On Faith and Data

[cbayer]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/questioning-faith-_b_4591329.html

David Katz, M.D.
Director, Yale Prevention Research Center

Posted: 01/13/2014 6:57 pm

As a scientist with a brain naturally inclined to skepticism and analysis, I suppose my spiritualism may be best captured by: Keep the faith, but get the data. While some of my fellow skeptalytics, if I may coin such a term to catalog us, may be inclined to renounce that first clause altogether, thinking there is no need for faith, I am obliged to disagree.

We are all a mass of electrons spinning madly around their nuclear bonfires, with empty spaces inside every atom vaster in relative terms than those separating the planets and star of our solar system. That so implausible a thing as a caress is possible in such a world of empty spaces masquerading as solid surfaces where skin meets skin requires an embrace of the virtual realities perceptions devise, and thus... faith in the prevailing illusion. Even the faithless have faith, if only in the reliability of the perceptions that get us through each day. To partake in the implausibilities of this life is an act of faith.

With regard to an almighty, my personal faith is mostly in my own ignorance. The universe is so staggeringly vast and dizzyingly complex that to call it humbling would be like calling the Himalayas "tall" or the Pacific "big." It is oppressive to contemplate how trivial we are in so colossal and intricate a construct. I can certainly understand the inclination to invoke designs other than our own to impart to us some importance we would otherwise clearly not possess.

But it helps me little in explaining the overwhelming complexities all around us to ascribe it all to an even more complex engineer of those complexities. If a Big Bang that seeded the universe is hard to contemplate, that much more so the perfect bundle that existed the instant prior, a fusion of every potential thing and thought, substance and sentiment to follow. We may shop the lexicon for labels as we choose, but something very much like "god" was implicated in that explosion, the source of all creation.

more at link

[trotsky]

1. I can certainly see why you jumped at the chance to post this article.

It equivocates on the word "faith" just like you love to do.

[Jim__]

2. "But still, an incalculable sum of human suffering derives from our competing claims ...

"... to absolute knowledge."

Yes. But I'm not sure that has anything to do with religion.

[cbayer]

3. I think it clearly does at times, but not always.

[Jim__]

5. You're right.

I should have said that claims to absolute knowledge are not limited to religion.

[cbayer]

6. Well, that's for darn sure!

[trotsky]

8. Would the following be a claim to absolute knowledge?

"There are no square circles."

[skepticscott]

4. As soon as I read the disclaimer

As a scientist with a brain naturally inclined to skepticism and analysis

I knew that major woowoo was coming..

[trotsky]

7. Because, you see, having faith that your car will start in the morning...

or that taking two Excedrin tablets will relieve your headache is exactly the same thing as faith in gods.

EXACTLY.

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. Almost completely off-topic, the "Yale Prevention Research Center" is not a Harvard project

to get rid of its ancient rival. It's actually about disease prevention. It seems a strange name to pick for it, that's all - no mention of disease, health, or anything.

[struggle4progress]

10. "We are all a mass of electrons spinning madly around their nuclear bonfires." Hmmm.

Y'know, I usually won't find that a particularly useful way to look at myself or other people: it's uninformative in many different ways

[pokerfan]

11. But...

it's spiritual... and mystical... and magical!

[Warren Stupidity]

12. Plus physics is really hard, therefore god.

[struggle4progress]

13. It's thin gruel, even as a theory of matter:

the nucleus of an atom is not much very like a bonfire, a term which (I should guess) the doctor has lifted from discussions of nuclear reactions in other contexts, such as the theory of stars or atomic bombs; and in their atomic "orbits" electrons do not seem to "move" in a manner to anything seen at much grosser scales, if we are to judge from the utter failure of everyone to successfully produce any of the "hidden variable" theories that so many once sought; moreover, the "emptiness" of "space" (including the "space" inside atoms) apparently disappeared long ago, in the theories that view the vacuum as a sort of constant chaotic mix of virtual particles flitting briefly into existence and then vanishing again

It is even worse IMO, if regarded as a theory of human (or other living) beings: a peculiar sort of alienation is required to demand that we think of humans foremost as nothing different than other matter

[Act_of_Reparation]

14. I think we're all in agreement there

It's typical HuffPo-league pseudoscientific drivel given undeserved legitimacy because the author is a doctor, as if an M.D. is any more qualified to speak of particle physics than are you and I.

Yale or not, Katz is a fucking quack, who has argued that because he is unable to prove the effectiveness of his holistic practices, the standards of scientific evidence really ought to be lowered.