Re: [asa] Explanatory filter

On May 26, 2008, at 9:21 PM, Stephen Matheson wrote:

>
>
> le to see that a more careful examination of a scene can reveal
> aspects previously unnoticed, and overturn hastily-formed judgments
> that were sometimes planted by unscrupulous apologists.
>

To see how strange these hastily formed judgments look, see this
dialogue in Time magazine below with the author of Blink, Malcolm
Gladwell. This book advocates the quick decision. (Whenever I see a
manager with this book on his shelf, I stay as far away from his
department as possible.) N.B., prepare to get sick.

> GLADWELL: One of the big trends in American society is the
> transformation of the evangelical movement and the rise of a more
> mature, sophisticated, culturally open evangelical church. Ten years
> from now, I don’t think we’re going to have the kinds of arguments
> about religion that we have today. Even the fight over intelligent
> design, to me, is a harbinger of a trend, which is that the
> religious world is increasingly willing to put its issues on the
> table and discuss them in the context of the secular world. Let’s
> argue about evolution vs. creation, using the framework that secular
> science has given us.
>
> SHIRKY: That’s wrong. Intelligent design is a stalking horse for
> creationism against a particular enemy, evolution.
>
> GLADWELL: I disagree. This is part of an ongoing transformation. We
> will not continue to have this kind of divide between Evangelicals
> and the rest of society. I just went to an interesting evangelical
> conference, and throughout, rock bands were playing. The rock-’n’-
> roll culture within the evangelical world is indistinguishable in
> terms of the sound of the music from the rock culture that came out
> of a very different, irreligious secular tradition, except that the
> words are about Jesus — love and all that. They’re not resisting
> outside culture, they’re embracing it and kind of making it their
> own. I think intelligent design and Christian rock are similar. It’s
> about taking up form from the outside and trying to Christianize it.
> Does the debate over evolution matter? Isn’t it really a nondebate?
>
> SHIRKY: No. It matters a lot because medicine is starting to become
> evolutionary, and we want to continue to have doctors who understand
> that.
>
> GLADWELL: But that’s not being threatened. The intelligent-design
> debate is about what you teach 7-year-olds.
>
> DYSON: What you teach 7-year-olds matters because they grow up.
>
> GLADWELL: But we’ve already been talking about how great Google is.
> They can just Google evolution.
>
> BROOKS: I think the debate is unimportant for a different reason,
> which is that 40% of people in the country don’t believe in the
> theory of evolution, and yet we seem to march on regardless.
>
> GLADWELL: None of this affects the way science is conducted in this
> century. Does it change you as a software salesman whether you
> believe in evolution or not? No — no more than it changes you
> whether you believe in Einstein physics.
>
> DYSON: You can’t limit your concern to short-term economic impact.
> This attitude closes off inquiry. It creates an approach to science
> that I think is dangerous.
>
> GLADWELL: But keep in mind the idea we’ve discussed of the
> multiplication of identity. We will have more debates and disputes,
> like the one over creationism. When you’re having 100 arguments at
> once, no one of them matters the way it used to. It’s important not
> to use a 19th century moral lens to evaluate the kind of debates
> we’re going to have in the 21st century. We have to accept that the
> general noise level will increase, but that doesn’t matter. You can
> be a creationist at night and go to work in the morning as a
> pediatrician and save lives.
>
>

Rich Blinne

Member ASA

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Received on Mon May 26 23:52:28 2008