Neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga says in his most recent book, The Ethical Brain, that scientists have as much or more difficulty than religious believers changing their minds about their favorite theories in the face of new evidence. Writes Todd Zywicki, also quoting Gazzaniga:
He also has an interesting chapter on religion, where he describes how the brain reacts during religious experiences and the psychological experience of religion. One interesting point he makes in passing is that it turns out that scientists are just attached to their particular theories as religious believers, and in fact, scientists are just as reluctant to surrender their beliefs about science when confronted with contrary evidence as are religious believers. He notes (p. 146):Nowhere does the human capacity to form and hold beliefs become more stark than when clear scientific data challenge the assumptions of someone's personal beliefs. It would be easy to spin a story line about how a particular person with a set of religious values resisted the biological analysis of this or that finding in an effort to reaffirm his or her belief. There are many such stories, but they miss the point. Scientists themselves are just as resistant to change a view when confronted with new data that suggest their view is incorrect. All of us hold ot to our beliefs, and it now appears that men are even more tencious about not letting go than are women.He adds (pp. 146-47), "Interestingly, it turns out that scientists are slower to change their views in the face of new data than are preachers."
Not surprising, considering that scientists are people too.
(By the way, the point of this series of posts is not to impugn scientists as a class, but merely to point out that they have human flaws and that scientific claims should be considered in that light rather than placed unworthily on a pedestal. I consider myself to be a scientist, and I like to think that I am humble enough in my beliefs to admit when I'm wrong or unsure.)
I'm not surprised that scientists have as much of a problem getting attached to their ideas as the rest of us, but it does seem a bit odd that they would get as attached as religionists do. After all, religionists, unlike scientists, are encouraged to be stubborn and unyielding regarding their views; calling someone a "man of great faith" is universally interpreted as a compliment, not the insult that it would be among scientists.
Then again, a scientist who only holds his current views because he has already seen them proved to his satisfaction may be justified in holding fast to those views, at least more so than a religionist who holds his beliefs equally strongly, but bases this belief primarily upon hearsay.
Does it say ANYWHERE in that book that Gazzaniga is an egotistical jerkwad? I've met him. It's true.
But, actually I've found THE EXACT OPPOSITE to be true. New data = new ideas = new funding opportunities, after all.
X: I think the point was "in the face of new data", which would appear to bypass the difference you point out.
ctg: I haven't met him, and the book doesn't mention his jerkwadiness anywhere! What an astounding omission... and I bet you'd find him rather intractable on the matter!
Well, of course scientists have flaws! If they didn't, there would be no need for peer review!
Apropos of which, even after the famous quadrupole moment of Mercury observations that confirmed general relativity's superiority to Newtonian flat-space physics, most physicists refused to accept the validity of relativity. (Einstein's Nobel Prize was for his research into the photoelectric effect.) Einstein himself said that relativity's acceptance would have to wait for its opponents to age out, which is more or less what happened.
Xrlq, you misunderstand the meaning of faith, at least in Christian circles. In particular, it does not mean the tendency to continue to believe something in the face of counter evidence. Nor in two decades of religious instruction did I ever encounter any encouragement to hold fast to my beliefs in the face of counter evidence.
Your view of religion is a charicature that was invented by athiests and other anti-Christian writers in the seventeenth century and has been uncritically taught and expanded by ignorant anti-religious people ever since.
Let me ask you this: if you had a very negative view of black people, and all that you knew about black people came from racist writers, do you think that would be a problem?
Oops. Make that the nineteenth century, you know, the 1800s (although it may have started in the 1700s). I subtracted when I should have added.
Michael, I didn't miss the "in the face of new data" part, I acknowledged it. A good scientist should be willing to re-think his old theories when new data no longer bear them out, but it's understandable that a scientist who is human may fall short of that goal. When it comes to religion, however, that's not the goal; keeping the faith is. That's why I have to think there's more or less to the story than the article lets on: people fall short of their ideals all the time, but the fact that the same exact behavior is regarded as vice by one group and as virtue by the other has got to have some effect.
Doc, if the notion that holding fast to one's faith in spite of evidence to the contrary is an invention of evil atheists conspiring to make Christians look bad, it sure was odd how eager my fundamentalist Christian teachers were to adopt these ostensibly anti-Christian teachings. To borrow your lame analogy to racism, almost everything I know about "blacks" comes from the "blacks," not from their detractors. In fact, a lot of it comes from my own studies of the "black" Bible back in the days when I used to be "black" myself. If you think the Bible itself doesn't bear out the fact that steadfast belief is a virtue and doubt a vice, then I'd suggest you crack it open every now and then and actually read the damned thing. I don't think that Jesus was acting an atheist shill, out to discredit his own religion, when he said that a child-like faith was not only desirable, but necessary to salvation. The only doubter I'm aware of who became a saint, Thomas, was elevated to that position despite his skepticism, and in large part for ultimately overcoming it; he certainly wasn't praised for being a "doubting Thomas" in the first place.
X, you're confusing scientific statements about observable natural phenomena with religious statements on a much wider range of topics. There are very few religious statements on which significant evidence can be brought to bear one way or another---only creation and certain miracles come to mind. What evidence would you bring forth to disprove the Golden Rule, or to disprove Christ's divinity? Which statements in the Sermon on the Mount are contrary to current scientific thinking?
It's very common today to hear people talk as if every English sentence---and even every human thought or belief---is reducible to a statement of fact that can be proven or disproven. Despite this idea's immense popularity, just a few moments' clear reflection should reveal its complete absurdity. As Hamlet put it: There are more things in heaven and Earth, X, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
What Ben said.
On the other hand, Xrlq, I should (and do) acknowledge that my assumptions about you were wrong. You sound so much like the many people I have known whose entire view of Christianity came from the likes of Bertand Russel and Richard Dawkins, that I assumed you were one of them.
All I can say then, is that either you misunderstood your fundamentalist friends and teachers, or you were involved with an odd group. To persuade me otherwise, you will have to find a significant numbers of fundamentalists actually saying things like, "Sure, all the scientific evidence seems to prove evolution, but God demands that we ignore all that evidence and believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old."
I've never heard anyone say anything like that. What they argue (correctly or incorrectly) is that the science of Evolution is critically deficient and that to an unbiased observer it does not support the claims that the Evolutionists make. This is not ignoring the evidence, it is disagreeing about what the evidence shows.
And you are misinterpreting the passage you quoted. Jesus did not mean that in order to be saved, we have to ignore facts. It is certainly not characteristic of children that they don't believe what they see. Quite the contrary.
Ben: the moral teachings are, for the most part, impossible to prove or disprove, except in the sense that a few of them might be shown to produce bad results rather than good ones (e.g., a social scientist could examine the efficacy of turning the other cheek, and conclude that its effect is to further embolden the bully and encourage him go keep on slapping you and others). Providing or disproving Christ's divinity is hard, but what if a natural explanation could be provided for each and every alleged miracle? A scientist could examine that data and try to come to a working conclusion; a Christian believer could not, at least not without jeopardizing his own Christianity in the process. Ditto for other theoretical possibilities that must be examined objectively by historians, but which cannot be entertained by believers, e.g., the possibility that Christ didn't live at all, that he didn't rise from the dead, or that he never said any of the stuff Matthew, Mark, Luke and/or John quoted him as saying decades after the fact, long after Christ himself was no longer around to correct the record.
Or take one of my favorites, Matthew 16:28, in which Jesus predicted the second coming would occur within the lifespans of at least one, probably two, of his 12 disciples. Today, 2,000 years later, with the second coming still schedule to occur Real Soon Now, it shouldn't all that hard to test the validity of that prediction: either some of the original 12 are still alive, or they're not.
Doc, you are right that Christian fundies rarely admit out loud that the scientific evidence supporting evolution is overwhelming. What I heard in fundy school instead was that evolution had been scientifically disproven, a claim that is patently false, known to be false, and totally unbecoming of an adherent of any religion that considers lying a sin. I'd actually find it MORE reasonable if they admitted that the evidence is what it is, and chalked it all up to God testing their faith; that at least could be true. It was never a problem for me in my Xian days, as I never interpreted Genesis as a substitute for The Origin of the Species, nor did I interpret each "X begat Y" as an asertion that X was the s an assertion a complete account of anyone's family tree.
As to my reference to childlike faith, that's a phrase bandied by the church, not its opponents. And if you really believe it is characteristic of children to believe what they see (and, I presume you also meant to say, NOT to believe what they DON'T see), I have to suspect you don't have any children, and haven't even been near one for a long time. Ever heard of Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny? Better believe in God like the kiddies believe in them ... or else.