Believing
Page 10
Then, during the sixteenth century, the makings of a critical methodological shift began to emerge: science would gradually attempt to restructure its methodology and research strategy to that of disproving ideas and hypotheses rather than proving them.
On first pass, a change in a single word—proving to disproving—seems trivial. There were clear implications however; the methods and evaluations of empirical research were about to undergo a significant alteration, albeit slowly. The upshot of the shift was that empirical science adopted rules and procedures that ratcheted up the precision requirements for evidence and standardized research methods while simultaneously introducing a healthy dose of skepticism about science and its explanations. Evidence had to be accurately described and measured. Interpretations had to specify as precisely as possible how they explained evidence. Repeated high-quality experiments that consistently failed to disprove hypotheses were essential for scientists to recognize and alter divides.10
Although it wasn’t fully grasped at the time, the emerging methodology identified a fundamental limitation of scientific inquiry: adopting the disproving strategy meant that nothing could ever be viewed as proved for certain. This limitation had unexpected consequences. Science and scientists acquired a new level of authority among the interested public. Their evidence, methods, and interpretations would gradually become available for assessment among supporters and critics alike.
A paradigm shift doesn’t assure that it is universally adopted or even universally optimal. To jump ahead to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, optimality was a central issue when scientists, philosophers, historians, and postmodernists actively critiqued scientific method and reasoning and came to view them in very different ways. Within science, the most influential writings came from the pen of physicist-historian Thomas Kuhn.11 Kuhn argued that the disprove methodology not only was overstated and idealistic but also that it was often disregarded by scientists without seriously hampering their research or findings. Other scientists have voiced a similar view.12
For what is often referred to as the “hard sciences”—chemistry and physics—the disproving strategy may be largely workable and often optimal. But once inquiries venture to other areas of scientific inquiry, disproving hypotheses may be no more informative than efforts to prove them. For the disciplines of sociology, anthropology, psychology, and psychiatry, critical experiments often can’t be conducted. There are multiple reasons why. For example, among people who experience auditory hallucinations, should evidence gathering focus on the content of their hallucinations, their frequency, their association with behavior, some combination of these, or something else? Or, if reports of hallucinations could be collected, can they be measured reliably? Another reason is that the past can’t be repeated exactly. This means that much of archeology and history is a combination of bits of evidence and sophisticated inference.
The postmodernists were aware of these limitations. Thus it is hard to contest their view that much of the research scientists claim is scientific is influenced by factors over which scientific methodology has minimal or no control. Still, at times, and despite multiple limitations, research efforts do lead to interpretations that are compelling and justifiable. For example, history, archeology, and empirical science often work together and use their very different methods and knowledge to construct explanations of past events.13 The progressive updating of the history of Stonehenge, the implosion of the Maya civilization, and the several routes taken by our ancestors during their exodus from Africa are current examples.14 Strict adherence to the disprove-only methodology would seriously constrain such investigations.
There are other sides to this discussion. Experimental replication may be the ideal research strategy for modern science, but the findings that emerge from its use are not infallible. For example, recently, seemingly well-established and repeatedly confirmed research findings have started to look questionable, such as the effects of drugs in curing psychosis, the health benefits of vitamin E, the durability of cardiac stents, and the previously mentioned ongoing revisions dealing with chemical bonds, atomic weights, and the constant of gravity.15 Further, how science uses findings and methods may merge with issues often considered outside its province. The scientific knowledge and methods applicable to performing abortions are well documented and understood, but the act of aborting a fetus is subject to moral, political, and religious interpretations and influence.
In short, all is not straightforward and tidy with regard to scientific method and explanation. True, for some areas of science, disproving hypotheses and studies is possible. But such options encompass only a small part of scientific effort. Thus, to maintain that science is “a domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution” is to ignore the full range of scientific inquiry.16
ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE
There is yet another perspective that informs these issues. Scientific methodology can be viewed as a system created to outwit the brain’s explanation and evidence-interpretation biases such as divide reduction, illusory correlations, and data distortions. There are limits to what method alone can accomplish, however. While scientists may strive to adhere to their methods, they are much like everyone else when it comes to belief creation and divide reduction.
For example, there are mathematicians who subscribe to a Platonic view of the universe in which theorems are true statements about timeless entities that exist independent of the human brain—things-in-themselves, as it were. Other mathematicians believe that mathematics is a human enterprise invented to describe the regularities seen in nature,17 ignoring perhaps that their view that nature has regularities is itself a belief. There are scientists who are convinced that there is no such thing as mind, only the brain and its products. Other scientists believe otherwise: mind is a perfectly plausible construct that, for example, has utility when studying how people reason. There are scientists who are convinced that the brain is constructed of units that perform specific functions—this view informs much of fMRI research and its interpretation. Others believe that the many parts of the brain are networked and that any activity involves multiple actions and interactions among diverse areas. There is also considerable competition among scientists regarding scientific discovery. Examples include Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier in their race to discover oxygen,18 the behavior of key players in the discovery of DNA,19 disagreements among researchers currently investigating altruism,20 and disputes over access to field sites among anthropologists.21 Instances of data falsification deserve to be added to these examples.22
AUTHORITY
Further, scientific research, evidence, and explanations often acquire the status of authority. Certain findings and authors are cited far more often than others. From one perspective, this might be called wise science. In a way it is. What scientist wishes to cite other than the most authoritative findings or scientists? But it is also a manifestation of a hierarchical intellectual credential system.23 Scientific publications that positively cite the work of other scientists tacitly acknowledge their authority for the moment and have the effect—perhaps unintended—of reducing divides among readers. Gould’s maxim is a case in point. It is cited frequently as the basis for separating the domains of religion and science. His authority is recognized and well deserved for his many contributions in multiple areas of biology. Perhaps this is why his view of nonoverlapping magisteria retains its influence.
A related point is that both scientists and nonscientist audiences are sensitive to authority when cultural factors presage interpretation or, to recall the words of Francis Bacon, when we see what we believe. Studies designed to assess factors that lead people to believe what scientists say are in agreement with this point. Belief in what is said is not determined by whether it is consistent with evidence or its interpretation as endorsed by a national academy. Rather, people are more likely to see a scientist with elite credentials as an expert when he or she ta
kes a position that matches their cultural values or estimates of risks.24 A version of this process is currently in play among both scientists and their audiences over climate change.
The author of the study cited in the previous paragraph, Dan Kahan, recommends a strategy to offset the effect of cultural factors: “To make people form unbiased perceptions of what scientists are discovering, it is necessary to use communication strategies that reduce the likelihood that citizens of diverse values will find scientific findings threatening to their cultural commitments.”25 Taken at face value, this is a perfectly reasonable recommendation. However, such efforts have a long and unsuccessful history, particularly when applied to beliefs that many scientists have rejected, such as the existence of UFOs, ghosts, and much of pseudoscience. Or take the high frequency of unproductive discussions among scientists and creationists dealing with evolutionary theory. The communication-strategy recommendation overlooks an obvious point: it is belief, not communication strategy, that is at issue.
EMPIRICAL STUDIES
The matter of nonoverlapping magisteria might rest here except for the fact that domain-related overlaps develop when scientists and theologians study features of religion. What follows is a sampling of direct-evidence findings from empirical studies dealing with religion conducted using standard scientific method. Giving up one’s religion is associated with a decline in health.26 Religion-based transcendental meditation reduces the symptoms and signs of depression.27 Pleasant afterlife beliefs are associated with better mental health.28 Rituals, particularly specific types of praying, change the structure of the brain.29 Religion aids well-being via social networks.30 There is also the possibility that “the God to whom we pray” exists in the human brain as an ontological material category because it releases submissive behavior seen in the nonvocal aspect of petitioning prayer.31 Participation in the package of behaviors that is a signature of many religions—belief, ritual, and positive socialization—reduces the aversive chemical and emotional effects of stress and uncertainty.32 Compliance with religious rituals leads to an improved sense of social status and self-respect.33 An increased sense of social status positively correlates with the density of dopamine receptors in the striatum, a region of the brain that plays a central role in reward and motivation.34
In effect, believing in ways that affirm religious beliefs leads to a decline in anxiety, normalizes aversive levels of brain chemicals, minimizes uncertainty, provides one with a specific place and status in the community, and may selectively release submissive behavior, which is associated with multiple positive health and psychological outcomes.
It is, of course, possible to argue that many of the preceding findings have nothing to do with God or an afterlife but rather reflect an “unholy alliance between medicine and religion.”35 Maybe all that is required to develop similar findings is a belief—perhaps that humanlike beings inhabit Venus—and to engage in nonreligious-based rituals, such as jogging, visiting the spa regularly, and eating healthy food. However, with the evidence currently in hand, a more plausible explanation is that religion-related belief and behavior influence believers’ physiology, emotions, cognition, and behaviors in specific ways, and they do so more effectively than attending one’s favorite spa, jogging thirty miles a week, and eating broccoli for dinner on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
OVERLAP—YES OR NO?
Further magisteria overlap is often present in the writings of scientists and scholars with a scientific bent. For example, it has been proposed that religious beliefs have their origin in the evolution of causal beliefs, which in turn had their origin in tool use.36 Another proposal is that belief in God is deeply embedded in the human brain, which is programmed for religious experience.37 That Christianity follows the laws of physics is yet another view.38 Others argue that belief in religion has evolutionary adaptive consequences and that game-theory algorithms can explain religious responses.39 Religious belief has been interpreted as reflecting a continuing ancient religious quest to which humans are committed, like it or not. That is, we have evolved such that we engage in this quest for which there is no alternative.40
Then there is the conjecture that religion is in our DNA. Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health for the United States, views it this way: “To see our species as embedded in a web of life and descended through natural selection from common ancestors with whom all life is shared is to see not human DNA but DNA per se as the prerequisite for the emergence of a life form capable of asking the question, What ought I do?”41 For Collins, “What ought I do?” is a universal moral question and what religion is really about. Because the question is a product of our DNA, DNA can be viewed as the source of this fundamental moral law and religion.
Interesting speculations all. Each with wide or, at best, indeterminate divides. But do they differ from many speculations offered in the name of theology?
A MOMENT OF REVIEW
Let me review to be certain that key points are clear. Scientific speculations are eventually constrained by existing evidence and its interpretation. In contrast, much religion-based speculation is not faced with the same constraints. Asserting that there is a god or a heaven can and does occur without evidence that meets scientific criteria. Speculations about gods and heaven are only one facet of religion, however. For other facets, there is evidence consistent with the view that affiliation with a religion has definable and measurable physiological, anatomical, psychological, and behavioral effects. Both science and religion employ direct and indirect evidence as well as authority in their interpretation of evidence—for religion, both miracle cures and revelations are examples of direct evidence. At times, the two domains work together under the umbrella of scientific inquiry while addressing theology-related issues. Both attempt to narrow divides. Further, it is highly likely that there was a person named Jesus, that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John were his disciples, that there was a Mohammad, and that some of the events described in the Old Testament are consistent with archeological and historical findings. By contrast, the evidence supporting much scientific conjecture is often flimsier. The likely presence of humanlike life elsewhere in the universe is an example. These speculations differ from religion-based views only perhaps because of the conviction among scientists that someday scientific evidence will be forthcoming.
CONCLUSIONS?
What conclusions might be drawn from this chapter? Many, perhaps, but the main one is this: the assertion that science and theology are nonoverlapping magisteria has more plausibility as a possibility about what might exist rather than a description of what does exist in the daily lives of scientists, believers, and theologians.
Still, there are important differences. At heart, scientific methodology is aimed at narrowing recognized divides through experimentation and precise statements about evidence. It acknowledges the presence of divides. Often its views and findings can be tested. Often they change. That this happens daily is attested by the fact that yesterday’s authoritative findings and authorities are not necessarily those of today. Theology too may aim at narrowing divides, but it is unclear if it has a methodology other than tradition and efforts to refine its interpretation of authority.
Where was Greg when I needed him? No doubt, I thought, wandering around the Piazza del Popolo or at one of the small restaurants on the Tiber side of the Spanish Steps eating ravioli, two of his favorite activities.
My e-mail went off with the hope of enlisting his help in dealing with the philosophy of belief. His response was not encouraging:
Dear Michael,
Sorry I can’t be of much help. Simply too busy. Teaching duties here take up 60–70 hours a week, giving lectures, meetings with students, grading papers, and of course late dinners here and there with other faculty. And I’ve met a young lady, Francesca. Anyway, the real reason is that the philosophy of belief it’s not an area in which I’m at home or know much about. You might contact Professors P or Q and see if they can help.
Professor P was cordial, brief, but not encouraging. “It is an extremely broad field not easily characterized. Philosophers have been arguing about belief for centuries and there’s no consensus. This means that key questions still need to be asked or the whole enterprise has been poorly framed. You know of course that some philosophers doubt that beliefs exist—if they don’t exist, they can’t be studied. A thorough study would require several years and require several books. It’s not something I can undertake.”
I thanked him for his time and thoughts and departed.
Professor Q was less cordial and, at times, highly skeptical. I told him of my view that the brain was critical to study if belief and divides are to be understood. He disagreed. “The brain is unlikely to provide critical answers. They [beliefs] are products of the mind and it’s there where they reside and thrive. New information often changes them. At times we invent them. The brain may be essential for these events to happen but I strongly doubt that it will explain the content of beliefs, their meaning, or how new information changes them.”
I also thanked him for his time and departed.
I spared Greg news about the outcome of his recommendations.
Floundering still, a past conversation with Mrs. X came to mind. Fortunately, I had recorded it in my notes.
“Where do you think your belief came from?” I had asked.
“I’m not sure, but I suppose I heard or read about it somewhere. Some real-life story by someone who eventually found her real parents.”