I have mentioned Alister McGrath’s The Twilight of Atheism: The Rise and Fall of Disbelief in the Modern World several times on this weblog. When I first read this book, about twelve years ago, its overall argument seemed unpersuasive. It was already clear then that the United States was going through a wave of secularization, which has seen a massive expansion in the number of “religious nones” in the past generation. It was during this period that books such as Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion became a cultural phenomenon.
As an empirical matter disbelief has not fallen in the modern world. On the contrary.
But McGrath was getting at something when he exulted in the possibilities for traditional religion in a “post-modern” context, where objective science was no longer privileged. In the middle 2000s, this seemed like a strange contention to be making. Books such as Higher Superstition: The Academic Left and Its Quarrels with Science were still on our cultural radar. The “Science Wars” were over. Science had won.
But when one war is won, the seeds for the next are sown. Over at Why Evolution is True, Jerry Coyne has a post up, Princeton’s course on how marginalized scientists can produce “different ways of knowing”. The entire post is a rather predictable product of someone who has a late 20th-century positivist viewpoint on these issues. For Coyne science is fundamentally transcultural and universal. As a paleoliberal Jerry also lacks the semantic nuance to navigate today’s progressivism very well, with its attention to lexical detail and precision. Coyne means well, but he sometimes comes off as a visitor from the 20th century.
It’s hard for me to think that Jerry Coyne would disagree with the idea that science is a cultural product, and so is refracted through cultural considerations. Rather, Coyne likely wants to emphasize the universal and objective nature of the scientific enterprise, at least in the ideal. As such, those who hold this rarified, idealistic, and practically not realized concept of science tend to imagine the scientific worker as a bare ratiocination machine. A contrasting view, more popular today, is to acknowledge that science is a human enterprise which has been subject to bias and distortion due to the particular socio-cultural perspectives brought to the enterprise by scientists.
A decade ago the latter view was not nearly as well articulated within science, among practicing scientists (though it was found outside of science). Therefore, Coyne could easily have expressed such dismissive attitudes and been indulged. But the times have changed. Viewpoint matters more now.
In The Twilight of Atheism McGrath argues that the idea of objective reality as highly attainable gave succor to triumphalist positivism. With its fading away the high tide of positivism will recede…and it does seem that that has occurred since he wrote his book. I am speaking particularly within science, with Jerry Coyne’s type of positivism being viewed suspiciously by many younger and mid-career researchers.
Thirteen years ago a sociologist of science, Steve Fuller, supported the Intelligent Design movement because he argued that scientists were biased by their subjective perspectives. At the time he was laughed out of court (literally). But it does have to be acknowledged that religious conservatives are an extremely underrepresented group within the natural sciences.
To this Jerry Coyne would simply appeal to his very strident transcultural and universalist views on science. Even if a disproportionate number of scientists are atheists and liberals, reality is what it is, and despite the bias objectivity wins out. But what does seem like the majority viewpoint (at least vocally) within science now is that representation of different experiences matters a great deal. This group would have to make a different argument as to why the enormous underrepresentation of religious conservatives within science does not matter in the least in relation to the questions being explored and the theories being proffered. As I do not hold this position (I lean more toward Coyne), I won’t attempt to outline what that argument would be.
Rather, I want to move back to the “twilight of atheism.” Secularization is real. But is it irreversible? Though it might seem glib to contend that the critical rationalism engendered by science erodes away at the authority of religion, the correlation does seem a real one. But if diversity of epistemology becomes the standard position, if sciences’ special and authoritative role within modern society is dethroned, I do wonder if a “reenchantment of the world” might become possible. If what is good and true is a function of feeling and power, of sentiment and moral suasion, then religion clearly is going to be in the game.
Few of the people who wish to pull science off its artificial pedestal would be sympathetic to the resurgence of religion, but that might be irrelevant….
“science is a human enterprise which has been subject to bias and distortion due to the particular socio-cultural perspectives brought to the enterprise by scientists.”
It’s been 13 years since John Ioannidis published his famous paper and it seems nothing changes in the world of science.
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
Any theory must be mathematical. It is only through the application of mathematical logic that you have any hope of producing a theory that doesn’t lead to contradictions. And a theory that leads to contradictions is useless because once you can derive a contradiction your theory can be used to prove anything.
A theory must map to empirical observations. If it predicts something other than what is empirically observed it needs to be scrapped.
That said you can have multiple valid theories. And they should all be tolerated.
Does this mean that the postmodernist critical theorists have won?
Does this mean that the postmodernist critical theorists have won?
not yet. but instead of a direct thrust they’re using the more generous instincts of people in different fields to sneak in their epistemological worldview. i think people are backing into something they are not aware of.
Any theory must be mathematical
charles darwin.
It’s been 13 years since John Ioannidis published his famous paper and it seems nothing changes in the world of science.
plenty has changed. replication crisis.
i think people are backing into something they are not aware of.
From a comment by Peter Frost I picked up on his calling the current cultural elite obscurantists. To what extent do they “know” and wish to conceal as opposed to them actually believing their dogma?
The paranoid style is really hard to shake.
“the enormous underrepresentation of religious conservatives within science” is perhaps due to the actual practice of science undermining religious belief, in particular conservative religious beliefs.
I’m not sure to what extent diversity of epistemology is a North American phenomenon. I really don’t see it in Europe, but perhaps I’m out of touch.
Do you guys in here really believe that one dominant meme will prevail over most or all humans? I call this the “one future” scenario. Is it not far more likely that there will be a multiplicity of memes and that there will be many different futures rather than just one? I guess I would call this the “cyberpunk” scenario.
The latter notion became more popular during the 90’s and 00’s. But, for some reason (I think it’s the intolorant left), the idea that there must be one future with one dominant meme seems to be talked a lot more about on blogs these last few years.
Why does anyone think the future will not be cyberpunk?
‘To what extent do they “know” and wish to conceal as opposed to them actually believing their dogma?’
One obscurantist dump truck from the left, one from the right. They meet in the middle to dump atop the public eye.
Speaking of the empirical eye, I, captain! wonder which side Sauron-Putin would push in an election?
https://www.salon.com/2018/12/16/christian-nationalists-are-trying-to-seize-power-but-progressives-have-a-plan-to-fight-back/
It’s all Solomon Asch and an inch, not… Two, not… 1.5, not….It’s whatever y’all say!! long…I mean short, I meant short all along!
Scientists are people, with biases and politics and all kinds of defects. What gets researched depends on fashions, money, power.
But science has one advantage over competing religions: it works. It gives you penicillin and TNT and smartphones. People like that, and it is hard to compete with that. Wrong stuff trends to get dropped and right stuff tends to get picked up. It self-corrects.
Great example: http://prefrontal.org/files/posters/Bennett-Salmon-2009.pdf
One of the big things that empirically tends to be associated with more religious/superstitious people, on average, is that important things in their lives are highly subject to what, from their vantage point, seems like random chance.
Paradigmatic are farmers, whose economic success dependents heavily on unpredictable weather and the productivity of farmers elsewhere in the world that influences market prices, and actors, who are frequently one of many equally qualified people seeking a role whose success in each case depends upon the largely unknowable inner vision of the casting director and the directors and producers of the enterprise as a whole. Back when sailing was a highly chancy venture, sailors were that way as well.
When people live predictable, stable lives as a result of science (an American’s diet varies little from year to year or season to season based on this year’s quirks of weather, for example), people tend to be more secular.
One reason we have seen a wave of secularism is that life has become more predictable. This also explains why it hit Europe first, where social safety nets have reduced uncertainty in the lives of the average person, relative to the U.S. which is decades behind Europe in the trend towards secularism.
If life gets more predictable in the U.S., for the average person, people will get more secular. If life gets less predictable in the U.S. going forward, people will get more superstitious/religious.
Even if there is a trend towards a more superstitious/religious culture, however, that doesn’t tell us what flavor of this kind of belief people will adopt. Secularization has been most profound among people who were ancestrally nominal, not very committed Christians. But, people who are raised in a secular manner who become superstitious/religious might very well find Eastern spirituality, New Age, neo-paganism, and other non-Abrahamic world views easier to stomach.
“But science has one advantage over competing religions: it works. It gives you penicillin and TNT and smartphones.”
for some value of works. Religion gives you social cohesion, self controlled behavior, and a high trust society. Those may be far more valuable than knick-knacks.
@Abelard: Puritanistic movements always claim for the absolute control because they have certainty that it is just _their_ morals that should be universal. Leading to questions such as: which one is the most beautiful word in the English language, “compulsory” or “forbidden”?
@ohwilleke: Thanks for the fresh point about the unpredictability. I have heard that in WWII (probably in WWI as well), the airplane pilots were very superstitious. Makes sense: even though you are flying a piece of machinery designed to be as reliable as possible, in the air battle all bets are still off.
Maybe we will also start to relate to the Internet and the computers in increasingly superstitious, quasi-ritualistic manners, the more we lose their control? Cf. also all the HODL-incantations of the crypto-fanatics.
One obscurantist dump truck from the left, one from the right.
But there are a hundred HELEs for every HECE. The totalitarian left has the whip hand, not the right. Free thinkers are a hundred times more likely to be found on the right rather than the left.
“Religion gives you social cohesion, self controlled behavior, and a high trust society. ”
Not in Syria.
“The totalitarian left has the whip hand, not the right.”
The left could be more powerfull in the civil society, but the right is more powerfull in the State (the hard right is gaining governments like dominoes falling) – ironically, if we think a bit
My general experience with lefty academics is they mostly understand – once they become grown ups – that it’s all kinda bullshit and performative. They usually went into the field for idealistic purposes – hoping to raise the consciousness of others – or else simply because they couldn’t stand the idea for working for a business, and wanted to be off somewhere doing something which wasn’t actually tied to the need for profit. But eventually they realize that the exact same fetid primate hierarchies exist within the academy, and there are social norms they must follow in order to advance. At that point though they’re largely trapped – trained to do one thing which has no practical application whatsoever – so it’s better to try and settle down and have an adult life within the flawed system than start over from page 1. Especially because if they’re lucky enough to actually get on tenure track (which admittedly is increasingly unlikely) they get to have a pretty cushy gilded cage.
If life gets more predictable in the U.S., for the average person, people will get more secular.
Or perhaps they will get more bored, and supernatural stuff is just more … interesting. TV may be one leading indicator.
Life is getting more unpredictable for the working class and down.