Dinesh D’Souza on atheism, his debate with Christopher Hitchens, and his book What’s So Great About Christianity.
Dinesh D’Souza is one of the most famous conservatives in America. He is a prolific author of works concerning politics and society. After college, he worked briefly in the public sector and was, in the late eighties, a senior domestic policy analyst in the Reagan Administration. As an author, he has always been a controversial figure due to his arriving at positions well ahead of the conservative consensus. Illiberal Education and The End of Racism made him a hated figure by the Left; but it was not until 2007, with the release of The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, that he found himself criticized by some members of the Right. His latest book, What’s So Great About Christianity, should restore his status among conservatives, however. It is a meticulous and exquisite defense of both Christianity and belief in general.
BC: Congratulations to you, sir. I just finished What’s So Great About Christianity and was quite impressed. Obviously its subject matter is timeless, but what about our present day makes the work so imperative?
Dinesh D’Souza: I think we’re seeing something very new right now. For the first time, atheism is being presented as a serious option for young people. A generation ago atheists were represented by the likes of Madeline Murray O’Hare who was not a very attractive poster child for the movement. Today atheism comes in a stylish disguise and is defended by witty debaters. They have mounted a strong attack on religion and claim that atheism is more moral than Christianity. Atheist works have dominated the best seller list for the last two years, and so I thought the time was right to mount a serious counter attack.
BC: In light of the recent spate of books attempting to debunk Christianity and God — such as Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, and Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon — how much is Christianity “on the ropes,” so to speak, in America? How successful have atheist attacks on religion been with the general public?
Dinesh D’Souza: Well, the Christians have been a little passive here. Many Christians feel that we should practice our faith at home but should abandon the public square. They had no way of knowing that atheists would end up taking their campaign into the public schools. Christians need to respond seriously to this threat because if we don’t we’ll find that our most intelligent young people will be led astray. The young want to believe in God but when they go to college their professors try to indoctrinate them into thinking otherwise.
Too many Christians try to deflect these arguments by using scripture. That is not going to work. Scripture works when you are arguing with other Christians but it will not be effective with atheists as they do not care about what the Bible says. When you’re speaking to someone indifferent to scripture you should use reason, logic, skepticism, and evidence. These are the tools atheists use and are also the ones I use for myself in What’s So Great About Christianity.
BC: What would you say is the most potent argument offered by atheists? By this I mean the one most difficult to refute.
Dinesh D’Souza: The goal of my book is to not only fortify the believer of Christianity but also to challenge the atheists while showing the seeker that they are rebelling against a childhood version of Christianity — one that they learned in Sunday school and catechism. Their opinion of it now is rooted in what I call “crayon Christianity.” What we must also realize is that when atheists use the word “fundamentalist” it is but a big ploy. When they say fundamentalist and mount attacks against fundamentalism what they really are attempting to do is to go after traditional Christianity.
That being said, I think the atheists make two arguments which must be responded to. First, they posit that Christianity is opposed to reason and science which it is not. My historical chapters show that Christianity had a lot to do with the origins of science. Most of the leading scientists of the last 500 years have been Christian. We should not go on the defensive when the name of science is invoked. Second, atheists claim that Christianity is a major cause of violence and war in the world which is also untrue and I illustrate why this is the case in my book.
BC: For readers unfamiliar with its pages, why do so many people continue to perceive Christianity and evolution as being mutually exclusive? What’s wrong with the notion that God created us and we evolved from there?
Dinesh D’Souza: There is nothing wrong with that notion. I have no problem with it. I do think that the intelligent design advocates have raised some interesting questions though. They have found some vulnerable points in the atheist critique. Evolution does not undermine the argument of design, however. You look at nature and in it you can see the handiwork of the Creator. The existence of God is supported by astronomy, physics and modern science in general. In modern biology, it is evident, in a most comprehensive way, through the complexity of the cell. The simple cell has enough information in it to compare it to a supercomputer. The cell already has built into itself the capacity to replicate. Evolution is true so far as it goes but the problem is that it does not go that far.
I make a distinction in my book between evolution and Darwinism. I see evolution as being a scientific proposition but Darwinism I see as being an ideological proposition. We have all these scientific laws but no one calls themselves Keplerians or Newtonians so why do so many insist on calling themselves Darwinists? Their doing so puts an atheistic spin on evolution, and this spin is what the Christian community finds itself reacting too.
BC: It has been suggested by Richard Dawkins that atheists now term themselves “brights” in keeping with their supernatural-free worldviews. That is a loaded term to say the least. In your estimation, how closely is atheism tied to elitism? Could it be that a certain segment of humanity is offended by the notion that anyone or any entity stands above them?
Dinesh D’Souza: Well, this whole business about the brights goes back a couple of years. Atheists sat around and said to themselves “we sound too negative” because to be an atheist means being against something. How could they rephrase their identity in a positive manner? Well, “brights” is what they came up with. They must have thought, “We all agree that we’re extremely smart,” so that’s where the term comes from. Dennett and Dawkins wrote articles about this. The term conveys a comical pomposity but when you look at their work it is understandable. Atheists stand on a metaphysical platform grounded in faith but they are the only ones who don’t recognize this fact. They assume that our five senses give us complete knowledge of reality. Why is that automatically the case? All evolution says is that our only imperative is to survive and replicate. There is no evolutionary mandate to seek truth or do any of the other things so many of us find ourselves doing. There is no reason to assume that the thoughts in our heads precisely match the mandates of nature.
BC: I was very pleased by Chapter 19 in which you responded to the absurd idea that the atrocities committed by Hitler and Stalin had something to do with the faith into which they were born (but later renounced). In the hopes of disseminating your arguments to the larger population, why is it no accident that the world’s greatest mass murderers — Mao, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot — maintained anti-religious regimes?
Dinesh D’Souza: I think it is no accident that the worst bloodbaths have come from anti-religious regimes because religion provides a framework of accountability. This framework was not present in the twentieth century totalitarian states. You have had bad guys in the past but they were somewhat restrained by the fact that they had to be externally accountable for what they did. That is why the totalitarian states behave in the wanton manner they do. There is nothing to restrain them from committing egregious acts. It harkens back to what Dostoevsky said in The Brothers Karamazov: “Without God and the future life? How will man be after that? It means everything is permitted now.” Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris do somersaults to prove that atheist crimes cannot be blamed on atheism which is incorrect.
BC: In your chapter, “The World Beyond Our Senses: Kant and the Limits of Reason,” you take issue with the idea that human reason is the finest, and only, way to comprehend reality. What other means are there? Why should we be deferential to what we cannot understand?
Dinesh D’Souza: Well, within the domain of human experience, reason is supreme. The problem is that the atheists try to use the same empirical techniques to prove what is outside the realm of human experience. Here’s the point: none of us know what comes after death. The believer says I don’t know but I believe in God, the atheist says I don’t know therefore I don’t believe in anything. In reality, both positions are derived from faith. Both groups make a leap of faith but the believer is humble enough to recognize this fact. The atheist can’t or won’t.
BC: One phrase really stuck out with me from your debate with Christopher Hitchens. It was the revulsion he felt over Christianity due to it forcing us to maintain a “posture of permanent gratitude” towards life and the Lord. How revealing of the atheist mindset are these words?
Dinesh D’Souza: The thing is even Heidegger recognized that we are thrown into this world without our asking to be. We find ourselves alive but have done nothing to deserve such an opportunity. This is how one could say there is no merit attached to existence . . . yet life remains precious to all of us — even to the sick who cling to life. Those close to death still cherish life, so if you don’t want to thank God then I say at least thank your parents.
I don’t know why atheists don’t want to view existence in a gratuitous way. Dawkins put the [Hitchens vs. D’Souza] debate on his website and AOL had viewers vote to determine who, in their opinion, won. When they took the final tally, I was the winner. Now what is important to remember here is that most Christians are not the ones generally surfing the web, yet, amid all those viewers, I was deemed the victor. I came determined to stop him in his tracks and I think it came out pretty well. Ironically, the debate was held in an atheist auditorium that looks rather like a church. If you watch it again you’ll find that in the beginning the audience seemed to be favoring Hitchens, but, as the debate moved on, the applause moved heavily in my direction. I have issued a debate challenge to Dawkins as well. We’ll see what comes from it.
BC: Thanks so much for your time, Mr. D’Souza.
What's So Great About Christianity is available on Amazon.com.
Interesting.
"Dawkins put the [Hitchens vs. D’Souza] debate on his website"
Is this still available? I have seen some parts of these debates on CSPAN, but I would like to read the whole thing.
Dinesh says "Scripture works when you are arguing with other Christians but it will not be effective with atheists as they do not care about what the Bible says."
Scripture is also irrelevant when "arguing" with non-Christians. In America today, there are more Buddhists than there are Episcopalians, there are more Moslems than there are Presbyterians, there are millions of Jews, millions of members of other religious persuasions – and millions of atheists and agnostics. Like it or not, this is a pluralistic society, in which scripture is becoming more and more irrelevant.
Dinesh says "I do think that the intelligent design advocates have raised some interesting questions though. They have found some vulnerable points in the atheist critique."
Just as creationism and "creation science" were ruled by the US Supreme Court to be religion in 1987 and therefore forbidden to be presented in public schools, in 2005 intelligent design creationism was similarly ruled to be not science but religion. Intelligent design creationism has no theory, no hypotheses and is not testable – it is simply not science, unless you dumb down science to include astrology and other pseudosciences, as was famously explained by a Dishonesty Institute Fellow in the Dover Trial.
Yes, the courts are the final arbiter of all truth. If the courts say so, we must certainly bow down.
Perhaps PaulBurnett would be good enough to show us the laboratory tests that have observed a simpler life form transitioning into a more complex life form over the course of millions of years.
[...] From Intellectual Conservative Politics and Philosophy [...]
"Mountain Man" commented "Perhaps PaulBurnett would be good enough to show us the laboratory tests that have observed a simpler life form transitioning into a more complex life form over the course of millions of years."
(1) Gosh, that makes a lot of sense (at least in the world of the creationists). I'll get started right away and check back with you in a few million years to let you know how it came out. Please leave me your forwarding address.
(2) You yourself (and all of us) are "transitional" life forms. Or are you precisely identical to both your parents (waitaminute, that wouldn't work, would it?). Are your children (presuming you are so blessed) precisely identical to you (and their mother)? Unless your children are your clones, you are a transitional form between your parents and your children.
(3) So you do not respect the rulings of the US Supreme Court? Thanks for letting us know.
Bernard Chapin said (to Dinesh) "I was very pleased by Chapter 19 in which you responded to the absurd idea that the atrocities committed by Hitler and Stalin had something to do with the faith into which they were born…"
I haven't quite gotten around to reading Dinesh's book yet, but I am curious if anybody here knows if Chapter 19 mentioned Martin Luther's seminal work "On the Jews and Their Lies," written in 1543 – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jews_and_Their_Lies
Hitler was simply responding to centuries of festering anti-Semitism when he followed Martin Luther's directions to "set fire to their synagogues or schools," "we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country" and "we must drive them out like mad dogs."
Or is anybody ignorant / naive enough to think that until Hitler, Jews were regarded kindly by the Germans?
Dinesh says "The goal of my book is to…(show)…the seeker that they are rebelling against a childhood version of Christianity — one that they learned in Sunday school and catechism. Their opinion of it now is rooted in what I call “crayon Christianity.”"
That's an interesting parallel with the "crayon" version of evolution and biology and science which most fundamentalists / creationists operate from. This carefully cultivated ignorance is discussed in a report on the Sixth International Conference on Creationism just held August 3-7, in Pittsburgh PA – see http://scienceblogs.com/evolutionblog/2008/08/report_on_the_sixth_internatio.php for the first part of the report.
PaulBurnett,
1) So the transition from simpler forms of life to more complex isn't testable? Thanks for clearing that up.
2) Yes, I am different than my parents, and my son is different than me (Yes, I am blessed with a son, but of course there can be no blessing without a "Blessor"). My parents and theirs, my son and my future grandchildren are and will be homo sapiens.
3) Well, let's see. Dred Scott… nope. Engel v. Vitale… sorry. Roe v. Wade… uh-uh. No respect for these decisions.
Last time I checked, there were no scientists on the Supreme Court. They're all (ugh) lawyers. All of them are fallible human beings, making fallible judgments. When they render a good ruling, I'm glad. When the render a bad one, they are criticized, and deservedly so. Arbiters of truth they are not.
Mountain Man – Actually, increasing complexity can be tested, and is observed from time to time, but large-scale changes do generally take more than a couple human lifetimes… not unlike in geology. Fortunately, we have good fossil examples of it. Mr. Burnett was responding to your request for "laboratory tests" "over the course of millions of years". There haven't been laboratories for more than a few thousand years, so yeah, that's kind of hard to do. Fortunately, the necessary evidence standard isn't quite that high.
In any case, for a somewhat less favorable review of D'Souza's work, see here.
Raymond: I don't think I ever asked your opinion about the "existence" of man-made-global warming. Do you apply the same standards of critical thought to that analysis as well (i.e. generations of human observations are required to draw any meaningful conclusions)?
I'm not trying to be provocative; just curious. Phil
"Tail clips taken for DNA analysis confirmed that the Pod Mrcaru lizards were genetically identical to the source population on Pod Kopiste."
Nice try, Mr. Engles.
Dr. Jackson, I didn't actually say that "generations of human observations are required to draw any meaningful conclusions" about the evolution of increasing complexity. Indeed, I kinda said the opposite: while we can't observe it directly, any more than we can directly watch the life cycles of stars, we can apply the principles we do know about to observe it indirectly. To use my star example, we know about nuclear physics, and we can predict what we should see when looking at our own sun as well as stars elsewhere – we can test those predictions. (And we do.)
With evolution, we can see the process going on today (occasionally rapidly, as I linked to before). We can make predictions about what we should see in the fossil record as well as in the genetics we can now directly examine – and we do test that stuff. And it works.
As to global warming – I'm not sure. I haven't investigated it to the level that I have, say, for evolution. It does seem that there has been an overall warming trend over the last century at least. It's not quite as clear that it's anthropogenic in origin; the Maunder minimum may have skewed our baseline somewhat.
(I will note that some of the tactics I've seen used by the opponents of global warming sometimes bear an uncomfortable resemblance to those of young-Earth creationists and "intelligent design" proponents, though. If their case was airtight, I don't see why they'd need such tactics.)
Mountain Man – That's one of the perils of reading a popularization of the research rather than the actual research. What the tail clips actually showed was that the Pod Mrcaru lizards were not from a previously unknown subpopulation that had previously been living there. They had developed from the Pod Kopiste lizards, and the small number of genetic changes (not zero, as the article implies with the word 'identical') demonstrates this. Of course, no one would expect more than small genetic changes over the period of a few decades.
But sometimes small changes have big consequences. This is also a very good illustration of how speciation actually happens, as opposed to the saltationist cartoon people often picture. A small subpopulation is isolated and develops independently (and often quite rapidly, at least rapidly relative to the usual rates of change) accumulating more differences over time until they can no longer interbreed with the original population. Google up 'ring species' for other examples.
Raymond: My confusion. I assumed that "large-scale changes do generally take more than a couple human lifetimes,not unlike in geology" meant that "generations of human observations are required to draw any meaningful conclusions" about natural events like global climate change, rather than meaning "kinda the opposite".
Dr. Jackson – "Large-scale changes" do, indeed, "generally take more than a couple human lifetimes" in biology and geology, the two fields I specifically mentioned. Which is not to say that big changes can't take place faster on occasion (c.f. the Pod Mrcaru lizards or Mt. Tambora – which, come to think of it, had some climate impact, too).
Nor are "generations of human observations" necessary to determine long-term trends. X-ray astronomy's only been around for a few decades, but it's taught us about some very long-term astronomical phenomena. In any case, we do have quite a few generations of human observations of climate over much of the Earth. That's one of the reasons we know about things like the Maunder Minimum.
Mr. Ingles,
It was your link. I simply quoted what was there. If your intent is to establish what you assert, the burden falls to you to provide sources that are not unclear, or do not contradict your thesis.
The article said the two populations were the same genetically. Same creature, different physical features suggest adaptation, not evolution.
By the way, no one doubts speciation. That's also not evolution (simpler to more complex…).
Raymond. So how does one observe temperature changes (measured to 1/100 of a degree) to determine whether the earth has warmed or cooled to a precise degree without involving generations of human observations? I can understand how the geologic record could show periods of drought or flood and other similar changes that relate to climate, but how does studying rocks tell us what the precise global temperature was in 972AD? Without these precise numbers, we can only guess whether the world is in fact warming or cooling by X degree; the issue of what causes this precise warming or cooling even further unattainable.
All I'm asking is for clarification on how the scientific method answers questions. It seems to me that, on Earth, to measure precise changes you need generations of human study. Or, generations of fossilized plants/animals to study. The more intangible the issue (global temperature vs. the shape of a tiger's skull), the less precise the observations — and therefore conclusions — can be, without generations of human observation. Would you agree to that statement?
I agree that radio astronomy and the like can see large scale generations within a single human lifetime by peering farther into space. But my question was limited to studying things on the Earth, specifically climate change.
Phil
Mountain Man – The new lizards have a new structure in their gut. Please explain how that's not "simpler to more complex". (BTW, if you want more details, you could read the actual paper, or at least a more comprehensive article.)
Dr. Jackson – I'm not sure that the global temperature is "more intangible" than other facts about the physical world. It is harder to get precise measurements for it, but that doesn't make it an abstract concept.
In any case, it often happens that any one item of data doesn't pin down the value you're looking for to a very precise degree. But it also often happens that you can combine many different measurements from many different areas to help limit the error bars. (Ever solved a sudoku puzzle?)
I don't know anything in particular about 972AD, but we have records in glaciers and artic (and antarctic) ice, we have records of crop yields, we have tree rings, we have lake sediments, we can estimate solar activity, etc. etc.
Now, I said that "I haven't investigated [global warming] to the level that I have, say, for evolution." I don't automatically dismiss the entire notion as impossible, though, because I've seen examples of very clever inferences made in other fields from limited data. And it's not related to what we're talking about here, and I'm not particularly interested in arguing about it.
Raymond, really? You think it's equally difficult/easy to examine a rock as it is to determine what the precise temperature of the world is to 1/100th of a degree? You think that studying the exact composition of a rock involves the same level of “tangibility” as determining the exact temperature of the earth?
I know that tree rings, etc. can tell you if the climate was wetter or dryer in a given year. But the claim that man-made global warming advocates make is that the earth has warmed by a precise .06 degrees over a precise 100 year period of time, not that it’s just ‘warmer’ than before.
My only point in raising the issue was to see if applying the scientific method meant recognizing that different natural phenomenon need to be studied in fundamentally different ways; namely, that a “trend” in global climate change (man made or natural) is impossible to assess without generations of direct human observation accompanied by precise, truly global measurements. Any other conjecture based on a partial set of data, extrapolation of data, unsophisticated data measurements, etc., is just an educated guess — and therefore not a scientific “fact” in any sense of the term.
In short, I just wanted to see the basic principles a scientist brings to the table when he analyzes scientific matters. I didn’t expect a conclusive answer on whether or not man warming exists, and if it does, whether man is responsible. But based on the way you approach understanding this issue, I can now better understand how a scientist arrives at their conclusions for other issues.
Adaptation to a new environment is expected. Again, neither group is genetically different.
Unless you are suggesting that the Eskimo people, for example, are superior because they can tolerate lower temperatures. Or perhaps, whites are superior since their average IQ is higher than blacks?
“D’Souza: …Christians have been a little passive here. Many Christians feel that we should practice our faith at home but should abandon the public square.”
Abandoning the public square is not Christianity. The last instruction Christ gave to his apostles was to “go forth and preach the gospel, teaching all I have taught you.” That was their mission. He did not say to go out into the world and find out what’s happening and incorporate it into his church (a sort of Christianity in reverse). Sadly, a lot of Christians are lobbying for just that “Christianity in reverse” within their own churches.
As far as the debate over evolution is concerned, I notice they are all non-productive because they end up arguing details while missing one very important point: evolution requires matter to work itself on, and it cannot explain where the matter came from.
Mountain Man – The groups are "genetically different", and this is the second time I've pointed it out to you. See the links in comment #18. Oh, and please note that, unlike you, I didn't conflate "more complex" with "superior" – those are orthogonal concepts. Quite often, "simpler" is superior to "more complex". (And your 'facts' about humans are not exactly given, either, but that's a discussion for another time.)
Dr. Jackson – Since I didn't say that "it's equally difficult/easy to examine a rock as it is to determine what the precise temperature of the world is to 1/100th of a degree", pretty much the whole of your comment is, well, misdirected.
Tree rings don't just tell you wetter/dryer. Different species of tree exhibit varied responses not just to rainfall but to temperature, average amount of sunlight, and so forth. Any one particular tree record will be 'noisy' but sampling a lot of them can improve the signal-to-noise ratio.
It's this sort of thing that makes me wonder about the opposition to 'global warming'. Assertions that boil down to "I can't imagine how this could be measured, therefore it can't be." Most young-Earth types attack radiocarbon dating without ever learning about the other radioisotopes that can be used. And of the few that do, almost none try to learn about isochrons. A bare handful learn enough to talk about mixing, while ignoring the tests that can be used to detect it.
Like I said, not decisive… but still leads to a bit of deja-vu.
"Different species of tree exhibit varied responses not just to rainfall but to temperature, average amount of sunlight, and so forth. Any one particular tree record will be 'noisy' but sampling a lot of them can improve the signal-to-noise ratio."
There aren't any treas in the ocean, and since a sizeable portion of this planet is covered in water, tree rings cannot tell you precise global temperatures.
And since the claim of man made global warming is based on a precise temperature change of .06 degrees over the last 100 years, I stand by my assertion that this is conjecture, not fact in any sense of the term. You need generations of precise global measurements to make this claim.
None of this is arguable. But it is interesting to see how the scientific method works in arriving at the man made global warming conclusion, and explains a lot about other scientific pronouncements.
Dr. Jackson – I can't find the "0.06 degree" figure referenced anywhere. It's pretty easy to find references to 0.74 +- 0.18 degrees since ~1900, though. (That's Celsius, BTW; Fahrenheit is larger.) May I ask what source you're using? The closest figure I could find was about 0.05 degrees of uncertainty in the record…
(I will again stress that I'm much more dubious that the measured changes are actually anthropogenic. The Earth's overall climate has varied rather dramatically in the past without human help.)
Mr. Ingles,
Once again we arrive at a point where you argue in circles. YOU pointed me to an article which said that the two groups were genetically identical. But then you say the article didn't really mean that and supply me another link, a link that has several sublinks. I suppose in there somewhere is the statement that vindicates you.
And then you say that I am wrong to note the observations of the first article – you twice corrected me (or may be once, but you would not have to correct me at all had you not provided the source of the "error"). Maybe you should consider correcting the source, I wonder how they would receive you, based on how you present yourself here.
The fact is, nothing you have said in any way supports evolution, simple to complex, inferior to superior, or however you want to parse the meaning of words.
One last thing: Down's syndrome people are genetically different. What species would you place them in? Are they simpler, more complex; inferior, superior?
Raymond: there have been dozens of "studies" that have shown varying degrees of supposed climate change over the last 100 years, ranging from a high of one degree, to a net cooling of the earth, depending upon whether you start your measurements in the 1880s, 1900s, 1940s, 1970, 1990s or just look at the last 10 years. A .6 degree rise is the one Algore throws around alot, which is why I've used it.
Of course, all this presupposes that 100 years is (a) a long enough time to actually see a "trend", and (b) that we've been able to accurately measure global temperature prior to the space age.
It's all junk science anyway, since both the methodology and assumptions are seriously flawed, and the "science" behind man-made global warming is just a vehicle to promote a leftist political agenda.
You know, somebody ought to write an essay about this.
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2006/07/31/an-even-more-inconvenient-truth-the-myth-of-man-made-global-warming/
Dr. Jackson – You state that "A .6 degree rise is the one Algore throws around alot, which is why I've used it." You may have used that figure elsewhere, but not in this discussion. Twice you cited the ".06" figure, and this wasn't just a typo, because you also twice cited precision to "1/100 of a degree". I'm kind of surprised you didn't even acknowledge the mistake, even to just say you misremembered the value. (By an order of magnitude…)
Again, this is reminiscent of tactics I've seen creationists use. They often present some apparently absurd "claim" of a scientist, and when I go and actually check, it turns out they've misrepresented the situation badly. I'm still willing to believe you simply misremembered, but I'm also still disturbed by the structure of your arguments.
Yes Raymond, I mistyped the number. It's not a tactic, it's an error. People do that sometimes, and when I do it I have no problem admitting it. I'm mathematically challenged. I spoke about something measured to “1/100th of a degree.” As a mistaken shorthand I wrote .06 degrees instead of .6 degrees.
The number itself is not the issue. It's the logic and methodology used to arrive at a precise number. I asked a simple question. Isn’t it obvious that the “scientific method” for analyzing precise global climate change (not whether it’s “wetter or dryer”) would require generations of human observation?
Instead of an obvious “of course”, all I get from you are dodges about astronomy, tree rings telling us a bit more about climate, etc.
If you actually responded with the obvious answer, you could have used this to support your statement in Comment 8 that “large scale changes do generally take more than a couple human lifetimes… not unlike in geology.” Instead, you launch into “I didn't actually say that ‘generations of human observations are required to draw any meaningful conclusions’ about the evolution of increasing complexity. Indeed, I kinda said the opposite.”
So now you’re arguing both sides of the position at the same time by throwing in observations about astronomy and evolution instead of addressing the one issue I spoke about. If you stopped and thought for a moment, you know that I believe in human evolution. Acknowledging that science treats the study of human evolution differently than it would the study of global climate change would reinforce your position that we need to look at these issues in a sophisticated matter. You can’t study people like you do trees, stars, or climate changes.
This to me is obvious, and acknowledging that man-made global warming advocates are perverting the scientific method to arrive at agenda-driven conclusions (kinda like a secular religion) is akin to me acknowledging — as I have repeatedly — that a literal Biblical view of the origin of human life on earth is equally flawed.
But while I can do this, you can’t say with certainty that it’s impossible to know the precise temperature change of the earth without generations of precise studies, but you are certain beyond any doubt that because “I [Phil] didn't even acknowledge the mistake, even to just say you misremembered the value. (By an order of magnitude…) …Again, this is reminiscent of tactics I've seen creationists use.”
The obvious, straightforward answer is that you cannot apply the same tactics to studying stars/fossils and global warming, but you can employ the same methodology which requires careful, precise observations involving generations of humans, or in the case of fossils and stars, generations of activity.
The only one playing games here is you, which now causes me to wonder about the sincerity and objectivity of your positions.
Mountain Man – Well, at least I learned to be careful about taking the first Google hit when I'm citing something I've read about elsewhere. But thanks for illustrating my points to Dr. Jackson, anyway.
Raymond: Interesting reaction to my comment #30. Once again, you can't give a straight answer to a straightforward question.
"One last thing: Down's syndrome people are genetically different. What species would you place them in? Are they simpler, more complex; inferior, superior?"
Dr. Jackson – You state: "Isn’t it obvious that the “scientific method” for analyzing precise global climate change (not whether it’s “wetter or dryer”) would require generations of human observation?"
And I've already replied, "not necessarily". As an alternative, we could look – today – at a large number of things that were sensitive to temperature and formed over many generations. (Hint: that's why my "statement in Comment 8" does not contradict my statement in comment 11. Large-scale changes do take time to form, but they can leave records that we can inspect today to detect those changes.)
Mountain Man wants humans to be observing, every second, as a paramecium becomes a cat. You want humans to be observing, every second, as an ice age thaws. (Sedonaman wants humans to observe the entire formation of a glacier.) All of these are just as silly as demanding eyewitnesses to every crime to obtain a conviction. Sometimes you have to rely on other evidence, and sometimes that evidence can be very convincing.
Saying "People weren't there, keeping records, so we can say nothing whatsoever about it at all" is just, well, flat wrong. It'd sure be nice if we had such records, but no, they aren't necessary to answer some questions. (Of course, if you check the link I gave in comment 26, you'll see that the warming trend over the last century is actually based on generations of humans measuring the temperature around the world, land and sea, with instruments.)
Even before that, we know that things were colder yet. We don't have calibrated temperature measurements before that, but as just one example we know that a couple of Revolutionary War battles depended on moving cannon over frozen rivers – rivers that froze regularly then but don't in modern winters. (Again, look up the Maunder Minimum.) And then we know that things were warmer before that – Greenland actually was green before 1300 or so. (And we can look at things like foramanifera fossils to check our models of Greenland and the rest of the ocean.)
Yes, the small list of examples I've noted here are just data points and don't make a case by themselves, but there are other data points, too. I'm not making a case for global warming; I'm making the case that a case is not a priori impossible without "generations of human observers" – pointing out that your "obvious" conclusion is not actually obvious. (That doesn't mean it's wrong, of course – but the way to check that is to actually look at the evidence, not simply insist that no evidence could possibly exist.)
Mountain Man – Wow. Just, wow. That you even have to ask something like that is… well, okay, if that's how you want it.
"Species" is something of a fuzzy concept, but in pretty much any reasonable sense of the term, people with Down Syndrome are firmly within the human species, or course.
(BTW, if you think this is a 'gotcha'… be careful. :-> )
In terms of complexity, again in any reasonable sense they are as complex as any other human. (Unlike the Pod Mrcaru lizards, they have no new biological structures other humans don't have.) In terms of "superior or inferior" – I have to ask, "superior or inferior to what and for what"?
Dr. Jackson – You state: "Isn’t it obvious that the “scientific method” for analyzing precise global climate change (not whether it’s “wetter or dryer”) would require generations of human observation?" And I've already replied, "not necessarily".
*** The operative word is “precise”, as measured to 1/100th if a degree as we can do today in the era of satellites and truly global data collection. So, please point me to the reference that tells me what the precise global temperature was in 942 AD? Was it 78.26 degrees? 76.15 degrees? 81.07 degrees? And what was the PRECISE temperature in each the 500 years following 942 AD so that we can “necessarily” determine — without generations of human observation and precise data collection — the exact percentage increase or decrease over these years.
I claim categorically it’s impossible to know this precisely. You say “not necessarily”. So, what’s the precise answer? Or is this just more BS where you can’t make anything other than an equivocal statement?
“As an alternative, we could look – today – at a large number of things that were sensitive to temperature and formed over many generations. (Hint: that's why my "statement in Comment 8" does not contradict my statement in comment 11. Large-scale changes do take time to form, but they can leave records that we can inspect today to detect those changes.)”
*** I didn’t ask for an APPROXIMATION. There are dozens of approximations floating around, each with a different starting point. Some are even highly generalized as I acknowledged previously ("wetter", "warmer", etc).
I asked whether a precise number is possible. It’s not. Everyone knows this. Why can’t you say it? The man made global warming hoax is predicated on knowing the PRECISE temperature change within the last 100 years (not just a hypothetical approximate working number). This is pure BS, and once again you can’t bring yourself to admit such a precise knowledge is not knowable over the last 100 years.
“Saying ‘People weren't there, keeping records, so we can say nothing whatsoever about it at all" is just, well, flat wrong’.”
*** You use direct quotes to attribute a direct statement to me that I never made. The only way you are capable of arguing a point is to outright lie about what I said, then shoot down that straw man.
Absolutely f**king dishonest. Thank you Raymond. You’ve now answered all the questions I’ve had about you.
Phil,
Relax. You knew going in that Mr. Ingles is a dancer. He never, ever, responds to a direct question with a direct answer. He always focuses on an irrelevancy, a tangent, or an obscurity.
Frankly, this appears to be the modus operandi of many atheists I have had experience with. Having no center, anything goes. It's probably something like an avoidance issue so that they can never be wrong, never have to change their minds, and certainly never allow a theist to win.
In the battle of ideas, being right in one's own eyes is the highest priority. They "know" going in that their opponent is wrong, misinformed, and probably at least a little dense. If their pre-conceived notions are close to getting challenged, change the subject, obfuscate, or belittle. Their opponents "hate science."
If that doesn't work, then they get insulting, nasty, and eventually throw their hands and leave with a parting shot about the ignorance of their opponent.
Again, Phil, take it easy.
MM: You're right. I just expected more from Raymond, thus my profound anger and disappointment.
I've characterized other's people words in the past, but I either put them in single quotes to show I’m paraphrasing, or said "you're saying something like X", or "people who say X" so that I'm not deliberately misrepresenting what the person I'm debating actually said. I thought maybe it was an unintended error when Raymond kept analyzing my essay on morality a year ago by talking about theories and statements I never made, but I now see this as a deliberate tactic. http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2007/07/13/the-true-nature-of-human-morality-a-response-to-the-critique-%e2%80%9cuniversal-morality-and-the-morality-of-the-universe%e2%80%9d/
“To begin his critique, Mr. Ingles takes all that I said above (and in much greater detail in "What Kind of Car Would Jesus Drive?") and reduces it to a philosophical argument about "divine command theory." This produces such questions as: Do the gods love the pious? And, is there something about sacrificing animals that is intrinsically pious? It’s a nonsense, straw-man way to treat the subject. Start by asking what did Plato and Socrates say about divinity and morality, then understanding what they said, assume that this now somehow helps define the inherent content of morality. It’s interesting stuff philosophically, and it uses some of the same words I do (though in different ways) [but it doesn’t reflect my position].”
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2007/07/13/the-true-nature-of-human-morality-a-response-to-the-critique-%e2%80%9cuniversal-morality-and-the-morality-of-the-universe%e2%80%9d/
Debate with an idealogue is impossible. You and I hold radically different views on the literal interpretation of the Bible, yet you've never seen fit to deliberately mischaracterize my words, nor I yours. It's possible to hold strong beliefs and still conduct yourself in an honest, straightforward manner.
Phil
Dr. Jackson – First off, I didn't mean to put that line in double quotes, but single quotes – I did not intend to imply that it was an exact quote. That's "not a tactic, it's an error." You made a fairly significant error in this discussion, too – and you'll note I didn't call you "f**king dishonest". I called it a "mistake" and asked if you'd "misremembered" it.
But actually, some progress is being made here. I now understand why you were harping on 'precise' so much – no, of course we can't know exactly what the global temperature was in 942AD. That doesn't mean that we can't determine a range with a minimum, maximum, and probability distribution. And yes, of course we can't know the global temperature within 1/100th of a degree for the last century – but no one that I've seen has claimed that. Within 1/100 of a degree? No way. Within about 2/10 of a degree, however? That does seem possible. Probable, even.
I kind of assumed you understood that, hence my confusion.
No one claims that the exact past global temperature for all history can be determined today. But that's not what's at issue. The question is – can it be measured with enough precision to make meaningful statements and predictions about it? That's an entirely different proposition, and can only be answered by actually looking at the evidence.
Honest debate is enjoyable, because it operates under certain implicit rules:
1) each party is a thinking, informed person and worthy of attention and respect,
2) It is possible that I might be wrong on some small point, larger point, or my entire perspective, and admitting such is not failure or embarassment,
3) There may be no agreement possible, for people have differing perspectives that are perfectly justifiable, and
4) the debate is about the issues, not the person.
That's why you and can dialogue and disagree, mutual respect, and an ear to listen.
A direct quote is assigned to me I never made, vs. ".6" instead of ".06". Both are just "mistakes".
A perfect example of relativistic thought.
“Within 1/100 of a degree? No way. Within about 2/10 of a degree, however? That does seem possible. Probable, even. I kind of assumed you understood that, hence my confusion.”
“… satellite temperature measurements are accurate to within three one-hundredths of a degree Centigrade …” http://spacescience.spaceref.com/newhome/headlines/essd06oct97_1.htm NASA October 1997
“Mears et al. at RSS find 0.193 °C/decade for lower troposphere up to July 2005, compared to +0.123 °C/decade found by UAH for the same period.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_temperature_measurements
I guess we really can measure global temperature to within 1/100th of a degree.
As far as pre-space age, there is no accurate global temperature measuremen, just guesses based on models based on incomplete data. The only accuracy comes after the space age began, and even them we're looking at the 1980s and 1990s as a baseline. Everything before that is inferred, extrapolated, modeled, or just plain made up.
Okay, let’s review. Raymond said in comment #8 “… increasing complexity can be tested, and is observed from time to time, but large-scale changes do generally take more than a couple human lifetimes… not unlike in geology.”
I asked a straightforward question [comment 9]: “Raymond: I don't think I ever asked your opinion about the ‘existence’ of man-made-global warming. Do you apply the same standards of critical thought to that analysis as well (i.e. generations of human observations are required to draw any meaningful conclusions)?”
The answer is simple. Yes. Testing genetic changes and validating the “complexity” (which in this case would be “accuracy”) of global climate change require generation of precise observation.
I asked this because I wanted to see if the “science” here was being used to promote a preconceived notion, or if the same logic/methodology etc. was applied to both genetics and something like global climate change. If science is willing to accept approximations or models as “fact” for climate change, then perhaps there is an additional element in drawing conclusions about “increased complexity” in the fossil record. But if “science” — as understood and represented by Raymond — recognizes that it takes generations of observations to make definitive (later defined as “precise; later defined as to within 1/100th of a degree) statements about climate change, then it’s clear that at least Raymond isn’t substituting a personal agenda in his scientific statements.
It was a softball question where I thought we’d be able to easily agree, since I agree completely with the statement that “… increasing complexity can be tested, and is observed from time to time, but large-scale changes do generally take more than a couple human lifetimes… not unlike in geology.”
Instead, I get several comments back about astronomy, the nature of uncertainty, what’s more or less tangible, tree rings, accusations of the same tactics that creationists use and being deliberately misleading for using .06 instead of .6, and whether something can be measured to 1/100th of a degree; everything but a simple “yes”.
There are no traps in a straightforward question offered in a straightforward manner, except for the ones invented by someone who’s unsure, or afraid, to say what they really mean because they don’t want their words to be used against them.
And so we get to “No one claims that the exact past global temperature for all history can be determined today. But that's not what's at issue. The question is – can it be measured with enough precision to make meaningful statements and predictions about it? That's an entirely different proposition, and can only be answered by actually looking at the evidence.”
Unfortunately, in answering questions about observing “a simpler life form transitioning into a more complex life form over the course of millions of years”, I want more than just “enough precision” to make “meaningful statements”. If that’s all there is, then every statement asserting a claim needs to have this as a disclaimer, because what we know precisely enough today to make a meaningful statement may be as wrong tomorrow as the claim that we’re about to enter a new ice age was in the 1970s.
There are things we can know with a degree of measurable precision, and there are things we can only make “meaningful statements” about that can be changed as easily as altering elements of the computer model that spit them out.
It’s time we forced science to differentiate between the meaningful statements it wants to accept, and the accurate measurements and conclusions it can actually support.
Wow, Phil, a tour-de-force. Nice work.
Myabe it's that smug certainity of the "intellectual elite" that is so grating on you. They are quick to nail conservatives, theists, and moral absolutists with "no one can be that sure." But when it is "SCIENCE," that is, information that is used to tell us how to think and live (as opposed to the discipine of science, which is more about the systematic discovery and investigation of natural phenomena), well, who can argue with that?
It's that dogmatic, who-are-you-to-question-SCIENCE attitude that turns so many off. It's agenda-driven, expects no dissent, no challenge, no deviation. It's SCIENCE. Anyone who doesn't toe the line is a rube, an ignoramus, a SCIENCE hater.
SCIENCE (as opposed to science) has become the new religion. SCIENCE tells us how to live, what to eat, where to go, and how to get there. SCIENCE combines a certain perspective on science with a moral imperative, a particular worldview, and an expectation of conformity. They are power brokers, not scientists. They guard their funding, not the purity of science. They are comfortable in their positions at prestigious universities.
This is what I have a quarrel with.
Dr. Jackson – Yes, a typo is an error. I acknowledged the mistake when it was pointed out, and clarified what I meant. The only reason it stood out is that I am usually very careful about quotation marks. If you want to impute sinister motives, that's your lookout, but it'd be kind of silly for me to do that when it's so easily checked.
As to "about 2/10 of a degree", it's very strange that you elided the part where I stated – quite explicitly – that I was talking about "for the last century". I.e. over a time period of (in this case, a bit more than) 100 years. (And yes, I'm being very careful with the quotes here.) We can be much more precise today with satellites, but temperatures before that rest on less precise instruments.
But note that phrase – "less precise". That's not the same as 'zero precision'. We've had accurate, precise, calibrated thermometers since the late 1800s; they're necessary for good chemistry, for one thing. So we can be fairly precise, over a bit more than a century – "+- .18 degrees" Celsius, as I cited, or "about 2/10".
(BTW, in scientific terms, "accurate" and "precise" are different concepts. Multiple accurate, but low-precision, measurements can be combined to get both accurate and precise values.)
Still, let's do another direct quote: "pre-space age, there is no accurate global temperature measuremen, just guesses… Everything before that is inferred, extrapolated, modeled, or just plain made up."
"Just guesses". That sounds as if numbers are just plucked out of… well, let's say the ether. Nothing constrains them, nothing's used to test them, nobody questions them. Nobody reports their error bars, or explicitly discusses potential confounding factors, or calibrates their methods against reference values and other techniques.
Let me ask you a softball question: Is your 'guess' regarding "pre-space age" temperatures as good as anyone else's?
“That sounds as if numbers are just plucked out of… well, let's say the ether. Nothing constrains them, nothing's used to test them, nobody questions them. Nobody reports their error bars, or explicitly discusses potential confounding factors, or calibrates their methods against reference values and other techniques. Let me ask you a softball question: Is your 'guess' regarding "pre-space age" temperatures as good as anyone else's?”
*** See http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2006/07/31/an-even-more-inconvenient-truth-the-myth-of-man-made-global-warming/
(And thanks for the softball!)
Dr. Jackson, if we stipulate the verbiage in your article regarding the anthropogenic hypothesis of warming – as I've already done repeatedly – we cut more than half of it from consideration. The anthropogenic hypothesis is not a theory (in the scientific sense), and merely has some suggestive data to support it, and some confounding evidence against it. I wouldn't be surprised if it were true or false.
Now, the smaller portion where you address the instrumental record – what we're discussing here – is interesting, but doesn't do much to tackle it quantitatively. For example, you note "Using this equipment [common circa 1900], how one would recognize the difference between 87, 87.13, 87.25, and 87.39 degrees (or anything in between) is somewhat of a mystery. If the actual temperature was, say, 87.46 degrees, but the observer mistakenly recorded it (or simply rounded it off to) 87 degrees…"
However, elsewhere in the same article you note that accuracy to within 1/100 of a degree was technically feasible. (Saying that the thermometer's precision "might have approached the limit of ± 0.01° C" is not the same as saying "we couldn’t figure out what the temperature was", BTW.) Precision to around a tenth of a degree – one full order of magnitude less precise – was quite possible, and indeed necessary for much chemistry, as I noted before. (You don't need "highly sophisticated digital measuring devices" to get accurate and precise measurements – look at surveying equipment. We'd still commonly use mercury thermometers today if less toxic but adequate substitutes weren't available.)
So, you're quite right that we can't be sure that the temperature was 87.13, 87.25, or 87.39. However, such actual temperatures would have been recorded as 87.1, (87.2 or 87.3), and 87.4. If you go look up the records, you'll note that they are indeed given to the nearest tenth of a degree. 87.5 is not the same thing as 'somewhere between 65 and 102'. In short, no, it could not "be off by any number of degrees".
Then there's the problem of the "lack of a genuine, in-depth, worldwide data collection system" – a definite issue, but no more insurmountable than the problem of precisely measuring temperatures. Since we are looking for averages, 'noise' in the data is not an insurmountable barrier to pinning down a range of values with a probability distribution – in a quantifiable way. You claim that we would have "at best, a rough estimate of the world’s actual temperature" – but can you tell me how rough? What are the error bars, anyway, and why?
I note that a lot of the article engages in what C.S. Lewis called Bulverism; as he put it, "You must show that a man is wrong before you start explaining why he is wrong." I'm perfectly willing to stipulate that a lot of people pushing global warming have personal motivations for doing so, but that game can be played both ways – so too do a lot of so-called "global warming deniers". The real questions are, "Is the Earth warming?", and "If so, why?". Once those are dealt with, then motivations might be relevant.
You actually do work on those questions at the end, but you make a mistake on the first one – I missed where you established that the 0.01 degree precision you desire is actually the "minimal level of accuracy" (well, technically, precision) necessary to identify a trend. How did you identify this value of precision as the "minimal level"? Why, to pick a random example, would precision within 0.2 degrees be unacceptable?
(I'll note in passing that you appear to confuse "weather" with "climate" – predicting the exact value of a noisy signal is an entirely different proposition from predicting the expected value and the probable error range. Think about predicting stocks, if that analogy helps. Picking exactly when a stock has peaked is nigh-impossible; predicting within a useful range how likely it is to go up or down from where it is… that's much more feasible, though not generally trivial.)
Raymond: “I'll note in passing that you appear to confuse ‘weather’ with ‘climate’ …”
*** This is one of the reasons I refuse to continue a dishonest debate. Here’s what I actually said about the issue:
“But knowing this, we can still somehow tell that the world’s temperature will be significantly warmer in 2100 than it is today (even though we can’t predict the weather for Chicago more than a few hours in advance)? 18 [Footnote 18] No, I’m not mixing apples and oranges by talking about tomorrow’s weather and global warming predictions. Nor am I taking a cheap shot at the global-warmers as a substitute for addressing objective facts. Have a glance at a question submitted to NASA’S Goddard Space Flight Center “Ask an Astrophysicist” on February 18, 1998 (http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/980218c.html) ‘Mars will definitely become more comfortable (Of course that is a relative term, for me comfortable is about 20 degrees F, with snow falling at a rate of 12 inches per hour) but it will be warmer. To actually guess as actual conditions is pretty tough since predicting the exact weather 1 week in advance is still pretty hard here on earth where we have a lot of information’.”
This was a comment about prediction, using a related subject like weather to illustrate the point I was making. It followed the other weather/climate prediction comparisons I made:
As Andrew Kenny wrote in The Sunday Mail on July 14, 2002, “Environmentalists claim that world temperatures have risen one degree Fahrenheit in the past century, but [Piers Corbyn, Director of Weather Action] points out that the period they take as their starting point — around 1880 — was colder than average. What's more, the timing of temperature changes does not appear to support the theory of global warming. Most of the rise came before 1940 — before human-caused emissions of 'greenhouse' gases became significant.”
“The paucity of weather recording stations around the world in 1900 would give us, at best, a rough estimate of the world’s actual temperature … To say that the world has “gotten warmer by one degree over the last 100 years” is to pretend that the figures of 1906 are just as accurate as those collected in 2006. Lest anyone think that this little problem was rendered moot by the 1920s, 1930’s, or even the 1940’s, Eisenhower couldn’t get his chief meteorologist to say whether it was going to rain or be dry on Normandy beach just across the English Channel on June 6, 1944, let alone tell him what the temperature was that day in the middle of the Amazon jungle. It wasn’t until the advent of the space age that mankind truly began to get a handle on predicting the weather — and was finally able to come up with a “global average temperature” accurate to a hundredth of a degree as it is today. And yet, we “know” that the world has gotten one degree warmer over the last 100 years because we can compare a digital readout taken today to the number we find in the back of some dusty old book?”
Climate and weather are different issues. But they are related. If you can’t even predict rainfall/temperatures a week out, how can you tell us with certainty what the earth’s temperature (which is impacted by weather patterns) is 75-100 years from now?
All this is just an elaborate dodge by Raymond anyway. Even though we’re both essentially in agreement on the issue, it took half a dozen comment exchanges to get a straightforward answer to the only question I posed in my original comment: “I don't think I ever asked your opinion about the ‘existence’ of man-made-global warming. Do you apply the same standards of critical thought to that analysis as well (i.e. generations of human observations are required to draw any meaningful conclusions)?"
If anyone wants to read what I actually wrote about the way politics and hidden agendas shape the global warming debate, please have a look at http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2006/07/31/an-even-more-inconvenient-truth-the-myth-of-man-made-global-warming/ I lay out my assumptions and methodology in a straightforward way. You can decide for yourself whether what I've said makes any sense (with or without the benefit of CS Lewis).
If you want a straightforward answer to the question I asked Raymond, feel free to comb through all that he’s said here and see if you can figure it out. It’s not my intention to hijack this thread with a detailed discussion of the man-made global warming hoax. Anyone who wants to see what I think about that can read my article (including footnotes and sources).
All I wanted was a straightforward answer to a question about scientific standards, which seems beyond the desire, or ability, of Raymond to answer with an equally straightforward reply; relying instead on an extended discussion of what constitutes a “precise”, “accurate” or “meaningful statement”.
It’s time we forced science to differentiate between the meaningful statements it wants to accept, and the accurate measurements and conclusions it can actually support.