Tolerance and the public square…

I confess I’m not really sure what is meant these days by “the public square”. There probably isn’t just one, and it probably isn’t a physical square in a particular spatial location. But wherever and whatever it is, there’s been a debate going on about who has access to it, and what they can legitimately do once they get there. This has been occasioned by the furore surrounding Kate Forbes who is currently one of the candidates in the Scottish National Party’s leadership contest (and therefore a candidate for First Minister in the Scottish Parliament). She is also a Christian and a member of the Free Church of Scotland. As I suspected, both of these have led to considerable confusion in the media. At one point last week things got so bad that Dr James Eglinton, an academic in the Faculty of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh and also a member of the Free Church of Scotland, was prompted to offer to proof-read journalists’ copy before they further embarrassed themselves. They were not the only ones to be confused.

Apparently, Mhairi Black (the SNP’s deputy leader at Westminster) couldn't care less about someone’s religion until, that is, it actually affects them in any way. For should it affect the way a politician might vote for or against something Ms Black is against or for, that is “intolerance”. One of Forbes’ opponents, Humza Yousaf (Black’s preferred candidate) helpfully opined that religious views were fine if the person holding them “...were able to disassociate their view, and not let that interfere with policymaking or legislating…”. This is presumably the approach Mr Yousaf, a Muslim, has been taking all these years. Partly in response to such statements, the Scottish Association of Mosques issued a statement about the debate: “The tone of the debate around religious beliefs …. is deeply concerning. Some of those beliefs in question, are beliefs that Muslims also share.” The implication is that the Christian in the race is closer to many Muslims in Scotland than the Muslim in the race. They went on to say that it was “..refreshing to hear a political leader [i.e. Forbes] talk about their religious values and principles, in an open and transparent way.” So Black is confused about tolerance, and Yousaf is confused about the teachings of Islam. Both think that religious belief is fine, provided it leads to no discernible action. Anything else is a form of intolerance.

I always assumed that politicians held beliefs that influenced them, otherwise of what value are those beliefs? Now some beliefs might not lead to outward action if they concern abstract concepts (e.g. my belief that a square has four corners). But this type of belief is deeply uninteresting. When added to other kinds of information, it might turn out to be useful, but it’s not the sort of thing that is going to set the heather alight. Many beliefs however, do shape action. My belief that an umbrella can keep the rain off of me means that I am likely to reach for one on a rainy day. If my experience of umbrella use turns out to be positive then I am likely to want to tell you about it so that you might benefit from their use. In sharing this information (which is intimately connected to my beliefs about umbrellas) I am not oppressing or insulting you, although I could obviously share it in an insulting way. If I felt strongly, I might go into politics and argue that there should be pro-umbrella legislation so that society in general could benefit from such an innovation. Why should this be in any way problematic? If it turns out you are not convinced and think that I am acting from impure motives (e.g. I own shares in an umbrella manufacturer) then this should certainly be exposed and factored into the public debate. But that’s what a democracy is; people with different views, in open debate. Beliefs, motives and facts all play a role in this and everyone is entitled to participate. Or so I thought.

It turns out that certain kinds of beliefs are now to be ruled a priori as having no place in public debate. Mhairi Black has certain beliefs, and I dare say she is confident she can justify them. But even justified beliefs are still beliefs. I’m sure they influence how she votes, the positions she takes in debates, and how she seeks to legislate for others. I have no idea what all of her beliefs are, but I suspect I don’t share many of them. But I’m happy that she has them and agitates for them. Some of Yousef’s beliefs are intimately connected to his experience as a Muslim in a culture where Islam is not the majority view. He has said that this aspect of his experience does influence his politics and his actions as a legislator. As has been pointed out in the twitter-sphere and occasionally in other media, he has not yet been quizzed on those aspects of Muslim belief that do not appear to neatly cohere with his politics. But both Black and Yousef claim that religious belief should play no role in politics and presumably no role in public discourse in general. Private good (or at least currently allowed), public bad.

I have no beef with them holding precisely this view (belief) and expressing it. But exactly why should I accept their authority to pronounce on which beliefs are and are not to be expressed publicly, which beliefs are and are not to be allowed to shape behaviour, debate and politics (if such a thing were possible)? At least we know from whence Forbes’ views flow and on what they are based. One might take a dim view of both a Christian’s beliefs and the Bible from which they are drawn. But to exclude them even from scrutiny, from even being presented in the public square, to assert that their defence and justification should not even be attempted, betokens breath-taking intolerance.

Tim Farron, a man who knows a thing or two about expressing Christian beliefs in a political context (to his cost) suggested a much healthier model in a radio interview recently: “The fact is, there is no neutral space in the public square and a genuinely liberal society is one where we bump up against each other respectfully and are helpfully healthily curious about why people think things that are different.” 

That's a public square I'd happily take a stroll in any day.

Life in the Pandemic X: Exacerbating uncertainty

 Many things in life are uncertain (apart from death and taxes obviously). And many things are uncertain in science. Indeed identifying, controlling and quantifying uncertainty is a key aspect of the practice of science. We’re so keenly aware of uncertainty that we try to dissuade students of talking about science “proving” things, as though in any given situation absolutely all uncertainty can be removed. We don’t think that it can be, and we can therefore never be “certain”. What we seek to do is accumulate evidence supporting a particular explanation for a given phenomenon so that it moves from being highly provisional (a hypothesis), to being fairly probably the correct explanation (a supported hypothesis), to being the best and most highly supported explanation we have (at which point it’s  usually elevated to the status of a theory). This takes time and effort. Even so, we also accept that the most accepted theory, with apparently lots of supporting evidence, can always be superseded by a new theory. This might be an extension of the original theory, or indeed a contradiction of it. But this whole approach raises  problems. It is tricky to explain (as you may have noticed), and it’s not the way most people think or speak most of the time. These problems (and why they matter) have been amply exposed by the pandemic.

Let’s start with the language problem. There are situations where certainty is conflated with clarity. In a startling reversal of form for the particular bunch of politicians currently running the UK, the pandemic mantra has been “We’re following the science, therefore….”. This is a reversal because it suited them in a previous situation (ie the Brexit debate), to downplay the view of “experts”. But as I’ve noted before, in the pandemic, this has changed. Experts are in; but uncertainty is not out.

Politicians and the media, are very keen on what they call clarity. But COVID19 is a virus new to  humans, and therefore new to science. Nothing was known, indeed could be known, about it (although things could be inferred). Early in the pandemic, at the time when many key decisions were being taken, the science was more than usually uncertain, and therefore the scientific advice to politicians had to be highly caveated (this is an assumption on my part, I wasn’t privy to it). But this doesn’t make for snappy press conferences. And it almost certainly guaranteed that the advice would change, and therefore the instructions issued by politicians would have to change (example: face masks). The media don’t particularly help in such situations. Their stock in trade is the language of u-turn and climb-down. It might have been wise to clearly communicate from the start that the course of action being embarked upon was based on a consensus of what, given the evidence at the time, was reasonable. Not certain, but reasonable. Problem is, would any of us reacted as we need to if the politicians had spoken this way?

To be fair to them, there have been some sceptics and deniers who have been happy to jump up and down and accuse them of exaggerating the danger of the situation for nefarious political ends. They have pointed out that for all the talk of half a million UK dead and the NHS overwhelmed, this was not the disaster that developed. But this is to miss the point. The one experiment that could not be done was the one that involved doing nothing and essentially letting COVID19 run its course. So on the basis of (suitably caveated) advice, we had our lockdown. And while we can’t be certain (that is, after all, the point I’m making), the difference in case and death curves (eg see here) between most EU countries (including the UK) and others like the US and Brazil, suggests that this was indeed a sensible course of action. As an aside, we have to now hope that we don’t blow it, and revert to the earlier trajectory that could lead to disaster. However, at least some of the critics seem to suggest that with all the uncertainty involved, essentially nothing should have been done. Action should only have been taken once all doubt had been removed. But then that would have meant nothing would have been done. And many thousands more would have died, deaths that we have almost certainly avoided. It will perhaps be possible to demonstrate this statistically, once more  evidence has accumulated. But at the point the big political and economic decisions had to be taken, actual evidence was scarce.

We have heard this sort of call to wait for certainty before, both in another contemporary context and historically. And it’s here that the language problem, and the complexity problem intersect. Climate change, its cause, effects and what we should do about it (if we can do anything about it), is undoubtedly complex. The idea that it is caused by human activity (primarily the burning of fossil fuels from the industrial revolution on, increasing atmospheric CO₂) has been a matter of overwhelming scientific consensus for decades ie we’ve gone beyond hypothesis, supported hypothesis, and theory to consensus. Even still, scientists in this area will probably be unwilling to say they have no doubts, that the relevant theory/theories have been “proved” in some absolute sense. That’s just not the appropriate language of science. But that allows others to come along and say that the science is uncertain, there are alternative explanations or the whole thing is just a hoax. Here, a legal analogy might help.

I served on a murder jury some years ago. We were faced with the weighty decision of whether the prosecution had proved its case beyond reasonable doubt. Notice that you can still convict and have doubt. The question is whether the case is proved beyond reasonable doubt. One can always come up with lots of “could be’s” and “might have beens”. But if they fly in the face of the evidence, or are not supported by evidence, then they are not reasonable. And if they are not reasonable, they is no reason to pronounce the defendant “not guilty”. If the scientific consensus around climate change were a defendant in the dock, although there are doubts and uncertainties, they would be ruled out by the evidence as unreasonable, a guilty verdict handed down, and the jury would go away and sleep soundly, their duty done. And yet the uncertainty, complexity, and the language of science conspire to provide a space for those who say we should do nothing because we are not 100% certain, precisely at the time when action has to be taken.

At least some who operate in this space are following in a fairly inglorious tradition that has been exposed several times. They seek to foment doubt and increase complexity, obfuscate evidence and exacerbate uncertainty. They explicitly seek to sow doubt, of the unreasonable sort. The approach was famously summarised by a cigarette company executive in the 1960’s in a now infamous memo which stated “Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the ‘body of fact’ that exists in the mind of the general public.”(1). What followed was essentially a well funded disinformation campaign of epic proportions. Meanwhile, cigarettes continued to be manufactured, sold and consumed and contributed to the early deaths of millions. The story of this and similar campaigns is expertly revealed in its gory detail by David Michaels in his books (2,3). And there’s evidence that there are commercial and other interests playing the same game with climate change. Stir up doubt, exacerbate the uncertainty, and the public will conclude that either the issues are so complicated and unclear that it would be premature to take action (like ban smoking or increase tax on gas guzzlers), or that the inconvenience of action is not worth uncertain benefits.

This kind of thing is happening in the pandemic. Reasonable people are not taking reasonable actions because, particularly in the US, misinformation is being spread and uncertainty is being exacerbated. The scary bit is that when the much hoped-for vaccine becomes available, we all know it’s likely to start over vaccination against COVID19. But, to resort to some unscientific language, you can be sure that wearing a mask and washing your hands frequently at the moment, and getting vaccinated once one or more vaccines have passed through the requisite trials, is a really good idea. I don’t doubt it.

 1. Michaels D (2005) Doubt is their product. Scientific American 292(6):96-101 (available on Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/7806937_Doubt_Is_Their_Product)

 2. Michaels D (2008) Doubt is Their Product. Oxford Univ. Press

 3. Michaels D (2020 )The Triumph of Doubt: Dark Money and the Science of Deception Oxford Univ. Press

What’s all this about more debate?

Here’s where my “remain” friends (and most of my friends voted remain) and me probably part company. I suspect most of them have been spluttering over their cornflakes and muttering darkly at TV news bulletins of late, because of the latest shenanigans at Westminster. And I understand why. They voted remain in the EU referendum (as did I) because they thought it was right and sensible. Probably, like me, they did not vote remain because the EU filled them with unalloyed joy (discussed further here). It’s a human institution with all the faults and flaws of any human institution (and a few extra ones to boot). But it made political sense to stay in, on the basis that many of the problems we face don’t respect borders and are better tackled as part of a larger political block. It made economic sense because the states of the EU form our largest and nearest market. Indeed the single market is as much a British construction as it is a European one. I could go on. But I won’t (at least not about all the reasons for voting remain). Leaving, they genuinely believed then and now, was and is madness. Leaving with “no deal” they regard as tantamount to national self-harm on an epic scale. I’m not sure I would put it that strongly. Time will, unfortunately, probably tell.

Their anger over Boris’ latest wheeze is genuine too. I have no reason to believe anything else. They see him as using illegitimate (if not strictly illegal) tactics to thwart the attempts of his Brexit opponents to scupper a “no deal” Brexit. Some, I have no doubt, think that the proroguing of Parliament is antidemocratic because it will deny the people’s representatives the opportunity to scrutinise the intentions and actions of the Executive. And with some justification they will point out that during the recent Conservative election campaign, Boris and a number of his current cabinet colleagues, sought to pacify moderate elements in the Conservative selectorate and garner votes by implying that they would not do what they have essentially just done. These various views are shared by a very large number of people. Last time I looked, well over 1.6M had signed a petition against proroguing Parliament. Polls suggest that there is currently a majority of that view by some margin. And there have been protests in many UK towns and cities.

As far as the proroguing issue goes, here’s my problem with those who have a problem. Their basic case seems to be that this is a manoeuvre to deny Parliament the opportunity to debate the issues around leaving the EU, particularly those raised by leaving without an agreement – the no deal scenario. But exactly what is there to debate that hasn’t been fully aired over the last three years? Who is there left in Parliament (or the country for that matter) that lacks the information required to form a view? The result of the referendum itself and how it should be responded to has been discussed to death. Early on the idea was floated that Parliament should simply refuse to act on what technically was an advisory vote. This was rejected. The overwhelming majority were clear that the result had to be honoured. Most MPs in 2016, and in the post 2017 House of Commons voted remain, and a minority of them have never reconciled themselves to the idea of leaving the EU. This I understand. But then, why did they vote 6-to-1 to put what was a complex and nuanced decision to the people in a binary referendum in the first place? Yes, David Cameron pushed the issue of a referendum for relatively selfish political and party management reasons. But he was aided and abetted by the political class as a whole, Labour, Liberal Democrats and the Greens and others. They all abrogated their responsibilities are all guilty for the resulting chaos.The historians can argue about how the guilt should be precisely divided up when the dust has settled.

Post referendum, and post Cameron, we had a general election. There were pro-EU membership/anti-Brexit options on the ballot paper in the form of the Liberal Democrats, Greens and occasional others. But these were decisively rejected. We saw the return (although perhaps temporarily) of two-party politics.  Of those two main parties, both made clear they would seek a negotiated withdrawal from the EU, so honouring the referendum result. Labour went further. They were specific in their rejection of no-deal, and said they would reject it as an option if they formed the government. The election was a close run thing, but Labour didn’t form the government because the Conservatives got more votes (although a relatively small win in terms of votes cast was then magnified by parliamentary arithmetic). But the options were there.

It is the no deal issue that has galvanised many of my remain friends, petition signers, press and politicians on all sides. It is presumably no deal, so the argument goes, that won’t be scrutinised and debated if Boris gets away with prorogation. But hang on, specifically this issue has been the subject of debate for months. It has been voted on in the Commons. Parliamentary skulduggery has even been resorted to by the opponents of no deal, with active support from the Speaker of the Commons. It’s not just Boris and his acolytes who can dive through gaps in our unwritten constitution. The debate has produced more heat than light and precious little agreement. Some insist that no deal will be an unmitigated disaster, others see it as the ideal clean break with the EU. Most are probably somewhere between these extremes. But the notion that it has not been debated, or that further debate is going to make any difference is not sustainable.

I have no idea precisely what the effect of a no deal Brexit will be. I am sure that there will be disruption. There will be costs. I don’t really see where there will be benefits. Will it be a disaster on the scale of war or famine or plague? Probably (hopefully) not. But this was always one of the possible ways of exiting the EU. It was also always one of the potential outcomes of the Article 50 process that Parliament voted, overwhelmingly, to trigger. In the referendum campaign, we were warned about the potential hit to the economy and jobs if we decided to leave. I found the warnings plausible, many did not. Some may or may not have been persuaded by the fantasy promises of the various out campaigns. But with all of that ringing in our ears a majority of my fellow citizens voted to leave the EU. We’ve now had three further years of debate. There’s no evidence of mass buyer’s remorse or that another referendum would produce a very different result, although conceivably it might produce a different outcome. But that would hardly help settle things. If it was remain 52% vs leave 48% (not entirely implausible if the polls are to be believed), why should that result be allowed to stand when the first one was reversed? Parliament ducked its obligations and handed the decision to the people. The people took the decision. The debate has been had. The democratic thing to do is implement the decision. It will be messy. But if democracy means anything is it surely that we get what we (or at least the majority) vote for.

But one final note. Recently I’ve been thinking about the life and times of a character in the Bible called Jonah. He lived in turbulent times. His own nation had been on the up, and under the current regime things seemed to be going well. It looked like the King (Jeroboam II) was doing well, militarily, politically and economically. I bet the King Jeroboam thought so. But it turned out there was a whole other level of reality that the King, and many people of the day in Israel, were missing. Their success was far more to do with providential timing and God moving the pieces on the international chess board, than Jeroboam's genius. He was working His larger purposes out. We know this because it’s helpfully recorded in 2 Kings 14:23-27, and explained further in the books of Jonah, Amos and Hosea. We live in turbulent times, nationally and internationally. This is not all and only about us, votes, debates, protest, politics and tactics. Providence may be merciful to us, and may come through these present difficulties unscathed. It might not. But the likes of Jonah, Amos and Hosea have a lot to say to us today. About the humility required of leaders if nothing else. Their own people, in their own time, did not listen to them. Perhaps we are in danger of making the same mistake.

Scientism

If “new atheism” (NA) is, if not dead, perhaps terminally ill, then one of the contributory factors to its demise is the scrutiny that its supporting doctrines have come under. Whether cause or consequence, NA has always been closely linked with “scientism”. Scientism is not science, does not work in the same way as science, and does not (or should not) have the same authority as science. A bit like NA itself, it’s not new; it has probably been around in one form or another as long as science itself. But it really began to emerge in the late 19^th century with the desire of some in science to paint the only possible relationship between science and other disciplines, or between science and religious faith, as a war in which there had to be a winner and a loser. It kicked around in the background for a while, probably pooped up in many undergraduate science courses, and came to public prominence more recently as a supporting pillar of NA.

What is it? Definitions abound, but at its heart it’s an understandable (and now familiar) view. The only truth that counts is scientific truth, and therefore the scientific method is the only means of discovering truth. A series of classic statements can be found in Peter Atkins short essay “Science as truth” published in in 1995. Speaking of science, Atkins claims that “There appear to be no bounds to its competence… This claim of universal competence may seem arrogant, but it appears to be justified.” All religion (grouped with studies of the paranormal) is dismissed as an “obscurantist pursuit”. Science is the “greatest of humanity’s intellectual achievements”; in contrast he thinks it a defensible proposition that “no philosopher has helped to elucidate nature”! I commenced my own scientific journey in 1979 when I began my science degree at the University of Glasgow. There were certainly some lecturers to us first-year biology students who weren’t backward at dropping such sentiments into their lectures. I now suspect that this was because their own historical and philosophical education was sadly lacking. As student, I found such views baffling; as a scientist, more than thirty years Iater I find them embarrassing.

There have been and are lots of responses to scientism. Some have come from those of a theological disposition. I rather like John Polkinghorne’s comment on scientism (in “Theology in the Context of Science, p46), that it is “the rash and implausible claim that science tells us all that is worth knowing, or even that could ever be known. Embracing that belief is to take an arid and dreary view of reality..” . Polkinghorne writes as a theologian and former (distinguished) physicist. For a wide ranging and eloquent critique from a scientist’s standpoint, read Austin Hughes’ “The Folly of Scientism”. Hughes writes for more than just the sake of an argument. He has a real concern that scientism’s overreach will eventually cause science big problems: “Continued insistence on the universal competence of science will serve only to undermine the credibility of science as a whole.” With contemporary attacks on expertise ringing in our ears, and with science now worrying within about the reproducibility crisis, I think he’s right to be concerned.  

Part of Hughes’ case is that philosophers are far from innocent when it comes to the scientism. Some schools of philosophy provided a major impetus to it (ie the logical positivists), while others colluded in its rise. It always bemused me that 19^th century theology gave up the tussle so easily. But philosophy being philosophy, scientism didn’t have it entirely its own way. At least now there does seem to be something of a fight back going on whether it’s Roger Scruton’s approach from art history, or Peter Hacker’s more analytical analytical critique.  

To my non-philosophical mind, many of those objecting to scientism seem to be united in a common reaction to the ignorance of those who promulgate scientism. This is a version of the disdain for other approaches that has been so much a part of NA. From their different perspectives, scientism’s critics have pointed out that it often derides and dismisses ideas that are never fully defined or fairly discussed. Some have objected to its selective memory when it comes to the history of science itself. Others have pointed out that it has a habit of blundering to other areas of academic endeavour, oblivious to important concepts and developments, constructing weak arguments and reaching fallacious conclusions. Particularly in popular accounts, this leads to a series of illusory battles against straw men, which of course, are convincingly won.  

It’s always struck me that this is something that often marks NA’s attacks on religious belief. Of course if you take the very weakest form of an argument it will be easy to defeat it. Having defeated the weakest form, it’s a short step to the claim that all arguments of that type are also therefore defeated. Showing that diverse beliefs in fairies, Santa Claus and large lizards controlling earth from the moon are irrational is not likely to be that relevant to debunking beliefs in well attested and evidenced ancient events that believers claim to have transformative power today. Such debunking may be possible, but it was always likely to take much more careful work than many in NA were apparently able or inclined to do. And the sheer logical inappropriateness of the natural science to do this work, was clearly lost on them.

As with the reported death of NA, it’s unclear to me what the fate of scientism will be. As Hughes argued, its fate will likely have important effects on science itself. As a scientist, I’m committed to the scientific endeavour, and think that within its area of competence science offers the best way to answer certain types of questions. But it can’t answer every type of question. For that we need the tools of philosophy, history, anthropology and the rest. And for that most important type of question (the why rather than the how)? If I were you I’d turn to Scripture rather than scientism (or even science).