Friday, April 29, 2016

challenge to athyeists especially Martyn Cornell

Atheism analyzed is a site I dislike. His political views suck and he uses them more than he analyses atheism. A friend, JPspfn, alerted me to an exchange where an atheist claims to have read my God arguments and argues against them. Rather he dismisses them without really understanding them.


Martyn Cornell said...
JBsptfn: I've read all those arguments before, thanks. They all boil down to: "We can't think of another answer so it must be god." And many actually have two possible answers. Apparent fine tuning? Could be god - but could be the multiverse. Overall - not good enough. And exactly the same failing applies to the attempt to answer the "no proof" attack: "I can't think of another explanation for my mystical feelings, so it must be god." Again, not good enough. Incidentally, that page is in shocking need of a good copy editor: it's almost unreadable, the typos are so bad.

They get onto Fine Tuning and multiverse
It's 200 and something comments, mine is qt the bottom but zi domnt actually expect anyone to read them, just for docs:
 
Martyn Cornell said...
“There is precisely NO evidence for a multiverse”

But nor is there any evidence that an immaterial being can call into effect, and affect, our material world: only your assertion that it must be so, because you can’t think of any other explanation. I fail to find evidence-free assertion convincing.

There appear to be three choices: the start of the material world was caused by an immaterial being; the start of the material world had no cause; or there was, in fact, no start. You seem to be rejecting that last one because it’s unprovable: but plenty of unprovable things are still true. I’m not saying the infinite multiverse IS true: but it certainly seems more parsimonious as an explanation than the idea of an immaterial being that can affect the material.
Martyn Cornell said...
Oh, and by the way: "Kimura proved that the only mutations to be passed along are deleterious, not beneficial." - no he didn't.
Joe Hinman said...
Martyn Cornell said...
“There is precisely NO evidence for a multiverse”

But nor is there any evidence that an immaterial being can call into effect, and affect, our material world: only your assertion that it must be so, because you can’t think of any other explanation. I fail to find evidence-free assertion convincing.

do you even know how to read? if you read my arguments as you claim to have. You probably just read the first line. Had you read my FT argument you would know that I have 26 reasons why Multiverse does not beat FT.
Joe Hinman said...
There appear to be three choices: the start of the material world was caused by an immaterial being; the start of the material world had no cause; or there was, in fact, no start.

Have you actually read anything about this topic? First you have no reason to suppose an immaterial from of being could not exist or create. Secondly being material or immaterial has nothing to do with it. Although it does seem all matter is cotangent so that's a reason to think the origin o all can't be material. Thirdly,


the start of the material world had no cause;

all material things have causes so attributing the universe to no cause is foolish,

or there was, in fact, no start.

science says there was. it's called the big bang,.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Atheist Farm


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I have noted the Orwellian nature of atheist language. For atheists reading this, George Orwell was a great writer who specialized in political language. One of his greatest achievements was to write an essay which one of the best ever written on the use of language in political ideology: "Politics and the English Language," written in 1946. In that great work he reminds us that:

Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.


Never was this so true than in dealing with atheists. In the way atheist are beginning to use speech we can see all tricks Orwell talked about. Of course most of these internet atheists have not read Animal Farm or 1984 so they have no idea. But in their use of certain words they disguise totalitarian leanings one would never suspect. The totalitarian regimes of the Soviet Union refereed to their political dissidents as "mentally ill" and kept putting in mental institutions becuase they felt rejecting the worker's paradise must surely be a form of mental illness.

I've already written about how the atheists use term "delusion." They actually don't use it to mean mental illness. They use the term to merely mean "a wrong idea." But in using a term that everyone knows means a false construct which results from mental illness they are actually calling religious people mentally ill without having to admit that they are doing it. It's like if they said religious people are stupid. The religious person objects but they said "it's a special form of the word that doesn't mean really not bright," but then they keep saying it. We would get the idea. It's like insulting people in ways that are plausibly deniable. why use a special term such as this just to mean "this is idea is wrong?" obviously it's meant to carry a connotation. Now consider the dangers of labeling as mentally ill any one who happens to disagree with your point of view. Atheism as a whole is become more totalitarian all the time and they can't see it because they are so addicted to the charge they get from feeling superior.

Here's the latest example of the Orwellian tendencies. They Dawkies use the term "cult" in relation to all religious belief and groups. Of course they have no knowledge of the true sociological meaning of the term. They think all cults are imposing their will upon brain washed lackies whose live they take over and ruin. An example is the posting by a CARM Dawkie named "Toast"



The title of the therad:" a few questions about cults" so he's just equating religion with cults.

If no one ever told you about your god you would still believe?

if so, would your belief mirror the one you have been indoctrinated into?

if you still would believe even if know one told you these things to
believe would you not just be making things up?


He's trying to say that because you can't come to the same conclusions you do as a Christian on your own with no Bible and no church to guide you then it must be a cult because it's others imposing their will.


another post by Toast:

sorry but everything...a religion is a cult
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This is also the same tendency. Everything the other guys value we disvalue so every term they use we must re-think impose our own terms. We can't allow them to name their own things, such as "church" we must name them and stick them with the connotations of our own interpretation. So thus Churches become cults. The irony meter is gong to blaring in a moment.

The really alarming tendency is the almost blatant admittion that ideas which don't stack up to the atheist ideology are "dangerous" and must be controlled. This statement was made on CARM sept 21 2009 by "Mountaineer Elf.



Because some ideas can be dangerous. Not all ideas deserve to be heard if they are dangerous.

Trying to usurp science and reality to stick in your deity is dangerous.



The context he's speaking of is an argument for the existence of God. The idea that a new concept or some concept that he doesn't agree with is "usurping scinece" is quite alarming. What's worse is he's not content for scinece to stay in its own domain it must conquer all and control all reality. Science when are arguemnts for God usurping scinece? That can only be the case if he thinks that science's proper domain is dictating  that we can't believe in God. It's even worse than that, their ideology equates science with reality. His view is so totalizing that it must control all, there can be nothing in existence that is not controlled by his view point.

In defending this other atheoids literally said "O he didn't mean it that way and you know it." How do we know it? How could he mean it in any other way? In what way could God arguments userp scinece and reality without the idea that science is all reality?

Here's the Orwellian rub. In animal farm the Pigs control the farm. There's a revolution the animals have overthrown the farmer and changed the name of the Farm to "animal farm" they are in charge. The pigs are the leaders, they keep putting up posters with slogans telling the other animals what it's all about. But they keep changing the messages until they come around to mean the exact opposite of what they did at first. This is the way totalitarians use language, according to Orwell.

(for a synopsis of the book go here)

Atheist used to call themselves "free thinkers." They wanted us to believe that they were just sticking for the rights of us all to think anything we think and believe anything we believe. Now they begin to define believing things that contradict their ideology add "delusion" and "usurping reality." When I pointed this out Mountaineer Elf redefined the nature of free thinking:


then:

True free thinkers are those that can speak and think with accuracy and honesty. As a scientist, I pride myself on being able to read and understand the natural world and everything it has to offer. Not all of it is 100% right, but I consider the 95% to be good enough.


This is so Orwellian everyone need to see this. He's narrowed the definitive of free thinking to the point where it includes his ideology and nothing more. So free thinkers are people who agree with me. Those are the one's we call "Scientists." The true free thinkers agree with me and nothing more.

But wait he's not done. It get's worse. he goes one better:



The rest of your anti-free thought rant snipped - not worth responding to insults. If you want a discussion, I'm more than willing to discuss. If you want to hurl insults, I can just go back to the Evolution/ID forum and have Creationists assume that I'm stupid for not buying into talking snakes, magic trees, and global floods.

Now he defines opposing his form of totalitarianism is "anti-free thinking." This is just like the communists. If you are dissident you are mentally ill and sanity is defined as obeying the state. If you point out that he's against free thought hense you are anti-free thought because free thought has now been reduced to nothing more than agreement with him. To disagree with him is opposes free thought. So the person who thinks we should all have the right to think for ourselves is now anti-free thought and one who thinks we have to control everything that is not in agreement with the ideology is now the free thinker! Black and just become white, as Orwell said. That is exactly what Orwell said political language does. read it again:



"Political Language...is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.."

Then his cohorts carry it a step further and if you dissent from this truth regeime of the atheists then you are a danger to humanity:


May brick


So Metacrock would be happy for children to be taught that HIV is spread through vaccines and that condoms offer no protection?


You can't get more Orwellian than this. This is exactly right out of 1984 where the state has the right to imposes that dissenters must  accept their view of reality even by forcing them to admit something such as 2 + 2 = 5. In forcing them to accept something they categorically and fundamentally believe to be totally wrong they are eliminating their ability to ever think independently. That is exactly what's happened to many of these atheists and what they are trying to do to religious people.

In brow beating, intimidating, by mocking and ridiculing people they force them to de-convert and in so doing they force them to alter their most basic and cherished beliefs and the fundamental understanding they have of who they are and what reality is. there is nothing more hinus one can do to another person. that is on a par with murder and If thought like they do I should start calling them murderers.

I'm sure they will come back and say they can't force anyone to deconvert against their will, that doesn't stop them from trying and it means they are shutting down reason and thought in discourse, they shut down reasoned discussion and reduce the whole situation to a political escapade. Perhaps this means they are not quite as bad as I think, but only becuase they aren't successful enough in what they are trying to do.

I know they are not all like this. There are may smart freedom loving atheists who don't do this way. There are plenty who do. I just hope it's becuase they don't really understand how what they say implies totalitarian mentality.

Monday, April 25, 2016

Orwellian Atheism


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Now that we understand that the hate group has evolved from mere hate group to Orwellian nightmare we can analyze it more effectively. So far here are the indications:

Use of terms:these are all found in past posts on this blog so you can just go down the page and find them.

Imaginary: indicating the status of belief in God

Delusion: Also used of alleged fictional status of God belief.

Cult: used as synonym for all religious groups even the most popular

Description of the making of God arguments:

Trying to usurp science and reality to stick in your deity is dangerous.


superstition: used defined as Christianity and other religious belief.

Definition of Superstition

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition (Christianity) one redeeming feature ...
www.brainyquote.com/words/su/superstition226408.html - 14k - Cached - Similar pages -

The same kind of recursive and circular statement I just got through exposing. What makes it superstitious? Because it's religion. What makes religion superstition? Because it' superstition.




Defining "Fre Thinkers" As those who agree with atheist ideology:

True free thinkers are those that can speak and think with accuracy and honesty. As a scientist, I pride myself on being able to read and understand the natural world and everything it has to offer. Not all of it is 100% right, but I consider the 95% to be good enough.


Defining opposition to Atheist control as "anti-free thinking."


Freedom becomes slavery and slavery becomes freedom. Now that we know this is the true nature of atheism, reductionism and all the other isms such as scientism that go hand in hand with the hate group, we can understand the danger is no just to Christianity, not just to religions, but to all people who want to think for themselves.

Atheism constitutes a clear and present danger.


This time from T WEb. An atheist makes the statement that God is "only imaginary." I put up a great argument that belief in God is rationally warranted and that is certainly strong enough to be thought of as more than "Imaginary." The he tries to soft peddle the insulting implications, which I find is an Orwellian use of language.\

Me: that's more than imaginary, remember the title of the thread?"

him: Only if there happens to actually be a God.


My argument is that we have strong reasons to bleieve there's a God. He wants to be able to continue the insulting connotations while denying that he means them. But when I claim that string theory is imaginary too what does he say?


Im originally posted by JimL
Neutrino's are detectable and are known to exist, there is nothing imaginary about them,



Meta:

atheists just really have a problem with understanding what is said don't you? God is real and can be detected. What the person I was responding to said about the meaning of imaginary would apply to anything that is not directly and unarguably proved. Neutrinos are not directly demonstrated. they are not directly observed. You can detect them but only by their effect upon other particles. There still remains no direct picture of one. They cannot be directly observed.

We can detect God by his effects upon people, that's what RE is. It's God's effect, the trace of God.


Jim L

and string theory is just that, a theory, based on the physics of the natural world, whereas God is merely an unscientific concept that gives to us an imaginary explanation as to the meaning of it all.



Again, Science is not the only form of knowledge. Understand? science is not the only form of knowledge. that means it doesn't have to be science to be true. That means bad mouthing God by saying "that's not scinece is not an argument! understand now? that's not a point in your favor. it's meaningless.

it does not make God imaginary. Just because something is not science doesn't mean it's imaginary. Logic is not science, logic is not imaginary. Phenomenology is not science, phenomenology is not imaginary. Understand now?

You are trying to privilege your position with words.



Meta

you are special pleading. You are trying to say that science is the only form of knowledge so therefore anything that is scientific is automatically redeemed from not having direct proof. But an idea that is not a scientific idea, if not proved directly must be imaginary. That's crap.

You do not have the right to privilege our position such that anything you say is exempt form direct proof but anything I say direct proof is automatically required.


Neutrinos and string theory cannot be proved directly no one thinks that makes them imaginary. God can be known by his effects and by one's understanding of being, so God is not imaginary.




Meta

Yes I sure and I have.(verify SN) See the threads I put down on how atheists have the wrong idea of the supernatural. The religious experience studies and the effects of navigation in the world are supernatural, a prori. they fit exactly what the original concept was about.Its' a Christian theological concept atheists do not have the right to define it!




Jim L

and so you are left with nothing but the imagination with which to construe an ultimate reality or God. Whether God exists or not you can only imagine.


you are doing it again, give me some proof that anything that is not science is imaginary? why do you think you get to pronounce that? Science doesn't say that. Show me the scientific data that proves that?

Moreover, My argument is based upon 300 scientific studies and you don't have any. I can verify the SN by science because the first argument is the supernatural. Supernatural refers to God's power to transform lives, that's exactly how the word was first. That's what it means that's what these 300 studies prove. you don't have any studies. you have no studies.

score, 300 to 0.

Theists = 300 studies proving our position

ahteist= 0 studies proving your position.






Meta

I am left with 300 empirical studies which show that the experiences that led to the creation of religion are real, they are experiences of something, they fit the criteria we use to determine reality so we have every right to think of them the effects of something real; they are about god we should assume God is that "something" that is real.


Jim L
not direct proof but more than imagination!


Meta
they don't have to be direct proof. you have offered no data or any sort of argument to prove that these are the only choices, either imaginary or totally proved directly. That's a silly idea. That's not science and it's not logical it's stupid. do you hear me its' stupid. got it? it's a dumb idea.

you are making extremely statements and you can't back them up.


I have studies showing an innate concept of God in the mind of humans. That means God had to put it there because evolution can't.

[not direct proof but more than imagination!

did you read the op? do you ever read anything? The point in the op is it doesn't have to be direct proof because it rationally warranted. do you understand that phrase?

I said in the first post that my point is not that God is directly proved but that it's rational to believe. So you come along and say "not direct proof" so what does that do to the argument? It agrees with it so it must no effect it at all do you see that?




I never defined imaginary thus. It merely means the construction of concepts in the mind with no definite reality.

So now it comes out that you don't understand what is meant by "connotations?" Atheists are indeed ignorant. It's a connotation of ignorance and stupidty and childishness if not why are you not willing to say that string theory is imaginary?

Hawkings numbers are imaginary how does that make you feel?





Jim l

You can't prove it directly because whether true or not for you, like it or not, God is only a concept in your own mind.


Meta
what did I say about proving things directly? when are you going to start addressing the arguments?

Sunday, April 24, 2016

Attack on the Soul"More Atheist Propaganda from Psychology Today



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We have met Psychology Today before. This was the little group of racist atheists who specialize in bogus IQ studies (Nyborg, Kanazawa, Hamilton).. The article I used as the example (see link) is by Stoshi Kanazawa.[1] That was a blog hosted by the magazine not the magazine itself There's a new example one is more closely connected with the magazine. While it's not as outrageous s the former blog I daubed "Psychology Today scam" it is nonetheless blatant, ideological, and propagandistic: by David Kyle Johnson [2] This article is "Do Souls Exist." It lays out the basic argument that science hasn't proven a soul so there must not be one. This article is basically Q and A from a talk with students at the  Berkhamsted School (middle and high school). This talk must have been for the middle school

Question 1: You place a great deal of store on neuro-science and physics, yet we have just read an article by Raymond Tallis, based on his ‘Aping Humanity’, that raises doubts about this. Why are you so confident in science?

He goes on to state that Talis is an atheist and fried and they work together and he doesn't believe in the soul he just thinks they go a too far sometimes with claims of Neuroscience. That's important because he's glossing over some very damaging stuff or the scientism crowd.[3] Before we get into that It's important to take note of his answers to this question: he basically says if you don't accept that science disproves the soul then you are a hopeless science denier, and even though we have no  data to prove it we must all work at believing it, since it has science's authority to back up belief. That belief is failsafe though its provision of comfort and technological know how the illusion of technique.Of course my critics are saying "he doesn't say that you are just reading that is."

He says:
 Now others do make this argument; when presented with scientific evidence against a view they cherish (like their belief in the existence of the soul), they will question science's ability to tell us about the thing in question (or anything for that matter) – or the objector will claim that I am putting "faith" in science (instead of whatever the objector has chosen to place faith in). But there are multiple things wrong with this line of reasoning.
We must never question science in it's ability to make any pronouncement or to know all things. That's not propaganda? Is that what scientists really say about the level of knowledge?

He goes on: "First of all, science is not based on faith; the primary assumption in science is that one should not take anything on faith but instead should base one’s beliefs on evidence and argument—which is the opposite of taking something on faith." So because science doesn't take things on faith then one is not taking science on faith even when it can't prove or disprove a particular hypothesis?  Does that mean any pronouncement made in the name of science must be right? He realizes there's hole in hi logic he goes on to try and plug it up but in so doing makes an even more damaging admission:
Of course, one might suggest that scientists have to take this “primary assumption” on faith—but even if that is true, doing so is a completely different kind of faith than the objector has in mind. It is certainly not the kind of faith required by the belief systems of those who posit this objection. In other words, believing “by faith” that it is good to proportion one’s belief to the evidence is completely different than believing the soul by faith. [For more on this, see the 17th chapter of my book Inception and Philosophy: Because It's Never Just a Dream (link is external)entitled “Taking a Leap of Faith: A How-to Guide”. (You can download it for free here (link is external).)]

So he's aware that he is expressing faith in science. But that's ok because when it's about science it's a special kind of faith that's really ok. Where I come from we call that "special pleading." Still a fallacy. The reason science faith is ok(even though it doesn't count as faith0 is because religion faith is so very stupid and science faith employs smart stuff like math and factual ideas. He implies all the standard atheist Straw man hokum about religion faith that Dawkins made up. Faith is believing stuff without reason ect ect. [4]

Then, as if he knows he's skating on the edge of fallacious argument, he retrenches in a rousing statement of confidence in the ability of science to guides is reliably into all knowledge: "Second of all, science has proven to be the most reliable guide to truth—most certainly, the most reliable guide to discovering the way the world is—that humankind has ever conceived."  That's a pretty tall claim if we think about it. Because he's saying there is no kind of knowledge, no field or area where science is not the guide. There's nothing science can't tell us. Of course he cant make good on it then to appear to make good on it we just pretend like other fields don't exist or they are totally unreliable. So science can tell us right from wrong, if life is meaningful and how, if your mother loves you, and that there is no God or soul. Then the ultimate pay off is used to ground it all the hard facts of science works. "The evidence for this, of course, is all around you in every piece of technology that makes your life so much easier than it otherwise would be; almost all of it was made possible only because science successfully discovered the way the world is and works." That's an interesting rhetorical appeal because again he reports to another --even so there's still another point behind it--kind of logic. The very bottom line that proves it all is technological devices and the comfort they brought us. so science is right and can do all and tells all because it gives us video games and air conditioning, Come on America sell your soul, air conditioning feels so good. Faith in gadgetry, the illusion of technique, the ultimate guarantor of faith in science.

After retrenching into what amounts to a pep rally for science he attempts to blunt the effects of critics such as Ray Tallis. He does this by assuring us that Tallis is an  atheist and sees things as he does except  in one little area.

Tallis is actually an atheist who, like me, objects to the soul hypothesis. What I have used the neuroscience for is to show that the primary assumption of the soul hypothesis – that mental activity is separate and separable from the brain (i.e., that mental activity is not dependent upon the brain)—is false. Instead, neuroscience shows us that the existence of the mental is dependent upon the existence of the brain; without the brain, the mental cannot exist. This is something that Tallis agrees with, so in no way would Tallis object to my argument against the soul hypothesis.What Tallis is objecting to is a separate suggestion made by some neuroscientists, and some philosophers of mind that: “the brain is numerically identical to the mind.” Numerical identity expresses the strictest form of identity. X is numerically identical to Y means that X and Y are the same object. Clark Kent is numerically identical to Superman; John Smith is numerically identical to “The Doctor.” In claiming that the brain is numerically identical to the mind, one is claiming that the brain and mind literally are the same object – one in the same thing.[5]
Let's see what Tallis really says: Raymond Tallis was a professor of Geriatric medicine at University of Manchester, and researcher, who retired in 2006 to devote himself to philosophy and writing. Tallis denounces what he calls “neurohype,” “the claims made on behalf of neuroscience in areas outside those in which it has any kind of explanatory power….” [6]

The fundamental assumption is that we are our brains and this, I will argue presently, is not true. But this is not the only reason why neuroscience does not tell us what human beings “really” are: it does not even tell us how the brain works, how bits of the brain work, or (even if you accept the dubious assumption that human living could be parcelled up into a number of discrete functions) which bit of the brain is responsible for which function. The rationale for thinking of the kind – “This bit of the brain houses that bit of us...” – is mind-numbingly simplistic.[7]

    
Specifically Tallis has refernce to experiments where the brain is scanned while the subject does some activity and the differences are attributed to some structure in that part of the brain. Tallis is highly skeptical of this method.

Why is this fallacious? First, when it is stated that a particular part of the brain lights up in response to a particular stimulus, this is not the whole story. Much more of the brain is already active or lit up; all that can be observed is the additional activity associated with the stimulus. Minor changes noted diffusely are also overlooked. Secondly, the additional activity can be identified only by a process of averaging the results of subtractions after the stimulus has been given repeatedly: variations in the response to successive stimuli are ironed out. Finally, and most importantly, the experiments look at the response to very simple stimuli – for example, a picture of the face of a loved one compared with that of the face of one who is not loved. But, as I have pointed out elsewhere (for the benefit of Martians), romantic love is not like a response to a stimulus. It is not even a single enduring state, like being cold. It encompasses many things, including not feeling in love at that moment; hunger, indifference, delight; wanting to be kind, wanting to impress; worrying over the logistics of meetings; lust, awe, surprise; imagining conversations, events; speculating what the loved one is doing when one is not there; and so on. (The most sophisticated neural imaging, by the way, cannot even distinguish between physical pain and the pain of social rejection: they seem to “light up” the same areas!) [8]
    
Hal Pashler’s study, University of California, San Diego is discussed in an  editorial in New Scientist, he is quoted as saying “In most of the studies that linked brain regions to feelings including social rejection, neuroticism and jealousy, researchers … used a method that inflates the strength of the link between a brain region and the emotion of behaviour.”[9]


There re profound implications here. First, the arrogance of science worshiping atheists to speak as though mere scientific facts somehow disprove God just by being facts is exposed for the hokum that it is. Besides the fact that this science worshiper (Johnson) argues fallaciously and distorts dishonestly (he's basically covering up how devastating Tallis's position is to his own reductionism) we can also see the fallacy of according to science an all knowning position.






Sources


[1] Joseph Hinman, "Atheism's Psychology Today Scam," Atheistwatch, Wednesday, May 11, 2011, URL: http://atheistwatch.blogspot.com/2011/05/atheisms-psychology-today-scam.html accessed 4/24/2016

[2] David Kyle Johnson, "Do Souls Exist?" Psychology Today, (oct. 6, 2014) on line URL:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/logical-take/201410/do-souls-exist accessed 4/23/16 all quotes of Johnson from this article.

[3] The issues

[4] Atheist straw man on faith vs real theological explanation.

[5] Johnson, op cit.

[6] Raymond Tallis New Haumanist.org.uk Ideas for Godless People (blog—online researche) volume 124 Issue 6 (Nov/Dec 2009) URL: http://newhumanist.org.uk/2172/neurotrash visited 5/9/12

[7] Ibid.

[7] ibid

[8] ibid

[9] quoted by Tallis, ibid.


 

Thursday, April 21, 2016

The Ideology of Scientism (part 2)




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 We left off talking about E.O. Wilson.
Wilson started sociobiology and then it transmogrified into evolutionary psychology.
            Evolutionary psychology seeks to explain psychological traits in terms of direct relation to evolutionary needs. Wilson didn’t just invent evolutionary psychology out of the air, there were other thinkers involved. From 1963 to 1974 William Hamilton, George Williams, Robert Trivers, John Maynard Smith pioneered in the sort of understanding we find in evolutionary psychology.[1] Wilson galvanized this trend with his work Sociobiology: the New Synthesis which has been said to mark the epoch.[2] In speaking of the spread of evolutionary psychology Wright says “a new world view is dawning.”[3] He uses the phrase world view literally. He says it’s a body of theory and fact, much like quantum theory, or molecular biology, but unlike that, “it’s also a way of seeing every day life. Once truly grasped (it is easier to grasp than either of them [quantum theory or molecular biology]) it can entirely alter one’s perception of social reality.”[4] Well that’s actually one good definition of ideology. That fits my concept of ideology: One idea that defines the world and determines how one sees everything filtering all perceptions through the lens of its truth regime.
The Questions addressed by the new view range from the mundane to the spiritual and touch on just about everything that matters: romance, love, sex (are men and/or women built for monogamy? What circumstances can make them more or less so?); friendship and enmity (what is the evolutionary logic behind office politics—for that matter politics in general; selfishness, self sacrifice, guilt, (why did natural selection give us that vast guilt repository known as the conscience? Is it truly a guide to moral behavior?)…[5]
Evolutionary psychology draws biologically oriented thinkers and is rejected by social science types such as anthropologists and sociologists, who chafe under the reductionism of the view point. They refuse to accept the explanatory power of naturalistic models. This is largely either the result of or fueled by the nature vs. nurture debate.[6] There have been criticisms of evolutionary psychology to the extent that it is seen as ideological. Stephen J. Gould, as David J. Buller tells us, “disparaged evolutionary psychology as ‘pseudo science’ and Darwinian fundamentalism.”[7] Buller goes to on to talk about the nature of his own flirtation with evolutionary psychology. He was lured into interest and then  “once I began to focus on evolutionary psychology, I seemed to encounter it everywhere I turned…it seemed to be all over television, not just on highbrow channels like PBS…ABC Special Report with John Stossel examining the evolutionary psychology of sex differences…” [8] This was in the period where there was also some popular idea like “Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus,” or men hunt and women nest, a lot of it backing the so called “Regan Revolution.” He goes to describe falling out of love with the theory.
Initially I was completely captivated by evolutionary psychology, I was certain that it was providing a deep and accurate understanding of human mentality and behavior…after six months research it was unclear to me how everything that went by the name ‘evolutionary psychology’ fit together and I began having serious doubts…a years research latter, it was clear to me that there were distinctly different lines of research being conducted under the evolutionary psychology label. I became convinced that the line of research that had garnered the most attention, both within academia and through popular media was wrong in almost every detail.[9]
            The first aspect that seemed to draw Buller to evolutionary psychology was a sense that genes almost have a mind of their own, they are the one’s actually guiding our moves. “I recalled a vivid passage in Richard Dawkins’s Selfish Gene that describes us as survival machines for our genes, which created us body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rational for our existence.” [10] The way he describes his infatuation, and subsequent disillusionment, sounds like a teenager’s crush or a young student turning to the Romance of Marxism and protest in the sixties. One can see how easy it might be to get caught up in such a romance. At least at one time, almost everyone who took an intro psychology class in college would go through a phase of spouting pop psychology at everyone and trying to diagnose problems with pseudo Freudian sounding labels. That process might even be more alluring if tied to Darwin and modern research. Evolutionary psychology has generated a fiercely loyal following. Buller again, “…I found evolutionary psychologists dismissing their critics as anti-scientific, politically correct postmodernists, or closet creationists. Any skepticism about the claims of evolutionary psychology was typically portrayed as a product of dogmatic indoctrination in the social sciences…”[11]
Exacerbating the conflicts, some evolutionary psychologists present their paradigm as replacing, rather than coexisting with, current paradigms, alienating advocates of epistemological diversity. An alternative explanatory model is presented - one that is grounded in evolutionary theory, reflects recent advances in cognitive neuroscience and developmental psychology, and achieves a dialectical balance between nature and nurture.[12]
Evolutionary psychology seems to present a totalizing view that some times overshadows even other scientific work, not as a result of careful scholarship, but merely because it is the word form the camp.
            We can see the same kind of ideological defense at work in the wanton attacks upon Thomas Nagel’s book Mind and Cosmos. [13] Nagel is a philosopher at NYU and achieved fame and respect for his 1974 essay “What’s it like to be a Bat?”[13] This work has become a standard among those who seek to disprove the reductionist’s take on brain/mind issues. His Mind and Cosmos has drawn fire from many quarters, no doubt including evolutionary psychology. It’s not clear what he means by “Neo Darwininan” but no doubt it must include evolutionary psychology. By labeling it “materialist” he’s taking in the largest possible group since that would include not only materialists but most naturalists and physicalists. He’s arguing that we can’t have a grand theory of everything as long as that theory is coming out of a ideological camp that only allows one view point. That is essentially the nature of the Neo Darwinian understanding. That’s not such a radical thing to say, but the tendency of the scientistic Zeitgeist won’t allow him to say it; the tendency is to reduce all knowledge to one form of knowledge. Not so much because it’s connected to atheism, although atheism is a part of it, but because it’s accepted as scientific fact in modernity, Neo Darwinian view point predominates because science predominates. Philosophy and Religion are not treated as knowledge, so they are not treated as valid alternative view points.
            The major thrust of the attack as been to label Nagel as “creationist” or “Intelligent Design” which he famously is not. It doesn’t help him that the Intelligent Design’s Discovery Institute has lauded the book. Brain Leiter and Michael Weisberg began the assault by attempting to tear it to pieces in The Nation, then Harvard psychologist, champion of evolutionary psychology Steven Pinker dismissed it as “shoddy reasoning,” not likely. New York Times Review of Books and London Review of books panned it. The Guardian (America) named it the “most despised science book of 2012.”[15] Alva Noë argued that Nagel is being confronted by Orthodoxy, “and they are responding the way the Orthodox respond.”[16] Nagel didn’t attack evolutionary psychology per se but one assumes that’s part of the “Neo-Darwinan” crowd. The reaction of anger certainly betrays and ideological vent, a “them and us,” a certain mentality of solider confronting the enemy.
            There is a cadre of physicists who are busy beating up on philosophy, even though their views can actually be described as philosophical. This is another aspect of the ideological tentacles claiming their grasp on a slice of science. These physicists are primarily but not exclusively part of the new atheist movement. Professor Massimo Pigliucci (City University of New York) complains about how in the days of Einstein and Bohr Physicists were intellectually sophisticated and respectful of other branches of knowledge. They were honored to work together with philosophers and theologians. [17] In fact there is a picture of the young theologian Paul Tillich together with Einstein and other physicists, philosophers, and theologians at a conference in Davos Switzerland, march 18, 1928.[18] That meeting may have had some influence on the production of Einstein’s publication arguing against the personal God. Tillich responded with an article, not chiding Einstein but lauding his views, yet putting them into a larger theological perspective that didn’t confine God to the realm of dead matter, nor did it defend God as a magnification of human psyche.[19] This is the kind of exchange that used to exist between philosophers and physicists. Now, Pigliucci complains, it seems physicists are more concerned with attacking philosophy. “These days it’s much more likely to encounter physicists like Steven Weinberg or Stephen Hawking, who merely go about dismissing philosophy for the wrong reasons.” [20]
Nonetheless, let’s get to the core of Krauss’ attack on philosophy. He says: “Every time there's a leap in physics, it encroaches on these areas that philosophers have carefully sequestered away to themselves, and so then you have this natural resentment on the part of philosophers.” This clearly shows two things: first, that Krauss does not understand what the business of philosophy is (it is not to advance science…); second, that Krauss doesn’t mind playing armchair psychologist, despite the dearth of evidence for his pop psychological “explanation.” Okay, others can play the same game too, so I’m going to put forth the hypothesis that the reason physicists such as Weinberg, Hawking and Krauss keep bashing philosophy is because they suffer from an intellectual version of the Oedipus Complex (you know, philosophy was the mother of science and all that... you can work out the details of the inherent sexual frustrations from there).[21]
He continues amusingly in the vain. Basically he shows that the physicists want to deal with philosophy as though its goal is to reproduce science. All of their criticisms are oriented around the notion that philosophy is not contributing to scientific understanding but is reacting to it. Essentially Pigliucci’s entire publication is in reaction to this movement he perceives of science types fighting against and trying to take over philosophy (and liberal arts in general) this is made explicit and typified in is article “on the Difference between Science and Philosophy.” [22] George Musser sums it up by affirming that in the days of Einstein philosophy and physics were close. As a sign of the drift apart he points to the Weinberg chapter title “Against Philosophy,” from the book Dreams of a Final Theory (Vintage 1994).[23] He also points to what may be a trend of the move back to reunion due to a sense that the search for grand theory is stalling. “At meetings where the two groups come together, they strike me as quite compatible. The philosophers in attendance tend to have training in physics, and the physicists, even if they can’t tell their Hegel from their Heidegger, are eager to learn.”[24] But are they compatible because they are becoming more attune to tolerating diverse opinion or because they are all becoming scientism’s pawns?
  photo foxtrot-free-will1.jpg
            There seems to be an amalgam of several ideologies that turn on the same naturalistic assumptions and that really go together. It’s often the case that one holds all of them at the same time, they include: materialism, physicalism, naturalism, and reductionism. Reductionism is a mythological procedure or assumption in many scientific fields. It also amounts to a philosophical stand within naturalism, et al. All of these “isms” go together, bleed into one another, and form an overarching set of ideas or a sort of “meta ideology,” so to speak. We could break it down endlessly into types of reductionism and so forth, but there’s no point in doing that. For brevity sake I’ll just refer to this whole amalgam as “Scientism,” when speaking in general of the major flow of ideas around that admixture, and as “reductionism” when talking about the connection to the assumptions of any form of reductionism. There are different kinds of naturalism and this may become confusing but I basically mean scientific naturalism as an opposition to religious thinking. The terms materialism and physicalism are related. They can be used interchangeably but have different histories. Phsyicalism is usually preferred as it recognizes that matter is also a form of energy so while matter isn’t all there is, it’s not necessarily the basis of all there is, it’s related to energy. That term reflects the reality of a modern understanding of science. Materialism is the older word and came out of the mechanistic era when the workings of the physical world were compared to a machine. “Materialism” was used in opposition to the concept of spirit. Physicalism was introduced in the 1930’s by two prominent members of positivism’s Vienna Circle, Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap.[25] Naturalism is the more general term. Turning to an atheist movement understanding of these terms:
Materialism (or physicalism) can signify either a broad metaphysical view, or, more narrowly, a type of theory of mind. Metaphysical materialism is a specific kind of naturalism which contends that everything that exists is either physical or dependent upon the physical. Broadly understood, reductionist materialism maintains that everything is strictly physical; more narrowly, it maintains that the mind (at least) is purely physical. Nonreductive materialism also allows the existence of nonphysical properties that inhere in, or emerge from, a physical substrate. Consequently, it is sometimes called emergent materialism or property dualism. In the broad sense, nonreductive materialism holds that everything is physical or at least dependent upon the physical; and in the narrower sense it holds that the mind can have both physical and nonphysical aspects even though it must be instantiated in a physical system like the brain.
While metaphysical materialism entails a materialist theory of mind, one can be a materialist about the mental without believing that everything is physical (e.g., some theologians are nonreductive materialists about the human mind but believe that God is neither physical nor dependent upon the physical; and some philosophers who think that the mind is purely physical also believe in nonphysical abstract objects).[26]
            Even within their own movement those who understand the terms acknowledge that they are metaphysics and don’t try to pass them off as science. “Philosophical materialism (physicalism) is the metaphysical view that there is only one substance in the universe and that substance is physical, empirical or material. Materialists believe that spiritual substance does not exist. Paranormal, supernatural or occult phenomena are either delusions or reducible to physical forces.”[27] The amalgam we are talking about doesn’t necessarily limit itself to atheists. E.O. Wilson is not an atheist. Nevertheless, in some quarters of the atheist movement adherents are constantly beating the drums for these philosophies while denying that’ it’s a movement and trying to pass them off as science proper. They try to juxtapose their view of the world, which they claim to be factual and scientific, while at the same time imposing these philosophical ideas as we see Thomas doing above. At the philosophical level academics make no attempt to hide the fact that this is philosophy, no holds barred. Geoffrey Hellman and Frank Wilson Thompson state:
In [11] we laid the groundwork for a comprehensive materialism based upon physical science which the problems of ontology and of the interrelations between higher order sciences—biology, psychology, social theory, and so forth on the one hand, and basic physical science on the other could be correctly stated and accessed. It was our aim to formulate principles of phsyicalism which are strong enough to incorporate the kinds of appeals to the comprehensive and fundamental character of physical science that materialists have sought to make…[28]
Materialism and phsyicalism are metaphysical assumptions. Both of these constitute philosophical positions; they are going beyond the domain and nature of science.
            There are several types of phsyicalism. Supervenience physicialism, for example,  and minimal phsyicalism. The word supervenience is currently enjoying a renaissance in philosophical circles. It basically means, as used in philosophical circles, that there are two sets of characteristics and one set is dependent upon the other or connected with it in such a way that a change in one means a change in the other. The concept came out of meta ethics but is being used in physics and philosophy of mind and other venues.[29]
            Daniel Stoljar illustrates supervenience with the use of an analogy by David Lewis. The analogy is to a dot-matrix picture, that is just dots and the global properties are formed solely from patterns in the dots. The pictures supervene on the patterns of dots and non dots. No two pictures could differ in their global properties unless they differ in the placement of dots.
Lewis's example gives us one way to introduce the basic idea of physicalism. The basic idea is that the physical features of the world are like the dots in the picture, and the psychological or biological or social features of the world are like the global properties of the picture. Just as the global features of the picture are nothing but a pattern in the dots, so too the psychological, the biological and the social features of the world are nothing but a pattern in the physical features of the world. To use the language of supervenience, just as the global features of the picture supervene on the dots, so too everything supervenes on the physical, if physicalism is true. [30]
Lewis says that “no two pictures can be identical in the arrangement of dots but different in their global properties”.[31]
The other versions of Physicialism include “minimal,” “token and type,” “reductive and non reductive,” and “a priori and a posteriori.” Minimal physicalism is tied up with philosophy of mind. That’s the version that’s always discussed wherever people discuss the brain/mind issue. It’s in this venue that we most often find arguments about the falsehood of physicialism.[32] Minimal physicalism is basically the core commitment of all phsyicalism. Supervenience physicialism is neutral in a good many issues. Minimal physicalism is the basic core belief of the physical nature of everything.
            There can be no doubt as to the philological basis of these ideas. While rank and file atheists profess their disgust for philosophy because “it’s making stuff up” the leaders of their movement have always and still are basing their world view and their movement upon obviously philosophical view points. Materialism is in line with the classic definition of metaphysics, reasoning about that which is beyond our observation, and phsyicalism takes up where materialism left off. Physicalism is completely rooted in philosophy of mind. Physicalism serves as the basis for atheist thinking. 
            Andrew Brown, himself an “old” kind of atheist, identifies and summarizes the ideology of the new atheists based upon the works of their major leaders and spokesmen.
So, who are they? The ideas I claim are distinctive of the new atheists have been collected from Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Jerry Coyne, the American physicist Robert L. Park, and a couple of blogging biologists, P Z Myers and Larry Moran. They have two things in common. They are none of them philosophers and, though most are scientists, none study psychology, history, the sociology of religion, or any other discipline which might cast light on the objects of their execration. All of them make claims about religion and about believers which go far beyond the mere disbelief in God which I take to be the distinguishing mark of an atheist….
There is something called "Faith" which can be defined as unjustified belief held in the teeth of the evidence. Faith is primarily a matter of false propositional belief.
The cure for faith is science: The existence of God is a scientific question: either he exists or he doesn't. "Science is the only way of knowing – everything else is just superstition" [Robert L. Park]
Science is the opposite of religion, and will lead people into the clear sunlit uplands of reason. "The real war is between rationalism and superstition. Science is but one form of rationalism, while religion is the most common form of superstition" [Jerry Coyne] "I am not attacking any particular version of God or gods. I am attacking God, all gods, anything and everything supernatural, wherever and whenever they have been or will be invented." [Dawkins]
In this great struggle, religion is doomed. Enlightened common sense is gradually triumphing and at the end of the process, humanity will assume a new and better character, free from the shackles of religion. Without faith, we would be better as well as wiser. Conflict is primarily a result of misunderstanding, of which Faith is the paradigm. (Looking for links, I just came across a lovely example of this in the endnotes to the Selfish Gene, where lawyers are dismissed as "solving man-made problems that should never have existed in the first place".)
Religion exists. It is essentially something like American fundamentalist protestantism, or Islam. More moderate forms are false and treacherous: if anything even more dangerous, because they conceal the raging, homicidal lunacy that is religion's true nature. [Sam Harris]
Faith, as defined above, is the most dangerous and wicked force on earth today and the struggle against it and especially against Islam will define the future of humanity. [Everyone]
All of these propositions will be found in the authors I have cited as well as in the comments to religious articles here. I sometimes think that only the last two are unique to the new atheists: you can certainly find the others in earlier authors. But those are the six doctrines which I would reject when saying rude things about the new atheists.[33]
Each of these opinionated positions summarized by Brown appeals to science as its justification; none of them can really be based upon science. Take the counter intuitive opinion that moderate religion is more dangerous than extreme religion because it’s somehow concealing some hidden lunacy (there’s a clinical scientific term, “lunacy.”) within it. That’s the sort of scientific thinking that motivated the mental health industry in the days of witch trails and brain stones. There is no data justifying this bromide. It’s obviously a slogan serving to energize the base and prevent defection to more reasonable versions of religion. At the same time it casts the aura of science over the evil essence of religion. The implications of essentialism alone mark it as totally unscientific. Science, in the hands of the new atheist leaders, takes on a role and a make up that real scientists would never recognize as scientific. It becomes more than ideology, something close to religion itself.
            These view points bear the ear marks of ideology. They reduce knowledge to one kind of knowledge and they reduce the world to one idea that fits everything. They form the basis of a kind of politics as they motivate and urge and define society in terms of negative results based upon the following of the antithetical ideas they seek to challenge. In that sense they are very reminiscent of Marxism: Marxism has the eternal struggle between the worker and the owner. The working class is exploited by the ruling class, and all the ills of society are due to that exploitation. The ruling class justifies itself through a false consciousness, if that consciousness was property cleared up by the “truth” of the proper van guard understanding, the workers paradise would be inaugurated. The same is true of atheism. According the ideas Brown discusses, there’s a great evil that spawns all the social ills, created by the false consciousness of religious belief. The priest class keeps the believer enthralled with “superstition” as the ruling class keeps the workers enthralled with promises of wealth. In Marxism the workers are save by the revolutionary van guard of the party. In new atheism the brain washed believers are saved by the van guard of science.  Workers are liberated by the party line, believers are liberated by the facts of science.
Making a chart like this is not meant to suggest that there is no truth in Marxism or that reduces neatly to just these points. In fact Christianity can also be put on such a chart. Yet is does illustrate the fact that these ideas lend themselves to an ideological perspective and unwary can be led down the garden path into some tempropal human idea of an eternal struggle for the good.
Marxism
New Atheism
Great struggle
Class struggle
Brain washing of believers
Victims
workers
everyone
Enemy of people
Capitalists/owners
Religion/religious
people
Van Guard
party
Scientists/atheists
Knowledge
(gospel)
Party line
Science/skepticism
eschatology
Workers paradise
Secular society
means
Propaganda
Mocking and ridiculing reiligion
Christianity
Great struggle
Sin/evil
victims
Human race
Enemy of people
Satan
Van Guard
church
Knowledge
Gosepl
Eschatology
End of times, second coming, judgment
Means
Preach gospel
Does the fact that Christianity can be subjected to ideological analysis mean that it is an empty ideology? No more so than science. The fact that science can be distorted and laced with ideological assumptions doesn’t mean there is no clear idea of science, nor does it mean that science doesn’t have a valid basis. Ideology can take over any view point. Any truth can become reduce to an ideological understanding if one is not careful. While we might consider that Christianity is like the prototype, ideology the copy. Although Christianity was not the first religion thus we could say religion as a whole is the prototype and these other versions are the ideologies. Yet we know religion can be ideological as well.
            One of the major examples of religion as ideology is creationism. Of course in saying that we have to aware of the fact that the counters to creationism can also be very ideological.
            The ideology of new atheism is a subset of the larger ideology of scientisim. Not all scisentistic types are atheists and not all atheists are scientistic. There is an atheist ideology that is an outgrowth and subset of the lager umbrella of scientism. What the umbrella has in common all of its many departments is the reduction of all knowledge to one thing; that one thing is the illusion of technique. In even the one thing is an illusion because the ostensible one thing is “science.” Yet it’s not really science because science is about hypothesis testing and this is more what William Barrett called “the illusion of technique.” The illusion of technique is the manipulation of all knowledge and fact, all feeling and questions into the closed realm of discourse. The reduction assumes the only possible questions and the only possible answers go back to the same circular concept, both problem and solution: the reduction of all knowledge not to science but to technology. It’s the bait and switch, the substitution of science for technology. Science leaves off with debunking what it could and then the offering of possible knowledge in the form the best explanation.[34] Yet technology assumes we have the answers. Technology assumes we have the answers and we are going to apply them. It assumes either we know the truth or it doesn’t matter. What is replacing truth is the ability to control things.Science is put over as “the truth” when in fact its’ only a means of hypothesis testing. That leaves us with a void in our understanding of the nature of truth.


[1] Robert Wright, The Moral Animal: Why We are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology. New York and Canada: First Vantage Books edition, Division of Random House. 1995.4.
Robert Write is an award wining American Journalist, writes scholarly books about science is respected for his scholarship.
[2] Ibid. 4
[3] Ibid. 4
[4] Ibid., 4-5
[5] Ibid., 5
[6] Harvey Whitehouse, “Introduction,” The Debated Mind: Evolutionary Psychology Vs. Ethnography. Oxford, New York: Berg Publishers. 2001,1.
[7] David, J. Buller, Adapting Minds: Evolutionary Psychology and the Persistent Quest for human Nature. Cambridge Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2005, 4.
[8] Ibid.3
[9] Ibid., 3
[10] Ibid., 2
[11] Ibid., 5
[12] Linda Gannon, “abstract,” “A Critique of Evolutionary Psychology.” Psychology, Evolution, and Gender. Volume 4 Issue 2, (2002), 173-218, 173.
[13] Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False.  Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. no page cited.
[14] Thomas Nagel, “What’s it Like to Be A Bat?” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83, No. 4., (Oct. 1974) 435-450.
[15] Jennifer Schuessler, “An Author Attracts Unlikely Allies,” New York Times, Feb 6, 2013, ON line copy 
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/books/thomas-nagel-is-praised-by-creationists.html?_r=1& accessed 10/18/13.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Massimo Pigliucci, “Lawrence Krauss: Another Physicist With an Anti-Philosophy Complex.” Rationally Speaking, online publication, http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.ca/2012/04/lawrence-krauss-another-physicist-with.html   accessed 9/27/13.
[18] Krista Tippett, “Einstein’s Refutation of Personal God,” On Being, online publication http://www.onbeing.org/program/einstein039s-god/particulars/1930  accessed 9/27/13.
Photograph from conference in Davos Switzerlan, March 18, 1928, courtesy of Image Archive, ETH-Bibliotek, Zurich. Published, On Being,
[19] Paul Tillich, “The Idea of a Personal God.” Online article from a blog by Krista Tippett, Speaking of Faith reprinted with permission form the Yale Divinity School Library. URL: http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/einsteinsgod/tillich-einsteinresponse.shtml (visited 8/31/2010) No indication is given of a translator or original publication.
I document this in a footnote to an article I wrote on my blog, “Paul Tillich and the Personal God: was Paul Tillich’s Ground of Being an Impersonal Force? Part 1.” Metacrock’s Blog, March 14, 2011 on line
In that article I put a caption under the picture (same Photograph published by Tippett the converence in 1828 In Switzerland) it says  Einstein’s paper was presented at a New York Conference science, philosophy and Religion, 1940.
[20] Pigliucci, Op Cit.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Massimo Pugliucci, “On the Difference Between Science and Philosophy.” Rationally speaking, on line publication, http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2009/11/on-difference-between-science-and.html  accessed 9/27/13.
[23] Steven Weinberg, “Against Philosophy” (chapter VII)  Dreams of a Final Theory: Scientists Search for The Ultimate Laws of Nature. New York, NY: Vintage, reprint edition, 1994. 166.
[24] George Musser, “Deep in Thought, What is a Law of Physics Anyway?” Scientific American Blogs (June 4, 2010) Onilne  http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2010/06/04/deep-in-thought-what-is-a-law-of-physics-anyway/  accessed 9/27/13.
George Musser is a contributing editor at Scientific American. He focuses on space science and fundamental physics, ranging from particles to planets to parallel universes. He is the author of The Complete Idiot's Guide to String Theory. Musser has won numerous awards in his career, including the 2011 American Institute of Physics's Science Writing Award.
[25] Daniel Stoljar, “Physicalism:Terminology,” Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy fed 13, 2001, sept 9, 2009. Online resource: URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#1  visited 3/11/11
[26] Keith Augustine,  “Materliaism,” The Secular Web  Internet resource online URL: http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/nontheism/naturalism/materialism.html  visited 3/11/11.
[27] Robert T. Carroll, “Philosophical Materialism (Physicalism),” The Skeptics Dictionary.  1994/2012 the article updated last 2010. on line resource, http://www.skepdic.com/materialism.html  accessed 9/22/13
[28] Geoffery Hellman and Frank Wilson Thompson, “Physicalist Materialism,” Nous, 11, Blackwell Publishing, 1977 available online through JSTOR URL: http://www.jstor.org/pss/2214560  visited 3/11/11.
[29] Stoljar, Op Cit.
[30] Ibid, citing David Lewis, On The Plurality of Worlds,1986, 14. no page numbers for Stoljar.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Ibid
[33] Andrew Brown, Andrew Brown’s Blog, “New Atheism, A Definition and Quiz.” online version published by The Guardian. URL: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/andrewbrown/2008/dec/29/religion-new-atheism-defined   visited, 11/1/11.
[34] Popper, find