If you weren't there, you should have been

The Thinking Atheist illustrates why...

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Hot time in the old town tonight

Things are getting a bit busy in the North American secular world. You all know I participated in the Reason Rally in Washington DC. The day before the rally the American Humanist Association held an open house reception at their DC offices.

Also that same weekend, and in the same city Atheist Nexus held an after rally function and the American Atheists held their annual convention.

Now upcoming this weekend we have the Midwest Science of Origins conference held on the campus of the University of Minnesota – Morris competing with the first ever atheist event on an American military base, the Rock Beyond Belief concert and conference at Fort Bragg, NC, and the Northwest Free-Thought Alliance 2012 annual conference in Renton, WA.

Not to be outdone, our Canuck friends up north will be holding a conference in Kamloops, BC entitled Imagine No Religion at the same time as the Women in Secularism conference is taking place in Washington DC.

Perhaps all of this is in response to increasingly oppressive extremism coming from the religious world, or possibly it is just time for freethinkers to come out of hiding and try to make a difference. 

Time will tell.

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The modern origin of religious skepticism

Egypt has been in the news a good bit lately. While the country has been under the thumb of one oligarch or another for most of written history, Egypt has managed to mature into a modern, advanced society. It seems therefore rather appropriate to discuss some of the region’s history, and perhaps a bit of the intellectual origins of the Land of the Pharaohs.

Egypt is a land replete with larger than life characters and astounding human progress. There have been ups and downs, yet some of this planet’s greatest civilizations were nurtured by the fertile lands of the Nile valley.

The seeds of modern culture originated not in Egypt herself, but across the Mediterranean in a land in the north of Greece called Macedon. Alexander the Great, Macedonian King and would be world conqueror, planted those early seeds. Following the rape of Gaza in 332 BCE, Alexander was welcomed into Egypt as a savior, even assigned god-like status. Alexander must have liked this because he began referring to himself as the son of Zeus.

Alexander built a great city along the Mediterranean coast, naming it after himself. Historian Michael Wood said of Alexandria, "it was the first city of the civilized world in size, elegance, riches, and luxuries: where one could obtain anything imaginable to fill the needs of the body and soul. As its famous Pharos lighthouse was a welcome sight for weary travelers, Alexandria itself seemed to have acted as a beacon for merchants, curious tourists, religious prophets, and most importantly: the finest intellectual minds of the times.”

Around the same time Alexander ascended to the Macedonian throne following the death of his father King Phillip II, a happy Sicillian philosopher was born of privileged parents in Messina. We know he was a happy fellow because his name, Euhemerus, is taken from the Greek word euhēmeros, meaning ‘happy or prosperous.’ It is unclear if Euhemerus ever met Alexander, but we know that he did find some association with the Alexandrian Court.

In 331 BCE, Alexander departed Alexandria on a quest to conquer Babylonia and the Persian Empire. He never returned, and died in 323 BCE.

Cassander next ascended the Macedonian throne. The young King seemed to take a bit of a shine to Euhemerus, giving him a job in his court. According to Euhemerus writings, Cassander sent him on long, adventurous journeys, of which he kept detailed diaries. There are those who describe these journals as fictitious and I’m quite inclined to agree. Most of the writings are lost. What we know of them is from the surviving works of his contemporaries.

It one of the most important works, of which only scraps survive, Euhemerus describes a voyage by ship to an island somewhere in the Indian Ocean.  The island is called Panchaea, and Euhemerus describes the culture he encountered there in great detail. He found on the island a golden monument upon which were inscribed the feats of Greek gods. The monument was called Hiera anagraphē, or ‘Sacred Scripture’.

The stories spoke of the great Kings, Uranus, Cronus, and Zeus. These were human Kings later worshipped as gods. The island and the society of which he writes are imaginary, but the Kings described bore resemblance to real Hellenistic rulers of the day. This tale was commentary on the practice of these rulers pretending to serve the people, yet being desirous, in Alexanderesque fashion, of worship and elevation to the status of god.

Thus Euhemerus became mythographer in chief in the court of King Cassander. His tenure in the King’s court was brief, yet his skeptical philosophy would spread across western culture. The theory of god as man didn’t make much of an impression on his fellow Greeks, but the euhemerizing of man-gods had quite the effect on much of the rest of the civilized world.

The written works of Euhemerus have survived only in scraps and in the recollections of contemporaries such as Diodorus and Theodorus. The religious skepticism of a man 300 years dead at the time the Christian Messiah was born has had enduring effect. 600 years after the death of Euhemerus, the early Christian apologist Lactantius utilized euhemeristic thought to debunk the Greek gods in his work Divinae Institutiones. Interesting that he never made a similar leap with his on religious heroes.

Euhemeric thought treats religious myth as a reflection of an actual historical event… just made larger than life by societal change, frequent retelling and reinterpretation. In the Cyrenaic philosophical tradition embodied in the skepticism of Theodorus, euhemerism opened broad, new avenues for interpretation of ancient myth and contemporary religious belief.

Over those brief four years Euhemerus was fortunate enough to have access to the resources of the Cassandrian court, he benefitted greatly from the intellectual environment present in Alexander's great city by the sea. With exposure to Egyptian culture, the scholars, philosophers and tourists who often visited Alexandria, and the availability of Demetrius' great library, the knowledge of the developed world lay at his feet.

Euhemerus may have been the first true skeptic. Truly it is a shame so much of the original work has been lost. Still, with only those few salvaged fragments of his writings, Euhemerus managed to pave the skeptical path for many generations of philosophers.

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Verbatim

FROM Religion Today

HEATHER WAX: SCIENCE + RELIGION TODAY

When Do Children Develop Skepticism?

Vikram Jaswal answers.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

One of young children’s most adorable qualities is their credulity. They really seem to believe most of what they are told—from the incredible (Santa Claus exists!) to the counterintuitive (the Earth is round even though it looks flat) to the normally unobservable (people have lungs). But when you stop to think about it, children’s willingness to believe even more mundane facts conveyed through language is pretty remarkable. Why should they take your word for it that they live in a place called “Virginia,” or that the four-legged animal licking their face is called a “dog?”

In some recent research, my students and I showed that 3-year-olds are much more likely to trust what they are told than the same information conveyed to them through another means. Some kids heard an adult claim that a sticker was in one cup when it was actually in another; other kids saw the adult place an arrow on the empty cup. On the very first trial, all children in both situations looked in the cup indicated by the adult. This probably reflects a generic (and appropriate) expectation that adults are normally helpful in these situations. In later trials, children who saw the adult use an arrow to mark the empty cup quickly switched to searching in the opposite one. But those who heard her claim it was in the empty cup continued to look there. Some children did so eight times in a row! We argued that in addition to whatever general trust 3-year-olds have that others will behave in helpful (or at least benign) ways, they have developed a specific bias to trust what they are told.

And this is actually a good thing. Most of the time, adults do their best to tell children the truth (or what they believe to be true), and so a default bias of this type is adaptive: If children can just believe what they are told, they don’t have to go through the time-consuming and sometimes impossible task of evaluating the veracity of everything they are told. A number of thinkers have pointed out that without such a bias to believe at least initially, communication would break down for adults, too. We would never be able to learn about things outside our own experience, for example. And some clever research by Dan Gilbert of Harvard University and his colleagues suggests that adults do initially accept as true information they are presented (in those studies, through text), though they can later go back to “unaccept” that information.

So, when do children develop skepticism, or the ability to “unaccept” what they are told? The short story is that it’s complicated. If you’re just interested in when they would no longer be fooled in the sticker game, we have data (as do others) that, as a group, 4-year-olds have little difficulty ignoring or doing the opposite of what they are told in that situation. But of course, there is enormous variability in how credulous children (and adults) are. A few 3-year-olds in our study stopped believing what the adult told them after being misled once (though most continued to be misled). In fact, using other techniques, Melissa Koenig of the University of Minnesota and Cathy Echols of The University of Texas at Austin have identified what might be considered skepticism in some infants as young as 16 months. In that work, an adult referred to a dog as a “ball,” for example, and some infants objected in various ways (e.g., shaking their heads, looking quizzically at their mothers, saying “no”).

Our research now centers on understanding why some kids are more skeptical than others of the same age. What kinds of experiences are necessary to foster critical thinking? What other cognitive skills are related to skepticism? As a preview, we have some preliminary data suggesting that 3-year-olds who are higher in what is called “inhibitory control” tend to be more skeptical. For example, those children who can make a response different from the one they would normally make (think of the game “Simon Says”) tend to be more wary of misinformation provided by an adult. This fits in well with the possibility that children have a default bias to believe, which must be inhibited to respond skeptically. Will training inhibitory control strategies (as one innovative preschool curriculum, Tools of the Mind, attempts explicitly to do) have an effect on critical thinking? Stay tuned!

Vikram Jaswal is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia.

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Apologies to Michael Shermer

The debate over healthcare reform, like just about everything these days in this highly polarized America, has become contentious. This time however, things are a bit different. The rhetoric has risen to a frenzied pitch and there is actual public violence like we haven’t seen since perhaps the Viet Nam protests. There are a good many talking points in this debate that are misleading - many outright lies - yet the masses are swallowing the bait and taking protest to the streets. So, with apologies to Michael Shermer, I will ask…

… Why do people believe strange things?

In a survey and interview-based study published in a recent issue of the journal Sociological Inquiry, sociologists from four major research institutions concentrated on the most curious aspect of the 2004 presidential election: the strength, intensity and resilience of belief held by many of the Bush administration lie that Saddam Hussein was linked to the 9-11 terrorist attacks.

The paper, authored by researchers Steven Hoffman, Ph.D., a visiting assistant professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo; Monica Prasad, Ph.D., assistant professor of sociology at Northwestern University; Andrew Perrin, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, addresses what it refers to as a "serious challenge to democratic theory and practice that results when citizens with incorrect information cannot form appropriate preferences or evaluate the preferences of others."

The study revealed that, although this belief influenced the election outcome, it did not result from as much pro-Bush propaganda as it did from the urgent need by many in this country to justify a war to which we were already committed. The findings illustrate possible reasons why some Americans form or accept false beliefs regarding Obama's citizenship, and in the healthcare debate.

The journal article, titled "There Must Be a Reason: Osama, Saddam and Inferred Justification," calls unsubstantiated beliefs, a "serious challenge to democratic theory and practice," and the authors discuss how and why such beliefs continue to be maintained by so many voters for so long in the absence of supporting evidence.

Co-author Dr. Hoffman says that over the course of the 2004 presidential campaign, several polls showed that majorities of respondents believed that Saddam Hussein was either partly or largely responsible for the 9/11 attacks, a percentage that declined very slowly, dipping below 50 percent only in late 2003. "This misperception that Hussein was responsible for the Twin Tower terrorist attacks was very persistent, despite all the evidence suggesting that no link existed," Hoffman says. In the study a rather substantial sampling of voters reported believing in a link between Saddam and 9/11. The researchers presented the available evidence of the link, along with the evidence that there was no link, and then urged respondents to justify the incorrect belief. For all but one, the overwhelming evidence that there was no link left no impact on their arguments in support of the link.

Hoffman says "Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as 'motivated reasoning' (similar to ‘confirmation bias’), which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe. "In fact," says Hoffman. "For the most part people completely ignore contrary information. [the study] demonstrates voters' ability to develop elaborate rationalizations based on faulty information."

So while pundits and politicians continue to blame the all-so-obvious misinformation campaigns of the Bush administration and FOX news, this study argues that premise and points to an individual or collective desire to believe in a pre-conceived worldview instead. While these deluded individuals point to the false authorities as support for the belief, it is the individual who is seeking confirmation.

As Hoffman says, "the argument here is that people get deeply attached to their beliefs," and that we humans form “emotional attachments that get wrapped up in our personal identity and sense of morality, irrespective of the facts of the matter. The problem is that this notion of 'motivated reasoning' has only been supported with experimental results in artificial settings. We decided it was time to see if it held up when you talk to actual voters in their homes, workplaces, restaurants, offices and other deliberative settings."

The same phenomena appear to be at work in this healthcare debate, with lies and hypocrisy bubbling from the bowels of advocates and opponents alike. Even as the bills have passed both houses we are seeing the talking heads still on the offensive. It don’t matter what the other side is for, I’m agin it…

The results of this study are rather dramatic, proving that irrespective of which political wing a person is affiliated, individuals exist in mass who are comfortable in their delusion and wishing to not to be confused by facts; almost all refusing to change positions even when confronted with the falsity of beliefs.

We need far more skeptics and many fewer sheep.

This missive was heavily plagiarized from a published interview with Dr. Hoffman, which can be found HERE.

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Flat Earth 101

I’d like to introduce you to a fellow I find very entertaining. His name is Pascal Boyer, a professor of Anthropology and Psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, who holds the prestigious title of Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory.

Boyer is also a religious philosopher and the author of a book I enjoyed, titled Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Foundations of Religious Belief, published by Random House (UK) and Basic Books (USA), 2001. The main theme of this book is that we now have a better understanding of religious representations, their causes and their role in human cognition, simply because we have a better and more precise understanding of the mind-brain, its evolution, its structure and its specific dispositions.

From the book:

“…coalitional psychology is involved in the dynamics of public religious commitment. When people proclaim their adherence to a particular faith, they subscribe to claims for which there is no evidence, and that would be taken as obviously wrong or ridiculous in other religious groups. This signals a willingness to embrace the group’s particular norm for no other reason that that it is, precisely, the group’s norm.”

Professor Boyer strikes a resonate chord in this statement, and it may explain some of the irrational behavior I’ve witnessed here in Texas recently.

The October 16th Dallas Morning News reported the following:

“Social conservatives on the State Board of Education have appointed three evolution critics to a six-member committee that will review proposed curriculum standards for science courses in Texas schools. Two of the appointees are authors of a book that questions many of the tenets of Charles Darwin's theory of how humans and other life forms evolved. One of them, Stephen Meyer, is also vice president of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based group that promotes an explanation of the origin of life similar to creationism.” The other author is Ralph Seelke, a biology professor at the University of Wisconsin-Superior. Also on the panel is Baylor University chemistry professor Charles Garner, who, like the other two, signed the Discovery Institute's "Dissent from Darwinism" statement that sharply questions key aspects of the theory of evolution. "

The "Dissent from Darwinism" document states:

"We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged."

So, we in Texas get to look forward to anti-evolutionists (flat-earthers) developing the science curriculum that will be taught to school children in our state. Lovely.

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Children Will be Children...

"Although small children have taboos against stepping on ants because such actions are said to bring on rain, there has never seemed to be a taboo against pulling off the legs or wings of flies. Most children eventually outgrow this behavior. Those who do not either come to a bad end or become biologists"

To Know a Fly, Vincent Dethier, 1962, p. 2

In their early years children are knowledge junkies, questioning everything in their view, though exhibiting little skepticism. Most never learn to distinguish between inquisitiveness and credulity. Those who do either come to a bad end or become professional skeptics

Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time, Michael Shermer, 1997, W. H. Freeman.
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