In the Big Book, Bill W. talks about finally coming to terms with this: “God is either everything or God is nothing.” The Sponsor asks: why not both?

Empiricism in science is tautological. What we see is determined by the act of seeing itself, and so we are seeing the act of seeing (and of course, ad infinitum, seeing what the seeing of the act of seeing looks like). Our minds create the world in this way. There is no world “out there” versus world “in here.” This duality is itself a red herring created by the mind. We dream the world, we imagine it. Science is another likely story, like all myth. It’s a subset of 20,000 years of meaning-making behavior that happens to enjoy contemporary hegemony.

Science’s materialistic story is satisfying in many ways. The impulse to know and be right about what we know is down at the root of the brain somewhere, close to the general terror-inducing realizations of exactly how puny we are. Repeatability and predictability are wonderful things. Power is a wonderful thing too. Turning a key and having a car engine explode into action, for example. Yay! Seriously. That we live in a universe where the rules don’t change on a Newtonian level every day or hour or whatever is very fine indeed.

But Dawkins is talking, it seems to me, about something else. His evangelical zeal is admirable, but he’s using the wrong tool for the job. Like opening a bag of potato chips with an AK47. In the same way, intelligent-design flunkies and zealots of all stripes use the wrong tool for the job. Rhetorical question alert: Is it so hard for us to say “I don’t know”?

Ok — what I *think* you’re saying is that scientific concepts, such as the “electron” are not quite as discretized in nature as they are on paper. And I would agree with you on that point. Atoms look less like the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant logo (the Rutherford model, IIRC) and more like a hollowed out cotton ball with a microscopic pinhead in the center.

However — Empiricism itself, as a tool, is far from being as willy-nilly as your comment suggests.

There are certain things we can observe about the universe, and we create conceptual models based on them. (i.e. the atomic model) But what’s terrific about these empirically derived models is that we can extrapolate accurate predictions from our observations.

I can look at an organic molecule’s stick-model (Ethanol, for example) and predict with some certainty what the likely products will be, given a known reagent. I can do this even if I have not witnessed the reaction with my own eyes, because the empirically-based conceptual model is *that accurate*.

I can look at an HNMR spectroscopy reading and determine (sometimes with the help of an FTIR or GCMS reading), with confidence, what the molecular structure is, how it will behave, and even how much of it is in there — all of this without actually hand-counting or directly observing the individual atoms.

If these imaginary constructs were merely something that a drunkard dreamed up after a liver-wrecking weekend bender (such as Intelligent Design), then predictions such as these would not be possible.

With regard to Dawkins’ alleged body suit, are you speaking more in terms of his positions on Science or on Atheism/Humanism?

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Editor: Seems to me that by empiricism, Aaron might be primarily referring to logical positivism/rationalism (of the deductive, phenomenological flavor), while the Brujo might be coming at the term via American pragmatism (postanalytic or Jamesian radical empiricism?)—these being yet another set of nonoverlapping magisteria. Anxious hostess that I am, I call on both e-gentlemen to spit and shake hands, any slights against alcoholics and/or Xianity being obviously unintentional. For “one man likes to push a plough, the other likes to chase a cow, / But that’s no reason why they cain’t be friends.” Plus I think Alan Sokal already had this argument—albeit with himself; and I am not at all sure who, if any of him, emerged victorious.

The universe is similar to this. Or not.

These constructs exist in our imaginations. They are no more nor less empirical reality than anything else in that fanciful place.

Dawkins has a great imagination, a veritable body suit of one. He tells a particular story with which many have relatively recently become enchanted.

I disagree. Empiricism is still the only way to do actual science (as opposed to “Creation Science”), as its the only way to stay truly grounded in reality. When we stray from empiricism, we risk invoking the human mind’s fanciful nature and end up with things like “string theory”. *shudder*

I do like that Annie Dillard excerpt, I may have to check out that book. While I agree that our life is defined by death and the end, I think it’s important to focus on our lives so that we may make the best of what we have (~6 dozen trips on the solar rollercoaster)

While it’s true that the universe around us is non-deterministic, aimlessly moved by exchanges of electrical potential, it would be an Appeal to Consequences to argue that as a disproof. Living organisms are the foil to the universe’s entropic ways; we are determined to survive and self-replicate for no other purpose than to exist. We build and create order in this quixotic notion that we can somehow make our existence a little more durable, only to be disheartened when the waves crash in and slowly melt our sandcastles.

The impermanence of it all is what makes it so bittersweet, though. As Dillard said, it’s the death that defines us — if we lived eternally in the supernatural, our earthly life would be meaningless. (I can actually prove that mathematically, if you’re interested ;) ) The fact that life itself is a scarce commodity is what makes it so precious.

Fascinating.

I can’t help but see humanism as ultimately childish, stuck in toddler-hood. Wisdom has a lot more to do with experience than knowledge does. Empiricism has been completely blown out of the water for a century now by those wacky quantum physicists, excellent scientists all. Like those troublesome electrons, we need to bilocate for a time if we want to be honest.

Religion must stand the analysis of reason. It must agree with scientific fact and proof so that science will sanction religion and religion fortify science. Both are indissolubly welded and joined in reality. If statements and teachings of religion are found to be unreasonable and contrary to science, they are outcomes of superstition and imagination. Innumerable doctrines and beliefs of this character have arisen in the past ages. (‘Abdu’l-Bahá, Promulgation of Universal Peace, Wilmette, Bahá’í Publishing Trust, 1982, pp. 175-6)

As with the tenet proclaiming the fundamental equality of women and men, or calling for the elimination of extremes of wealth and poverty, easier to proclaim than to follow all of its implication….

And if I guiltily put a quotation from my religion on your blog, it isn’t meant to argue with the Richard Dawkins of the world, but it’s where my understanding of religion comes from, and I do it awkwardly, having learned to keep my mouth shut after realizing that I was the only person who held much belief in God in the whole of the UNM philosophy department, and no arguments were going to change anyone’s positions and I didn’t really want to be in the business of changing anyone else’s position, thank you very much. Or sometimes, I wanted to say, the same God you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in, but materialism, it’s just not cutting it for me. I enjoyed the semester of philosophy of science spent lambasting creationism, (so tempting the straw men, there, like this image). I also figured out that a semester of ethics did little to persuade anyone to behave ethically—that all any theory of ethics really did was poke holes in the previous system. So it started to seem that there were things for which one ought to turn to religion, and things for which one ought to turn to science and, yes, things for which one ought to turn to poetry. Is that magisterial interdigitation?

As to Miss Dillard, I concur with “pompous flowery crap.” I actually like Dillard’s writing style, but it only sometimes serves the book’s purposes and when it fails, the reader feels cheated—well, okay, I FEEL CHEATED. I don’t really speak for the objective, proverbial reader. I just hated Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, a lot.

But enough about me! Wouldn’t you rather bypass Dillard’s god/devil life/death dichotomy entirely? What would a Zen master say?

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Editor: Ah, those Zen masters. Tricky bastards. They tend to tell you to clean something; also, they gesture a lot. Other times they laugh merrily and then steal your dessert when you aren’t looking. Mostly nonverbal responses, though. Whereas lyric poets try to use words (beautiful futility!) to point at the moon.