embarassment of a person, that can actually have an effect.
I guess… I’m just skeptical of the “lets stop sarcastically dealing with the crackpots and nicely deal with the reasonable opponents” as a tactic when there are a lot of crackpots out there, and they’re perfectly capable of spreading their ideas whether you ignore them or not.
Pleeease make a T-shirt with the Grid of Disputation on it…
Ah, our T-shirt operation is a shambles, which we’ve been meaning to upgrade. But that’s a good idea.
But isn’t it clear from the quote that Dawkins is considering using ridicule to convince the fence-sitters, not to convince the (fundamentalists) believers themselves?
Not true. Many will tell you that both strategies are useful and necessary. And you will often find both strategies in the same person, where they would use one or the other strategy depending on context.
Richard Dawkins wrote: “I have occasionally worried that – just maybe – Eugenie Scott and the appeasers might have a point, a purely political point but one, nevertheless, that we should carefully consider. I have lately found myself moving away from that sympathy.”
Unfortunately, that political point seems to me to be incontrovertible. If you want to promote science education in a country as religious as the United States, head-on assaults on religion are unlikely to help you in reaching your goal. Tarring a good politician like Eugenie Scott as an “appeaser” doesn’t change the brute facts on the ground one bit. She would, I’m sure, prefer never to have to discuss religion at all. But when religion raises its ugly head, “no necessary conflict” is a convenient way of turning the discussion elsewhere (toward what Scott really cares about), and, given religion’s wonderful capacity for refutation-evasion, it may even be true.
You go on to state: “One of the least pleasant aspects of the atheist/skeptical community is the widespread delight in picking out the very stupidest examples of what they disagree with, holding them up for sustained ridicule, and then patting themselves on the back for how rational they all are. It’s not the only thing that happens, but it happens an awful lot, and the joy that people get out of it can become a bit tiresome.”
I fully agree. And, after a more than ordinarily tiresome back-and-forth with some of P.Z. Myers’ sycophants–on the subject of his “crackergate” stunt–I found myself reminded that atheism is no guarantee of that purported rationality.
After reading the post by davidmabus, I’m reminded that there’s irrationality, and then there are some things even dumber.
@64 Aaron Baker: be careful not to insult the more moderate believers in Nostradamus or believers in prophecies in general 😉
Deen,
I had a look at your blog. It seems interesting; but, sadly, I read hardly a word of Dutch (I can handle German (with some help from a dictionary); not close enough, though).
Patrick wrote: “I guess… I’m just skeptical of the “lets stop sarcastically dealing with the crackpots and nicely deal with the reasonable opponents” as a tactic when there are a lot of crackpots out there, and they’re perfectly capable of spreading their ideas whether you ignore them or not.”
It may sound as if I’m contradicting my earlier post, but I’m not: I’m inclined to agree with this, too. One problem with crackpots is that their ideas don’t always stay restricted to whatever tiny fringe they started in. The alarming recent statistic for the number of Republicans taking the birther nonsense seriously comes to mind. Lots of people rejecting the legitimacy of a democratically elected president could lead to ugly consequences. So by all means, crackpot notions need to be debunked, and sometimes in no pleasant terms. It helps, though, if you can do it with a minimum of self-congratulation.
When Ken Miller is your enemy, Sean, you should be clear that you’re bearing the cudgel for atheism v religion, not science/evolution versus creationism. Pretending it’s about evolution v creationism is sailing under false colours.
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“the sizable majority of your disputational effort should be spent engaging with the best people out there with whom you disagree — confronting the strongest possible arguments against your own view”
I think this well-meaning and oft-repeated guideline is fundamentally mistaken. Argument isn’t just about abstract disputation and debate; it is also about conflict, winning over minds and achieving victory over the other side. When you enter into a debate with a reasonable prior expectation of changing your mind by the end of it, then yes, you expose yourself to the best arguments against your views. When instead you have a sufficiently high prior confidence in your views (say on creationism, homeopathy, global warming and the like), the point isn’t to try and formulate a harmonious meeting of the best possible minds. It is to isolate, marginalize and render impotent the other side.
Where the conflict model applies, you defend against the weapons your opponents actually use, not what they would use were they making their best possible case. You wouldn’t fight against people with boxcutters by making bomb shelters. If ninety percent of your adversaries go around calling fortuitous coincidences miracles and unfortunate ones evidence for the inscrutability of God, if they think praying to said God is a clever way of ensuring longevity and health, then these are positions worth debunking, whether or not they meet with the approval of the best theologians. Leave to your opponents the R&D question of which arguments are best supports for their view, intellectually and politically, and set to the opposition’s theologians the task of understanding why their sophisticated views are so suasively inert. If for whatever reason Godel’s modal argument for theism doesn’t convince the Answers in Genesis crowd, so much the worse for it. Divine watchmaker is what must be confronted then…
“My problem with the BH.tv dialogue was not that they were lending their credibility to someone who didn’t deserve it; it was that they were damaging their own credibility by featuring a discussant who nobody should be taking seriously.”
Hmm. I don’t think this is a fair criticism of this dialogue. I’d never heard of Nelson before and maybe he has a history as a crackpot that I don’t know about, but I thought he didn’t come off as one here, except in admitting that he was a young earther (when Numbers asked him). Numbers did not press him too much on this conviction, and the discussion veered toward topics in the philosophy of science. I found the discussion interesting and enjoyable in spite of the fact that I learned he was a young earther. Nelson was quite engaging and articulate, and I think this is the real source of worry: if fence sitters on the evolution debate are favorably impressed by how Nelson comports himself on a number of other matters, then maybe his stance on the age of the Earth deserves another look. And in fact THIS is the real reason so many people don’t want him back on BH.tv.
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The grid of disputation oversimplifies. There are always more dimensions than depicted by only two skewed and arbitrary axes. The Meyers-Briggs personality grid is another example. Anyway, whether to be “nice” as a strategy is well-studied. Game theorists have not found a better strategy than T4T, (tit for tat). This strategy is to be nice unless you are disrespected, and only then deploy the cold disdain and mockery from your arsenal.
Don’t know whether to be nice or nasty? Rationality requires the best strategy – T4T (be nice until disrespected). Also, Christian theism requires the best behavior – the Golden Rule (always be nice). So a T4T-Golden Rule debate would always travel the high road. And really, why take the low road? It’s demeaning and unpleasant and usually devolves into ad hominum attacks and name-calling (e.g. “crackpots”). Moreover, it’s a distraction from the real issue of the debate. Keep it civil and don’t go there.
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Great article! Really liked the “Grid of Disputation”.
I agree that mockery should be left to comedians – but changing people’s minds might be more important than you think. Sure, it feels cheap and unproductive to explain simple facts and implications to people who believe whatever people they trust (because of shared opinions, social/religious backgrounds and so on) tell them to believe.
But look at all these “artificial grass-roots movements” in the USA right now. Like what seems to be happening at these “town-hall meetings” concerning the health-care reform. A few pundits started saying that the reform will introduce “death panels” and “(mandatory) euthanasia for old people”. It’s pretty clever actually, because A) It’s a very clear message that anyone can understand (and be outraged about), B) Rational people (or anyone who knows what’s in the bill) will simply dismiss it as crackpots rambling about nonsense – maybe they’ll make a humorous comment or two that only they will really get and C) when someone eventually understands that yes, a considerable fraction of the population actually believes this bullshit, the insanity will be so big and deep-rooted that there’s nothing you can do.
Now imagine this actually leads to the health-care reform being canceled. It’s not that funny anymore, is it?
So while we are above manipulating the crazies or the “passionate, well-meaning but gullible” there are those who are willing to do it for selfish reasons. I don’t think we should do the same, but I do think the gloves need to come off. Not by mocking, but by listening and educating.