HARRIS: There are many kinds of dogmatism. There’s nationalism, there’s tribalism, there’s racism, there’s chauvinism. And there’s religion. Religion is the only sphere of discourse where dogma is actually a good word, where it is considered ennobling to believe something strongly based on faith.
WARREN: You don’t feel atheists are dogmatic?
HARRIS: No, I don’t.
So Apparently Sam feels that dogmatism applies to strongly believing something based on faith. Then I suppose Atheists or Scientists cannot be dogmatic if their beliefs are based on evidence, right?
HARRIS: There are many kinds of dogmatism. There’s nationalism, there’s tribalism, there’s racism, there’s chauvinism. And there’s religion. Religion is the only sphere of discourse where dogma is actually a good word, where it is considered ennobling to believe something strongly based on faith.
WARREN: You don’t feel atheists are dogmatic?
HARRIS: No, I don’t.
So Apparently Sam feels that dogmatism applies to strongly believing something based on faith. Then I suppose Atheists or Scientists cannot be dogmatic if their beliefs are based on evidence, right?
In theory and assuming that theory is perfectly manifest in the real world.
i.e. ...
No.
Unless you’re using “if” in the last sentence as an abstract conditional rather than as an assessment of reality.
HARRIS: There are many kinds of dogmatism. There’s nationalism, there’s tribalism, there’s racism, there’s chauvinism. And there’s religion. Religion is the only sphere of discourse where dogma is actually a good word, where it is considered ennobling to believe something strongly based on faith.
WARREN: You don’t feel atheists are dogmatic?
HARRIS: No, I don’t.
So Apparently Sam feels that dogmatism applies to strongly believing something based on faith. Then I suppose Atheists or Scientists cannot be dogmatic if their beliefs are based on evidence, right?
I would argue that Sam Harris probably does not associate dogmatism with atheism simply because it does not have a similar “structure” as organized religion—although Harris seems to have been part of the impetus for coalescing the atheist community. As Jefe said, atheists can be just as dogmatic as the next guy… Ultimately though, I don’t think Harris really wants to attack dogmatism, he wants to attack faith. That’s his problem…
So Apparently Sam feels that dogmatism applies to strongly believing something based on faith. Then I suppose Atheists or Scientists cannot be dogmatic if their beliefs are based on evidence, right?
Even more apparently, eudemonia, is that belief is a conflicted religious invention, at least as the word is currently used. We atheists don’t believe anything under the moon or sun, other than for those of us who share with theists some measure of inclination/willingness/ability regarding reality-bending, which many of us certainly do.
So Apparently Sam feels that dogmatism applies to strongly believing something based on faith. Then I suppose Atheists or Scientists cannot be dogmatic if their beliefs are based on evidence, right?
Scientists are not dogmatic simply because science lacks a belief structure or system.
There’s nothing to be dogmatic about.
Atheism is a word that doesn’t imply belief any kind so there is nothing to be dogmatic about there either.
dogma |?dôgm?|
noun
a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true
So it appears that dogma is laid down by “authorities”, whereas science is almost literally “laid down” by experiment and evolution of experimental results. We stand on the shoulders of all of those who came before and found the same results. We use those results to make experimental predictions. If we can make accurate predictions, then the concept is reified.
We don’t need to believe what the scientific authorities tell us because we know that as their students they will force us to repeat all of the experiments of their teachers in lab and “demonstrate” the results to us for our own experience. Learning and practicing science is very different than learning and practicing religion. There is a difference between having confidence and having faith. Faith requires belief. Confidence requires statistics.
Theory can’t really be dogma because theory is never accepted as proven, just well founded or not. “Findings” represent evidence that the theory is congruent with or not. Acceptance of a well founded theory when used as a premise to support further reasoning is not the same as accepting theory because it was “laid down” by authority, as dogma.
(I find this whole idea of “laying down” a concept very strange)
dogma |?dôgm?|
noun
a principle or set of principles laid down by an authority as incontrovertibly true
So it appears that dogma is laid down by “authorities”, whereas science is almost literally “laid down” by experiment and evolution of experimental results. We stand on the shoulders of all of those who came before and found the same results. We use those results to make experimental predictions. If we can make accurate predictions, then the concept is reified.
We don’t need to believe what the scientific authorities tell us because we know that as their students they will force us to repeat all of the experiments of their teachers in lab and “demonstrate” the results to us for our own experience. Learning and practicing science is very different than learning and practicing religion. There is a difference between having confidence and having faith. Faith requires belief. Confidence requires statistics.
Theory can’t really be dogma because theory is never accepted as proven, just well founded or not. “Findings” represent evidence that the theory is congruent with or not. Acceptance of a well founded theory when used as a premise to support further reasoning is not the same as accepting theory because it was “laid down” by authority, as dogma.
(I find this whole idea of “laying down” a concept very strange)
Possibly you have dogma cofused with single-mindedness. Heavy cognitive bias or filter. I think dogma is just plain arbitrary programming.
Could not scientists be dogmatic about their unproven theories or hypotheses?
String Theory for instance?
Big Bang Cosmology?
Granted these would not be the best of scientists but…
Instead of dogmatic, I think the word you’re looking for is persistent. Experimenter bias is usually controlled for or discovered through peer review, especially in replicate studies. Also, don’t they generally get the math to work first before they go off chasing windmills. In your example, unproven means working on the problem and making progress.
Do you think that their are scientists who ignore or disagree with peer review prognosis? Ones that just insist that their ideas are right regardless of what the methodolgy says?
Michael Behe for instance.
William Dembski for another.
Are these dogmatic scientists or just religious propagandists?
Behe still teaches bio-chemistry at Lehigh University and writes books promoting ID. He believes and promotes the god of the gaps crap and irreducible complexity, even though peer reviewed science has completely proven his ideas wrong in biology. He’s tenured but it makes you wonder how they can keep him. IMO he is not practicing legitimate science.
Learning and practicing science is very different than learning and practicing religion. There is a difference between having confidence and having faith. Faith requires belief. Confidence requires statistics.
