Here's a disturbing thought for you, just as if you need more disturbing thoughts in your life! And you're welcome!
But first the good part. In my experience, scientists and genuinely "spiritual" people have more in common with each other than either group might recognize. The folks in both groups tend to be "show me" types.
That can be pretty obvious about scientists, who are relatively well known -- at least as a type of person. But it's usually not known about spiritual types, for fewer people know much about those folks at all. Yet, spiritual folks usually aren't people inclined to just believe things. They want to experience stuff, have evidence for what they believe, even if only personal evidence is available to them.
Both groups sometimes remind me of good automobile mechanics. You just don't meet many competent automobile candidates who refuse to subject to hard nosed testing their hunch or belief that X is the cause of the car's problems -- although I once did know a man who "solved" at least half the problems my poor boss brought to him by replacing the muffler. Even mufflers he'd installed just a month before! I strongly suspect Carl was a fundamentalist when it came to his religious affiliations.
Now here's the disturbing part. It's my impression that, while scientists and spiritual folks share in common a "show me" attitude, a whole lot of religious folks don't. They are far more often interested only in possessing a conviction, and the one and only idea they have for testing the truth of their conviction is by how firmly they can cling to it. But that's a very unreliable way of figuring out what's true or false.
To be fair, I think they're just usually basically good people who, for one reason or another, are constitutionally incapable of living happily with uncertainty. But whatever they are, I've seen often enough how their need for a merely firm belief gets them into troubles, great and small, and even prones them to causing other people troubles, both great and small.
Thomas Metzinger is more directly to the point about that. He describes religion as, "the cultivation of a delusional system", and goes on to chastise dogmatism as, "... a philosophical thesis that you are entitled to believe, to hold on to a belief, for the sole reason that you already have it. It’s an old human way of looking at things, and that’s intellectually dishonest..."
Granted, Metzinger's criticism of religion is perfectly one-dimensional, but I find his notion dogmatism is intellectually dishonest genuinely worth thinking about.
As everyone knows, we all have a human right to believe anything -- anything that does not harm anyone else -- and that right is inviolate. If I want to believe the cosmos was brought into existence by the excited callings of a wild turkey, well I have a right to believe that.
But Metzinger seems to be suggesting that dogmatism goes far beyond merely setting a stage for intellectual dishonesty. He seems to be suggesting that it is fundamentally and inherently intellectually dishonest. To me, that's an interesting idea.
Can we believe something is true without sufficient reason and evidence for believing it is true -- without automatically being intellectually dishonest?
Below is a link to a video of a talk by Thomas Metzinger on that subject and much more besides. You can watch the video or just read the excerpts from the video.
Intellectual Honesty and Spirituality
But first the good part. In my experience, scientists and genuinely "spiritual" people have more in common with each other than either group might recognize. The folks in both groups tend to be "show me" types.
That can be pretty obvious about scientists, who are relatively well known -- at least as a type of person. But it's usually not known about spiritual types, for fewer people know much about those folks at all. Yet, spiritual folks usually aren't people inclined to just believe things. They want to experience stuff, have evidence for what they believe, even if only personal evidence is available to them.
Both groups sometimes remind me of good automobile mechanics. You just don't meet many competent automobile candidates who refuse to subject to hard nosed testing their hunch or belief that X is the cause of the car's problems -- although I once did know a man who "solved" at least half the problems my poor boss brought to him by replacing the muffler. Even mufflers he'd installed just a month before! I strongly suspect Carl was a fundamentalist when it came to his religious affiliations.
Now here's the disturbing part. It's my impression that, while scientists and spiritual folks share in common a "show me" attitude, a whole lot of religious folks don't. They are far more often interested only in possessing a conviction, and the one and only idea they have for testing the truth of their conviction is by how firmly they can cling to it. But that's a very unreliable way of figuring out what's true or false.
To be fair, I think they're just usually basically good people who, for one reason or another, are constitutionally incapable of living happily with uncertainty. But whatever they are, I've seen often enough how their need for a merely firm belief gets them into troubles, great and small, and even prones them to causing other people troubles, both great and small.
Thomas Metzinger is more directly to the point about that. He describes religion as, "the cultivation of a delusional system", and goes on to chastise dogmatism as, "... a philosophical thesis that you are entitled to believe, to hold on to a belief, for the sole reason that you already have it. It’s an old human way of looking at things, and that’s intellectually dishonest..."
Granted, Metzinger's criticism of religion is perfectly one-dimensional, but I find his notion dogmatism is intellectually dishonest genuinely worth thinking about.
As everyone knows, we all have a human right to believe anything -- anything that does not harm anyone else -- and that right is inviolate. If I want to believe the cosmos was brought into existence by the excited callings of a wild turkey, well I have a right to believe that.
But Metzinger seems to be suggesting that dogmatism goes far beyond merely setting a stage for intellectual dishonesty. He seems to be suggesting that it is fundamentally and inherently intellectually dishonest. To me, that's an interesting idea.
Can we believe something is true without sufficient reason and evidence for believing it is true -- without automatically being intellectually dishonest?
Below is a link to a video of a talk by Thomas Metzinger on that subject and much more besides. You can watch the video or just read the excerpts from the video.
Intellectual Honesty and Spirituality
