the billy pulpit

Malala Yousafzai is a 14-year old girl living in Pakistan. In a country not known for the freedom of women, and especially that of young girls, this courageous youngster has become an example for all for her outspokenness in favor of education for young women. Her father, also unusually for this region, is a staunch supporter of her position. He is the owner of a school that educates young women, so he is living his principles.

Anyhow, it appears that this young woman represented such a threat to the local Taliban that they sent one of their thugs to kill her. She survived and is expected to recover, although she is still on a respirator as I write this. Her recovery will undoubtedly be long and painful; she may very well have some level of permanent brain damage. The Pakistani people and even the government have rallied behind her, and to their credit even the local Muslim leaders have condemned the cowardice of the Taliban gunmen.

Still, it gives one pause. (Well, this one, in any case!) What kind of belief system could be so fragile that a 14-year old girl poses a threat to them? So much so that they feel they need to kill her? How can any rational person come to this conclusion?  I understand they think they are acting on God’s behalf, but as I outlined in my last post, that’s not good enough. Simply, it makes no sense. If the most powerful being in the universe (as they believe) is offended by someone’s actions, couldn’t He act Himself? Why would He need some puny human to act on His behalf?

I’m no big fan of organized religion in general. That being said, I think we could agree that some religions seem to have a better track record of “goodness” than others. Christians in general seem to be more tolerant; no Christian religions I know of have called for the death of an unbeliever lately, nor any Crusades for that matter. Most Christian faiths condemned this latest round of barbarity and I can’t imagine it was just because it was done in the name of the Prophet; I believe they’d do the same if a splinter Christian faith did something equally heinous. So if my contention of different religions having different levels of “goodness” (I admit that’s a pretty loose term and may be difficult to agree upon) is true, then why would Islam exhibit less of it than, say, Christianity or Judaism?

A theory I came across a while ago proposes that religions (we’re talking the monotheist religions here) mature over time, the process often including a fair amount of violence in the early-to-mid stages before settling down to peaceful coexistence with neighboring faiths. For example, in the 1600s professed Christians were still hanging “witches” and had only recently stopped forcing people into Christianity at the point of a sword. Islam is around it’s 1600-year mark, so by that theory the occasional murder of a 14-year old girl fits right in. That’s not to forgive the barbarians who attempted to kill her, but it might hold out some hope that in another five or six hundred years Muslims may decide to calm down, play nice with other faiths and maybe not be so touchy about their beliefs.

Again, it should be recognized that by and large the world of Islam has risen up in outrage against the attempt on Ms. Yousafzai’s life, and lest Christians get all “holier than thou” remember that there’s a subset in that group who believe a women’s health clinic that also performs abortions is a worthy target of explosive devices or arson, and has been known to threaten (and carry out the threats against) doctors who perform abortions. Nonetheless, most Christians would condemn the bombing of abortion clinics; in contrast lots of Muslims rioted in outrage over the denigration of their faith by a poor excuse for a film (see my last post). I didn’t see too much Muslim condemnation of those riots, so there is a difference here.

In any case, maybe this time the Taliban went too far. We can always hope. And hope that young girls everywhere (and boys too) can get educated without fear for their lives.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock in the last couple of weeks you know that portions of the Islamic world seem to have taken leave of their senses.

To explain (just in case you in fact haven’t been following things), some loon here in the US created a piece of trash (calling it film) that portrays the prophet Mohammed in less than favorable light. I don’t think it’s even been released yet, but in anticipation of same, fundamental (fanatical?) Muslims around the world have been rioting in protest of their beloved prophet being portrayed in less than favorable light.

This post isn’t about freedom of speech, nor whether or not this goofball who created the film should have thought better of it, should have seen this coming, or any number of other possible topics. I may get to them at some future point, but right now, and in light of my last few posts, this brings to my mind at least a remarkable lack of critical thinking skills being demonstrated by these fundamental Muslims, and what we can observe about religion and religiosity in general.

The main thing that strikes me is that evidently, lots of people who profess tremendous faith in God appear to believe that the most powerful being in the universe needs to be protected from insult, which can apparently be carried out by a bunch of Neanderthals burning down neighborhoods, trashing cars and breaking windows. It seems to me that God should be able to put a stop to anything that offends him in a heartbeat (literally). If God is the most powerful being in the universe (as most fundamental religions would proclaim), then why on earth would He need these thugs to protect His reputation? Now I get that they’re rioting not over an insult to Allah, but instead a perceived insult to the prophet. I think it’s safe to say however, that they think the connection between their prophet and their god was so close that an insult to one was the same as an insult to the other, so in my mind the cause of the rioting is the same.

Fortunately, here in the US we don’t see people rioting over insults to a Biblical figure, or even directly to God, so one might be forgiven a bit of a superior attitude on the part of staunch Christians here, until you recall that we’ve had people who somehow thought that God required them to murder an abortion doctor. I understand they believed they were avenging innocent lives, but again, if the purpose here was to “do God’s will,” then why couldn’t God take care of matters Himself by zapping the abortion doctor? The more I think about it, the more this whole notion of “doing God’s will” seems to not make much sense. If God really cared, why wouldn’t He do whatever it is He wants done? The Bible is full of stories where He did, if we’re to believe what we read, so why all of a sudden does He need our help?

One of three things appears to have to be true:  either these folks are presuming to do God’s work for Him (which sounds pretty arrogant to me), or deep down, they don’t believe Him to be capable of doing it for Himself (which wouldn’t fit with the notion of an all-powerful God). Or He doesn’t care.

Whatever else might be going on, it looks to me like a little application of some critical thinking skills might be in order.

There’s another component to developing critical thinking skills: the awareness of our own biases. We tend to find “truth” in things that line up with our preconceived notions. I’m not saying this is a bad thing; in fact, I’d suggest that this ability is advantageous. If we were unable to connect the dots between what we know and new input, the process of adding to our existing body of knowledge would take forever. The challenge of course is that if something is truly “new,” how do we know it’s worthy of being added to our databank (just to repeat the topic of these four blog postings, in case you missed it!)

But let’s go back to our own database for a moment. How do we know that “what we know” is actually true? Setting aside The Matrix concept, which itself was built around Descarte’s Evil Demon metaphor, how do we examine what we “know?”

First of all, I think it’s important to understand that we all have blind spots. These are called “scotomas” when referring to our vision. A scotoma is caused by a small spot in our retina where the optic nerve exits and thus no light receptors can be found. No light receptors, no vision in that spot. The reason we don’t notice it is because it’s not in the center of our field of vision and our brain “fills in” that area for us. The term has also been applied metaphorically for areas of our personality we can’t perceive. For example, you may believe you’re far from a sexist, but refer to the women in the office as “girls.” (Many years ago my lovely spouse helped me to see how that’s demeaning, even if I didn’t mean it as such!) Or you don’t believe you have a racist bone in your body, yet you see an Asian person driving poorly and you extrapolate that to all orientals.

This concept has been extended to include attitudes as well. I attended a workshop shortly after I returned to Metagenics where the speaker (Lou Tice) described scotomas and applied them to our thinking processes; he said we figuratively can’t see our own biases and attitudes and that those inhibit us from reaching our potential. He tied it into how our unconscious mind programs our actions through our self-talk. So if we believe ourselves to be incapable of something, that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy; if we want to break through that then we need to change our self-talk. I won’t go into that in detail here, but it makes an interesting case for how we can change outcomes in our lives simply through repeating positive affirmations.

In any case, it seems clear to me that these philosophical blind spots exist, just as the literal blind spots in our retina. Becoming aware that you have them is probably the most important first step in dealing with them, which brings us back to critical thinking. Once aware of a the potential for blind spots, you start looking for them. You ask “Why do I believe something? Just because I’ve never questioned it?” That’s not good enough. I read once that a basic process of philosophical thought is the statement “I believe this to be true, but I could be wrong.”

I think that’s a pretty good mantra to live by. The awareness of the possibility of one’s own fallibility is the first big step to wisdom.

In my last post I talked about how to evaluate scientific claims. That’s relatively easy compared to critical evaluation of what most of us are come across on a daily basis. Questions like “should a modern society allow capital punishment?” Or “is abortion right or wrong? And who decides?” The guy who had that “I don’t believe the liberal media” bumper sticker had obviously abrogated his critical thinking responsibilities to a political ideology. Evidently, if he read it in a newspaper or heard about it on TV, he automatically rejected it. Unless of course it was Fox News. If I recall correctly, many of Rush Limbaugh’s listeners took great pride in calling themselves “dittoheads” because they agreed with everything he said. It’s scary to me that people would want that blowhard to do all their thinking for them, but they’re clearly out there. I’m just sayin.’

But how do you decide what to believe when there’s no “hard science” to defer to? Philosophers will arrive at a conclusion after examining all the different aspects of a question, but they always reserve a back door for themselves; you’ll hear “I believe this to be the truth, but of course I could be wrong.” Even scientists who deal in testable hypotheses will tell you that even they don’t deal in absolutes; the best they can get to is the same statement as our philosopher friend: “I believe this to be the truth, but of course I could be wrong.” Following their examples then, we should come to a conclusion only after examining the facts, but always remember that there’s the possibility that we could be wrong. That’s really the only intellectually honest position.

So how do you know you have all the facts? Clearly, that’s a never-ending quest. You NEVER have all the facts. To amend the initial question then, how do you know when you have enough facts to come to a conclusion? That’s really the core of it: when do you know you have enough information?

I think that varies from situation to situation and depends on a lot of variables: how much you already know about the topic, how important the question is, what’s involved in finding out the facts, and so forth. Ironically, one thing is available to us today and is both working against us and in our favor is the internet. There’s an enormous amount of information to be had with just a few keystrokes these days. That’s good because it makes it easier and easier to find out stuff, but it’s bad because no one is policing the internet to make sure what’s there is truthful. But when used properly, in general educating oneself by gathering information is a good thing. So that’s the first thing: cast your net as far as possible and gather as much information as you can.

My very intelligent (and relentlessly skeptical) friend Mark Elliot helped with this next one: second, when examining the purported facts, try to determine the agenda of the purveyor of said facts. Are they promoting something? Have an ideology? Looking for fame or money? If you can sort that out, it will give you some insight into their perspective and may help you determine a bias in the data. Everyone has a bias, even when they try not to let it influence what they write or say. A good example of that is so-called “Biblical archeology.” I say “so-called,” not to be pejorative, but because it’s frequently not good archeology. Many times the writer will start from the unshakeable premise that the Bible story is an accurate historical depiction, and then hunt for archeological evidence to support that depiction. A better approach (if you will, a scientific approach), would start with no premises and see what the archeological record had to say, and then build the story from that. The Bible details the ancient Hebrew conquest of modern-day Israel, describing extensive warfare and large-scale military actions; some archeologists have maintained that they have evidence to support that story including fire-scorched city walls and the like. However, there’s a very interesting book entitled “The Bible Unearthed” by Finkelstein and Silberman, two archeologists in Israel, where a very different picture is painted. They say the archeological record supports no such conquest; instead they maintain that the ancient Hebrews were likely hill-dwelling nomads who gradually settled in existing villages and abandoned their nomadic life to take up a pastoral existence. Full circle (and my point): if you have an agenda (to prove the historical accuracy of the Bible, in this example), your treatment of facts may be suspect.

Next, try the “smell” test. Learn to stop and think, “Does this feel right? Does this make sense? Does it fit with what I can verify objectively?” This takes some intellectual rigor and honesty here. If you start out with the thought that “you’ll have to prove this to me,” ESPECIALLY for things that seem on the surface to fit your own belief system, that’s a great start.

Let me give you an example. There’s a number of nut jobs out there who believe the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon was somehow staged by the US government to justify going to war in Iraq. Think about it though. For that to be true there would have to be at least dozens, and perhaps hundreds of people who would have to believe in that mission (to start war) strongly enough that they would keep this vast conspiracy a secret. I don’t know about you, but when someone tells me something juicy I’m as likely as not to forget I’m supposed to keep it a secret, and spill the beans within 48 hours. And the US government is worse than I am at keeping a secret! How likely is it that dozens of people would be able to keep this a secret for more than a decade after the events? And not a single person blabbing? I think pretty unlikely!

I’m not a 9/11 conspiracy theorist, so poking holes in that one is pretty easy for me. But what if I were inclined to believe it in the first place? That’s when it’s especially important to be skeptical. So the time to be the most skeptical is, ironically, when we’re most inclined to believe!

To recap then, here’s the steps:
1. Gather your facts.
2. Look for an agenda
3. Give it the smell test (Does it make sense?)

Applying these then puts us well on the way to critical thinking!

There’s a part 4 coming up though.

So what exactly does it mean, to “think critically?”

It might be tempting to say that, since a lack of critical thinking more or less means accepting whatever you hear without question, then critical thinking would mean automatically rejecting everything you hear, again without question. But that’s not it; that’s just being difficult. (Side note: if you haven’t seen it, there’s a great Monty Python sketch called “The Argument Clinic” which is worth watching; you can see it on YouTube.)

Anyway, critical thinking means (to me at least), that you don’t automatically accept what you are told, but that you stop, take a moment, and evaluate what you hear. You compare it to what you know (or think you know), and then consciously decide to either accept it or not.

But that doesn’t quite get it either; if you’re comparing something to what you already know (or believe) to be true, there’s always the potential that you’re wrong. “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” (That great comment is usually credited to Mark Twain, but he probably was just quoting someone else!) So critical thinking means you also challenge your own assumptions and preconceived notions. This can be really challenging and forces you to be always on your guard against “what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” Always being on the lookout for your own blind spots can be really tiresome!

So how do you evaluate some new factoid, knowing that you may be walking into one of your own blind spots? Well, for some things I think it’s pretty straightforward. I work in a branch of healthcare science (nutrition) and I’m constantly being asked to evaluate claims made by competitors. Our customers (doctors) are surprisingly willing to accept outrageous claims on faith, which tells me that a lack of critical thinking isn’t limited to laypeople!

Anyhow, I teach our reps a three-step process to evaluate claims like this, and strongly recommend they teach the customer to do the same. It goes like this:

1) Show me the science.
2) If there’s no science, tell me about the historical use of the product.
3) If there’s not much history, then what’s the rationale for the product?

To elaborate: 1) What’s the science in support of the claim? What studies have been published? How were they conducted?? (Double-blind placebo-controlled crossover? Epidemiological? Case study? What?) Were they published? In what journals? How long ago? The claims can then be evaluated on the merits of the documentation. 2) If the science is not there or is weak, that doesn’t automatically cause the claims to be false, if there’s a history of application. For example, many herbs today have little direct science simply because western medicine hasn’t gotten around to studying them, but there’s a rich history of use in indigenous cultures. Chinese medicine, for example, records the use of specific herbs over a period spanning thousands of years. That’s a pretty large epidemiological study in anyone’s book! And 3) If there’s not a historical record of use and the science is spotty, then the explanation of what the product does had better match known scientific principles and it should “make sense” biochemically.

And with each failed step, my skeptic meter goes up a notch or two. Admittedly this is not fool proof (even scientists get bamboozled every now and then!) But this simple process has proven to be the most effective way I’ve come across to sift the wheat from the chaff of health claims.

That works pretty well for things that can be empirically studied, but what about “softer” claims, or purported facts from politics, sociology, etc. where actual studies don’t exist? Or where study design doesn’t lead to a definitive finding? How is critical thinking applied there?

Stay tuned for part 3!

So back to the question. Leaving aside for now whether or not such a thing even exists, could the presence of free will explain our struggle to achieve a God-given morality? I think it doesn’t, because it circles around the notion of an “all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving Creator of everything” (which is the description of God I grew up with and I suggest is held by most fundamental Christians today). If our sense of morality comes from God, but God also gave us free will, and our free will causes us to stray from the path our “God-given conscience” would have us normally follow, then free will is actually a corrupting influence. So why would an all-loving God deliberately put into us the very thing that would cause us to go astray? If He’s all-powerful, then wouldn’t He be able to instill in us a stronger sense of what’s right and wrong, such that we would be more inclined to choose “correctly” (meaning, in a way that would please Him)? And if He could but chose not to, how can He be called “all-loving?” If He’s all-knowing,” then wouldn’t He have known that our exercise of free will would inevitably lead to what we see in our current society?

It would seem that we inevitably choose pretty badly when left to our own devices. The Bible is full of references to man’s basic inclination to sinfulness, stating outright over and over again that we are doomed except for God’s grace. If we believe that God gave us free will, and our free will leads us to “bad” choices, then we would also have to accept that God is the reason we are constantly screwing up and causing his displeasure! Displeasure profound enough, if we are to believe what we read in the Bible, that God would condemn us for all eternity based on what we do in this short lifetime. Most Christian religions preach a punishment of eternal torment in hell for this; some (such as Jehovah’s witnesses) believe the Bible teaches a less painful punishment: simple death. Still, even accepting that view, it’s pretty significant in contrast to the payoff of eternal life in bliss. Either way, that seems like a big price to pay for the inevitable outcome of a stacked deck.

One answer I’ve heard is that “It’s not really God’s fault; He gave us free will and Satan’s influence is what’s causing us to make the wrong choices.” OK, let’s go with that for a minute. It might explain things: if there is a Satan (the embodiment of evil, which again, is what I was taught as a kid), then it’s conceivable that Satan has so corrupted our sense of morality that we now have to struggle constantly to stay on the narrow path that leads to pleasing God. However, I don’t think that changes anything; we’re back to the same question: what would that say about God? If He’s all-knowing, then He would have to have seen how much suffering that tension would create. If He’s all-powerful, He could have given us a stronger sense of right and wrong (or a greater ability to choose wisely). If He’s all-loving, how could he allow so much suffering and angst when He could stop it?

I’ve written a number of posts here about the source of morality; mostly because I no longer believe that our sense of morality is given to us by God (or to put it another way, I don’t believe that without god there is no right and wrong). I think our sense of right and wrong has an anthropological or evolutionary explanation, which I’m coming around to gradually. In order to support that contention I’ve looked at various defenses of morality (as being religion-based, God-given or the like), and raised what I think are pretty good arguments against each position. But maybe the wrinkle is free will. Maybe we DO have an innate, God-given sense of morality, but competing with that is free will. We are able to look at each situation, weigh it against our desires, aspirations and preconceived notions and then decide what to do; free will then, is what allows us to override the moral code God has given us. This tension between what we want to do and what we know is right (from our innate sense of morality) could explain why we struggle with morality.

Before we get into that however, let’s take a look at the notion of free will. On the surface that makes no sense; a basic concept of free will seems to be pretty much ingrained in our thought processes. Of course we have free will! We’re not programmed robots, after all. We can consider several courses of action in any given situation and decide what to do; that’s free will.

It turns out however, that philosophers have argued the question of whether free will even exists for over 2,000 years, with no clear answer. So I’m not going to pretend to try to come up with an answer that’s eluded people for two millennia, nor even to add significantly to the debate. But it IS an interesting question, once you start digging into it. On one hand, it seems intuitive and obvious that we can decide what to do, and that’s how to define free will. On the other hand, when we look around us, virtually every event has a cause. If there’s a fire in the kitchen and a house burns down, we assume that something caused the fire; it didn’t just happen. Thus, cause and effect drives everything. Yet when it comes to us as humans we say that process stops. We believe we override cause and effect by our choices, which are the result of deliberation and decisions we make. Yet, think about this: I have done things that, afterwards, I wonder why I did it. I seemed compelled in some way to do something contrary to my wishes. Or I tried to blame some external factor. “I don’t know what I was thinking; that’s just not like me!” I suppose you could say that I COULD have done otherwise, so I still had free will; I just chose not to exercise it. But that seems like not confronting the reality of the situation: I felt like I was not really choosing what to do, but more reacting to external causes.

Cause…and effect. And yet, something about this doesn’t feel right. I can’t yet defend it completely, but I just feel that we have free will; that we control out destiny.

Either way, I don’t believe that the notion of free will explains our struggle with morality. I’ll explain why in the next posting.