Thursday, October 10, 2013

Victor Stenger On Anti-Science

Not really associated with the top tier of New Atheists, physicist Victor Stenger makes the same sort of arguments. While being self-touted as a particle physicist, he is very apparently also a devout Scientismist, as demonstrated by his book, “God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.”.

Not only does science show no such thing, science cannot show such things, ever, by the very construction of empiricism itself. More intellectually honest Atheist scientists claim merely that such questions are “not interesting” (or some variation of that dismissal) because science cannot, ever, produce answers. For them, if empiricism cannot provide an answer, then the question is illegitimate or trivial. In other words, if you cannot answer the question, ever, then attack the question.

But not Stenger. Content to mischaracterize his own discipline, Stenger does not shrink from mischaracterizing those who criticize the undisciplined side of science. In his piece for Huffington Post, ”The Rising Antiscience”, Stenger resorts to stereotyping every aspect of his argument.

Starting with “favorability to science”, Stenger takes government funding as an indication of antiscience, with the implied belief that science should be a government adjunct, supported to the extent that national defense is supported. That national defense is a constitutional requirement for the federal government, and supporting science is not, escapes him completely. In fact, it is argued frequently that government cash dumped on scientists can and has produced corruption of those scientists who compete for it. Whether Stenger fits this category, I have no idea. (Note 1)

Stenger notices the sorry education which US students receive, but only in science. And he gives just one sentence to that subject.

Yet, he admits, the populace is well enamored of the technology which is science-based.

Says Stenger,
”So, you might ask: What's the problem? Where does all this hostility to science come in?

I think the answer is clear. The hostility is not directed toward the practical applications of science, as in medicine and technology, but with the challenges that basic science brings to the religious views held by the majority of Americans. Unfortunately most Americans do not seem to realize that basic scientific research is the foundation of the welcome applications.”

Here is where Stenger, as he frequently does, flies well away from any facts, and soars off into his own prejudices: antireligion. It’s as if Americans are opposed to electrons but not electronics. Is that the case? Hardly.

First, Americans are not antiscience, they are against corrupt Scientism, and money driven Scientismists with huge agendas as messiahs or Atheist evangelists. Americans know something that Stenger-type Scientismists seem not to know: science has inherent limits which include perpetual refutability, falsifiability, human corruption, and material limitations. When Stenger-type Scientismists make these accusations, Americans recognize the inherent falseness of the premises being made. And it is easy to project the agenda behind it. Here are Stenger’s premises:
A. Antiscience is driven by religion.

B. No, wait. Antiscience is driven by corporate profit, using religion.
First, what Stenger and the anti-antiscientists claim is that skepticism of evolution is anti-science. What they always fail to admit is that evolution, especially common descent, but also speciation via beneficial mutation, is not an empirical claim, nor is it verified in the one manner that guarantees objectivity: replicable experiments, replicated with public data. Not only that, they will not be so replicated. Thus they are not objective, they are subjective. So either Stenger is ignorant of the objectivity requirements for his own discipline, or he is dishonest. Either of those conditions renders him incompetent for consideration of valid pursuit of valid premises regarding, well anything, but certainly premises for one’s worldview.

But Stenger is also an avid Atheist; so his attachment to evolution as more than science is attributable to a religious need: to explain origins in terms of material existence, a necessity for Atheism. (Note 2)

Second, Stenger attempts to strengthen premise A, with this statement of premise B:
”Corporate profits are the force behind the denial of climate change. But denialism would not be so effective if its proponents were not able to exploit the antiscience inherent to religious faith.”
Well, no, it’s the logical attachment to the objective aspect of science (empiricism) which motivates the anti-Scientism to which Stenger is actually objecting.

Stenger then analogizes AGW denialists with the Tobacco industry of 30 years ago, a comparison which is a False Analogy and a Poisoning of the Well.

In fact there actually is empirical data which indicates that the history of the earth has contained vast variations in climate, from ice ages to warmer periods than we are in now. But Stenger ignores evidentiary objections and instead uses weather to prove his point about climate change: Bad storms prove the case, he implies. These implications are far outside the arena of science, a place where Stenger frequents whenever he wishes.

Finally, Stenger makes the standard hate attack on religion:
”Faith would not be such a negative force in society if it were just about religion. However, the magical thinking that becomes deeply ingrained whenever blind faith rules over facts warps all areas of life. It produces a frame of mind in which concepts are formulated with deep passion but without the slightest attention paid to the evidence that bears on the concept.”
And yet the “evidence” which he implies is conclusive is not even valid “cause and effect” empirical, experimental, objective evidence in either case: evolution or AGW; those two pursuits are merely inductive and are subject to the inductive fallacy in spades. Evolution has no predictive capacity for modern biological science, and it cannot, because it predicts everything and nothing, randomly, simultaneously, based on inferential inputs rather than observed cause and effect. AGW cannot prove that CO2 is the actual cause, it is merely inferred to be the cause, based on correlation only. (Note 3)

So it is blind faith in the magical thinking of Scientism that Stenger is promoting.

What Stenger wants is unyielding reverence for science, scientists, and especially Scientismists like himself who are engaged in their war on religion. But their use of magical thinking while attacking magical thinking demonstrates the internal non-coherence of their entire worldview.

Witness this categorical claim Stenger makes as he wraps up:
”From its very beginning in prehistory, religion has been a tool used by those in power to retain that power and keep the masses in line.”
This would actually be interesting, IFF Stenger had more than prejudice to support his claim, say actual evidence to present. In fact, a common sociologist claim is that religion came into being as an explanation for non-replicable observations requiring explanations, or for explanations of origins, and had utility for forming civil associations. But that is of no interest to Stenger; religion is tautologically evil, by definition, his very own definition: no evidence is required. The only thing worse than sociology is sociology by Scientismists.
”This continues today as religious groups are manipulated to work against believers' own best interests in health and economic well being by casting doubt on well-established scientific findings. This would not be possible except for the diametrically opposed world-views of science and religion.”
Aside from misrepresenting “well established scientific findings” as being somehow factual or objective, Stenger misapprehends everything outside his own small circle. Science and religion are not the least diametrically opposed. (note 4) What Stenger’s real, actual problem is, is with logic vs the religious attachment to non-empirical pursuits which Stenger (and others of his bent) call “Science” (implying it to be holy) when it in fact is merely induction. Logic precedes science, and must be used when evaluating claims which are made as if they are actual science.

When a pursuit is not empirical, it is not objectively evaluable; therefore, it is subjective and subject to the inductive fallacy.

Repeating that for full effect in a more specific mode:
Both evolution and AGW are not empirical pursuits, therefore, they cannot be considered empirical science; thus they are not objective, they are subjective; they are subject to the inductive fallacy. Therefore, they are not “well established scientific findings” in any sense with which Stenger wants to associate them. In other words, Stenger’s statement is false and purely prejudicial in its implication.
So neither evolution nor AGW deserve to be touted as factual, evidence based science which is not to be criticized nor considered with skepticism. To claim such is a religious claim, that of Scientism based on Atheism.

And Scientism based on Atheism is the religion being evangelized by the likes of Victor Stenger.

NOTES
Note 1: But using Stenger’s prejudicial accusational archetype, I’d have to guess so.

Note 2: Stenger’s absurd book, “God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.”, is another example of his religious need to create a material explanation, which cannot actually be done: an intellectual dishonesty, to say the least.

Note 3. The predictability of the computerized hypotheses is placed far enough out (now it is a generation away, they claim in the face of land temperature stagnation) that the demands for taxpayer-cash-now cannot be refuted by non-existent experimental verification or falsification, or by inductive observation of variables in action. Some variables are now admittedly not known, such as those which create temperature stagnation of land mass while oceans warm.

Note 4. Creation “science” has no more (or less) verifiability than does evolution or cosmological origins science. So while it conflicts, it is not conflicting with actual empirical, “settled science”, it is conflicting as one materially unprovable hypothesis vs a second materially unprovable hyposthesis. Further, it is only in the Materialist claim of material-origins-only, a demonstrably irrational Category Error, where dualist religion conflicts with materialist monist hypotheses, and then not by much. So the entire notion of religious “anti-science” is bogus, and a wet dream of Scientismists who wish to use it to denigrate non-monists.

Addendum:
Here is some actual data to compare with Stenger's unsubstantiated claims:


Here


Here


Here

12 comments:

Steven Satak said...

Lewis commented on this phenomenon once. The physicist, when staying in his own field, is good at what he does. But when he steps outside and uses his status as a physicist to back his statements as an amateur philospher, all bets are off.

Stenger says things that make no sense and that are based on an anti-theist bias he brings to the discussion. It is not something he gets from the facts.

(Of course, you can always get what you want from the facts, so long as you studiously ignore the facts that run counter to the conclusion you want...)

Spicoiter said...

I think Stenger is on the positivist trend; he is stuck there.

Regarding verificationism, the verification principle is unable to give an account of science for two reasons: first, protocolary assertions (of base or of observation) are absolutely no uncontroversial, and besides -which has a central character- a serie of similar and repeated observations, no matter how many they are, fail to logically substantiate the universal laws of science.
Therefore positivists had to leave verifiability and switch to "controllability" and "confirmability". Carnap distinguished between complete confirmability and incomplete confirmability.
It seems incredible that some outdated dogmatic positivists have not yet realized this.

Karl Popper, from "The logic of scientific discovery", considered the verification principle as self-contradictory, cryptic-metaphysic and unable to explain the universal laws of empirical science.

Martin said...

I ain't got no love for Stenger, however:

>evolution, especially common descent, but also speciation via beneficial mutation, is not an empirical claim, nor is it verified in the one manner that guarantees objectivity: replicable experiments, replicated with public data. Not only that, they will not be so replicated. Thus they are not objective, they are subjective.

It is not repeatable, but it is empirical, because it involves, as you call it, "forensic" evidence. Historical evidence. If you ditch evolution because it is not repeatable, then you can kiss all of history, criminal investigations, etc goodbye as well. We can't repeat a crime to observe it happening, but we can find the fingerprints, bloodstains, and so on that shows with a high degree of certainty what happened.

Michael said...

It's amusing to watch all these atheist scientists pretend to be experts in theology and philosophy. Ironic how they hijacked the field of science from the Catholic Church and then injected it with their own belief system, evolution, which they now have the audacity to claim as being empirical truth despite having zero observable, testable evidence, even after all the billions of dollars wasted in pursuit of such efforts. And let's not even get into the abysmal failure that is abiogenesis.

"Unfortunately most Americans do not seem to realize that basic scientific research is the foundation of the welcome applications."

Pure, unadulterated ignorance. So let me get this straight. Unless I and the rest of America denounce our religious beliefs, we're unscientific, as if science were somehow dependent upon atheism, right? Give me a break. Since when did science become the exclusive property of atheists? Of course it's only natural that atheists want for all scientists to be comprised solely of anti-religious, which is why they've installed their own point-men to ensure that it remains as biased towards atheism as possible. It's 100% exactly the same mindset as Stalin, Mao and other atheist leaders in their communist utopias, who hated religion and thus committed mass genocide to wipe out those
"useless bottom-feeders."

From its very beginning in prehistory, religion has been a tool used by those in power to retain that power and keep the masses in line.

Hey Victor, over 100 million people were murdered in atheist-communist states in just one century. That's more than every war in world history combined.

Ever notice how every prominent atheist, Dawkins, Sagan and so forth, despite being supposedly anti-religion as a whole, focus the vast majority of their aggression towards Christianity? That's because Christianity has fixed moral values and ethics, placing value on human life from inception in the womb until the last breath. The communists cannot stand having an ideological view which competes with their moral relativism and so need to purge it from their midst. That way, the communist leader is freed from all moral restraints and can institutionalize whatever systematic cruelty and immorality he pleases.

This makes it apparent why atheists, socialists and homosexual activists are hellbent on removing religion, specifically Christianity, from every facet of American life. The Constitution was written to protect rights which were believed to be inherited by our Creator, which is exactly why such people seek to undermine it.

Stan said...

Martin,
It's interesting to see how much actual archaelogical information has been suppressed. I've been looking at the "forbidden" data, that which falls outside the parameters of the necessary evolution narrative, and which has been rejected, not for validity, but because it doesn't support the requirements of TENS.

I have never before looked seriously at the forbidden data since it has been tarred as "Creationist" if it threatens the narrative. I believed that such information was, indeed, prejudiced and false, and I never looked at it, although I did hear about some of it, secondarily. I'm finding otherwise, and I've got a long way to go to finish considering it all.

That's one reason that I haven't yet followed through with the proposed attack on evolution, which originally was to be an attack on the Atheist certainty and hypocrisy of claims which they cannot know to be the case.

Now it will certainly include some forensic evidence, empirically verified which goes directly contrary to the claims of evolutionists, which they must defeat if evolution is to be considered valid.

Like Atheists, evolutionists seem to claim that they need not give any reasons for rejecting evidence which they do not like.

Martin said...

Stan, do you have any examples?

Martin said...

I should also add:

>Creation “science” has no more (or less) verifiability than does evolution

This isn't true. We can verify theories about what happened in the past with inductive evidence which increases the probability of them being true. If, for example, young earth creationism is true, we could theorize that since all animals were created in one instant, we should find evidence in the fossil record of this. But if animals slowly evolved from simpler organisms, then the fossil record should reflect this. So we can verify, indirectly, which theory would be true or at least more probably true.

Stan said...

Martin,
Note that I did not claim Young Earth Creationism, and I will not. I'm not done looking at the evidence and the criticism of the evidence which is in the hands of some of the Creationists. Some of it will necessarily be rejected. Some of it will likely be usable, since the main attack on it is Ad Hominem and full of false associations rather than any direct falsifying measurements. Then again, maybe not, based on its own lack of merit.

One of the problems is the off-hand rejection of claims without even viewing the evidence much less measuring it, i.e. dictating that it is false, due to not being congruent with prevailing "professional" opinion. That is a common irrationality from the evolutionist camp.

There are several claims which are interesting that I haven't had time to investigate yet; it's in the works. It's time consuming to have to find non-prejudiced analysis from both sides, and then to consider the relative value of the arguments of both sides.

Here's one interesting argument you might want to dig your teeth into: it is claimed that the geologic column/animal evolution chart is not found to be the case in many places around the world, with animals in inverted layers and the geologic column being incomplete in many places with missing regions altogether (which would not be at all surprising, IFF there are demonstrable disturbances which caused the inversions/omissions.)

I still need to look at that claim and its impact.

yonose said...

Hello Everyone!!

Long time no see.

About AGW, there's a conclusive video regarding the corruption of scientific data and the beginning of the global-warming narrative. That you may watch from this link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jzBWmpzifc

Being well informed, we should know that the narrative of global warming is just one of the many big scientific hoaxes of our time.

You should never EVER trust science when it is already a consensus, where biased political implications are coming from other types of outdated consensus, which, unfortunately, are indeed the daily meal.

No paranoid-conspiracy-theory-cave here. Just what needs to be whistle-blown.

Kind Regards.

Martin said...

Yonose,

What is the gist of the video? It is too long to watch right now, but I do know that Monckton lies, distorts, and does anything he can to support what he has already decided as a conclusion, so any link to something from Monckton is going to be immediately suspect and almost certainly false.

Stan said...

Martin,
Here's your chance to refute Monckton's full repertoire...

yonose said...

Martin,

Is not about Monckton only.

Alarmist Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW, pun intended), suspiciously begins to be well known with the tampering of scientific data. Obviously the idea of AGW resides on an alarmist position.

While I agree there is an effect with our industrial endeavours, is not a big a deal as the mainstream, in that particular case, make us believe.

Here are more complete sources, which are admittedly too long to read in one settling, but interesting ones nonetheless:

NIPCC 2009 report (you may download the full report from this page)

NIPCC 2011 report (you may download the full report from this page)

And possibly this book! (I have not read it yet):

http://www.amazon.com/Hockey-Stick-Illusion-Climategate-Independent/dp/1906768358/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1266101689&sr=1-1

Keeping an skeptical view regarding the AGW activism is still not an un-substantiated claim.

Kind Regards.