Thoughts on Arguing

I have been wondering about arguing lately. How we argue, how we get set in our world view and dig in like a donkey sits back on its hind legs and won't budge. The reason this has been in my mind is because I've been trying to learn about determinism. When I first heard about it in a podcast by the Reasonable Doubts guys, I resisted and thought, this is ridiculous! Of course I have free will! I feel like I do!

But after 4 hours of them explaining it, I felt like I was getting it. Then we had our Morgantown Atheists group have a meeting on determinism and free will. A professor from WVU came and talked about it and I got it even more. Now I've tried to explain it to my husband Butch and my friend Jeff, who are both extremely resistant and argue against it. Part of that is probably because I don't understand it enough to explain it well. But part of it is because the idea of determinism is huge. It rocks your world when you hear about it.

What I'm really trying to get at, though, is how we, as humans, seem to always fight for what is most comfortable and familiar to us. We always seem to resist new ideas. And something else, we always seem to pick the other side of an argument if we're up in the air. For instance, when I was explaining determinism to my friend Jeff, he objected heartily.

But then we were talking about this topic, about how people stick to their comfort zones, and he told me that he ended up explaining determinism to his son, and found himself defending it, while his son objected.

Isn't that interesting? Why do we do this? I'd love to see some research on this. I've heard of a few studies that might apply to this, but I can't recall them clearly enough to find them for you. If I can think of how to search for them, I'll add them here. If you know of any studies please let me know!

Also, do you find this is true for you and your friends and family? Or do you see it differently?

Determinism and Free Will 2a of 4

Recently, I wrote about Determinism and Free Will. It was basically an introduction and consisted of a transcript of the Reasonable Doubts guys. Well, this is the first half of their second episode on the subject. I decided to break it up into two posts because, as you can see, it's incredibly long. And it was taking me forever to transcribe it.

So in this part, the guys are talking about determinism again, especially in regards to how to deal with people who break the law or do something wrong. This is a very touchy subject but the guys explain it well, especially when they talk about parenting.

Here you go:

1:56 Dave (D): So in our previous episode, Free Willy vs the Determinator part 1, we talked some about determinism and free will, but we didn't get to the moral implications associated with a hardcore determinist world view like the three of us seem to share. And not all naturalists do.

Jeremy (J): No, we need to acknowledge that there is diversity amongst naturalists. I will say I don't feel bad going further in saying, though, I think they're wrong. I think they're demonstrably wrong. I think accepting determinism, unfortunately or not, is necessitated by a consistently naturalistic world view. But there are people who disagree.

D: But it's a very hard thing to do, and it took me a very long time to just decide that, "yes, in fact I'm going to follow the evidence", because you're giving up a lot of things, apparently.

J: You're giving up things you never had.

D: Well, yeah. But things that I thought I had.

Determinism and Free Will 1 of 4

Let's talk about Free Will versus Determinism. I first learned about this philosophical and practical debate while listening to the Reasonable Doubts podcast, which I've recommended to you in the past. They have done four episodes, plus one bonus interview with a christian apologist radio show that is too painful to sit through, on this topic. It is so interesting and important that I am going to transcribe the relevant sections of all four episodes for you. (I don't transcribe the other topics of the episode, and skip half thoughts, etc. I recommend listening to them in full)

They all build on each other. The first episode (below) was the hardest for me to grasp. I had never heard of Determinism before, and had always assumed we have free will. So if you're new to it, it seems harsh and unnatural. But stick with it. The following 3 episodes clear up a lot of the questions raised in this one. Unfortunately it takes quite some time to type them out so try to be patient with me.

Reasonable Doubts, Episode 29: Free Willy vs The Determinator

Starts at 21:16

Definition of Free Will (24:30): This is the definition that christian apologist and philosopher J.P. Moreland would take: He calls it Libertarian Agency. You are a free agent. Your actions do not have prior causes. You are the unmoved mover if you have free will. You choose to do something. You could have chosen otherwise. Not only can you initiate actions, you can also stop actions, or choose not to act. Basically we're all little gods, in a way.

26:25 Determinism in a nutshell is the opposite of that. There are external and internal forces that influence your behavior. Commonly people think of determinism as you couldn't have done otherwise. You're standing there with the gun pointed at somebody and you're forced to pull the trigger. But really it means simply that there are reasons for your behavior, forces and factors at play, external and internal prior causes. When you are making choices those choices are not uncaused. There is a chain of causes. Your choice is the effect of prior causes.

The Science of Persuasion

The other day I gave you a transcript from a lecture. The article was titled Why People Defend Their Dogma. At the end I promised a follow-up with some practical advice. And here it is. They did another episode of Reasonable Doubts, Episode 70, where they talked about how to persuade people, especially about science. They talked about a professor who has done some studies. I have written up a transcript of the salient parts of the conversation.

Partial Transcript:

37:18 If the goal is not to score points, if the goal is actually to persuade people, if the morally superior goal is to win minds rather than just make people look stupid, then tone really does matter. Psychology has some things to say about how we should best go about trying to persuade people to really, any position, but even more specifically to a scientific position that they may otherwise feel threatened by,  or may conflict with their worldview.

38:07 It's an empirical issue. What is likely to be persuasive or off-putting or not is a testable question. There are people right now researching how you package factual issues and seeing if that affects the rate at which people believe, disbelieve or deny them.

One of the examples of this, there is a researcher who's name is Geoffrey Monroe from Towson University who has done some studies on peoples' willingness to agree with belief consisting information as opposed to information that's inconsistent with beliefs as a function of things like how the information is presented to them.

So he had a piece on Science and Religion Today where he folded this into the debate about, do you alienate people by using blunt language that offends them. The theory behind this that people don't, as most people probably realize, they don't simply make up their mind on the basis of factual, cognitive, cold type calculations. This is one aspect that frustrates us, is that when we are debating with somebody, it quickly becomes apparent that the facts of evolution in some cases won't make a difference, if the person has an emotional investment.

So people hold attitudes because they are linked to aspects of your self-identity. As stated in Terror Management Theory, if you have a worldview that can be threatened, you get defensive. You circle your wagons as if attacked. In the same way, with factual issues like scientific-type things, religious people hold these as part of their broader self-identity.

Dark Chocolate and Other Tidbits of Goodness

If you're like me, and you enjoy dark chocolate, then I have some studies to share with you! I think they'll be helpful for the holidays as well as generally beneficial throughout the year. If you don't like chocolate (WTF, just kidding), see below for swine flu info, and other linky goodness.

Dark Chocolate Helps Ease Emotional Stress: A new study found that eating about an ounce and a half of dark chocolate a day for two weeks reduced levels of stress hormones in people who felt highly stressed. The chocolate also partially corrected other stress-related biochemical imbalances. "The study provides strong evidence that a daily consumption of 40 grams [1.4 ounces] during a period of 2 weeks is sufficient to modify the metabolism of healthy human volunteers," the scientists say.

That led me to a study from last December. It's rather small and involves self-reporting, but it could be a promising line for further research, and could be something you experiment with yourself to see if it works for you:

Dark Chocolate Lessens Cravings: Dark chocolate is far more filling than milk chocolate, lessening our craving for sweet, salty and fatty foods. In other words, eating dark chocolate may be an efficient way to keep your weight down over the holidays (and throughout the year!) The dark chocolate gives a feeling of satiety.

Happy Atheists! Survey Finds We're As Happy As Nuns

I have all this information to share with you, but I haven't had a chance to organize it properly. So I've decided to kind of throw it out to you with a few notes and let you process it at your leisure, instead of wait any longer. Last month the results of a survey were released. The survey was all about the godless and it was done by Professor Luke Galen.

Luke Galen does a podcast called Reasonable Doubts with two other awesome guys, Jeremy Beahan and David Fletcher. I love this podcast and have been listening to all the past episodes to try to catch up. Just recently I listened to episode 32, Profiles of the Godless where Dr. Galen addressed CFI Michigan with his results. This was recorded back in January of this year, before his paper was published. I highly recommend listening to the podcast as it makes the data come together to make sense.

Along with the podcast, you can look at Luke Galen's pdf presentation that he used for the talk. Note: He has zero sense of color or graphic design. The charts are pretty painful to look at. But if you follow along with them while you listen to the podcast it really helps. Use eyedrops to keep your eyes from bleeding. lol

Another take on the data is presented by the Center for Inquiry. They did a press release last month and summed it up briefly. And here is a 5 page pdf of the results that won't make your eyes bleed. It's mostly text as opposed to charts.

This study was really awesome. First, it looked at nonbelievers in all their different aspects and iterations. How many of us still claim to be spiritual, etc? And the chart I found most awesome was how atheists find themselves to be relatively happy (life satisfaction, page 16 of the pdf). The interesting bit there is that people who are comfortable and rather set in their belief or nonbelief are much happier than people who doubt, like agnostics. In other words, being certain in your belief or nonbelief of god(s) helps with emotional stability.

I did come to the conclusion that I'm a bit of a statistical anomoly, though. Most atheists tend to be white men who have higher education and make good money. The only thing I have in common with them is that they have fewer children (Oh, I'm white, too. LOL) So yeah, I'm a white woman with only a bit of college, mostly self-educated, I'm not spiritual in the least (whereas most female atheists also claim to be spiritual), I'm a housewife, and I have no kids. So I guess I'm not your typical atheist.

Dr. Galen also looks into the issue of labels, which I find interesting. We have friends that call themselves Brights and avoid the A word. And I would never call myself a Bright and am proud to be called Atheist. Some people like to be called Humanist or spiritual. So he looks into that. When forced to pick just one label, a lot of people chose atheist which was interesting.

I'd love to see this go further, to ask even more questions of atheists. Maybe then it wouldn't be so hard for us to come together, to unite for common causes.

What do you think? Your thoughts are welcome, as usual. :)