Science and the Supernatural

There is a long-standing tradition which requires that science deals only with natural explanations for natural phenomena, and thus can have nothing to say about the supernatural (defined as anything that exists outside of nature). While largely true, this way of thinking is all but useless in the real world. Sadly, we live in a society in which people are willing to believe the craziest bullshit imaginable--and much of this consists of supernaturalism.

We need a lot of people to fight against this decline of the intellectual climate. There are several groups of people qualified to do so: skilled investigative journalists, conjurors, and scientists (among others, but these are the primary movers and shakers in the skeptical community).

Investigative journalists are useful for two reasons. First, they have those investigative skills that allow them to get inside the scam organizations and find the truth at the bottom of these ridiculous notions. At least equally important is that they have the communicative skills to report their findings, in an understandable manner, to the public at large.

Conjurors are useful because many of the supernaturalists are, in fact, using age-old conjuror's techniques to achieve their so-called miracles. The psychics, for instance, use a method of cold reading in a majority of cases. And even when they aren't using well-known conjuror's tricks, they're often exploiting the same psychological principles that the legitimate entertainer makes use of to achieve certain effects. There is no group of people more qualified to detect trickery than professional tricksters.

But scientists are perhaps most important of all, because contrary to the common "science has nothing to say about the supernatural" humbug, these actually are scientific questions. The claim that science can't study the supernatural is true, but only in an esoteric sense. In any useful sense, science has a lot to say about these issues.

When people are talking about the supernatural, they're talking about events that operate outside of nature. However, in almost all cases, these supposedly supernatural events actually do (allegedly) have natural, physical manifestations. Anything that is detectable by human perception has some form of physical manifestation.

If the claim is that a house is haunted, there's going to be some physical manifestation. Either an apparition will show itself, or the ghost will create "cold spots" or knock on walls, or slam doors, or any other cliche from old horror films. These are all physical manifestations.

If the claim is that dowsing can detect water, that's not a supernatural claim. If true, it's a physical manifestation.

If the claim is that psychics can communicate with the dead, then something is interacting with the natural world.

If the claim is that there is a god, that's going to have physical manifestations. Some Deist gods may prove to be an exception, as they are not said to interact with the physical world. But the various gods that people actually worship certainly would have physical manifestations. Answering prayers, performing miracles, forgiving sins, creating universes: these are all physical manifestations.

My point is that, even if an event or being is said to be supernatural (whatever that is!), it has physical attributes. If it has no physical attributes at all, then no one is even going to be talking about it. It doesn't do anything for their life, it's impossible to detect, and makes no difference in human affairs. I don't believe that these things exist, but it's impossible for science to disprove them. We can call these "purely" supernatural phenomena, and the old adage that science has nothing to do with the supernatural actually does apply here.

But all the "supernatural" things people talk about in religions or New Age fairs, actually are well within the proper domain of science. Even if the being is supernatural (and thus, undetectable by science), it somehow interacts with the natural world. So its effects can be detected and can be studied by science.

For instance, if your claim is that there is a supernatural god who, say, answers prayers, how is that detectable by scientific means? The god may be supernatural, but the efficacy of prayer is within the natural realm and is certainly a matter for science to decide. In this case, all you have to do is run a statistical analysis to determine whether prayer significantly improves, say, the healing speed of hospital patients. When this experiment was performed by the Templeton Foundation, they had some interesting findings.

The patients were divided into three groups. One group was prayed for and not told about it. One group was not prayed for and not told about it. One group was prayed for and told so. The first two groups both demonstrated average recovery. The third group actually experienced a "nocebo" effect and had a prolonged recovery time.

This is a perfect example of science studying the supernatural. Of course Christian theologians were quick to criticize the study's research protocols (which, despite my dislike for the Templeton Foundation, were actually quite good), but they were just upset because someone had actually bothered to prove them wrong.

Related to the idea that science can't study the supernatural (whatever that is!) is the concept of NOMA, or nonoverlapping magisteria. As much as I respect and admire Stephen Jay Gould as a thinker and a scientists, I cannot forgive him for supporting and popularizing NOMA as a valid way of thinking--it is not! Gould wrote, "[T]he magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty)."

On this point, Gould is dead wrong. He correctly identifies what science has to do with, but incorrectly gives ultimate meaning (which cannot actually exist) and worse, morality, to religion. After all that religion has done to society, I can think of fewer actions more misguided than allowing religion any more room to comment on morality. Religious morality promotes bigotry, stupidity, and murder.

But Gould's greatest mistake is in assuming that all religion does is "ultimate meaning and moral value." If that were the extent of religion, I would have no problem with it, and would agree with Gould's assessment. The problem is that ultimate meaning seems, to me, a red herring. Science can reveal the universe as it really is. Ultimate meaning, it seems to me, is simply what we as individuals and societies make of that universe. There is no "ultimate" meaning. There is only personal meaning. Science, it is true, does not have much to do with personal philosophy. It also doesn't have much to do with moral philosophy (though there are some minor points of overlap, despite Gould's assertion to the contrary). If religion weren't about supernaturalism or a magic man in the sky, Gould would be correct to give morality to it. However, religionists are not the most moral, nor the most intelligent people in the world. Any morality that modern religion (or any religion as it has ever existed in the history of the human race) gives us is guaranteed to be horribly skewed by supernaturalism. Gould argues for NOMA while considering the almost atheistic "religion" of many sophisticated theologians, forgetting that more than half of the American population still believes the Universe is less than 10,000 years old.

This debate over NOMA has created strange bedfellows. Many Christians, unsatisfied with the blind faith given them by their preachers and holy books, think that science should set out to prove their religion correct. These people are certainly opposed to NOMA. On the other hand, many other Christians realize that NOMA is their best protection from scientific scrutiny. They may not be satisfied with blind faith, but at least they're safe from falsification.

A lot of atheists and scientists (almost all scientists are atheists--food for thought) are on my side. They see NOMA for what it is--a last ditch effort to save religion from proper scientific scrutiny and debate. As such, we argue against it with all our might, because we know that the best way to kill religion is to expose it to the light of science, under which it cannot help but to shrivel.

On the other hand, such thoughts are not politically correct. There are those who think we need to take this battle one step at a time. For instance, American biologists are currently in a state of war against creationism. For these biologists, perhaps it is a safer tactic to make every attempt to keep science and religion separate. They are rightly concerned that many religious individuals will, if science and religion are forced into conflict, choose to ditch science and keep religion. It's a valid concern, and one I cannot answer to a particularly satisfying degree. Politically speaking, perhaps it is better to keep religion and science separate, if for no other reason than to keep funding and trick the religious IDiots into avoiding their conflicts with science.

And of course there are plenty of evolutionists who are also religionists, including some respected and noteworthy biologists. I don't understand how they can reconcile scientific truth with their Bronze Age mythologies, but they seem not to have a problem doing so.

But that still doesn't make NOMA true! We can discuss politics and tactics until the cows come home, if we want. But I actually care what is true, so I cannot support a proposition that goes against what I know to be true. Religion makes scientific claims, and should be subjected to scientific scrutiny. The same goes for all other forms of supernaturalism as well.

The controversy over evolution and creationism is but a single skirmish in a larger battle, I think. Perhaps in this skirmish, NOMA is a tactically sound position to defend. But in the larger battle, it will only cost us more in the future. It may be that we're best to leave NOMA where it belongs, accept the difficulty that causes in our present skirmish, and move on. If we do this, once our current fight against creationism has been won, we will have an easier time defeating religion, supernaturalism, and irrationality in general.

Unfortunately, many scientists disagree with me--at least publicly. In 1999, the National Academy of Sciences supported NOMA: "[S]cience and religion occupy two separate realms of human experience. Demanding that they be combined detracts from the glory of each." I'm not entirely convinced that they don't take this stance simply to protect their funding and political standing in a country dominated by mindless creationists. But the fact that they popularize this stance will not be useful to us in the future.

Science can indeed study the supernatural (as long as it has natural manifestations--as all supernatural phenomena in which people believe do). It's just that supernaturalists don't like what science discovers about them, and scientists don't like it when supernaturalists threaten their funding.

Keep it natural!

Bob

Is 'Design' Used Intelligently?

In the latest issue of the scientific journal Nature, Richard Sever turns his focus on the word "design" (Nature 454, 27 (3 July 2008)). He argues that many biologists use a lazy linguistic shorthand when they mention the word in describing something that occurs in nature. For instance: "The bird's wing is designed for flight."

Of course we all know that it wasn't actually designed. Design is a word used for purposeful planning. In order for there to be design, as Ray Comfort and his lot are always pointing out to unsuspecting passers-by, there must be a designer.

We have a very good understanding of biological diversity, and even know, in some detail, the mechanisms by which evolution continues to operate. So by simple necessity, there is no such designer. Evolution requires us to realize that biological diversity is not the result of any form of "intelligent design."

This is the gist of Sever's argument, and he will find no substantial disagreement here. Especially when talking with the public, we must be extremely careful about the words we choose to use. But I think more important than the fact that "design" is used only as a sort of intellectual shorthand, is the question of why we must be so damned careful about it in the first place.

And the answer is simple: creationists, and lots of them. They are always eager to quote biologists out of context to make it seem like real scientists support their intellectually suicidal position, even though the truth is quite the opposite. The creationists are quite fond of quote-mining, as it is one of the few things they are actually able to do with some efficiency (they've failed completely in all other intellectual pursuits).

For instance, in 1980, Stephen Jay Gould wrote: "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and notes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils."

This is quoted out of context in countless creationist books, websites, videos, etc. But they either completely fail to grasp what he's talking about, or they're deliberately lying about it to prop up their own position. Gould did not argue that there are no "transitional forms." He argued that transitions between SPECIES are rare (not that none exist). Transitions between larger groups, however, are quite common. The fossil record is rich with them. You are encouraged to read Donald Prothero's book, Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why it Matters (Columbia, 2007) for more examples than you know what to do with.

If creationists are going so far as to quote Gould out of context, even though he's one of the most famous paleontologists of recent years (largely due to his--somewhat controversial--contributions to evolutionary biology), surely they will have no hesitation to quote anyone else out of context if any of us dare to use "design" as a bit of lazy shorthand.

So strategically, I'm in complete agreement with Sever. His assessment of the situation is quite accurate as far as I can tell. So you're warned: if a biologist does happen to mention "design," he doesn't mean "intelligent design." And if a creationist quotes a real scientist, I'll bet you my lunch money that it's out of context (or an outright fabrication).

Denver Catholics Add Insult to Injury

The Archdiocese of Denver just agreed to pay $5.5 million in a settlement related to yet another case of systematic child abuse by Catholic clergymen. The priests involved are all dead, so the actual abusers cannot be brought to justice, but the victims aren't settling for excuses like that. After all, we all know by now that the Church was systematically involved in a massive cover-up, for which they must be held accountable.

I am glad they've settled this case. It's another five and a half million dollars a hideous institution no longer has available with which to further degrade society. I'm only sad that it isn't more, as five million dollars is just a drop in the bucket to the evil monstrosity that is the Catholic Church.

And yet, even while settling the case, the Archdiocese couldn't help but to add insult to injury, by lying to the victims and public once again.

One of the attorneys representing the victims, Jeff Anderson (you may remember him from the film Deliver Us From Evil, or from the list of filmmakers, victims, and attorneys who were honored with my Champion of Justice award), obtained as a part of the settlement, a series of documents, which he has released to the public--sadly, with names left out--revealing that Church officials did indeed know what was happening and instead of reporting the abuse to the police, covered it up and allowed it to continue.

We're all aware of these stories. There are so many of them, it's hard to be surprised. Everyone knows that the Catholic Church, operating under orders from the Vatican, covered up every single instance of child abuse that they could.

Quoted by the Denver Rocky Mountain News: "There's a lot of damning information in those documents," said Tom Koldeway, 47, who was molested by White for more than eight years. "They knew he was a pedophile before I was born."

So the Church has been dragged, kicking and screaming, into something closer to full disclosure. Archbishop Charles Chaput said that today's policy is to report pedophiles to the police. That's probably the case, but certainly not because the Church is any more enlightened. They're just terrified of further damaging their precious reputation if word of another cover-up happens to get out. But he added insult to injury by claiming that he didn't know why anyone would keep sexual abuse secret.

Here Chaput counts on his audience not knowing their history. Certainly, that's true of most Catholics, for no one who knew the Church's history would still be a Catholic, but it's not true of the rest of us. There were secret orders from high levels of the Church, issued directly from the Vatican, ordering this systematic cover-up and demanding that all reports of abuse had to be dealt with directly by Rome. Chaput knows this, of course, but chooses to ignore it in his statement.

Do I think that Chaput himself was involved in the cover-up? It's difficult to say, since Anderson's documents mentioned no names except for the now-deceased pedophile. Personally, I doubt if he was personally involved. He was not ordained as a bishop until later. But he is still a member of the organization that oversaw this abuse. Sure, he's apologized for it, but because his apologies are mixed with his lies about knowing why these tragedies weren't reported, I question his sincerity.

And the child abuse scandal is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to negative aspects of Catholicism. Yet they still receive tax benefits. Let's not rest until they lose those tax benefits. It's time they learn to take responsibility for their offenses. Personally, I think they need to pay more than the millions they've been paying. Let's make them feel the consequences of their evil.

Bob