What is truth?

A few years ago, a friend--I suspect that he voted for donald t. rump--challenged me with: "You have read about the world's major religions.  You are a learned man. Tell me whether anybody other than Jesus has ever come back from being dead?"

I usually never take up such questions to debate.  Because, there is no way that one can debate such questions that are not based on evidence.  They are driven by faith.  I merely thanked him for the certification that I was a learned man, and then moved on to other topics.

As a kid, I was raised with stories of people doing extraordinary things.  I believed them.  It took a while to figure out that belief and faith do not invite inquiry.  As my grandmother often replied, "because it is so!"  I remember once my father narrating the story of a Hindu holy man who was reportedly seen in three different places at the same time.  My immediate thought was, "how did they confirm that?"  After all, this was even before the age of telephones--they could not have been on a three-way call and reporting the sighting.  But, I didn't dare to ask my father that, the same way I chose not to respond to the question related to the resurrection of Jesus.

All of us--except trump, and his minions who might be a huge subset of the 63 million who voted for him--seek the truth in anything we want to understand.

The faithful claim about Jesus or other divine people and happenings are extraordinary claims.

The principle of proportionality demands extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims. Of the approximately 100 billion people who have lived before us, all have died and none have returned, so the claim that one (or more) of them rose from the dead is about as extraordinary as one will ever find. Is the evidence commensurate with the conviction? 

The extraordinary evidence is not there.  "In science, we need external validation." There is no other way.  One might choose to believe in whatever, but that belief by itself does not make it an universal truth.

How do we know that the scientific method works?  Is science itself a "faith" as much as the resurrection of Jesus is a faith?

Nope.  The fact that you are reading this is evidence that science and the scientific method are no "beliefs" or "faiths."  Here is Richard Dawkins explaining that:

I don't "believe" in climate change

"If I respect the person, then I am almost always open to listening to their ideas--even if they are different," a student remarked during discussions.

Now that explains why nobody listens to me! ;)

The student's observation is profound--am not sure if she realizes how insightful that is.  I hope she does not let go of that bottom-line; it will serve her well in life.

I am so convinced because, after all, I have my own experiences to confirm that.  Once, a stranger emailed me after reading an op-ed of mine, in which he wrote that he always reads my opinions because of my integrity.  The craziest thing is that he and I do not know each other and, yet, in his estimate from afar and based on my writings, I am a man of integrity.

I, too, behave the same way--I love to interact with people who are genuine and for whom I have respect.  Why would I want to waste my remaining time with people for whom I have no respect at all?

These begin to matter a lot on issues that bear enormous weight on society.  On the world.  Like with climate change.  Most people who are suspicious of claims about climate change, or the human triggers behind it, are also some of the more religious people in this country.  Most scientists, on the other hand, are not that much into religious beliefs.  So, we now have a problem: How could we convince them about the urgency?

This is not that much different from how public health issues--like small pox and polio--were tackled in developing countries.  Remember?  People, especially in villages, were not quite sold on the vaccination idea.  The campaign then sought out people in the communities whose words had some weight on others.  The village elders, the religious leaders, the school teachers, ... and when those people spoke to the community, the campaign was an easier sell.

Even here in climate change,

people can accept unwelcome truths much more readily if they come from within, rather than from outside, their community/family/group.

The NY Times profiled Katharine Hayhoe, who is a climate scientist as Texas Tech University, as one of those highly respected insiders:

Dr. Hayhoe has come to prominence in part because she is just so darned nice. It would be too easy to chalk that up to her Canadian background — she says it does help explain her commitment to finding consensus — and she has found that she gets her science across more effectively if she can connect with people personally. In a nation seemingly addicted to argument as a blood sport, she conciliates. On a topic so contentious that most participants snarl, she smiles. She is an evangelical Christian, and she does not flinch from using the language of faith and stewardship to discuss the fate of the planet.

She reminds us about something important:

While some climate warriors treat those who are not inclined to believe them as dupes or fools, she wants to talk. “If you begin a conversation with, ‘You’re an idiot,’ that’s the end of the conversation, too,” she said

Something similar is what another student remarked during the discussions.  Students hate it when they are treated like stupids.

Some people seem to intuit all these.  Some are like me--we learn it the hard way, after a few early years of arrogance.  It took me a while to understand and appreciate intellectual humility.  I wish I had understood that when way younger.

So, why the strange title for this post when it is intellectual humility that I wanted to reach?  It is straight out of that NY Times piece:

“I don’t believe in climate change,” she said. Belief doesn’t come into it; scientific verification does.
“Gravity doesn’t care whether you believe in it or not,” she said, “but if you step off a cliff, you’re going to go down.”

Facts and scientific verification have nothing to do with "belief."  But, facts and science alone cannot win the day.

Oh, the coolest thing of all?  I had tweeted the "belief" thing earlier:

I love this: I don’t believe in #ClimateChange
"#Belief doesn’t come into it; scientific #verification does."https://t.co/c6ZRvlbYn1

— sriram khe (@congoboy) October 11, 2016

And Katharine Hayhoe was one of the people who "liked" my tweet.  Hey, there are people who even listen to my tweets ;)

Throwback Thursday ... because it is Friday!

"I am curious how closely you align yourself to the ideals of humanism and existentialism" inquired a student in his email the other day.

If he follows-up with a meeting in my office, he will soon find out that I drive myself--and this guy too--crazy with my thinking and blogging about those issues over and over and over and over ... ;)

How awesome it is to receive an email from a student regarding those issues, right?  A few like that and I can rest assured that the future will be in safe hands.

It seems like I more often than not connect with the sincerely religious than with the secular folks. The first ever student, at the current university, with whom I connected that way was home-schooled in a religious family background.  When she invited me to her sister's "homeschool commencement," I felt privileged to have been included in that.  Knowing my atheism, she included a postscript:

 In all fairness, I should warn you that you'll be mixing with pretty conservative folk, should you choose to attend. And the graduation will be held at our church. So if either of those factors will be too unbearable or uncomfortable. . . [smile]

I went there.  It was the best commencement that I had ever attended.  The event was not about meaningless speeches and boisterous applause for all things trivial.  Instead, it was a heartfelt acknowledgement by the student and the teacher--the daughter and the mother--of the completion of an important stage in one's life, and the role that each played.  I was moved by the experience.

A few months after that, it was about this time of the year--before Thanksgiving.  I wrote an email to the sisters' parents about how their two daughters were simply wonderful.  Over their years at the university, I got invited to many more events at their home, including a wedding.

In life outside of interactions with students, my meaningful associations seem to be with people--the frequent commenters at this blog included, of course--to whom their faith matters.  The man with no faith always hanging around with people who are sincere believers is quite an interesting juxtaposition.  Even I find this particularly interesting!

I wrote back to the student,

Yes, in my atheist framework, I spend a great deal of time trying to understand what it means to be human and to belong to humanity, and to make sense of my existence.  It is a marvelous challenge.  

I hope to figure those out before my time runs out ;)

Do not believe the hype about science education. It is humbug!

Students incorrectly believe that science classes are only about some random science thingys that they do not ever have to worry about once they pass the classes.  But, that is not really the students' fault--the teachers and the system, who convey such  notion, are the ones who are guilty of an enormous crime.

Of course, we learn about various scientific explanations--from grand ideas like evolution and big bang, to curious questions like why the penis is shaped the way it is, to everyday puzzles like what happens to the boiling point of water when you go from sea level to higher elevations.

What is behind all that content is the real McCoy.  Or, as Joe Biden might put it, the big fucking deal.  It is about students learning to doubt and then learning to ask questions in order to figure out the answers.

The most important goal in educating our children should be to encourage them to question everything, to not be satisfied with unsubstantiated claims, and to be skeptical of a priori beliefs, either their own, their parents’, or their teachers’.  Encouraging skeptical thinking in this way, as well as directing a process by which questions may be answered—the process of empirical investigation followed by logical reasoning—helps create lifelong learners and citizens who can responsibly address the demands of a democratic society.
And there is overwhelming evidence that one of the key collateral benefits of a more scientifically literate populace is that the seeds of religious doubt are thereby planted among the next generation.

That is from the talk that the physicist/public-intellectual Lawrence Krauss gave after picking up the 2015 Humanist of the Year award.  In fact, Krauss opened the talk with a Richard Feynman quote:

Permit us to question—to doubt, that’s all—and not to be sure…. It is our responsibility…to proclaim the value of this freedom, to teach how doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed, and to demand this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.

To doubt. To question.  Two actions that always trouble the establishment, whether it is science or politics or religion.  Especially religion, in which one believes without doubting and questioning.  A good Christian never doubts Jesus rising three days after he died.  In his Hindu faith, my father believes in the gods and godmen whose "miracles" he has even witnessed in person.

Science, on the other hand, makes us think about these very differently.  We begin to doubt the claims.  We question.  We ask for evidence.

The purpose of education may not be to destroy religious belief, but surely, as Richard Feynman alluded to in the quote I opened with, its purpose is to encourage doubt. In that arena we are sorely falling short.

We are falling way short.

[An] AP-GfK poll revealed that less than a third of Americans are willing to express confidence in the reality of human-induced climate change, evolution, the age of the earth, and the existence of the Big Bang. Among those surveyed, there was a direct correlation between religious conviction and an unwillingness to accept the results of empirical scientific investigation. Religious beliefs vary widely, of course—not all faiths, or all faithful people, are the same. But it seems fair to say that, on average, religious faith appears to be an obstacle to understanding the world.

Krauss offers examples from here in the US.  The old country is no different.  Well, it is way worse there.

I am so glad that Krauss added this:

Of course, science class isn’t the only place where students can learn to be skeptical. A provocative novel that presents a completely foreign worldview, or a history lesson exploring the vastly different mores of the past, can push you to skeptically reassess your inherited view of the universe.

As I have noted in many posts, in my dealings with students, I push them to question their views of the world.  "The academy has a far more important and subversive way" of dealing with such issues--the doubt and the questioning are all related to curiosity, and "curiosity is insubordination in its purest form."  There is no doubt about that.