Distortion Not Good for Faith
I blogged previously about the Answers in Genesis creation museum that’s going up in Kentucky in How to Waste $25 Million. Now the museum is about to be opened, and they held special events for the true believers yesterday.
This museum is a monument to the desire to avoid scientific evidence and to present an interpretation of the Bible that has clearly failed. Young earth creationism serves to place the Bible squarely in opposition to science, and by “science” in this case I do not merely mean “the data of science as currently understood.” Young earth creationism goes contrary to the data that we have. But the approach of young earth creationism is also contrary to the very methods of science. It takes one interpretation of a religious text, determines a very large body of “things that must be facts” from that meager information, and then sets out to impose those results on whatever observations are made. This is not a search for truth.
This indictment doesn’t apply as I’ve stated it to all creationism. Old earth creationists, for example, take a substantially different approach. It’s easy to forget that there are many conservative Christians who don’t have a problem with the age of the earth as determined and confirmed by multiple branches of science using many different approaches. While they disagree with varying portions of the theory of evolution, the collision is much smaller.
It is worthwhile noting that ID (intelligent design) creationism differs again by only asserting the need for divine intervention at various points in the development of life. I think it is still right to call ID creationism precisely because of that demand for a special type of intervention. Many young earth creationists are now spending their time arguing for ID. Why? It’s a simple public relations strategy. If you challenge people with the idea that the earth is only 6,000 years old, that dinosaurs lived with humans, you are running against such an overwhelming body of evidence from fields ranging from archeology to geology to biology, that many will reject you out of hand. So what you do is try to attack the scientific method in small ways, and do so in ways that some theists who believe in common descent can agree with you.
But at the bottom line there are still the same group of organizations out there who are pushing a 6,000 year old earth, because, in their view, the Bible says so. But numerous Biblical interpreters don’t believe that the Bible says that at all. So what this amounts to is equating “faith” with their specific interpretation of a small portion of the Bible. And that, in itself, is a distortion. This is not faith versus science. It’s not the Bible versus science. It is a contest between a bad interpretation of scripture and the overwhelming body of scientific evidence. (I have some comments on the various interpretations here.)
There’s an excellent article on the creation museum on the Panda’s Thumb. I like in particular the contrast between the spending done on creationism and that on scientific projects and education. Distorting the evidence and the record is not good for faith. It is building on the sand, a flawed building on a useless foundation at the cost of $27 million.
I’m curious as to whether it’s an inevitable distortion. From where I’m standing, it seems that this is an effective technique to encourage belief in a particular dogma: just equate it with some far broader and much-loved concept. Is there anything to stop dishonest or desperate preachers applying it at will?
More interestingly:
1) is there any way of generalising this form of distortion? If so, what examples are there for it outside of religion?
2) How do we recognise this tactic? How do we help others to recognise this tactic?
3) Are there any circumstances under which it could be valid and/or a good thing?
Well, nothing has stopped preachers from doing so thus far. A great deal of “Biblical” preaching simply consists of forcing the association of some set of words from the Bible with some dogma favored by the preacher. Even if one eliminates the many potential approaches to interpretation quite a bit is just random words, but if you associate certain words (for example words from the Torah [Pentateuch] or words from Jesus) with a dogma it’s easier to make it unquestioned.
But that is kind of a sideline. The rest of your questions have set me to thinking and I will respond later. I’m still working on editing a publishable version of a book “When People Speak for God” which relates to what you’re saying.
One question I have to work on is this: Are there books which perform a similar function in a secular context to what the Bible or another sacred text does in a religious one? Are there “canonical” sources that are used to cut off thinking irrespective of their validity. I seem to recall Einstein and Darwin being used in such a way, with some set of their words being associated with a concept which they would have been unlikely to support.
Hmmm. I’m rambling, but your questions interest me a great deal.
I’m actually not entirely sure. I think one could argue that there are no such secular books, if only because people generally feel no qualms about holding human writers to a human standard of evidence. It should always be possible for us to replicate a human author’s logic; where this isn’t the case, an inference of quackery is clearly valid.
The only counterexample I can think of is when people don’t expect to be able to replicate another person’s thinking. For example, it’s quite common for ordinary people to be misled by quacks posing as scientists, because said people have got used to the idea that scientific ideas take a lot of effort to comprehend.
The whole “social darwinism” phenomenon can probably be seen as an example of the breed. Take a belief* that’s treated very seriously, claim that your own daft opinions are somehow part of that belief, and watch as the credibility floods in. Fortunately, this can only ever afflict people who aren’t confident of their own mental abilities; pretty much by definition, there will always be experts who are qualified to take the quacks on.
On a related note, I’ve just had a thought: you could argue that creationists are playing the same game with science as a whole as they do with the Bible. They’re not just equating “faith” with their specific interpretation of the Good Book, they’re trying to equate “science” with it too, just as social darwinists did with their dogmas.
But this raises the question: doesn’t this criticism also apply to many forms of debate? The whole idea of debating is that you convince the audience that your ideas are a necessary consequence of rationality. The only difference seems to be how much effort goes into justifying this conclusion. At what point does it become a rhetorical ploy rather than a structural necessity?
And on that note I think that the issue of rambling is mutual. But it’s such fun!
* I am, of course, using the term “belief” in a very broad sense here.
[This is attempt #3 at posting, sorry if it comes out doubled]
I think one could argue that there are no such secular books, if only because we have no qualms about holding human writers to a human standard of evidence. When their work doesn’t hold up, we feel justified in assuming that it’s wrong.
The only counterexample I can think of is when people don’t expect to be able to replicate another person’s thinking. For example, quacks often pose as scientists because ordinary people have got used to not comprehending scientific concepts.
Social darwinism can probably be seen as an example here – the fact that it referenced an Important Scientific Work undoubtedly gave it credibility with the masses. Another example would be the woo surrounding quantum mechanics.
Fortunately, this issue can only ever afflict people who aren’t confident in a field; pretty much by definition, there will always be experts who are qualified to take the quacks on.
* I am, of course, using the term “belief” in a very broad sense here.
OK, I think this is the right one to keep. If not, I’ll try to fix it. For some reason your posts are getting put in the moderation queue. I can’t figure out why. The only reason I have set for moderation is too many links, but that obviously isn’t it. I also put a few common words from typical spam messages in moderation.
In any case, I’m pretty quick about approving . . .
It doesn’t matter which one got through – they’re all equally rambly. The only difference is that I suspected a word limit was being invoked so the later ones are substantially shorter than the earlier ones 🙂
There are no length limits. There must be some word in the messages that invokes the moderation, but I can’t find any. I can delete the two shorter comments so we can keep the discussion in one thread.
Corkscrew wrote: “Take a belief* thats treated very seriously, claim that your own daft opinions are somehow part of that belief, and watch as the credibility floods in.”
From some the credibility floods in. But others use the obvious daftness of the added opinions as reason to reject the belief which is otherwise taken seriously, which thereby loses credibility. This applies both to Christians rejecting Darwinism because of the social aspects and the half-baked philosophy sometimes added to it, and to atheists who reject Christianity and theism because of the sometimes ridiculous inferences falsely derived from the Bible. The result of this is that the daft extremists manage to discredit the moderate and mediating positions which at least Henry and I try to take on both issues.