Chapter 11:
Non-overlapping magisteria
Science provides real answers to the “big questions”
Let’s say we are trying to answer the question — “is it going to rain in New Delhi tomorrow?”. And let’s pretend that
there are no nuances in the way this question could be interpreted. It is a
clear, unambiguous question with only two possible answers — “yes” and “no”. Now imagine that two contestants, A and B, are recruited to report a
daily forecast to a scorekeeper.
Contestant A believes that rain is predicted by temperature, humidity,
air pressure, wind speed etc. She is able to measure each of these using
calibrated instruments. At the end of each day she feeds data into a computer
model, and reports the answer.
Contestant B believes that rain is caused by a Rain God who makes note
of our actions, can be propitiated with certain rituals etc. Predicting whether
it will rain or not then becomes a question of being able to represent the
mental states (desires and intentions) of the Rain God.
We have no a
priori preference for either of these methods. In fact, we
have no interest in the underlying mechanism (or beliefs), only in the
predictions. The scorekeeper can tell us at the end of one year, whose
forecasts were more accurate on average. The advantage of setting up the
contest in this manner lies in the fact that the contestants must produce falsifiable theories
in order to succeed (see Chapter 2). The predictions can be falsified because
they pertain to a specific,
unknown outcome. It is not
good enough to explain the event “after the fact”; i.e. it rained yesterday
because…
Now, I would like to assert this — the process or method which comes up with the most
empirically accurate answers to simple questions (of the kind posed to our
contestants) will be the one which eventually comes up with the most
empirically accurate answers to the “big questions” (origins, purposes,
consciousness, free will…). The reason is simple. The process is fine-tuned for
producing theories that yield truthful answers. If we want theories to give us
truthful answers, we must allow them to make falsifiable predictions, otherwise
there is no way to weed out hypotheses that don’t fit the facts.
Religion and spirituality produce no falsifiable predictions. Studies
show that people tend to restate their beliefs in more unfalsifiable terms when
presented with facts that contradict their beliefs, and this applies especially
to political and religious beliefs. Which suggests that unfalsifiability can
work as a defence against contradicting evidence that may lead to (what else?)
falsification.
But if religion and spirituality are no good for producing truths, then
what are they good for? The answer, (according to the field of “memetics”) is…
survival and propagation! Religion and spirituality are products of “cultural
evolution”. Cultural evolution happens not through genes but through memes, a concept
introduced by Dawkins. Memes shape the cultural traits of our societies rather
than the physical traits of individuals. And this happens orders of magnitude
faster than genetic evolution. Language, for instance, is a result of cultural
evolution, and words are memes.
Why are religion and spirituality particularly good at survival and
propagation? One reason that comes to mind is that they are over-optimistic.
It’s easy to see why we would want to
believe in certain things — heaven and hell, eternal soul, reincarnation etc. If beliefs that make
us feel good about ourselves are more likely to take root than beliefs that
correspond to reality, then the fairy tales produced by religion and
spirituality are “fitter” for propagation than the bleak, brutal description of
Nature presented in Chapters 6 and 8.
Then there is the claim that our ethics and morality derive from
religion, a claim strongly opposed by Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and
others. Richard Dawkins makes the following argument against this view in his
film (and book) The
God Delusion : The
scriptures of each of the major religions contain at least a few moral
guidelines that are at odds with modern values and laws; e.g. issues relating
to the status of women, homosexuality etc. Modern societies are able to then,
pick and choose the moral guidelines from scriptures, rejecting ones that are
in conflict with current thinking on these issues. On what basis would they be
able to do this, if societies did not already possess ethics and morality that
are independent of
scriptures?
Next, scientific theories are criticized as being reductionistic.
Various holistic explanations are offered as alternatives, but many of these
turn out on closer examination to be simply mysterious answers to mysterious questions. On the other hand, living things have turned out to
be so intractable in their complexity that they are only in theory, reducible
to simple parts and interactions between simple parts. The rationalist must be
content then, with a reductionistic
faith, as we admitted in Chapter 8.
Finally, the notion of “non-overlapping magisteria” has been invoked
(and continues to be invoked) to claim that religion, spirituality and
philosophy try to answer questions that are beyond the scope of science — the “big questions”. I hope the kind
of questions addressed in Chapters 6 through 10 will serve to persuade us that
this is a wrong claim. If not, a return to faith belief needs only a hop and a
skip as follows —
1.
The “big questions” can never be
answered by science
2.
Therefore, we need to look towards religion and spirituality
for the answers
3.
These answers are stated in unfalsifiable terms which
means any talk of evidence is off the table
4.
Therefore we should accept them on faith and reject
other, contradictory answers
Is it possible to defend the claim that certain questions (the “big
questions”) are fundamentally
different from other questions and therefore not subject to
scientific enquiry? No, because that would amount to a Mind Projection Fallacy
(from Chapter 2). Questions, or the thing/process they refer to, are not
inherently mysterious. It is the degree of our ignorance about them which make
them more or less mysterious. The reason some things or processes can remain
mysterious for centuries is because of their complexity. We have only recently
devised the tools and methods to handle such complexity.
Chapter 12:
Putting it together
Getting rid of excess baggage
The upshot of Chapters 10 and 11 is that we are all programmed with
certain cognitive biases — intentional stance, decoupled cognition etc. These adaptations were
crucial to the survival of our ancestors in a hostile environment, so natural
selection included them in our problem-solving toolkit along with heart, lungs,
brain, eyes etc. Over time these have been subverted into belief systems that
we are able to retrospectively analyse within the framework of Neo-Darwinism.
All this is starting to sound a little academic. For a materialistic
worldview it doesn’t seem very material. Is there anything usable the
aspiring Rationalist can take away from all this? I certainly hope so. Here are
some cognitive tools that can help in busting many a myth -
·
Things happen even with no one to make them happen — Intentional language
creeps in even where it is least appropriate. Like, the gene “wants” to replicate itself. It does not. Or, this is how “Nature” works. Nature is not a thing or person. But there is no
way to explain certain concepts without the use of such metaphors. As long as
the metaphors are not taken to be how the process actually works, there won’t
be any miscommunication. But we first have to get used to the notion that in
the natural world, things just happen with no one to make them
happen.
·
Be skeptical of moral arguments — Let’s reemphasize what we said at the start of
Chapter 9. An explanation of “how things work” which begins with an assumption of “how things ought to work” is very likely to be a wrong explanation.
The universe doesn’t care about our petty
notions of right and wrong and will not conform to them. To cite an example — “group selection” was at one point advanced as a theory to explain
evolutionary traits of species. After all, individuals can be expected to
sacrifice self-interest and act in the larger interest of the group, right?
Wrong. As it turns out, even altruistic
behaviour is modelled more accurately starting
from individual motives. That’s why we have Game Theory.
·
Avoid the intentional stance — When a dog is staring at
you, what might it be “thinking”? In my experience, one of four things — am I or have I food, am
I potentially harmful, am I a potential mate, am I an enemy? Unless there is
evidence of rational intent actually
being present, we should assume it is absent. This is hard to do for cultural
reasons. Anthropomorphism of animals and machines is commonplace, most evident
in children’s cartoons. Anthropomorphic gods and goddesses are present in
Hinduism, among other cultures. Even what we now know as electricity, the
Greeks attributed to Zeus.
·
The Universe has no built-in reasons and purposes — Some people believe that
“everything happens for a reason”. What they really mean is everything happens
for a “good” reason, even when that is far from evident. It is a
silly notion, just like the idea of every person being created with a
predefined purpose (“teleology”). Reasons and purposes apply only to Human-made
artefacts. As for us, we are Nature-made and we each make our own purpose. Or
in the words of Sartre, “Man is condemned to be free”.
·
Don’t be a dinosaur — Most folks have no
qualms about getting rid of old technology and learning to use new technology.
The fact that old tech is replaced by new tech must be because the new tech
is better (in a utilitarian sense). The same argument
should apply to new ideas but does not. Why? Because existing beliefs block new
ideas that are not consistent with them, as we saw in Chapters 3 and 4. There
seems to be a certain hypocrisy in lapping up the latest tech gadgets while
rejecting the ideas that make them tick. The progression of our beliefs and
worldviews are hopelessly out of sync with the progression of our tools and
technology. We are technologically advanced dinosaurs.
·
Your gut rarely tells you anything new — Our intuition deceives
us all the time. In fact, magic tricks and staged illusions rely on
our intuition being wrong. For example, our intuition tells us that the Sun
“rises” in the East and “sets” in the West, that the earth is flat, that a
feather falls slower than a stone etc. The reason is obvious — our intuition has
evolved to help us make quick decisions necessary for day-to-day survival. Not
for revealing universal truths of the cosmos. Successful scientific theories
have only rarely emerged out of pure thought (or intuition), but instead from
the analysis of real-world data. While thought
experiments have an important role in coming up
with hypotheses, it is only confirmation against experiments that gives a
hypothesis any validity.
·
Coincidences happen — Avoid connecting
isolated random occurrences. Some people believe that “there is no such thing as a coincidence”. This is actually a restatement of the “everything happens for a reason” dogma. It exploits our innate tendency for
pattern-finding. Coincidences do happen and they happen more often than
you expect. There is no cosmic conspiracy at play. If
you worked out the likelihood, you may find that what happened was not so
improbable after all. And remember, someone’s got to win the lottery
even though the odds of it being you may be very small indeed.
Written by Ambar Nag.
ambarnag@gmail.com
(Continued in Part 6)
(Continued in Part 6)
Very nice post...
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