Author: Ophelia Benson

Yet another enthralling Start the Week, this one from June (I don’t listen to them in any sort of coherent order, rather I listen to the ones that sound most interesting first, in case I get run over by a bus before I get a chance to listen to them all). It’s interesting in general, but especially for the moment when, after everyone else has expressed great enthusiasm for a film about a charismatic Los Angeles preacher at a gospel church, Norman Finkelstein dissents from the general applause. He thinks it’s all an irritating exercise in white primitivism, and that the preacher in question is an embarrassment. It takes a bit of nerve to say that!

Another thing irrationalists like to do is translate. Well I suppose all arguers translate, but irrationalists are especially fond of doing it. But then that’s not surprising, is it. Irrationalists are woolly by definition, so naturally they think one word is as good as another, vague approximations of meaning will do well enough, clarity is not necessary between friends.

One translation that’s especially popular – I may even have droned about this in a N&C before, I don’t remember, it certainly comes up a lot – is from evidence to proof. They seem to think the words are interchangeable – only they never say evidence instead of proof, no, it’s always the other way around. I suppose they have themselves so convinced that skeptics and secularists and atheists are claiming greater certainty than we in fact are that they just take it for granted we’re talking about proof and certainty even though we never use the word.

So that’s how it goes. I say something like ‘Why should we believe something if there is no evidence for it?’ and the irrationalists earnestly assure me that ‘the so-called scientific method of rigorous proof is a myth,’ and then go on about light’s being both wave and particle or quantum mechanics. But the ‘so-called scientific method of rigorous proof’ is a red herring, scientists don’t talk about proof, they talk about evidence. Proof is the province of math and logic, not science as a whole, and I didn’t say proof in any case. I said evidence. Evidence. Evidence. But confirmation bias is a powerful thing, and they apparently can’t hear me.

Well to be sure it is a waste of time arguing with irrationalists, but on the other hand I did find out something I’ve been wanting to know, which is what they mean when they say that rationalists and atheists define evidence too narrowly. That seems to be a fashionable thing to say, I keep hearing it and seeing it, but the discussion always seems to go off in another direction before I can pin down what they mean by it. But this time after I asked about fifteen times, the irrationalist (who claims to have a PhD in cognitive science, which I hope is a bit of Walter Mittyism) finally said what he meant: ‘In terms of “evidence”… it can be non-material, non-phenomenological, but impinge upon an individual’s consciousness.’

Oh that. Is that all. Wanting to claim that something that happens inside my head (or your head, or X’s head) is evidence of something, not in my head, but in the external world. That’s what broadening the definition of evidence amounts to; I see. ‘I really really feel that Jesus loves me, therefore Jesus exists.’ In short, a piece of pure Humpty Dumptyism: words can mean whatever I want them to mean. It’s a question of who’s to be master, that’s all. If we can all decide that anything we can dream up in our own dear little minds constitutes evidence, why, what a fun world we can all create. Of course, that will mean we’ll have to come up with a new word which means what ‘evidence’ means now, and then the irrationalists will hijack and redefine that one too, so that we’ll have to come up with another one, and –

This could go on awhile.

Now, hang on. Surely one doesn’t have to be a postmodernist to have some doubts about the WTO. Well no, one doesn’t, because I do and I’m not. QED. But there seems to be some confusion on the matter.

This week in Montreal, there was an anti-globalization riot in which windows were broken in protest against a World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting. But the Habermas-Derrida declaration praises the WTO and even the International Monetary Fund as part of Weltinnenpolitik…Yet it is not much of a stretch to claim the young anti-globalists as disciples of postmodernism and Derrida, who has hitherto been a foe of “logocentrism” (putting reason at the centre), “phallologocentrism” (reason is an erect male organ and, as such, damnably central) and Eurocentrism (the old, old West is the homeland of all of the above).

Well I think it is indeed much of a stretch. Not only does one not have to be a postmodernist, one also does not have to be either young or an ‘anti-globalist’ (whatever that means) to be a WTO skeptic. There are real, concrete, specific, non-woolly problems with the WTO and how it operates, but you’d never know it from about 95% (rough estimate, to be sure) of the media coverage. It’s not all about staying as sweet as you are and nostalgia for tiny farms with little plumes of smoke rising over the old farmhouse, it’s not about hating Starbucks, it’s not about anti-Eurocentrism or primitivism. It’s really rather simple. The tribunal is made up of appointed, unelected, unaccountable trade representatives who have the power to overturn (or at least penalize) any legislation that they claim interferes with trade. Environmental legislation, labour legislation, consumer safety legislation, truth in advertising legislation. This is not some kind of fuzzy-headed made-up grievance, it’s a very dangerous system. It’s ludicrous to lump doubts about the WTO in with postmodernism. Apples and oranges, Starbucks and Burger King.

What a chump I am. I’ve frittered away a lot of time and energy on a discussion board, arguing with someone who disagrees with my ‘Science and Religion’ In Focus article but can’t come up with a convincing argument. Sigh. Same old bollocks. Atheism is a belief, theism and atheism are exact equivalents, you’re defining evidence too narrowly, I can’t prove god is there just as I can’t prove I love someone, blah blah blah. Can’t they do better than that? Well no, of course they can’t, that’s the whole point. Can’t come up with better arguments and can’t see how lame their own are, apparently. Right, I’ll just give us a quotation or two by way of refreshment.

I am all in favor of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive dialogue. One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment. [Steven Weinberg, ‘A Designer Universe?’]

Let there be no doubt that as they are currently practiced, there is no common ground between science and religion…The claims of science rely on experimental verification, while the claims of religion rely on faith. These approaches are irreconcilable approaches to knowing, which ensures an eternity of debate wherever and whenever the two camps meet. [Neil deGrasse Tyson, ‘Holy Wars: An Astrophysicist Ponders the God Question’]