(This post is in response to this: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1766393,1767271#msg-1767271 )

Henry:

1.) At the beginning of your most recent post, you wrote: "my commitment to freewill has NEVER been the basis of my arguments against your views, or any other views. My grounds for such dismissal are based upon clear logical argument that such views are not scientifically supportable."

There are two problems with this statement. The first is that you yourself have made it clear, in earlier posts, that your commitments to humanist principles like free will DO in fact constrain your responses to propositions like a biological basis for religiosity. Have you forgotten? Here are your own words, from a previous post:

"To be perfectly upfront, my interest in this subject (religion and its possibly biological basis), which is also my main interest in participating on the Board generally, is to preserve a basic scientific and philosophical respect for what is essentially a strict humanist position, i.e. that human beings have freewill...". (You can refresh your memory here: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1750690,1750749#msg-1750749 ).

That could not be any clearer. Now, if you want to take that back, by all means, do so; but until you do, everyone reading your remarks on the possibly biological basis of religiosity will assume, and for reasons you alone furnished, that they indeed have been constrained by (A) your prior commitments to freewill, and more importantly (B) your belief that "biological predisposition to" is somehow equivalent to "we don't have any free will".

The second reason is that you have not presented any evidence for the proposition that (A) religiosity does not exist (as you have alleged), and (B) that it is does not emerge from enduring features of human biology.

Rather, you have simply announced your conclusions, and in the most dismissive tone at that. That's not enough. It's not enough, because many of us believe that IF the human brain is such that wherever there are humans, there will be religious beliefs and practices (as indeed there always have been), it is then fair to say that religiosity indeed emerges from biology. Now, if there is something illogical in that inference, or evidence refutes it, by all means, explain; but if you can't, or won't, then none of us has any reason to simply subscribe to your conclusion (especially when you yourself have already made it look suspect by announcing your pre-commitment to humanist doctrines) simply because you have announced it. We have no idea who you are; we have no reason to believe (not least, because you yourself have given us no reason to believe) that your conclusions are definitive and justified by a preponderance of evidence; and it is most unfair of you to expect otherwise.

2.) You complain about my rhetorical jabs. Why, you have even issued a "warning" (your word) that you will not engage with me if I ever type one again.

This is rich for someone whose own tone is relentlessly pontifical and imperious. Nor are the warning and the pontifical, imperious tone unrelated: you seem to take it as a personal affront that I, and others, don't accept your conclusions simply because you have deigned to reveal them (and in the absence of any real argument from you as to why we should). This is not fair. Nor is it fair for you to expect me to overlook your own relentlessly pontifical tone, and your announcements that I "haven't read the literature", while issuing stern (and frankly embarrassing) "warnings" to me about the, um, horrific spectacle of you not discussing this stuff with me anymore.

Let me add here that my rhetorical jabs actually have a point: to try to get through the imperiousness. This isn't the Vatican, and you're not the Pope. For me, and others, to come to adopt your positions, you need to give us good reasons for adopting them. And by the way, I have asked repeatedly for you to provide some sort of sketch as to what precisely a convincing argument for biology-driven religiosity would look like to you, and you still haven't even done that. What, pray tell, do you want? What would it look like, hypothetically?

3.) Science provides reasons to believe that free will exists, just as it provides reasons to believe it doesn't.

4.) A growing number of researchers into religion DO argue for biological predisposition to religiosity. They fall into two camps: those who believe that religiosity is an adaptive trait; and those who believe it is a by-product of other traits. Just off the top of my head, those who fall into one of those two camps include Boyer, Gould, Sperber, Atran, D. S. Wilson, Haidt, Mark Pagel, Todd Tremlin, Bruce Hood, loads of guys. Nor are their explanations "simplistic", as you suggest.

5.) You write: "I acknowledged that genuine freewill *is* a sacred cow, without scientific basis, which is why I do not use it to support scientific arguments. My post was only designed to show that such "sacred cows" are built in to what it means to be human; not that they serve as premises for scientific or philosophical arguments."

But this is a trivial or hollow statement, in that you have already made clear that you will assent to no proposition which you fear threatens that sacred cow. I am merely suggesting that on the specific question of whither the origins of a ubiquitous religiosity in human socieites, you forget about the sacred cow for a while, and just focus on the question.

6.) I am actually not at all "hell-bent on refuting you". There is nothing personal in this for me. Sincerely, I would be happy to leave behind every one of my own suspicions and views, and adopt every one of yours, providing you present good reasons for doing so; but it just so happens that, as a rule, and despite your loquaciousness, there is really no clear "through-line" in your posts, let alone clear, concrete, evidence-driven arguments. There are ex cathedra-style pronouncements, certainly, but we - or at least, I - need more than that.

For example, and again: what precisely does a convincing argument for a biological basis for religiosity look like to you? You want gene names? What?



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/10/2016 02:28AM by Tal Bachman.