The Faith and Science of Professor Fish

I wrote the following in response to Stanley Fish's second column on faith and reason.

See his article here.

They closed comments while I was writing it, so I'm posting it here.

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It might be said that the contrast between faith and science is that faith presupposes that one is right, while science presupposes that one is wrong. The analysis presented by Prof. Fish tells us that the suppositions of science are built on assumptions inherited as "fact" from previous endeavors. Does the humble doubt of the "knowing" faithful parallel the careful hypothesis testing of the critical scientist in this regard? 

I think there is a naive view, however, in limiting the discussion to one person making one observation at a time. Ten scientists can repeat the same experiment in ten places at ten times and get the same answer every time. Facts can exist, even without an observer to attest to them, as the fact is waiting to be observed (gravity is waiting for you at the bottom of the ocean). Independent verification is a powerful antidote to having to accept anything from anyone in the form of assumption. If I understand one of the undercurrents of Prof. Fish's descriptions of faith, the pervasive human belief in God and faith can be also viewed as an experiment performed in parallel over many centuries, thus taking on a greater dimensionality than simple singular belief. 

I did not expect to state this, but perhaps he is right that science and faith do have more in common than they don't.

Quote of the day

"I feel like I have lost my mind. I work hard to make a respectable life and educate my children. Now we are living in a camp, and my sons are talking of guns."

-Sher Mohammed, a Pakistani fleeing from Taliban militants in the Swat valley.

From Washington Post

Torture tyrants

This is it.  I have had it with all the moral relativism discussing whether torture works and is admissible, why torture is bad, and under what circumstances torture is not torture.  All apologists for torture are going to hell- and I'm not even religious and I can say that.  Torturing is fundamentally incompatible with civilization, and so apologists for torture are not members of modern human civilization but another- and that is a good working definition for being in hell (in the theological framework of novelist Cormac McCarthy).  So, quite frankly, I don't give a shit about the opinions of torture apologists.

One fact that has come up lately is that the United States of America, as a victorious power, EXECUTED Japanese soldiers that followed orders to waterboard and otherwise torture our prisoners of war.  To the victor go the spoils, while the vanquished go to the gallows.  But when we conduct the same acts, as a superior power, this is acceptable behavior.  What this highlights is that our position as a country, in the name of sovereignty, is that we are fundamentally above international law.  Above meaning we do not recognize it.  Pragmatically speaking, this is a fine premise, so long as no one can enforce external views on our sovereign nation.  

When Britain ruled the waves, and the American colonists rebelled, I'm sure there was a great deal to be said about how wonderful British society was.  Such nice clothes and music and public schools they set up!  But they tortured and murdered and marauded the coastline and dogged the private affairs of the subjects, and these outweighed all the benefits of being British to a great many of the colonists. Supremacy, when used as a shield from culpability, is tyranny.  And no wonder why the people in the world suffering from our unstoppable foreign incursions, who see that people like them are being tortured without possibility of challenging their detainment, see the USA as a tyrannical and evil superpower (regardless of all the "good" things we do for the world).  No amount of civilized behavior can make recompense for a strategy that is anathema to civilization itself, and any country that does not recognize this will go to hell, and no one will mourn its passing.

Just ask yourself this: if there were a nation that could and would invade ours in order to capture our leaders and force them to stop torturing people, or to force our removal from foreign countries, or anything else, how do you think that would affect our actions?  What we are experiencing is the corruption of supremacy.  All empires crumble.