Examining Paradigms

I will let you read for yourselves.

Kissing Hank’s Ass

I just finished the book entitled Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali.   It is an autobiography of one woman’s childhood in various countries with a prominent Muslim population and her flee to Holland where she takes control of her life.  She does an incredible job at outlining the differences between Islam from country to country, ethnicity to ethnicity, and tribe to tribe.  The story is excellently told and empowering.  Even though I do not venture to directly compare other religions to fundamental Islam, I do feel that anyone who was raised in an environment where scripture was interpreted as literal and abandonment of religion could cause shunning by family and community will be able to relate to Ayaan’s story on a cursory yet powerful level.

She eventually abandons Islam but details her journey out, and the cognitive dissonance that initiated this journey.  For anyone who has dealt with religious paradox, contradiction and cognitive dissonance, this book is for you.  Ayaan ends up making a short film with a man named Theo van Gogh who is shot, stabbed and has a letter impaled to his chest addressed to Ayaan as a result of the film.

This film was named Submission Part I

I am left conflicted by books like these.  We are constantly told that Islam is a religion of peace.  Yet Ayaan, a once devout Muslim, is a strong opponent of this statement.  Furthermore, when I read the Qur’an, I find plenty of passages that justify violence and terrorism.

The following experience is a perfect example of when someone falls into the petitio principii fallacy, more commonly known as begging the question.

To maintain the anonymity of the participants, I have changed all the names in the story. The story is also condensed and summarized. This is not an actual word for word account.

Who is who:
Kate = my colleague with whom I am conversing
Susan = a colleague with whom we are annoyed with often
Marie = a colleague that is always extremely annoyed with Susan

Kate and I were recently discussing some of the people within our professional circle and Kate said, “you know Marie came up to me and told me that she just celebrated her tenth anniversary of meditating twice daily.”

“Wow, that is impressive dedication”, I replied with sincerity.

“You know, I would think that someone who practiced meditation for ten years would be much more tolerant about other people. Marie is always extremely irritated with Susan, and I would think that a serious meditator would be much more relaxed about it.”

“Why? Are you into meditation, Kate?”

“Yes. In fact, I am trying to meditate every morning, and I look forward to the day when I will be able to sit in a 2 hour trance. It will be awesome.”

After pondering Kate’s response, I replied “well maybe you should be less critical about the practitioner and more critical about the practice itself.”

“You are right, maybe Marie is just not meditating correctly and that is why she is easily irritated with Susan.”

“No. I mean maybe meditation is not all that it is cracked up to be. Maybe meditation does not work.”

Kate replied briskly. “No, meditation definitely works.”

“Kate, I really think that maybe this is cause to question the validity of the claims made by practitioners of meditation. Maybe, meditation just doesn’t work as well as some say. Why do you think it works so well? Shouldn’t you be skeptical of its value?”

“It will work. I am sure of it. People say it works and I am going to have success.”

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Begging the question is stating a “truth” and assuming the truth of that “truth” without using any other evidence to support it. The above dialogue is a classic example and it irritated me. Why not engage in skeptical dialogue about the claims of a methodology that often purports transcendence and spiritual enlightenment?

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence and begging the question is not providing any evidence.

I have been a long time discovery and history channel fan, but it seems that more and more the are producing horrible shows about aliens visiting earth, ghosts and other things that fuel popular irrational thought. While watching a history channel show that was discussing the “possibility” that aliens assisted primitive cultures with building the pyramids and other intriguing, early architecture, I realized that most of the distasteful programs fall into the argumentum ad ignoratiam fallacy.

There are a few different forms to this fallacy, but two common ones are, 1) arguing the truth of something because it can not be disproved, and 2) jumping to an untested conclusion because you are ignorant to the source of something.

Examples:
1) Statement: Aliens built the pyramids.

No they did not, there is no evidence that points to aliens

Well you can not prove that they did not build the pyramids, so they did. – argumentum ad ignorantiam

2) Statement: There is a funny noise in the cellar at night, and I do not know what it is.  The noise must be a ghost. – argumentum ad ignorantiam.

It really bothers me that shows that should be promoting good science are just feeding irrationality in the general public.  One of the people on the mentioned (aliens and pyramids) show said something along the lines of, “What I like about the aliens hypothesis is that it forces us to think.”  Au contraire my friend, it prevents you from thinking.  It creates an absence of thought when complex ideas are needed.  It is a cop out.

The truth is that ancient civilizations are much more complex than some give them credit.  Do we have the answers for all of the architectural and astronomical mysteries within these ancient cultures?  No we do not.  But saying, “this ______ is complex, aliens must have helped” gets us no closer to finding the answer to these ancient puzzles.

When we are confronted with mystery and complexity, we need to form testable hypotheses and test these hypotheses to approach the truth.  Blaming complexity on aliens or the supernatural is a cop out, generally untestable, and is not productive.  Unfortunately popular television is not helping promote critical thinking in society.  Shame on them.