The Devil's Delusion - David Berlinski, PhD

and teacher David Berlin skis latest book The Devil's delusion atheism and its scientific pretensions argues that science has not been able to prove God's in existence nor explain the start of the universe the program hosted by the Discovery Institute in Washington DC last about an hour thank you all very much for coming here I know that the greatest metaphysical division and all of our experience is the division between a writer who wishes his books to sell well and potential readers who are not all that interested in fulfilling a writers wishes nonetheless I'm grateful that you're all here today I have to confess that I haven't read this ayah this is the first time I've laid my eyes on it but I have read the earlier versions and I'm sure the book in my absence has only gotten better only gotten better this is a book about know the devil's delusion is just the title but it's really a book about atheism and its scientific pretensions and I'd like all the stress to be on scientific and pretensions obviously I wrote the book because sitting in in in my apartment in growing irritation at the success of Richard Dawkins bore Christopher Hitchens book Sam Harris's book Daniel Dennett's book I said to myself I need to cash in on this that's one thing and second of all I need to present the other side perhaps I didn't present that in the most intellectually elegant way possible but it correspond it to my thoughts and the more I read it of what Hitchens had to say and what then you'll then it had to say and what Sam Harris and what Richard Dalton had to say the more I thought that there really is an another side to this question about eight years a minute scientific pretensions of course there's more than one side there multitude of sides what I thought five minutes before I started speaking tonight I had a memory kind of a flashback to the 1950s which of causes a far better decayed than anything that followed and I remembered when the Soviets sent what's-his-face Yuri Gagarin out into into space there was some pooch they sent first I forgot the pooches name does anybody remember a little dog but the dog didn't have anything to say didn't do anything up there in space and when Gagarin came back a story began to circulate it's just a wonderful story evidently senior members of the Politburo had told Gagarin before he blasted off Yuri have kind of a look around would you Yuri you know look around yeah see if you see anything up there in the clouds I mean just take a look through the porthole Oh Gagarin came back he said started speaking to all these bull-necked guys a little you know it's nice that you got into space but did you see anything that might compromise our authority and power you get the drift right you're gonna said no ah the relief was just so considerable all these guys thank you nothing to worry about there's no one up there sitting behind the clouds little did they know little did they know I thought of this story because it seems to me one of those odd stories that bounced around in history full of strange reverberations I thought of this story when I read Richard Dawkins book or when I read Sam Harris's book or Daniel Dennett's book or Christopher Hitchens book all these guys they're all roughly in the same position of Yuri Gagarin we had a look around and just between us we couldn't see anything therefore there is nothing to be seen this seems to be a leading theme of our experience in the 21st century and it reflects all of the imposing authority the monumental and richly deserved credibility of the scientist the community and the power and magnificence of the scientific tradition we've all had a look around the tradition seems to say seems to say hey you know we don't see anything and it follows anybody can follow this reasoning even a child that there's nothing to be seen what also follows and this is not evident to a child is that because there's nothing to be seen there's no reason to worry about any effort made to compromise the authority of the scientific institution itself this last point seems to be particularly significant it seems to me particularly significant because according to the scientific traditions own principles the one principle revered above all others is that the tradition be constantly under surveillance and constantly open to criticism now we're all adults we know that's just nonsense the scientific tradition is not constantly under surveillance and it's not constantly open to criticism the fact of the matter is that unless you're an extremely great scientist you react to criticism the way I do and the way you do it's just a love some kind of experience nobody wants to hear himself criticized and scientists are just like anyone else so I think the moment is interesting in that regard in that the accessibility of criticism is always near by the willingness to hear it to understand it to meet it to deal with it is where it always is and then is in a remote and inaccessible distance well why should this be a cause for concern why should we care after all in a really fundamental sense we're all part of the scientific tradition we can't escape it sometimes Christopher Hitchens talks about the Enlightenment tradition Noam Chomsky also uses the phrase somebody interviewed Noam Chomsky in between his you posturing about world affairs and sin no no what do you basically believe in and he said I'm a child of the Enlightenment child of the Enlightenment terrific we all are we're of the Enlightenment party for the very singular and important reason is that as far as we can tell there's no other party we can join none of us I presume are really tempted by the options that are now available the Islamic world although deeply minitor II in many respects is so remote from our experience and make so many intellectual demands that we really cannot understand or fully accept that is pointless to talk about an option other than the Enlightenment we're all in the same boat me too I'm not writing I did not write this book to question that I cannot remove myself from the historical and emotional and intellectual juncture I find myself I'm of the party of the Enlightenment - I don't know another party to go to perhaps if I found one I'd go there but I can't find it and I assume you are more or less in the same position more or less in the same decision therefore we are all roughly adrift in a boat and using a metaphor first made popular by the philosopher of science no rot we're trying to undertake repairs without sinking it's not a very easy undertaking we don't have an alternative position to which we can appeal we have to do everything internally including writing a book of this sort questioning the premises of atheism and its scientific pretensions because I think they badly need to be questioned not because I have a position of faith to advance I don't I write as a secular Jew I remember perhaps three words of Hebrew vaguely I forgotten everything I learned when I was 13 voluntarily I cannot pray I don't go to a temple I don't go to a church and I'm sure that my life if judged soberly would at once be dismissed by the hypothetical powers who make these moral judgments nonetheless I've written this book and I've written this book because it seems to me the access to atheism in the name of science and after all we don't have another name we can appeal to has been premature it's been extremely vulgar it's been historically illiterate and it's made some catastrophic Lee mistaken judgments about what science can cannot do what it has and what it has not done in the book I consider a number of representative topics for example there is an obvious question that all of us at one time or another asked traditionally the time to ask the question is 3 a.m. in the morning well what am I doing here why am I here for that matter why is the universe there what's it doing out there is that this whole incredible panorama and by 5:00 in the morning and breakfast we generally forget the question but the question is real it's not an illusory question no matter how many times philosophers say while the question is meaningless or to take a similar remark Stephen Weinberg the great contemporary American physicist author one of the authors of the electroweak theory theory of unification has a famous famous sentence he said got to imagine steven weinberg rich with honor or a Nobel laureate cashing in on this incredible salary at the University of Texas their flower petals scattered in front of him when he leaves the room to go to the men's room oh no what I think is the more the universe seems comprehensible this is a quote the more it also seems pointless here we have one of the great physicists of the late 20th century rich rich with honour prestige dignity all the usual frocks a careless universe can confer saying hey you know I may have understood it but I can't see the point and of course everybody in the world jumped on him poor guy for that sentence in a couple of years later he said you know I thought her all over the universe is really a fine place after all I didn't mean to knock the universe but the claim let's forget about steven weinberg the claim is very interesting how easily we go to a claim about the pointlessness and meaninglessness and sterility of the physical universe but at the same time we have fashioned our career and our existence by interpreting it surely there's some conflict between those two kinds of claims if the universe is as pointless as Weinberg at one time believed it was why is it so comprehensible why is electroweak unification even possible in a pointless universe I think this is a second kind of question in which the authority of science is aggressively pushed beyond what the authority of science can properly determine and a third question one that I I think that you will agree is terribly difficult terribly important has to do with a completely different area of our experience and that is the moral life we all recognize that morality places certain demands on us and that's not a trivial point we are very different from the animals in the way we try whether potently or imput impotently to arrange our life not only from the moment the satisfactions for the moment but into a coherent narrative where we can at least make the claim I've acted in this way because and what follows that because is some appeal to a moral standard we in the late 20th and early 21st century have just found it incredibly difficult to say to ourselves what that moral standard rests upon I'm not saying I've got an answer I'm saying we have found it very difficult attempts to interpret moral issues in terms of the consensus of a free society as Richard Rorty the philosopher my teacher by the way put it in discussing moral issues seem to suffer a serious impediment when we consider that free agents and varying societies have come to radically different interpretations of what their moral obligations really are and wrought Marathi was an exceptionally intelligent guy of course he knew that and he asked himself what can I say to Nazi Germany which thinks it's just a great idea to exterminate 9 million European Jews and after we finished with the Jews we'll get rid of the gypsies and when we finish up with the gypsies the homosexuals and then we have all of the Russians to exterminate into a certain extent that was the free consensus of a society at a particular moment of time because if it hadn't been the free consensus there would have been no Holocaust after all it was not the free consensus in Denmark it was not the free consensus in Italy and it was not the free consensus in Bulgaria strangely enough in those societies no Jews were killed and Rorty completely honest said mom I don't know I got no objection I had no objection to offer for the rest of us although we could admire Rory's honesty I think there's something recognizably malignant in his conclusions although for the life of us we cannot say quite what it is we cannot say quite what it is I think this is an underlying Trinity in our experience an irritation that will not stop irritating us and the moment we deny access to any form of divinity clearly we deny ourselves access to any form of authority that could settle moral issues for us the dilemma we find ourselves in roughly as an intellectual society the party of the Enlightenment is that we cannot fully place our faith in any form of Revelation and at the same time we cannot place our doubt and everything it's a very uncomfortable position and to say that a token affirmation of atheism just settles it is not very acceptable at all the final the fourth issue I would like to mention is I think that Darwin's theory of evolution plainly play a very heavy very suggestive role in all contemporary discussions Richard Dawkins said that Darwinism has made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist and he wants others to be as full as he is I think he's absolutely right I think he's absolutely right there is a correlation the coordinate not a logical one I'm not making a logical organ but I think there is a connection between the extent to which an individual vests his belief in Darwin's theory of evolution and the extent to which he divests his belief in any form of revealed religion this has made it exceptionally difficult to come to an honest assessment of our understanding and biology everyone has a certain amount of bad faith about this everyone has a certain amount I know I don't exclude myself I've made um I mean a tiny little reputation criticizing Darwin's theory of evolution it's easy enough to do any scientific theory is easily criticized including a string theory I've also criticized and every step of the way I've scratched my head missing I don't know maybe I'm all wrong about this I still say that me are these criticisms serious are they significant have we missed something as I keep suggesting of fundamental importance in the explanation we have of living system or are you simply behaving like a lamentable crank and Monday Wednesday and Friday I think I'm behaving like lamentable crank Tuesday Thursday Saturday and Sunday I think I'm behaving with you rare perspicacity and intuition but I think the truth of the matter is those who are professionally occupied and defending Darwin feel the same way deep down they know there's something not quite right in demanding of a scientific theory that has this degree of reverence when it does not have a comparable degree of plausibility and I think Dawkins because he very often is good at framing musicians put his finger exactly what the issue is Darwyn made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist if you're not an intellectually fulfilled atheist follows by contras ition that you're not a Darwinist either if you're not a Darwinist either why not if you have something critical to say the issue is not simply an issue of science it's an issue of very general suggestiveness and importance so i've given you four points where I think the contemporary a vowel of atheism must be considered intellectually unacceptable and defective that's not to say that it couldn't be improved it's not to say that there might not be a rich or more suggestive body of doctrine and evidence to which we appeal but at the point which we find ourselves that is more or less groping confused not sure of any answers disappointed in the extent to which scientific theories have been successful at the same time utterly amazed at their success I wrote the book because I wanted another point of view to be expressed whether that point of view will prevail whether it will be considered incidental or trivial I really don't know but perhaps that's the only thing an author can ever say I really don't know and I hope for the best I think what would be appropriate now is if we just talk together I took questions as as much as possible well thanks so much David if you wouldn't mind for your questions if you would just identify yourself quickly and then give your question if you don't mind I'll start us off from your articles I gathered that you you don't feel that Darwin's theory of evolution is anywhere near has anywhere near the certainty of say things in physics and my question is this is is that a reductionist view in a sense that are you saying that really when we get down and study the smallest parts we're very certain but when we actually look at whole organisms were not a certain could you just explain well you should I use that go ahead and use that will pass us around just I think I think it's a terrific question and I wish I had a terrific answer what I would say is that what we really need to do is be honest with ourselves about where there is intellectual sophistication grandeur predictable and an extraordinarily rich understanding of fundamental concepts I don't think that's in biology at any level in biology I do think there are parts of mathematics that certainly exhibit those those properties I think mathematics is that our richest most comprehensive most complete most interesting and most intellectually sophisticated system of thought I know of nothing comparable professor Rosenhaus who's a mathematician we were just mentioning this a second ago I know nothing comparable to the body of knowledge subsumed under the title real and complex analysis there's nothing like that anywhere in our experience it's detailed it's precise it's full of rich ideas and it has access to one of the most unusual concepts in all of human experience a concept of a proof we actually get a proof I think parts of physics are like that not all of them but parts of physics certainly Newtonian mechanics after 300 years in the complete reformation of Newtonian mechanics in the 20th century that is a stupendous body of knowledge why that should be so perhaps there's something of historical accident this is just what the great minds of the 17th century began with they didn't begin with biology perhaps there's something deeper at issue I suspected something much deeper in physics there's a phrase called no-go theorems and they are theorems that is actually statements that can be demonstrated that you can't have a certain kind of knowledge I mean that you don't go there and it always seems to me biology is protected by a rich body of nogow theorems things that we cannot truly get our hands on I mean after all look around the room here are two three dozen examples of a biological structure if we were to say can you describe these biological structures in the same level of attention in detail you can prescribe a black hole answer's no we wouldn't know how to begin what makes a certain area of space and time or space-time a living system no idea no idea why living systems have the properties they do to what extent are they accidental adventitious design we don't know we don't know yes hi my name is Edie I go to a Towson University and I traveled from Towson today here I wanted to you talked about Newtonian mechanics and I accessed some of Newton's theological writings online there's a Newton project where you can read some of his theological way and I always found it interesting that I was I was raised with public school for up in public school and they never mentioned the fact that Newton wrote far more on theology than he did on Oh on physics it's not been read it hasn't been read as stuff is sitting there you want to read a million pages of it by Newton in Latin amazing in it and I try that I got a sentence into that stuff but but one of the things that I think is interesting is the atheists are the ones the Darwinists so we call them are the ones that demand that for instance theories like intelligent design should not be even spoken should not be brought into science or into the classroom and I one of the problems I think there is that Darwin's theory you know there are people who critique it based on Cambrian explosion and these kinds of phenomena and within Darwinists themselves and but the problem I see is that Darwin's theory doesn't necessarily refute intelligent design because you still have the probabilistic issue that people like Michael Behe and and so forth put forward and that is that you just repeat that Darwin's theory darwin's theory does not refute the probabilistic in the improbability of life arising which mean if it's if Darwin's theory is true there would still be probability probability issues because you know we have structure in the universe and we don't really know how to account for that whether it's the structure of a room or you know the gravity or something like that where did why did it happen with structure as opposed to sand and a pan that's just all sprinkle to it no structure it's very similar to the question we asked about moral life - and why is there structure there why are the laws of physics true and deep sense why are they true they reflect as Einstein had hoped some form of underlying cosmic necessity it doesn't i hesitate to make a claim I can't back up and the idea as Steven Weinberg very often expressed it in dreams of a final theory that we would discover a final theory that was logically necessary I don't see any evidence that we're moving in that direction we're moving in the other direction certainly uh now one of the things I can think of is with Cambrian explosion it's very interesting because you have a whole lot of life forms appearing suddenly in the fossil record and one of the things we know less suddenly now but still there is that there still is what's known but you have extinct civilizations try to follow my thought here like the Egyptians and so forth like that and they have writing and language that evolved and then the then these civilizations died died off it seems to me that you have intelligent design that occurs by nature and then disappears in the same sort of sense that you have Cambrian explosion and for instance when human beings design things it seems to me that you have intelligent design and natural laws acting at the same time so my point is I don't see why Darwinists all the time try to refute intelligent design with with Darwinism that's that's my problem they both coexist it's just went to what degree and where do they exist I mean no matter how committed a man-made may be to Darwin's theory he's always open to the possibility that maybe some further category of explanation which design plays a role but I take it that's not the argument you want to make the argument that anyone defending Darwin's theory would make is that there are no probabilities that are exorbitant within the theory no probabilistic Peaks that have to be scaled no resources that have to be introduced that the explanation as it stands for its proper domain is relatively complaint complete that is the claim whether it's true isn't it another question entirely hi my name is Richard Hyde I've enjoyed your talk very much there two books I'd like to mention I just want to see if you've read them and found them helpful whoo I think two authors thinking in similar lines one is Hanna errant of course in the human condition question technology and awful long time ago are the dangers of technology being our technology ISM I guess would be what she's critiquing in the human condition and then more recently a British journalist named Brian Appleyard who's written a book called understood understanding the present also a brilliant grilling critique of science brief comprehendible yeah hannah arendt the her discussion is I agree completely with you just extraordinary and it's it's really a regret of my life that I didn't know her because everyone I knew knew her very well my father knew her all his friends knew her and a uniform opinion that she was just a very very capable and intelligent woman I agree completely I haven't read enough about the other guy Apple Apple Yard yeah I don't have anything particularly intelligent to say but I think the whole issue of Technology is a fascinating issue I'd like to write a book about it just entitled why is there technology it does seem kind of like a gift I mean look around just compare our lies with the lives of the animals and the dog cat we've got artificial lighting we've got a room we got air conditioning what exactly is it about the structure of physical thought that has made all this possible should we be grateful is it possible to imagine a world completely without technology because the laws of physics are so rigid they permit nothing except what they themselves compel it's an interesting idea I don't know what to say about that but it's certainly something that has not been properly discussed not only has not been discussed as an intellectual issue but the moral issues are a very unclear one of the things that strikes me again and again about technology is that it's completely exempt from democratic control control of the market possibly but I don't believe it I mean no market forces made the computer inevitable no market forces made nuclear weapons inevitable and I do think the scientific community reacts with outrage to stereo whenever this is pointed out it was a very interesting case that just occurred to crackpots said talking about the new Hadron Collider that's supposed to go online in about six weeks or eight weeks neither them a very capable physicist but they asked a question that physicists had been talking about suppose the Hadron Collider spontaneously forms a little black hole the physicist it's great that's what we're looking for we'd like to see a black hole but Hawking tells us that it will radiate away immediately so what these guys said well suppose it doesn't suppose it's stable well what would it be like to have a stable black hole in Switzerland well one thing I can tell you is there wouldn't be no any Switzerland left if it's really a black hole and if it's stable if it keeps on ingesting stuff it will destroy the universe how could you take that concern seriously the physicists say yes there is a finite probability there's points you're six thousand decimal places that just isn't going to happen well suppose it does very very small probability weighed against an infinite cost is that the kind of moral calculus prepare to embrace well all I can say is I'm glad I'm not there I don't want to write an op-ed defending that one businesses scoff at black hole possibility yeah um so I'm my name is Jason Rosen house and maybe just a few general comments I'm not sure if there's a question at the end of this beyond how do you react I'm about to say um I I think you fight with me I I think you might be exaggerating the role that science plays and in the books of Dawkins and Hitchens and Harris and that it and maybe to a lesser extent Victor Stenger and people like that and Tanner ettus yeah I mean you know I mean none of these people as far as I know claimed that that science proves atheism or that it's a logical consequence of any particular scientific theory most notably evolution that implies atheism the role that science plays I mean most of them don't even like Hitchens and Harris in particular say very little about science either but they're more interested in the sort of the cultural effects of religion and even Dawkins the main role that science plays in his book is just to refute the argument from design that it leaves are even used to seem really convincing to everyone I believe actually in your commentary piece you said it's convincing to everyone so I think Dawkins point was that that seems like a yeah you would probably phrase it more colorfully but you know that it seems like a less convincing argument and you know furthermore I would add that yeah it yeah we often talk about theism versus atheism but but really I mean I mean no one's talking about deism here I mean no it's you know it's one thing to say well you know yeah we haven't discovered any tangible evidence you know of God but but maybe he exists nonetheless but you know most people I think hold a certain conception of God like for example you talked about finding some authority for moral judgments well you need a certain kind of God to justify that and in particular if you have you know sort of the Christian view of things is that we're the intentional products of a God who loves us and a God of omnipotent and omni-benevolent God and then you have science coming along and telling a story about how were the you know the chance endpoints of a hundred of hundreds of millions of years long process of evolution by natural selection which is a singularly bloody you know process yes singularly hard to reconcile whether the eye picture of a loving God so I think the the conflict between science and religion I'd say it's not a logical conflict it's not that some aspect of science logically proves you know atheism it's that the Christian view of things tends to become tends to seem unlikely in the light of what science has discovered I think that was also the point of Weinberg's comment it's not that something about the other Big Bang or quantum mechanics right it's not than anything about that says all well clearly atheism is now true it's that we can't find any trace of theism you know in it and people used to do that all the time you know it used to be you know why me natural theology and you know and Rhonda it used to be that science was the handmaiden of religion so anyway as I said I don't know if there's really question if the end of that beyond how do you respond to any of that I think you're right I think I agree with pretty much everything you said the differences between us would be matters of emphasis stress and accent one trivial correction the subtitle of Victor Victor Stenger's book is how science shows there is no god or how science has disproved oh god the failed there wasn't the title I forgot I got it in here somewhere it was something about what science has done it had to forgive me people used to invoke God to explain things and now we have a directly oh I think that's that's absolutely true people did use to invoke God to explain things now we have better explanations but the suggestion that rests with me is that perhaps that's because we have not suitably enhanced our theological understanding that was Kurt girdles remov girdle was very seriously interested in these questions he was also insane but I don't think the two are incompatible and he was bitterly unhappy with the state of theologies there's no reason this can't be put on the same kind of foundation as Newton's mechanics so I'd say yes and if we're if we're simply considering two hypotheses one is a quantum mechanical explanation of the decay of a-- of a subatomic particle the other is God God did it you know where I'm gonna go if I'm going to place my money I'm gonna go with the physicist but that's not the end of the story it's just not the end of the story there are levels of complexity that we as sensitive and suffering human beings want to address and that I think is just left out of the picture when you go to Dawkins when you go to Dennett when you go there just happiest climbs with the way things are I find that intellectually very difficult to take more questions I David Mark Ryland good to see you hi mark Oh something wrong with my computer can you help sure glad to help out I tried and it worked all morning maybe we're looking at maybe the the whole question about scientism it kind of inverts everything and partly I think it's I'm going to make an assertion see if you'll buy into this mathematics is very attractive as the paradigm of knowledge because if it's it's beauty its consistency coherency its ability to give us certainty and prove an absolute proof but what is it exactly that we know and we know mathematical things you're not going to expect that I'm going to try to answer that well but my music he wants to answer it right here but let me suggest the possibility that at least this that what we know when we know those things isn't much necessarily about the world of material existence okay at least not without a lot of careful thought in translation and that leads us then to mathematical physics which is our best attempt to bring together the world of the world that we know either directly or indirectly through sense experience yeah and this other world that we know through this other these other this other look but look the second we try to make any sense of a claim about material existence I think the matter is philosophically hopeless we can make no sense of mathematical physics in terms of material objects I mean not even the beginning it's riddled with hopelessly obscure entities mysterious forces things that we can eat in no way place our sensory apparatus around and we have to use a vast complicated inferential tangle to get near them I mean after all the beginning of physics modern physics is is Newton I mean building on Kepler and Galileo cause what Newton said was I got this incredible hypothesis the moon is held in its orbit by the same force that controls the fall of an apple I have know nothing in all of human history comparable to the force of that insight and what's more I have a formula that will explain it completely and precisely what's this force like well have accidence against the panoply of empty space and acts instantaneously and what can I say about this it's just nuts that's how physics begins and it's only 200 years later that Einstein comes up with something that seems a little more sophisticated but by that time we have another concept that's just riddled with mystery the concept of the field I mean all of physics is the study of fields right now not only the electromagnetic field that Maxwell introduced in 1859 but all the quantum fields you would take a physicist alone in a bar give them a drink or two and then say the truth you make any scenario you're telling me that these fields out there and the fields interact and sometimes they have no energy and sometimes they have enough energy to pop up a particle and half the time we can't see anything and half the time they're interacting like mad and you guys are claiming this is better than Thomas Aquinas I guarantee you by the third wrinkle so you're right there you're right it's not better but that's where we're at well I think you're helping me out here actually because I think we should flip it the other way and I'll quote Nancy Cartwright who said I'm sorry quote Nancy Cartwright she wasn't she married to Stuart Hampshire yeah I remember she's a philosopher for science yeah Boston Science and Elysee she said I used to be fond of telling people that there were no exception this laws of nature until a friend of mine said all men are mortal and I had to stop saying that in other words you're speaking for yourself now if we go to them if we go to the world of everyday experience we do actually have a lot of certainty best stuff but it's not mathematical certainty it's a very different kind of certainty so I guess what I'm I would like you to maybe common there are lots of things we say we're certain about I'm absolutely certain I have a nose right and we're certainly you know in this room having this conversation I don't doubt it that's not scientific knowledge you know you're right it's better than scientific knowledge isn't it I mean if this if this knowledge was false could our scientific knowledge possibly be true if it was false that we built instruments and learn mathematics and did all the things we need to do at the level of everyday experience in order to do science so isn't that I guess it could be false and I don't know I feel I feel like I'm back in the philosophy seminar room at Princeton and I know these questions go someplace odious and now I'm asking a simpler question not that whether this is true or not but could is it possible that scientific knowledge could be is more likely to be true than this kind of knowledge it seems to me that that's in principle impossible because scientific knowledge depends on this kind of knowledge yeah but everything depends on what you mean by depends I'm just going back 40 years giving you the answer I would have given I'm the father what do you mean by depends is there a logical connection and how do you defend the logical connection there used to be a whole body of research about that whether we could actually derive scientific theories from sense data for example nelson goodman was wonderfully ingenious about defending the idea but to tell you the truth I don't think those are living questions any more we know that there's a lot of scientific research that's wonderful that's interesting that's useful that makes unbelievably accurate predictions and we certainly know we live our lives and complete indifference to most of it Richard Feynman said that quantum electrodynamics is so accurate that if you measure the distance from the octave of Los Angeles the difference between theory and experiment would be smaller than a single hair I don't know whether that's really true but the accuracy is pretty amazing accuracy is pretty amazing my sense of certainty that the Sun will rise tomorrow or that I have a body that I'm not only material spirit or that certain relations relationships a transitory that love doesn't last all those things is much more firmly grounded and I think there's a human a universal human experience because after all very few people study quantum electrodynamics but whether there's a really illogical connection I don't know and it seems to me that since I started studying philosophy 50 45 years ago the number of things that are said to be logical has diminished day by day and we're forced to rely on pragmatic intuitions hunches the nature of the culture scientific attitudes the attempt after all to derive science from something pre-scientific like sensory experiences or individuals or whatever tremendous amount of ingenuity has been devoted to that but nobody pays attention anymore I mean how many people have read nelson goodman the structure of appearance and yet it's an extraordinary work by an intelligence of the highest order but nobody cares and that's a factor that needs to be addressed a lot of things are true but nobody cares about them one more quick comment is have you read Hans Yanis speaking of Hannah Arendt - another one of heidegger's children on CEO knows highly recommend illnesses it does he write in English a German most well both but a lot in English he but he's German isn't it you guys German he was he was a German who fled the Nazis and taught in at the new school out of you know I haven't I haven't read him but if you're interested in writing especially on science and technology would be another tremendous resource and also I think he's the greatest proponent of a kind of neo Aristotelian view of nature kind of reasoning from first prince thanks for the reference uh David I wonder where you come down on the wishful thinking argument people like Dawkins and hitch and say that people who believe in God engage in wishful thinking and some people have put the show on the other foot there and say that they are engaging in wishful thinking that God does not exist as a non-believer yourself I mean where do you come down on that it's awfully hard to know but my understanding of the religious tradition is that it is a tradition that is people who are throughout history taking religious views very seriously that it is full of agony and uncertainty and a great sense of self-consciousness about self delusion I don't know quite who Dawkins is addressing when he talks about wishful thinking certainly no one who in the 21st century takes religious faith very seriously is inclined to confuse a wish for the real thing I think there's a very easy transference Dawkins through a lens of almost sublime and perfect ignorance has considered the Moslem or Islamic community and said these guys are just nuts you know given the given atomic bomb level exploded over Oxford and that would be terrible but the the generalization is false I mean the religious tradition is very rich it's one of great soul-searching uncertainty skepticism profound anxiety wishful thinking plays a very little role especially if you consider the nature of God I don't know how many wishes are going to be fulfilled if this guy really exists and is as furious as everyone says he is I mean Dawkins writes that the God of the Old Testament is most fearsome indignant homicidal genocidal homophobic misogynistic creature on the face of the earth you know wishful thinking to have this guy judge you after you're gone yeah I don't think it's quite quite that simple I may be talking just the one who's engaging wishful thinking I mean I think it was Jonathan Swift wrote somewhere that he reports a conversation with somebody who an atheist says to somebody on the street explains the argument that God doesn't exist and the guy on the street says why sir if it be as you say we can drink and whore and defy the person and maybe that's what a lot of intellectuals are really thinking we like do what we like oh that's certainly true that's certainly true one of the one of the user Fox one of the benefits of a complete absence of any any form of moral authority in the universe is just this happy feeling we can do as we like it is a continual torment in temptation to anyone who denies access to the divine a torment because doing as we like as we all know ends up making people miserable and a temptation because it's very hard not to do as one likes but that's that's part of the apparatus we bring to those particular kinds of experiences it's part of them but I think wishful thinking I'm not sure you know there's a wonderful remark in Boswell's life of Johnson and Boswell says the Johnson you know David Hume said there's as much reason to fear life after death as there is to fear life before death they're both an expanse of nothingness speaking for himself sir Boswell said to Johnson what do you say about you mouth of being completely free of the fear of death then Johnson can imagine this guy six one big huge massive authoritative says sir he lies put a pistol to his breast and see how with what equanimity he faces death I think that's true of a lot of these rhetorical asides a lot of them yes all right my name is William Worley and I wondered if you could say a few words about chance and design you study linguistic analysis I guess no it was on your as amay linguistic and I was anyway you don't need to know linguistic analysis - you mean like generative grammar and stuff like that no I'm talking about the modern English philosophers who who reduce all philosophy - so oh sorry my mistake you I was thinking about Chomsky generative grammar I was thinking about one area line 9 and a gar and people like that Bertrand Russell anyway a chance and design seems to be this two central concepts around which evolution and intelligent design revolve and I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about for example natural selection is that just a process governed by chance or is there some design there and then in which case it raises the question about what you mean by intelligence when you're talking about intelligent design your animals intelligent well I think they are sure who would though there seems to be a continuity and so if things develop you know who's to say how do you draw the line between what's an intelligent development what's a chance development I think that's a good question um you know as with all of these questions that seem very simple there's a tremendous amount of depth underneath it I could not say with any certainty that natural selection is really stochastic in nature although it seems to be obvious that since environments change very very quickly the best we can do is to model environmental change by some sort of random variable which makes all of evolution fundamentally stochastic because the product of two random variables is a random variable but I don't have a lot of intellectual resources to defend that it just seems to me that environments if darwin's theory is correct environments should change very very rapidly because there's a lot of things to be explained by changes in the environment it's it's the same problem that behavioral series of psychology faced in the 40s 30s and 40s that kind of begs the question as it does you're absolutely right it does beg the question you're saying if you say the environment is what elicits these response these chance responses because the environment changes therefore there the creature has to change by chance because the environment changed well that that begs a question because the creature may be making an intelligent choice to respond to how the environment change in equity I agree that's why I said we haven't really reached that stage that natural philosophers reached in the 17th century where they say these are the fundamental concepts we're going to concentrate on them every time we get we try to get somewhere richer in biology we run to exactly these kinds of questions to the extent that I've understood them and we say well on the one hand the other hand but if you take it to the next level don't you have the say yes you're absolutely right for example Chomsky's a figure I admire immensely because he's revolutionized linguistics and he talks about his own contribution language grows as a innate maturational program in the organism just the way an arm grows you don't learn to speak a language you have a program that enables you to speak one when the environment cues your language learning ability your language learning program it's automatic children don't learn a language they just absorb it they suck it up and he said that's the biological term happened about 1959 1960s right there's something about that that is much more biological and everything that the behaviors such as BF Skinner were writing the question Chomsky doesn't ask is if this is a biological turn and we understand the biological terms turn in terms of random variations and natural selection have we just not pushed up the problem of language acquisition so that it becomes a problem of how a species acquire something instead of a problem of how an individual acquires something and the answer is yes we pushed the problem up for the time being that's probably the best we can do it's not insignificant it doesn't mean we haven't learned something what we've learned is the problems deeper than we thought it was because after all a species according to Darwin Darwin's theory is simply a behavioral mechanism just like a an individual in Skinner's theory it learns Skinner said the environment is changing all the time and there's reinforcement in Darwin's theory it's survival maybe that's the ultimate truth I don't know it doesn't sound like it though it would be very remarkable of that where the ultimate truth and it would be so destroying from everything we understand in terms of the fundamental principles of physics I would find that one of the great mysteries of all time yeah yeah my name is Todd a biologist and this conversation reminds me of example a little shallow in some of the details but there is a married couple academics doctors grant and grant if I got that properly and they visited the Galapagos Islands for a number of years yeah they lived there right okay you're familiar with them yeah um well you're way ahead of me then perhaps but my question would be is how do we look at design from the point of view of a more complex matrix because if for centuries there's been El Nino and La Nina working on the Galapagos Islands and if in fact Darwin only visited for a very short window of time he made a conclusion based on that very bright encounter and yet the finches you know I go back to Cambrian explosion all those body types all those body plans came well you may say less rapidly but whatever they came they came with a genome a complement of information that may be horizontally diverse as well as vertically diverse in the long scale of time but in the horizontal sense the finches morph back and forth like the pendulum swings with the environment and while they may change in their phenotypic expression and you say oh this is now a shorter beak yeah it's now we swing over it's a longer beak it's the same population expression expressing these different phenotypes and ultimately it's one very plastic species that's how it looks to us right that's also how do we address the evolutionists with the concept that really this is more a design issue and less an evolution issue in the sense that as its expressed had it been something that keeps extrapolating okay maybe Darwin is correct but it doesn't extrapolate it keeps coming back and forth yeah but it's survival but it is also a design in terms of the amount of actual evidence we have we have compared to the the length and complexity of life we have vanishing these small amounts of evidence it's perfectly plausible to say that with respect to the Galapagos finches what we see is periodic variations in the size of pigeon we don't know that's true we just don't know that's true we think that that may be true how long have we been how long the grounds been sitting in their horrible little igloo in the Galapagos well I would posit that they've been there at least long enough to watch how much change go back and for many generations yeah no that's true but on the other hand the mysterious ineffable event could have taken place before they arrived and it might take place after there we just don't know what we do know in the only body of evidence that I think is very very suggestive is we have a long ten thousand year old tradition of animal husbandry and we know a lot about what it's possible to do with artificial selection and the answer is we can do some amazing things with artificial selection but there are there seem to be inherent limits beyond which we can't pass we don't know how to pass them maybe no it's not really the same thing because there are constraints in place on artificial selection that nature cannot quite meet for example constraints in place in terms of time speeding up processes but I think the uniform experience that we've had with artificial selection is just as you suggested that for reasons that we cannot quite understand maybe ten thousand years is just a blink maybe it's just too short maybe if we kept breeding the cows we would discover one that started secreting coca-cola instead of milk I don't know chickens that lay square eggs pigs mounted on wheels but we don't have the kind of experience that would enable us to say with complete authority couldn't happen we just don't know don't want anyone to forget okay I'm just an engineer I may not go as deeply as you have but let me put a couple of thoughts together and get your response to them the first thought is everything that has a beginning has a cause and the second thought is with the advances in astronomy and physics and whatever have you we now have concluded pretty solidly that the universe including both the material in it and time itself and space came into being and from that way from those two thoughts you could conclude that or you could infer that the universe had some sort of transcendent cause I certainly heard that argument before you know everything depends on the context in which you put it if you're making it in an informal context where you want to persuade someone you know I'm not nuts I've got some serious ideas here that's fine if you want to do it in a way that would be persuasive in a philosophy seminar room another standard the judgment comes in if you want to persuade a mathematician still a third standard of judgment comes in think there have been responsible ripto all three of your claims it's just not obvious to me that everything that exists began to exist that was your first claim right everything that begins to exist has a cause I feel like my head's a little full of ginger ale when I try to think about that one what I immediately think of is what's the underlying space because space in a mathematical sense is it an open or a closed set of it's open there's one conclusion that can be drawn if it's closed as a boundary that might not be part of the set so a lot depends there's been a lot written about this very sophisticated stuff and I think the only conclusion you can draw is that it's inconclusive which is very suggestive in itself Adolph green Brown grun Baum Brown Tom well some dramatic name at the University of Pittsburgh has written a lot about so you have two equally plausible accounts what you've given is the classical medieval Kalama argument essentially Arabic and it's it's a very powerful statement look there's the universe began to exist at one time what caused it gotta be transcendent the trouble is the word transcendent exactly what does that mean in that context explain what it means in a way that doesn't sound as if you're trivializing a question of great importance transcendent mean a cause that's not part of the effect it's very hard to make that work because any cause can be described as part of the effect by describing it is the cause of the effect does that not count as being part of the effect that's an argument Donald Davidson used to give I think the best we can do is say we have conflicting intuitions we don't know what to say about these questions deeply conflicting intuitions we'd like to say the universe it's out there it exists why does it exist exist for a reason the reason is God we'd like to say that everyone would like to say that part of the time and no one wants to say it all all the time it's like that let's be honest that's the way life presents itself to us thank you for giving me two questions I hope you'll enjoy this question um I do I'm just a little more somewhat curious about your intellectual lineage you mentioned your your father knew Hannah arrant and so there's obviously a family of thinking and all these people were exiles together yeah that's why they knew each other a Hannah Arendt arrived in I think 1940 if I'm not mistaken my parents came in 1942 and there was just a huge German community around around these people I myself grew up almost entirely in the german-speaking environment because nobody speed spoke English Manhattan northern part of Manhattan I mean the entire neighborhood is now Dominican it's just wonderful to see the change everyone is speaking Spanish just as everyone spoke German when I was growing up but Hannah Arendt's wrote for a paper called the out spout and she very quickly gave up German for English she was remarkably fluent in English and there were all sorts of people around it don't forget she was married to someone who was teaching philosophy at bars Heinrich Bleecker and she had many contacts in the german-speaking community that left Hitler's Germany before the war I think she knew Tillich but you know the great love of her life of all things was a Heidegger a love that survived his Nazi Party membership which is an extraordinary story in itself well if we don't have any further questions from the audience I have one more for you I remembered that in 2005 I think it was two or three years ago that you had championed this just I thought of it because we have a couple versions about natural selection this Kingsolver study from a few years ago that's right I met a meta-study of natural selections effects in the wild you remind us about that study and secondly have you seen any you know updates and literature in terms of finding natural selection at work in the wild rather really or is the best we have going computer simulation what was what do you see in that regard I don't know who's working in the wild you know the studying natural selection the wild it's very difficult one thing you've got to be in the wild which is horrible for another thing just imagine trying to form an empirical study of grizzly bear mating habits it does not commend itself as a graduate thesis there there are two landmark studies but there's one landmark study in 1986 a publication booked by endler called natural selection the wild and it had many cases of natural selection under under what appear to be very reputable empirical conditions and then King Savas meta study which was published in 2001 - I forgot exactly looked at about 600 different kind of studies of natural selection in the wild included that as the population size increased past 1,000 the effects of natural selection seemed to converge very very rapidly toward zero especially when you're talking about stabilizing selection and they just reported this I said you know the question is very interesting you'll have to give natural selection a lot more attention than we've been giving it and then the paper the study just disappeared there are a couple of comments but - but that's typical that is what happens with negative evidence in any scientific disappointment any scientific discipline let's think our speaker real quick thanks David Berlinski is the author of several books including a tour of calculus and Newton's gift he's a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute in a former fellow at the Institute for applied system analysis for more information visit discovery dot org

Channel: IDquest

Views: 111,096

Rating: 4.4927697 out of 5

Keywords: David Berlinski (Author), Devil's Delusion, New Atheists, Intelligent Design (Ideology), Science, Religion, Philosophy, Evolution, Darwinism, Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins (Author), Christopher Hitchens (Author), Sam Harris (Author), Daniel Dennett (Author), Brights, The God Delusion (Religious Text), Agnostic, Discovery Institute (Organization)

Id: vtgV2VP9iEQ

Length: 63min 29sec (3809 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 15 2013